Deep in the Darkness (27 page)

How did she come this far? I ran as fast as I could, yet she made it here way before me...

I took a step forward. Then, it hit me, like a great rush of hot air.
The smell
, the familiar foulness of decaying leaves and excrement and putridness and all things gone to rot, rising up from an unseen source.

Why I hadn't smelled it when Phillip had taken me here, I can't explain. But it was here. I had found it. Somewhere beneath her gentle footsteps was the dwelling place of the Isolates.

"Jessica," I said, my voice cracking. "Come here." I tried to step forward but my legs immediately froze, taking me no further than beyond the outer perimeter of the stones.

Fear had me in its grasp again, not because
I
was afraid, but because I was terrified for my daughter.

Right behind my daughter was an Isolate.

Jesus, it seemed so nightmarishly surreal, so weirdly feigned, it felt as if I were looking at some hoaxed up image from a book of nineteenth-century ghost photographs. But it
was real
, mere feet from her, embodied within the bed of browned leaves and soil. A face, staring at
me
, its golden eyes dulled to a drab shades, like dirty lamplights. The gnarled, knobby head appeared as if it were a strange piece of nature, shifting ever so slightly, gently jostling the dead woodland camouflaging it. It looked like an anglerfish nestled in the sand awaiting its prey at sea bottom.

As my eyes adjusted to the entire surroundings, more came into view. Jesus, there were perhaps a dozen demons here, all masterfully camouflaged within the brown earth-toned environs. Hideous, gnarled faces with downcast brows, staring at me, stirring ever so slightly as if to alert me to their presence, but not so much as to make themselves apparent to Jessica.
   

She looked up from the dead raccoon, waved at me, unaware of the threat only feet behind her.

Then, from the corners of my pained eyes, I saw something. A burrowing-like ripple below the leaves, approaching her from behind. It stopped at her heels and I froze, paralyzed, heart pounding, breaths short and stagnant.

Like a worm unearthing itself, a brownish face appeared, a hideous mask squirming out from the layer of brush and tangle. A single clawed limb rooted out alongside it, reaching for her ankle.

It had to have been sheer mental will (it certainly wasn't my bravery), but Jessica ran to me at that moment, as if my mental pleas had somehow coerced her to bring her body forward. She leapt into my arms, crying, and I quickly embraced her.

I ran back to the house, holding her tightly the entire way.

Christine waited there, racing forward, face swollen and doused with tears. She grabbed Jessica from me and hugged her against her pregnant belly and repeated through her sobs,
"Oh my baby, my sweet baby. Thank God you're okay
," rubbing her head and kissing her.

She paced away toward the house, and I wondered if she noticed that all the windows had been barricaded. She brought Jessica inside, going in through the office entrance. I'd left the steel doors unlocked (would she notice them too?) so she'd had no problem getting back into the house. I wanted to go inside, speak to her, but it became clear that Christine wanted no part of me...not now, anyway.

I took a deep breath, a million thoughts racing through my head, none of them making sense.

Except one.

They had Christine.

T
he day's veil of clouds had dissipated into fine air, allowing the near-full moon to wash its pale blue beams across the backyard. In this light my house looked like a Frankenstein monster with its boarded-up windows and chipped shingles. It had become haunted—had been all along, I suppose—and thus reflected such with its dreadful appearance. Slowly I gazed around the dark yard, at the matted lawn, the poisonous woods, and Christine's herb garden (it had overgrown rather quickly, making it look like something out of a Lovecraft tale, particularly with the cement birdbath shadowing over it). I felt like a zombie risen from its grave, the only remaining grasp of the real world being the patches of soil and moss fouling my body.

I paced awkwardly across the yard, checking the windows repeatedly to make certain no Isolate could make its way in. A few nails had come loose, but the barriers remained secure. Eventually I went back into the house via the office door, then into the kitchen where I sat at the table, staring at the clock, which read eight-thirty. I made myself a cheese-on-rye sandwich and chased it with some milk. My appetite was virtually nil and it took me some time to force it all down—the food felt like Styrofoam against my dry scratchy throat. When I finished, I went upstairs where I quickly showered and changed into a clean pair of jeans and a sweater. Christine had sequestered herself behind the bedroom door, and I figured that Jessica might be in there with her. I peeked into Jessica's room anyway, just in case, and surprisingly enough found her asleep in her bed.

My princess was motionless beneath the quilted covers. Her tattered teddy-bear lay curled in her grasp, its one button-eye peeking out from the edge of the comforter, dangling from withered threads. I ran a hand through her curly hair—one of the simple pleasures, I realized now, still left in my life—then gazed through the upstairs window alongside her bed into the dark of night. The wind picked up and whined sharply against the glass, startling me a bit.

Staring into the woods—sometimes hours at a time—has become an outright obsession with me, for I need to be ready to act the instant the golden eyes appear; it's the only option I have to protect my family. Christine has suffered great pains with me, I know this now, albeit for reasons distinct from those I'd originally assumed. At first it seemed clear that her anguish had come by virtue of my 'presumed onset of mental illness', my sudden paranoia, my drastic change in personality. All along I'd carried a great burden with me, knowing that my actions had gravely hurt her. Combine that with the frustration of never being able to reveal that I suffered as a means for her safety and the safety of our daughter—that I could never reveal to her the hideous secret about the woods and its inhabitants—and you could see why she might lose all faith in me. To her, on the outside, it would appear as though I was suffering from paranoid-delusional schizophrenia. And that would unnerve any unassuming spouse.

