Deep in the Darkness (19 page)

The animal can't be dead...it has to be sacrificed on the big stone.

But like a fly caught in a web, I felt no alternative than to allow fate to run its course. I followed the animals, feeling as if
I
had been leashed and led along the path. I coursed over all the familiar rises and dips, high up into the woodland. The distance didn't appear to vary much from my real-life trek up here with Phillip. Neither did the environs: the ground got real soft in spots, my boots squelching in some awful muddied puddles. The trees towered over me like skyscrapers.

Eventually, in the same amount of time it took me and Phillip to get here, I crossed the perimeter of the circle of oaks into the shrine constructed of ancient white stones.

Almost immediately I began to experience pure fear again. It hit me like a sandstorm in a gale, whippingly powerful and relentless. The world spun giddily. Oh God, would I live through this?

It seemed too horrific to be true (again I had to remind myself that this was nothing more than a very vivid dream), but here she was in all her slaughtered glory: Rosy Deighton. She was slumped on the big center slab, body facing skyward, arms stretched out over her head and dangling off the edge, fingertips in the dirt. Her nightgown fell in silky tatters across her gutted torso, entrails stripped and lying prone to the canopy above. Slivers of moonlight trickled through the silent leaves, igniting her still-open eyes like two silver gems. I never felt so doomed in my life, the horror of her glistening organs exposed to the elements torturing me just as much as the age-old scars still visible on her skin.

I realized now that this dream was more than just a dream. It was a horrid form of trauma, one that had me hypnotized and wholly dominated. In a way it taunted me and made me realize that despite my years of schooling and professional experience, there was nothing I could do to save Rosy Deighton. Or Lauren Hunter. And perhaps, I realized with phenomenal dread, my family.

A silent breeze picked up, pushing the branched leaves of the canopy aside, bathing the center stone with horrid radiance. The Stonehenge-like stones, in all their towering brilliance, cast dark chiseled shadows across the entire area.

Page and the deer stopped alongside the center slab. My playful little cocker spaniel leaped up into the stone and settled down between Rosy's legs, duly burying his tongue into her open cavity. The deer barked once, and Page looked up at me, bloody maw shriveled back from his canines. His once golden coat lay matted against his body in a ghostly phosphorescent hue, gray and spotted with blackened smudges.

The dog jumped down from the rock.

Rosy Deighton began to move.

First one arm, which had been horribly dislocated from the shoulder like a section of loose rope, twitched a few times then swung forward in a quick-jerk maneuver across her chest. Then her eyes, which had been open, grew even wider and rolled
 
in their bloodied sockets; crimson teardrops trickled down her cheeks. Her mouth—that ghastly black maw—moved in its only
 
possible quiver, spewing forth an alarming blend of coagulated fluids and gurgling moans. She sat up, horridly fast as if controlled by strings, then looked at me, eyes still rolling, mouth still chomping and spewing its evil brew.

Pure fear felt like a fairy tale at this moment...the horror, the terror I felt was unfathomable, it rose in me and filled me up so much that I simply couldn't take it anymore. I felt as if I might very well implode...but at this point realized with dismay that I'd have to begin the horror anew, because in dreams one never really dies. They wake up on impact.

I'd woken up all right...right back into the dream. The
real
waking world wouldn't come until this script had run its course to the very bitter end.

As if pulled by ghosts, Rosy rolled off the surface of the stone onto the forest floor. A small cloud of dust rose around her fallen body, which lay utterly motionless while her head twisted and jerked on its own accord, the maw spitting inhuman growls that eerily maintained a hint of Rosy's once-feminine tone.

Michael...

I heard my name being called, a woman's voice, sweetly nice and tender. Yet...it rode a haunted echo, proof of otherworldly origins.
It's nothing but a dream-voice, nothing but a dream-voice...
I peered in the direction of the summons—to my right—and shoved my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming, realizing from the moisture on my cheeks that I'd been weeping uncontrollably. A new horror stood before me...one too vast, too extensive to accept.

Lauren Hunter was here too, walking out from behind one of the stones. She leaned crookedly against the white slab, half her skinned face covered in dried blood, her hair a nappy padded mess. She smiled maniacally—a taunting rictus grin of death rife with chattering teeth—then crept across to the front of the stone, dragging her intestinal leash along with her which snaked away from her body around the back of the stone, dried out and peppered with flakings of twigs, leaves, and soil. She staggered toward me, arms outstretched, smile wide and frozen, head bobbing in a blackly comical manner. So goes the cliché: she looked like a fucking ragdoll.

The last remnants of my lucid mind tried desperately to wish it all away, I even closed my eyes and thought maybe, just maybe I'd find myself naked in the classroom porking the supermarket cashier.

I opened my eyes.

She was still there.

Closer. Still smiling. Reaching for me. Tendrils of green smoke seeped from the open wound in her torso.

I tried to scream. Nothing came.

She stopped, as if surprised with my failed attempt to wake up. Her smile disappeared. "The animal must be alive at the time of sacrifice." Her body jerked and twitched. Her eyes turned up their sockets, exposing pus-blood whites.

I looked back at the center stone. Page was there, on all fours, tongue lolling from his bloody mouth. He panted, in a respite, so it seemed. I staggered over to the center stone and fell to my knees before the dog; the earth felt soft and moist on my knees. Lauren Hunter walked over too, fell on the ground beside the tossed body of Rosy Deighton. The deer had pulled another vanishing act. Both of them stared at me, Lauren in a direct line of vision despite lying on the ground, Rosy in a sidelong glance, unable to twist her inverted head in my direction. Each of them seemed to exhibit a bit of empathy—or so my imagination told me so—but these looks were more likely consents: go-aheads to commence a very tragic resolution.

