Echoes of Darkness (37 page)

“Whored up,” he said, holding her chin in one hand and applying lipstick with the other: more Ruby Red.

“Yes. Whored up,” he murmured, only barely aware he was doing it. “Oh, God, yes.”

Her eyes opened, and he snatched his hands away from her mouth, his heart skipping a beat, then recovering with a strong, fast rhythm as her eyes drooped closed again.
No wonder
, he thought, considering the three darts he had used to get her here. He hoped she would throw off the effects soon. If she didn’t, he would have to inject a stimulant. He needed her awake to play. He slapped her cheek, gently.

“Wake up.”

Her eyes opened. Then closed.

“Wake up!” His palm cracked against her beautiful, whored-up cheek. Her eyes snapped open, rolled once, then focused on him. He slapped her again, harder. “I said wake up, lover. It’s time to play.”

The girl’s head lolled left and right as she took in her surroundings. The white walls, the lights, the table. When her eyes focused on the tray beside her, on the array of shiny, sharp instruments, the leather restraints snapped tight as the muscles stood out in sudden, stark relief along her long and lovely limbs.

“Over here,” he said, snapping his fingers to attract her attention.

Her gaze found his again, her eyes round and rolling, and she bared her teeth at him. He was surprised at the aggressive expression on her face, in her eyes. He would have to change that. He slapped her a fourth time, then grabbed her face again, digging his fingers mercilessly into her cheeks and jaw, holding her head still so he could lean down to stare straight into her wide eyes.

“Scream for me.”

Her head thrust forward in a sudden, powerful motion, catching him by surprise; only his startled recoil saved him from injury as her white teeth snapped closed a fraction from his nose.

“Jesus!”

She was strong—very strong—and seemed to have thrown off the effects of the tranquilizer with amazing speed, but it was more than that: she was struggling, as they all struggled, but he stood frozen in surprise, realizing that she was straining not to get away from him, but to get
at
him.

He was unnerved. Wrong—this was all wrong. She was
his
playmate.
His
. He needed to regain control of the situation. To regain dominance. Steeling himself, he touched her, trailing his fingertips slowly down her body, from the base of her throat, down between her heaving breasts and over her taut, quivering stomach. The muscles beneath her skin felt like shifting stones.

“You’re a strong one,” he said. “It’s going to be fun to break you. And I
will
break you. You
will
scream for me, little girl.”

Her only response was a growl, a grinding rumble deep in her chest, as she continued to strain. Beneath her growl, and beneath his own sharp, nervous breathing, Benny swore he heard the leather restraints creak.

He weighed the idea of giving her another dose of tranquilizer.
I
will
break her,
he thought,
but better safe than sorry.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t you go anywhere!” He forced a laugh, striving to sound casual. He turned from her and went out into the main basement, letting the playroom door swing shut behind him, and started walking toward the stairs.

He wanted the dart gun.

He was at the top of the stairs, pushing the door open, when he heard it.

A thump, down in the cellar.

He half turned, looking down the stairs.
I shouldn’t hear anything,
he thought.
I built that room to be completely soundproof.

Leaving the door to the kitchen open, just in case, he slowly made his way to the bottom of the stairs again. The cellar was spooky. It consisted of three corridors, all running parallel, separated by storage closets and old coal bins. The light switch at the top of the stairs turned on only the lights in the main corridor, leaving the side corridors and the spaces between the bins swathed in shadows. He looked down the central aisle toward the playroom, and saw a sliver of light along the floor.

The door was ajar.

Well, that explains it, then
. He had forgotten to close the playroom door all the way, so some sound was leaking out into the real world. Simple.

It didn’t feel simple.

What the hell is the matter with you?
spoke a voice from somewhere behind his eyes, the voice of his dark twin—the voice of his Need.
Look at you! Frightened by a helpless playmate! You need to be a man, take control! It’s
your
game! It’s
our
game!

