Darling (32 page)

Tears leaked down her face. What had happened? What was he doing? This had all seemed so
normal.

“
...please,” she whimpered.

He pulled the knife away and reached for a roll of duct tape sitting on the coffee table.

Panic flooded through her. She knew she had one chance.

She bucked her hips, her hand shooting toward his throat. He fell to the side, crashing into the coffee table, strands of her hair still twisted between his knuckles.

Candles fell to the floor, wax splattering over the hardwood.

Eileen was up and at the door. He thundered behind her. She spun, the light catching the knife as it flew toward her face.

She ducked and scrambled to the side. The knife slammed into the door several inches deep. He planted his foot against the door and jerked it free.

“Dammit, Eileen, I—”

As he spun around, a nail file slammed into his collar bone with a crunch.

She backed away, her keys jangling from the embedded file, blood soaking his shirt. He grabbed it and pulled, screaming, but it wouldn’t budge.

She dove for her purse. It skidded across the floor, the contents spilling everywhere.

Her keys jangled behind her.

She grabbed for the pepper spray as he gripped her ankle.

* * *

The hall leaned over Dennis as he crept toward Jason’s apartment. Some of the light bulbs must have died. The shadows were deep, almost tangible. They clustered around him as he flexed and unflexed his fingers.

His heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest. It pumped acid through his veins and all he could think of was destroying something.

A grunt drifted down the hall. As apartment 234 came into view, the door cracked open. Candlelight flickered in the doorway.

He peeked through the crack.

Jason, naked, his back to the door, the muscles of his shoulders and buttocks tensed. Head tilted back. Eyes closed.

He turned. Stepped away. Muscles quivered. He could taste blood. He saw fire, great sheets of flame painting the hallway, erupting from the floor, reaching upward, grabbing at the ceiling, pulling it down onto everyone’s heads. A pressure built inside of him. If he didn’t release it, didn’t lash out soon, his muscles would rip themselves from his bones.

He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes.

He heard a whimper. A grunt.

“Shut up, bitch.” Very faint.

Eileen would never let someone talk to her like that.

Dennis went back to the apartment. He nudged the door open.

She was on her stomach. Her hands behind her back. Wrists held together with duct tape. Jason twisted atop her, fighting with her belt. She squirmed and bucked, pressed the buckle into the floor. Blood ran down his chest onto her jeans.

The candlelight ricocheted from the tip of a knife hanging loosely from his hand.

The next few seconds were little more than snapshots.

Eileen’s eyes wide as she scrambles backward.

Jason looking at her, angry.

Dennis’ shoulder colliding with Jason’s hip.

The knife hitting the ground, spinning, sliding.

Jason’s head bouncing from the hardwood floor.

Dennis snarling, his fists firing like pistons, Jason’s face crushed under the blows.

Blood splattering onto the wall, the sofa, the floor.

Jason’s fingers scrambling for the knife, breaking as

Dennis grabs them and snaps them back.

Jason’s scream cut off by an elbow smashing into his windpipe.

The fog cleared. Not completely, but enough for Dennis to realize that the weeping, bleeding lump of flesh underneath him couldn’t harm anyone any more.

A quivering ball whimpered in the corner. Shadows covered it. A part of Dennis realized it was Eileen, wanted to go to her, tell her everything was okay. But his instincts still had him.

Blood dripped from his fists. The burning in his knuckles told him that some of it was his own. His nostrils flared wide, taking in the scents of the room: thick burning wax, the coppery smell of blood, the acrid musk in the air.

He grabbed the roll of duct tape from the floor.

Jason tried to say something as Dennis strapped his wrists and ankles together behind his back. Dennis slammed his face into the ground again with a loud crunch.

Crying from the corner. “Ohgodohshitohgod.”

He grabbed Jason by the ankles and jerked him toward the bathroom.

“Dennis? What are you doing?”

He hefted the squirming, bloody mess up and into the tub.

—Bleed it for me, my darling.

Bleed it like a pig for me—

He marched back into the living room and grabbed the knife.

“Dennis?”

He stared at the crying thing in the corner. A face slowly came into focus.

Eileen? Why was she crying? Why were her clothes ripped?

—Bleed them all out for me, darling.

The whore should leak out onto the wooden floor,

slowly,

slowly.

Stick her in the gut and leave her.

I want to drink her pain—

Eileen fought her way to her feet, her face bruised and swollen, her shirt ripped open to reveal a scratched, pink breast dotted with blood.

—Yes, blood!

She has so much of it in her.

Spill some of it for me—

“Eileen?”

He shook the fog off and went to her. He sliced the tape from her hands and held her close. She pressed herself against him and cried.

“I didn’t—”

“Shhh...” He cradled her head in his arms.

They stood like that for several minutes, rocking back and forth as Eileen cried harder than she ever had before.

When she had finally calmed, he took her up to his apartment. She shuffled slowly, staring at her feet the entire time.

“Do you want me to call the police?”

She nodded, then turned and went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Dennis felt sick to his stomach. He stumbled over to the corner table and grabbed his phone. A part of him wanted to go into the bathroom and hold Eileen as long as she needed him to, but she needed privacy. Another part of him wanted to march back downstairs and take that goddamn knife and—

—YES!

YES, BABY!

OH GOD!

SLIDE IT INSIDE OF HIM!

DO IT!

I WANT YOU TO WASH THE FLOOR IN HIS

BLOOD!

I WANT TO SWIM IN HIS INNARDS—

He sunk down into his couch and closed his eyes. Allison’s voice sounded like it was in his ear, just the way it sounded in his dreams. Was he losing his mind?

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed. He was greeted with silence. He looked at the display to see a
NO
SERVICE
message flashing at him.