I wanted to scream, but didn't. I knew it wouldn't come.

"Do it," Lauren said. Rosy said something too but the words were unintelligible. Still, the meaning was there. It was time to make the sacrifice to the Isolates. No avoiding it now.

This is just a dream, just a dream, just a dream...

"The animal must be alive at the time of sacrifice, or you and the ones you love will fall prey to ruination." A breeze picked and carried Lauren's threat into my lungs—I could taste the rot of her words on my tongue.

I looked at my dog. Jessica's dog. My mind struggled with the thought.

Do it, Michael, do it like they say, and then the game will be over, and so will the dream, and you will wake up in bed with the morning at your disposal, plus the entire day to flee Ashborough's dark embrace.

I reached over, pet the dog across his hide. Sticky blood filled my hand.

I took my other hand, placed it around the dog's neck. Page didn't resist.

I squeezed.

Hard.

Harder.

I pressed his skull against the stone.

I felt bones moving. Snapping somewhere in his head. Something warm seeped from his mouth.

I looked toward the woods, unable to witness my own crime.

Oh my God...

What the hell...?

The woods...they were filled with golden lights. Hundreds of them at varying distances, floating indiscernibly in and about the trees and copses.

Staring at the lights, I slammed Page's skull against the center stone, over and over again until the world and those ghostly golden lights whisked away from me in a dark swirl of ugly gray tones.

"M
ommy!"

I heard Jessica's voice, as crystal clear as any reality that had come my way over the years. Yet, I immediately considered this to be another dream—another dreadful scenario to clash with. I heard some noises, pots and pans banging, the scrape of something plastic.

"Come here, honey...don't go outside."

Christine's voice, keeping a leash on our daughter. I opened my eyes, still in assumption that this was all a dream: my tempered breathing, the sun-specked walls, the dolls in Jessica's room meeting my tired gaze. I felt no less alert than I had last night when I began my journey.

I stretched out under the sheets, feeling like a swimmer coming up from the bottom of a deep pool, reality's light growing clearer and brighter as I waded toward the stirring surface.

"Mommy! I want to go look for Page!"

Jessica's voice came through loud and clear, her call to Christine from somewhere near the bottom of the steps a 'real world' shove through my dream-water's surface: I'd woken up, this was no mental illusion. To be sure, I remained silent and still for at least five minutes, listening to their conversation as it filtered into my blooming consciousness.

And thinking of Page.

It was all a dream, nothing more than a crazy, nutty dream
. And that was simply good and fine, a nice little positive in a world suddenly exploding with negatives. But there were still all those negatives to contend with. No small potatoes.

Speaking of which, the smell of something cooking wafted upstairs. Eggs, home fries, bacon. My stomach growled. Despite my torment (and a bastard of a headache), I smiled. This was perhaps Christine's approach to making up—I'd done the same exact thing yesterday in an effort to mend a hole in our relationship. A nice warm meal would feel plenty good right now, and might be in order before breaking the news to the family that we'd be leaving Ashborough immediately, once and for all. Car or no car.

Neil Farris...dead.

Lauren Hunter...dead.

Rosy Deighton...dead.

Jimmy Page...dead?

Jessica's voice from downstairs: "Can I wake up Daddy? He'll help me look for Page."

Christine: "We have no car right now, honey, it's in the shop. Don't worry, Page'll come back. We'll go out and call for him when daddy gets up."

I looked toward the window. Jessica's dolls were there, all of them, heads included. Sunlight poked in through creases in the blind, slashing the walls and floor. The clock said it was nearly nine o'clock; apparently Christine had decided to let me sleep in today. She and Jessica had turned in rather early last night and probably got up at the crack of dawn to do this, that, and the other thing. I wondered with no care at all as to whether I had an appointment due to arrive at any moment. Apparently Christine didn't give a shoot either. If this were any other day, I'd've been pissed off, and would have let Christine know all about it too.

But today...it was different now, wasn't it? The world had taken on a new perspective, one barely palpable in spite of the fact that I lay in my daughter's bed utterly convinced of my breathing and my aching body. There'd be no time nor energy to be angry. It all had to be aimed toward my new directive: the safety of my family.

I heard Christine make a
hum
sound, and clang more pots and pans. There were some footsteps, then a call from the bottom of the steps. "Michael, I think there's someone knocking on the office door."

Shit. I'd had an appointment after all. They'll have to wait. "Christine, could you lean out the kitchen window, tell them to wait about ten—"

At this very moment in the sentence, I glanced down at my hands, and my words hit a roadblock.

My palms and fingers were covered with blood.

My breathing immediately went shallow, came in painful bursts. My heart jostled in my chest like a punching bag. In a panic, jaw locked, skin crawling, I ripped the covers aside.
Jesus
. Messy streaks of blood, everywhere, staining the cool beige sateen. I looked at my hands again.

There were coarse hairs all over my them, stuck in the blood like insects on flypaper. They were wedged under my nails.

Dog hairs.

Jesus Christ...I feel as if I'm going to die. I think I'm having a heart-attack.

A cannonball of terror blasted up from inside me, suffocating me as it lodged itself in my throat. The real world had taken on yet another identity, one that consisted solely of fragments that'd seeped their way in from the surrealism of my dreams. I plucked a single hair from my hand, held it up and peered at it curiously. Brown, caked with blood.

Jimmy Page's hair
.

Now was the time to pack it all in, to pull the tainted covers over my head and allow the madness to assume control of my mind and body. It'd be so much easier to live the rest of my life in this simplistic state of mind, via straitjacket and padded room.

"Michael, did you hear me? There an elderly woman outside. She must have an appointment with you."