Darling (30 page)

His mother screamed. The plate shattered. Blood cascaded down the side of his father’s face. The old man spun, confused, shocked, falling to one knee. He placed a hand on the table, pushed himself to standing as his fist swung out blindly, gliding past Mike’s nose without connecting.

Mike’s knuckles crashed into his father’s jaw. He fell back to his knee. Mike hit him again, and again, until he fell to the floor. Mike reached down, jerked his collar up, and pounded fists into his face rhythmically, explosively, like pistons firing, blood splattering on his shirt and on the wall, blood leaking onto the floor, his father’s hands flailing, his mother screaming for him to stop but not moving from her seat, his father whimpering like a dying dog, his bones cracking underneath Mike’s fists, Mike’s hand and arm screaming in pain as the bones in his own knuckles shattered, but he could not stop,
would
not stop, as two decades of abuse and resentment traveled down his arm and into his father’s face.

Kill him
, the voice in the back of his mind whispered.
Beat him to bloody pulp. Shatter every bone in his face. Crush his windpipe. Stomp on his ribs until his lungs collapse. Kill him! Kill him and take his battered corpse into the dark, offer it to your darling, kill him, blood sacrifice, the doors are open even now—

He stopped, staggered back. His lungs fought hard for breath. His knuckles sent sharp knives of pain stabbing their way up his arms, into his shoulder, into his head.

The voice inside of him screamed for him to continue, but he was frightened more than he had ever been, even more than when he had listened to the mad whispers calling his name from the dark. He had always had that voice inside of him, had learned to live with it, but now it almost brought him to tears to realize that
it was no longer his voice
.

It belonged to the darkness.

And so do you, my darling. Finish him. Bring him to me.

His mother rushed to her husband’s side. She wept as she cradled the old man’s head in her arms. His face was unrecognizable, a crimson Rorschach blot stretched across a purple-and-green mottled skull. His father wheezed, rolled around in his mother’s arms, his hands still flailing.

What had he done?

KILL HIM GODDAMN YOU!

Mike stumbled like a drunk from the house. His mother’s crying echoed after him, accusing him.

The voice in his head taunted him.

Icy rain fell all around him, crashing into his hot flesh, freezing him to the bone. Wind buffeted against him, trying to push him back into the house to finish it.

He felt sick, nauseous, like he was trapped in some fever dream that no matter how hard he fought he could not wake from.

He stumbled to his car, his broken hand hanging useless at his side.

Overhead, thunder rumbled.

* * *

Jack’s long legs reminded her of tall, thin trees swaying in the wind as he shuffled through the basement ahead of her.

“What kind of strange things?”

“Um...” She wasn’t sure how to answer that. She laughed. “Well, this is going to sound weird.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“But I’ve been having nightmares.”

He paused. “Nightmares?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of nightmares?”

“It involves the building. There was this doctor back when it was a hospital—”

“You’ve been dreaming about Whaley’s fountain, haven’t ya?”

She froze.

“Yep. Reckoned that’s what ya was dancing around.”

“Is that...”

“Common?”

She nodded.

“Don’t know about common, but it’s recurring, that’s for sure.” He started walking again and she trotted behind him. “This building gets a hold of all of us sooner or later. Some of us it just gets a little hold of. Others…Well, sometimes it takes a big bite out of some folks.” He stopped at a door and fumbled in his pocket for his keys. “This dream was pretty bad, huh?” He unlocked the padlocks on the door.

“...horrible...”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“But the dreams aren’t all.”

They stepped into his workroom. Lights hung everywhere, blasting the room like the sun itself burned inside. Sweat broke out on Eileen’s neck.

Jack pulled a rag from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. “You don’t live here, do ya miss?”

“No.”

“But you know someone that does.”

She nodded.

“Someone who’s acting peculiar lately.”

“Yeah.”

