Dead Reflections (29 page)

* * *

He got the truck into the garage and hurried to shut the door. He carried the silver matchstick case inside, a little nauseous at the idea of bringing a part of the thing into the sanctity of his home.

“That you, hon?” Bonnie called.

He debated showing her and decided not to do it. He shoved the capsule into his shirt pocket as she entered the room, her soft perfume and long brown hair always a comforting entity for him. She gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

“How was your day? You’re soaked.”

“Had the cab window open for a minute,” he said.

“Why?”

He paused. He thought he felt a tickle of movement in his shirt pocket, and a shiver like a diseased nail slid along the trail of his spine. “Trying to let some air in to cut the condensation on the windshield,” he lied.

“Ah. Well, go get changed and come down for supper. I’ve made a spectacular berry crumble for dessert.”

He’d lost his appetite, but he couldn’t bear to tell her. He kept thinking of the way the tongue had lashed out and connected with the seat, its dual clawed heads pulling themselves forward…if they’d penetrated him instead of material…he couldn’t finish the thought. What had the creature been? His mind toyed with the idea of some adolescent in an early Halloween costume out playing tricks, but the glowing eyes had been part of an actual head, and the rotted teeth…the tongue-claw still gyrating on the seat afterwards…it had been no costume.

“Lock the doors and windows,” he told her. “Storm’s getting strong.”

“Oh, the breeze is kind of nice,” she said, amused.

“Bonnie—do it!”

She winced a little and stared at him. “What’s gotten into you? You’re acting a little odd.”

Something’s blown in with this rain. Don’t know what, don’t know why, but I’ve got a part of it here in my pocket and I can feel it moving again. It’s tickling around inside this canister like a stinging insect trying to find a way out.

“Old man’s still missing from town.”

“Oh, Drew. It’s a shame, but it’s nothing for anyone else to be afraid of, other than his poor family. The old fellow probably tried to go out for a walk and wandered off before anyone could stop him. It’s not like he’d be any kind of a threat.”

No, but there’s a dark man walking our way and he wears a darker coat and hat that’s shadowed beneath a sinister umbrella. He has a fanged snake for a tongue.

“Just do it, for me,” he said.

“Fine,” she said. He could see that she was perplexed. He could only imagine her facial expression if he tried to explain what he’d seen on his way home. He hurried upstairs, eager to examine the claw that had, clearly, not been destroyed. He found dry clothing, got into it, and locked the bathroom door. He put the plug into the tub, then opened the matchstick canister and shook the ragged bit of claw out against the white porcelain. It immediately began to circle as it tried to find traction against the smooth surface, dragging its tail of now hardening flesh behind it. Then, it began to tap its way across the tub—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick—the noise of a hard-shelled insect hitting against the inside of a jar. The ticking became frenzied. Tickticktickticktickticktick! Ticktickticktickticktick! It bore back and forth in the tub, its bizarre dark claw capable of gripping. It tried to lunge up the concave sides, to fall back in again. It was determined, to what end he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to allow it any further freedom in order to find out. It dribbled a faint pink liquid behind it now, seepage from its biting tip.

“Shit!” he exclaimed. He used a wad of toilet paper to shove the claw back inside the metal container. It tapped madly, creating a faint staccato, the canister rolling lightly back and forth on the counter. What to do with it?

“You coming down for supper?” Bonnie called.

“Almost done,” he yelled back. “Just give me a couple more minutes.”

“Supper’s getting cool!”

Frantic, he opened cupboards and drawers, seeking a place to store it. He noticed that Bonnie had placed a big canning jar with a seal-lock lid under the sink. It held an inch of bath salts. He unlatched the jar and hurled the matchstick canister inside, then sealed the jar. Not knowing what else to do, he put the jar back under the counter and shut the door. It would hold the cursed claw until he ate and could return upstairs. Not that he had any appetite at all. He felt sick. Worse, he felt petrified. Even as he made his way downstairs, he thought he heard it moving about in its prison, the faint tapping like seconds passing audibly as the storm increased outside.