He tried the landline next. All he was greeted with was static. Goddamn storm.

He went to Mike’s door and pounded. There was no answer.

He pushed the door open. Mike’s phone sat next to his computer. Dennis picked it up and dialed 911. Again, he was met with silence and
NO SERVICE
.

“Fuck.” He smacked his hand against the wall hard enough to shake some of Mike’s actions figures from a shelf. He stormed back out into the living room.

He knocked on the bathroom door. “Eileen?” No answer. “Baby, my phone doesn’t get a signal so I’m going to find a phone to call from, okay?”

“...okay...”

He wanted to say more, but had no idea what he could possibly say.

He went across the hall and banged on Margot’s door. No one answered.

Frustrated, confused, worried, he did the only thing he could think of. He went back to Jason’s apartment. He stepped inside and looked around. No sight or sound of the bastard. Dennis peeked back into the bathroom.

There he was, beaten, bloodied, and broken, lying in the tub, his consciousness elsewhere. Just looking at him disgusted Dennis.

—Finish him for me.

Please...

I’m aching for you to—

Dennis grabbed the phone in the living room, but there was no dial tone. The storm had severed all communication to the building.

He paced to the window and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind howl outside, the rain firing like machine guns against the building.

When he opened his eyes they were drawn to the supermarket’s parking lot.

All of the lights were on.

He saw movement on the concrete. Someone walked toward the building. He tried to focus through the rain. Whoever it was carried a large gas can, like the kind of emergency can that Eileen used to keep in her trunk. What were they doing?

The figure paused and glanced back at Raynham.

“Mike?”

His roommate turned back toward the supermarket.

What the hell was he doing?

Mike walked up to the supermarket and started pouring gas onto the ground.

“Jesus Christ!” Dennis darted out the door.

* * *

He had been listening to the siren call of the market since he had taken poor Lucy’s body inside. He realized that now. All the dreams, the whispering, even Margot—it all came from that deep black. It called to him, had seeped into his blood, had almost forced him to kill his father. He could resist it no longer. He had to plunge himself inside.

He had taken the heavy gas can, an old aluminum model like his father had always used, from the trunk of the car. Eileen had showed it to him when she sold him the thing, relating a story about how she and her sister were stranded in the mountains as teenagers when her sister’s car had ran out of gas. It was heavy. He guessed it held three gallons. His fingers ached around the handle. He wished he could switch arms, but his swollen and shattered hand couldn’t even flex its fingers.

As he waded through the field, already muddy from the downpour, he felt strong. Confident. Determined. If he had to step into the darkness, he would make sure that he was the last.

Cold, slimy grass clutched at his skin like fingers from a thousand corpses. His clothing was soaked through, and he shivered from the chill. The whispering from inside the blackness had made so much sense to him. His darling waited for him, needed him,
hungered
for him.

He stepped onto the cracked concrete of the parking lot. It looked so strange illuminated, as though he were getting a glimpse of what it would have looked like had construction not halted, what it would have become if his darling had not been so hungry.

He stopped and glanced back to Raynham. Was Dennis up there somewhere? Did he know what horrible wonders slept beneath the earth here?

The darkness writhed like ebon serpents stretching from between the doors and sniffing the air. A few of them slithered out into the rain, the heavy drops vanishing into their non-flesh.

One of them struggled out to Mike’s foot, wrapped itself around his ankle. Its touch was searing cold. He hissed and yanked his foot back.

The serpent slithered away. It seemed offended.

Mike bent over and pulled his pants leg up. His ankle was white, ringed in a purple-red-black mottling that had gone completely numb.

He unscrewed the cap. The smell of gasoline wafted up and smacked him in the face.

—Come to me, Michael. Come my darling—

He splashed the gasoline onto the boarded up windows of the place, careful not to get too near the tendrils of black that reached for him. He soaked the base of the support columns underneath the awning.

Then, without hesitation, he raised the can high over his head. He had to use his broken hand to steady it, and the pain was excruciating, but he ground his teeth together, clenched his eyes shut, and poured.

The gasoline cascaded over him like baptismal waters, burning fumes filling his lungs with every breath. It rinsed the pain away from him, rinsed away all of his weakness, caught every one of his sins in its flowing grasp and carried them off.

The waterfall dwindled away until the can only dribbled onto his soaked head. He sat it down with a loud
clank
and took a rag from his back pocket. He wiped the gasoline from around his eyes and opened them. The fumes burned his retinas, clouded everything in front of him, and wrenched tears from his sockets. But he had never seen anything so clearly in all of his life.

Faces swam up at him in the black. Each was dark and still, carved from obsidian. Their empty sockets stared at him, unmoving lips allowing whispers to escape. Everyone that he had ever known and loved whispered to him from those still mouths.

He took the rag and wiped it through his hair until it was damp. It went easily into the mouth of the can, almost as though the metal chewed and swallowed it. He thought for a moment that it would fall completely in, but it hovered about the lip just long enough for him to roll the tip up and hang it over the side.

He took Margot’s lighter, a Zippo she had loved so much, and lit the rag. The tip smoldered for a moment before igniting.

“Mike!”

He turned to see Dennis rushing toward him. His roommate stopped before coming under the awning, staring wide eyed at the darkness struggling its way out into the night.

“Jesus Christ...”

“You see it now, Dennis?”

“What...what is...”

“It’s the darkness inside of us. It feeds on it, bathes in it, pools it all in its heart.”

“What?”

“Margot knew. So does probably everyone here. No one knows all of it, but everyone has a piece of the puzzle. Awful pieces.”

“You’re not going in there, are you?”

Mike nodded. “I have to. It’s gotten hold of me. I didn’t know that when I brought Lucy up here it would take it as a sacrifice, but it did. I’m bound to the thing.”