“Here’s my advice.” He pulled a notebook from his shelf. The spine was labeled “Anomalies.” He opened it to an empty page, took out his pen, and scribbled. “Just stay away from here. This place ain’t right. Some of us have deep roots here. Some of us made promises that they have to keep, jobs that they have to do. But you’re not sucked into this place yet. So just get as far away as you can and don’t come back. Things are getting worse here. You may not get too many more chances.”

One of the lights flickered and Jack’s face lost all color.

“What do you mean? What’s wrong with this place?”

“I’ve said too much already, I think.”

“But I—”

“It’s not for us to know. I shouldn’t know as much asI do.” He slid the “Anomalies” binder back onto his shelf.

“Jack, listen. I’ve been—”

He grabbed her shoulders and jerked her toward him. She froze, scared, his beer-scented breath blowing into her face. “Get outta here. Never come back. Ya hear me?”

She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t move. The intensity of his eyes rooted her to the floor.

“Whoever you know here’s lost. If they ain’t someone different by now, they will be. Happens to everyone here. It’s like goddamn Chernobyl. It’s in the fucking air.”

“You’re hurting me.”

He let go of her and she stumbled to the door.

“Listen to what I say, miss. It ain’t just piss and vinegar, ya hear?”

She stumbled out into the dark of the basement. What
had
he said? Did he confirm her suspicions, or was he crazy? And what was in that “Anomalies” binder? The word itself conjured images of paranormal activity. If she could only get a peek at it...

She came to a dead end of storage cages. She was so flustered when she left his workroom that she must have taken a wrong turn. She turned to head back, her mind swimming through everything Jack had said, and saw him rushing from his workroom. His hands were full. In one he held a grocery bag with what looked like tubes of hamburger meat inside, while the other held a foot long black case. He fumbled with the locks, slid his keys back into his pockets, and darted down the hall. He bounced off of one of the cages as he passed.

An overhead light reflected off of his keys.

Eileen stared at them, bewildered. They were hooked on a stray piece of wire hanging from the storage cage he had bumped into. Did he notice?

She heard the elevator’s doors slide shut and the box rumble up the shaft.

She almost laughed at the timing of it all. She rushed over, unhooked the keys, and darted back to the door. She undid the locks and crept inside. She glanced around the room to see if there was anything else that caught her eye, but the room was mostly tools. She took the binder from the shelf, laid his keys on the table, and then froze. She didn’t want to steal from the man, but she also didn’t want to get caught having broken into his workroom.

She debated for a few moments until finally deciding that she could take it, read it, and then sneak back down here and leave it outside his door. He would likely suspect her, but so what? If he didn’t catch her in the act of breaking and entering, there was little he could do.

One of the lights flickered again and went out.

She shivered.

Eileen left, shut the door behind her, and made her way toward the elevator.

She felt eyes on her as she walked.

The shadows of the basement seemed to writhe in excitement as she passed. She listened, tried to hear footsteps or breathing, but the only sounds were water rushing through pipes and her own footsteps coming down onto the concrete.

As she passed the laundry room she almost gasped.

A young boy stood in the corner by one of the machines, shirtless, staring at her. His glassy eyes and pale skin
unnerved her. Something about him was unnatural and he
stared at her with an almost sexual glare.

She chastised herself for being frightened of a child, but hurried off just the same.

Once outside the building, she felt a little safer. A little more secure. Her depression and anger at Dennis flooded back again and she almost broke down crying before she even made it to her car.

Thunder rumbled above her and she thought she felt the first few drops of icy rain splash against her scalp. Finally she was in her car, the binder safe in her passenger seat, and driving away from this damned place.

* * *

The cold stabbed him like daggers, hacking bits of warmth from him with every gust. Where had this goddamn wind come from? It was too early for this kind of weather. Jack ran through the forest, his gun case in one hand, the hamburger meat in the other.