* * *

As Drew made himself eat enough of what Bonnie had cooked for him in order to satisfy her, the Umbrella Man paused to sniff the night air a few miles away. He’d followed the road as far as it went, eager to catch up to the man who had been stupid enough to sneak up on him, startle him, soak him, then witness and injure him, and who would likely report him to this world’s authorities before he had a chance to find an escape route. The road forked to the west and to the north.

He needed to obtain the piece of himself that had gone missing and which would draw all the wrong attention in this sphere. In his world, to recklessly lose a piece of oneself in defeat rather than victory, especially in the waking zone of humans, meant retribution of the worst kind. His tongue ached. Fear burned stronger in him. He’d gone for the jugular and lost. No matter. A new, finer fang had already begun to grow in its place and the regeneration would be complete within the hour.

Lightening cut the sky, highlighting him between air and soil, ozone and oxygen, life and death, killer and demon, invigorating him with renewed force and filling his eyes with deeper fury for this place. He’d blown in on this system by accident during the dreaming hours, caught along the astral jet stream and hurtled into a sea of black cumulus cloud when the cosmological lines that, on rare occasions intersected his world and that of this planet called Earth had somehow, magically, connected during a vicious storm that had opened an unexpected pathway between the two parallel realms.

He bore dark wings over his head, the wings conical and connecting at each tip above the hat, the bones of each wing a line of mechanical cartilage that formed a bas-relief of a geometric grid that shone in the dark. Whereas these humans of this place were mortal, he was not; whereas they were good, neutral, and evil, his evil was paramount. Whereas their hunger could become satiated, his could not. Whereas they were mostly omnivores, he knew only flesh and blood and the sweet marrow taste of bone which he required almost continuously to recoup energy and remain alive.

He killed, he ate, and he eviscerated souls as tokens for home. It was expected. He delighted in the quivering of freshly killed flesh and in the essence of terror that permeated that flesh like a fine, exotic spice. Human flesh was the best. He was a human’s worst nightmare, the kind that crept in during the longest night hours when minds and dreamscapes kissed most often, and where he slunk within the folds and crevices of lucid dreams. He was nightscape, the dark shadow that lingered in far corners, that clung to early morning hours like the chill of wet spider web that followed these humans through their days and into their nights like pestilent déjà vu, waiting to jump out at them with the vengeance of a torn and bleeding Jack-in-the-box. He hid within dreams in the way a tick can nestle deep into skin. And now, through some metaphysical fluke, he found himself actually here in their physical plane, walking the earth and clad in their garb, rather than enjoying the clandestine security of a dreamscape, his wings emulating an umbrella in an attempt to shadow his face and keep himself dry and protected until he could find a portal back home.

He needed to find darkness and he needed to concentrate. But before he went, he had to eliminate the one who had taken a part of him with the intention of showing it to the authorities. They would seek him. And if they caught him before he could escape; if those in his realm discovered this, he’d be barred from returning home, and worse. They’d find him in his dreams; they’d leave his body, but they’d take his essence and they’d do things to him. Bad things, horrific things, the stuff of nightmares from which he came. Beneath the clothing his body was the color of ash, his muscles hard ropes of intention. When he reached the fork in the road, he studied the ground for signs of tire tracks but the rain and wind had washed it away. He inhaled deeply and smelled the air for a track of the man’s fear, his body trembling, his eyes floating like coals in the dark, his tongue probing for direction.

There. To his left, the west, a sourness that lingered like old, forgotten wine. Needing to make time, the Umbrella Man released his wing tips and took flight, the wingspan scoring eight feet across, their flapping the sound of tropical leaves bending against a heaving rain, dark dreams cutting the night.

* * *

“You’re picking at your food,” Bonnie said. She seemed a little annoyed.

Drew placed his fork on the table. “I don’t have much appetite tonight. I’m sorry, babe. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”

She got up and placed her hand on his forehead with maternal warmth. “You don’t seem to have a temperature. We can finish the rest of this tomorrow.”

Something upstairs fell over with a soft bang.

“I wonder what that was?” Bonnie asked.

“Wind probably blew the window open.” He scraped his chair back and went to head back up to the bathroom.

“Can you help me with the dishes?” she asked him.

He paused. “I’ll come right back down. I forgot something upstairs. I’ll check the window too.”