But if what Sam Huxtable had said was true, then this assumption of mine, although highly substantiated, would prove to be grossly incorrect. When all this had first started, my relationship with Christine had become a great chasm, one that needed filling with something immediately explainable, and I'd simply grasped the most obvious one with all my faculties closed. Now it seems I'd been horribly wrong. The cause of her suffering had not been my cold, dreadful behavior, my overt frustrations. It had been invoked by the same torment inflicting me all along. That Christine had had her very own experiences with the Isolates, and had been wholly distressed due to her prohibition to communicate with
me
.

Sam Huxtable was right.

Lauren Hunter was right.

They had her.

But to what degree? What sort of threats had they made to Christine? By keeping the pregnancy to herself, had Christine thereby heeded the demands of the Isolates, essentially protecting me?

I had to find out.

W
ith my hand still tenderly caressing my daughter's hair, I backed away from her bed with every intention to about-face and go into Christine's bedroom—
our bedroom
—and open up the lines of communication again, when, by force of habit, I gazed out the window.

I saw them immediately, escaping the perimeter of the woods and slowly approaching the house. Golden eyes, perhaps a dozen of them, floating like fairies from a child's fable.

The sight jolted me. My hand slipped from Jessica's head and accidentally tore the teddy bear from her grasp. It fell to the hardwood floor with a quiet, graceful thump, slightly stirring the five-year-old from her dreams, but thankfully not waking her.

Leaving the teddy bear on the floor, I quickly escaped her room, went downstairs, and scampered through the kitchen into the hallway leading to the office.

Once in my study, I seized hold of my medical bag which I restocked earlier with all the appropriate tools necessary for curing their ills: bandages, antibiotics, a variety of clamps and scalpels (the latter having performed the C-section), and exited back out the office door, into the night.

At once the golden orbs in the backyard signaled me (in actuality the eyes themselves did not gesture, but the frantic movement of their bodies induced a flurry of illuminated activity) and I followed their lead into the dark woods.

Once in the woods, the beasts aggressively clutched at my clothes, hissing reptilian alarms in indication that I had arrived. They led me through the woods along a familiar path, their claws poking and scratching me when my tired pace lagged too much. I stumbled repeatedly along the way, and at one point fell down and considered staying there and feigning death; somehow, I didn't think they'd fall for it, and it was this thought that got me up and moving again. I ran a hand across my mouth and came away with blood; I'd busted my lip in the fall. "Fuck," I uttered, not really caring, grasping my bag and continuing on. Five minutes later I reached the circle of stones where the Isolates darted all over the place like dogs chasing a ball. In the starlight I could see two hidden doorways slowly rising up from beneath the brush on the forest floor, each constructed of mud and thatch, leaves and twigs intricately woven on and around them to permanently disguise their existence.

Two Isolates abruptly forced me through one of the entranceways which fell into a steep narrow passage. Nearly falling forward, I stretched my arms out in front of me, carefully feeling my way through as my shoulders scraped along the dark soil walls, my head against the low ceiling. The passage twisted and turned and it wound down into the darkness; in some places it widened, other times it thinned out. Sections broke off every so often into branched corridors where more Isolates appeared for a glimpse of their 'Savior'. I felt bodies scampering by as I stumbled further into the earth, harsh voices hooting louder and louder, limbs groping me, guiding me, only their bulbous golden irises visible in the utter blackness.

A flickering of lights appeared ahead. Once there, I beheld a familiar sight: the immense subterranean dwelling. Hundreds of burning torches lined the soil walls, igniting the chamber to a ghostly golden hue.

A single Isolate jumped out, mere inches before me. I jolted and dropped my medical bag, which I'd completely forgot I was holding.

Fenal. He silenced the advancing crowd, positioning his wiry body now three feet in front of me. His limbs swayed in a purposeful dance. His grin was brown and rancid, brimming, the scar on his face wriggling like a snake. "Savior." A spectrum of whispers came from the crowd.

I remained silent. I could taste blood and sweat in my mouth.

"Heal us," he said.

A mob running three deep marauded me, each creature suffering from some kind of sickening ailment; two creatures dangled broken limbs before me as if bestowing gifts; many overtly picked at open festering sores so that I may clearly see them; another experienced a failed childbirth where it miraculously crawled over trailing its uterus behind like a piece of luggage. Fenal broke through the pleading crowd and guided me into a separate antechamber to the left where one by sickening one I was forced to treat them.

Hours passed. I spent them under the firelight, binding their broken parts, sealing their wounds and administering antibiotics, delivering their babies. It was a terribly fatiguing process that seemed to never culminate. In the end I treated a total of twenty-one Isolates. Four of them were dead before they got to me, two had died under my 'care'.

They were a race weakened by injury and disease, that much I could ascertain. I realized now that it was my job, as their so-called 'savior', to heal them and help them flourish, to multiply further (my efforts in aiding their genetic exigency for caesarean births might prove fruitful towards the acceleration of their population, as it seemed apparent to me that the female parent sometimes perishes during childbirth, given the three instances I've encountered so far), to help them gain strength and vigor and reestablish themselves as the evil and hateful breed thriving in these woods. Just like Neil Farris presumably had.

Oh, they eat their dead.

Coming here tonight, I had dreaded the possibility of an untreatable demon laying before me. The third Isolate presented to me had not been bitten nor scratched by a forest animal; wasn't broken-limbed nor the ill-fated recipient of a newborn infant.

No. This demon had been suffering from disease.

It lay in a separate hovel, shivering atop a burlap bag, its gnarled teeth clenching and grinding in a shock of agony. Blood and feces surrounded it like a foul moat. Its golden eyes had lost all their luster, now dulled to naked gray hues. Upon close inspection I observed that it had been bitten in a multitude of places, on the legs, stomach, and groin, probably by
 
a rat. I administered a penicillin vaccine, but knew it would prove of no avail.

An hour later, the demon was dead.