He had been their caretaker for far too long. They were tied to this place somehow. Mark had hinted as much during one of his drunken rages. Jack had turned his head for too many years, had fed them in exchange for pay and the hope that they wouldn’t go looking elsewhere for food. But there was something else, something that he hadn’t admitted to himself until now.

Feeding them kept the pain away.

He had been one of the survivors of that horrible accident decades ago, and the pain that he had lived with had been damn near crippling. There were times when he thought about ending it all. But when he fed these things, when he kept up his end of what had surely become some kind of infernal bargain with this place, the pain went away.

He didn’t care about that anymore. Things were getting worse and the thought of that grate opening, of those things
saying his name
, was too much. He had to end them.

He slid down the hill. He sat the bag of hamburger to the side and pulled his flashlight from his belt. He had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t even bothered to use it, hadn’t thought of the shadows that sometimes writhed and whispered here. He was surprised he hadn’t had an accident rushing through the dark woods, but he had made this trek so many times over the years that his body knew every step.

He shined the light onto the tunnel. With thunder overhead, an icy rain showered the earth.

The grate was open.

He fumbled with his gun case. Pulled the pistol out. Shined the light into the trees around him. Listened.

Rain smacked against fallen leaves.

He aimed the flashlight down into the tunnel. The light died against the deep black inside.

He cleared his throat. “Dinner time, boys!”

Something growled behind him.

He spun.

One of them stood on the hill above him. He shined the light into its eyes, hoping to disorient it, but it didn’t so much as blink. He raised his pistol—

—and something hit him from behind.

He fell forward into soggy leaves, the flashlight flying from his hand. He rolled onto his back and tried to
scramble away, but sharp knives clamped into his calf. He screamed.

Black shapes swarmed around him. Hot drool dripped onto him. Their breath reeked of decay, their fur of rot. Another one bit down into his other ankle, crushing the bones. He screamed and fired off a shot. He heard a whimper, but it didn’t let go. He squeezed the trigger again and again, unloading the clip into the thing until it finally opened its jaws and fell limp to the side.

He aimed at the one on his calf, fear taking hold, not realizing he had fired too many shots.

Click, click, click
.

The air was knocked from him as one slammed its front paws onto his chest. It lowered its head toward his face, hot diseased breath crawling over him and making him gag.

“I told you we would taste you.” It grinned.

They dragged him screaming into the tunnel and fell on him, their jaws ripping muscles away, crushing bones, dragging his guts from his body and stringing them down the tube.

The last thing he saw was the grinning one, the one that spoke, holding his severed forearm on the ground with its paws, ripping meat away as it laughed.

* * *

Mike stood outside of his car, the cold rain pelting his face like jagged pebbles. Raynham loomed over him like his father once did, dominating him, demanding
respect
. His hand, already swollen and purple, throbbed. He felt dazed still, didn’t even remember driving home.

Thick ribbons of filthy ice water ran through the parking lot, crashing against the curbs like surf. His eyes were drawn to something sparkling, some shiny thing catching the light while being washed away. It bobbed upward, a larger piece breaking the surface. It looked like one of his anime figurines.

It slammed against the curb hard enough to split into two pieces before being dragged under.

Come to me, Michael.

The voice had traveled through so many permutations since he beat his father nearly to death. His own, the voice of the strange whispers he listened to in the dark, Dennis, Eileen, his parents, Margot.

I need you inside of me,
Margot’s voice echoed in his head.

The drenched branches of the willow hung to the ground like a dying man reaching for the earth. The wind hit them hard, each individual leaf swaying like raised hackles even though the limbs barely moved. Every so often they would part long enough for him to see Karen inside, her hair drenched, a white T-shirt soaked through to transparency, the pink buds of her nipples shining through as she spun around and around, smiling at Mike all the while.

Dance with me, Michael.

His head felt like it was splitting open. He thought of Zeus birthing Athena from his skull. His stomach was a roiling mass of acid. His hand felt like it ripped itself apart.

He needed to lie down. Close his eyes.