He hurried back up to the bathroom and, locking the door, opened the cupboard to look for the jar. It was on its side, the metal and glass lid having rolled away from the jar. Bath salts had sprinkled out into the open, but the claw and its trail of flesh were gone.

“Unbelievable!” Drew bit his lower lip in fear. He did a quick search of the cupboard and didn’t see it anywhere. He scanned the floor and noted a little line of cerise fluid closer to the door. If the thing had gotten loose into the house, he’d have to find it and soon.

“Drew? You coming down?”

“One minute!” he yelled. “There’s some water on the floor. I’m cleaning it up.” He had to buy a bit of time. “You go ahead and do them. I’ll help with something else in a few minutes. I promise.” He heard her sigh, but also heard the customary sound of the tap turning on, followed by the soft clink of dishes.

“Where are you, where are you, where are you?” He scanned the bathroom, found nothing, and moved into the upper corridor. They had three bedrooms up here, his and Bonnie’s at the end of the hall, their son Dennis’ room across from him, and a guest bedroom at the other end. Dennis would be home soon from a part-time job. The idea of this thing hurting his wife or kid was more than he could bear. He had no idea what kind of substance was contained within the claw, but he knew from the force of the lingual attack that its impact and penetration would be lethal.

He hurled the light on in Dennis’s room, his shoulders slumping at the realization that this fang could be anywhere: amid a closet full of shoes, clothing, odds and ends, beneath a rug, inside the fold of a curtain, under a mattress…

Panic set in. All he could do was keep an eye and ear open for it. The thing tapped. If he heard the slightest sound, he’d check it out, something not easy to do with a storm raging outside and hurling rain in torrents against the windows. He returned downstairs, debating what he could say to Bonnie to make her alert without frightening her.

“There’s a large wasp loose in the house,” he lied. “I thought I’d gotten it but it’s disappeared somewhere. I don’t want us getting stung. If you hear it or see something small and dark move, let me know. I’ll get rid of it.”

Bonnie finished drying the last glass. “Oh, I’m not concerned about a little insect. So, you said you’d give me a hand with something else. That laundry needs doing.”

“Yup.” He got it into the washer and set the cycle, hating the noise in the house, hating the storm outside, wondering where the creature with the smoldering eyes and serpentine tongue might be now.

“Bleeding to death from its injury, hopefully,” he mumbled.

“What was that?” Bonnie asked from the parlor where she’d gone to read a magazine.

“Just thinking aloud,” he said, sour. He shook each piece of laundry out, examining both sides before folding it. Nothing in the house was safe now. And considering what walked around town out there, nor was any other area here.

* * *

The Umbrella Man soared above low shrubbery and trees, his eyes capable of detecting infrared pockets of living creatures everywhere, from squirrels wrapped tightly in their nests, birds huddled in bushes, a lone traveler in a car below, a group of deer huddling, terrified beneath a swatch of tangled vinery. He cast his tongue out into the night and rain, tasting the air, searching for that distinct tang of fright that arrived in dispersing bits every now and then. His original and newly grown fang connected in a rapid series of taps, firing out a plethora of sonar signals to the lost portion, then listening for its response.

Nothing yet. But it would come. It had to come. Fright urged the Umbrella Man on and fright also heightened his sense of outrage. Then a gust of wind brought a succulent aroma of the terror of the one who had taken a part of him, and the umbrella man swooned for a moment. Then he opened his blackened mouth and elicited a low, wet snarl, the sound of a moldy door sliding open in the rain. He turned his wings more westward and followed the scent which became stronger until it solidified into an easy trail.

In the distance, the Umbrella Man saw a dark dwelling, its rooftop forming a murky flap against the waning sky. Heavy rain and gusts of wind bent trees in half and tore grasses from their root beds, but the house contained several lit windows and through its walls the Umbrella Man detected two large infrared shapes and one small one, each in different parts of the dwelling. With a hiss of jubilance, he pushed both wing tips forward into the shape of a guiding spear and bore towards the house. Soon enough, he heard the sonar tap of what he sought…his fang was in there, moving about, seeking its host, the smallest infrared hurrying through the upstairs portion of the human’s dwelling.