Benny had put off his Need for quite a while before he’d gone hunting this time, and it had grown so,
so
strong. Almost without a thought, he took a deep breath and started toward the door. He tried to ignore the shadows that loomed to his left and right, in the dark spaces. He needed to shut in the sounds, and shut out the world. He needed to close that door, and fetch the dart gun. Then he could get on with his game.

Fine,
said the twin behind his eyes.
Go get the gun. Bring it back; then we can play. We can play
hard
.

As he approached, his hand outstretched to push the playroom door closed, something felt wrong.

Why can’t I hear the girl?

She should have been screaming for him. Or crying. He should be hearing the sounds of her struggling, pulling futilely at her straps and sobbing. But he heard . . . nothing. Unnerved, he opened the door wide.

The cuffs were empty, the torn straps lying loose on the table. The room was silent.

The girl was gone.

“Shit!” He looked at the shadows shrouding most of the basement, wondering how long it would take him to find her down there, when he suddenly remembered that he had left the—

The kitchen door at the top of the stairs slammed shut.

“Shit!” The bitch was
getting away
! He sprinted for the stairs. Shadows loomed on his left and right as he ran toward the exit, arms and legs pumping, mouth open and shouting in time to his slapping feet.

“No! No, no, no! No—”

He was almost to the stairs when something burst from the shadows to his right and hit him. He caught only the barest impression of motion from the corner of his eye before the impact lifted him from his feet and drove all thought and breath from him. Whatever it was hit him and didn’t stop, Benny’s own weight not slowing it at all. His feet never touched the ground as he was driven sideways into the door of the old coal bin,
through
the door, breaking it to splinters with his shoulder and back. Benny was carried along until he smashed into the back wall of the bin, hard enough that some of the boards broke. He slumped to the dirty cement floor, paralyzed by pain. His body struggled to draw a breath while his mind looked for something to focus on. As he sat there, he noticed he only had one loafer on, the other foot clad in just a black sock.

Hit me right out of my friggin’ sh—
was all he had time to think before his breath came back, rushing down into his lungs with a loud
whoop.
Then a second. And a third; inhalations so strong he rocked as he sat there. He focused on counting his breaths so he wouldn’t have to look at the feet.

Right there in front of him, pale in the dim light leaking through the shattered door: bare feet and legs. Female. Shapely. He could only see them to the knees, but he refused to look up. A sound came from up there, above the legs, but he didn’t want to think about it. Growling, low and guttural and growing. Beneath that sound, Benny was aware of a sound from his own throat; a high, terrified whimper, like that of a frightened dog.

Hands gripped him, shockingly strong; they squeezed his shoulders and lifted him off the ground. His back was pressed hard into the wall, his feet dangling; the one without a shoe felt cold. His eyes were closed, and he intended to keep them that way. This was playtime, and playtime was supposed to be fun. But this was not fun.

“Look at me.”

He felt her breath upon his face, warm, and moist. He tried to jerk away, smashing the back of his head against the wall. He did not care. All he wanted was to get away from whatever was holding him. He twisted in her grip, trying to turn away from that mouth, so close to his face.

“Look at me!”

Flecks of spittle sprayed Benny’s cheek and neck. It smelled of decay. The voice was deeper, rougher than before. Louder. More insistent.

“No . . . please, I—no . . .”

As Benny heard himself begging, part of him searched within his head, poking into the shadowed corners of his imagination for the backup he always found there; this was playtime, his dark twin’s favorite time, and he would know what to do. He would know. But the vaults of his mind were empty, with no sign of his powerful twin.

He was on his own.

No . . .

He gasped as the grip shifted, and something—a thumb?—pressed against his collarbone. Hard. Harder. His gasp became a high-pitched mewling cry when, with a sickening crack, and an explosion of pain, the bone snapped.

“Look—at—me!”

The voice would not be denied, and when Benny felt a similar pressure start to build on his other clavicle he turned his face toward the voice, its breath fluttering his eyelashes.

He opened his eyes.

Her eyes glowed, red in the dim light, but it was her mouth that captivated him. It was inches away, and it was wide. Too wide. The teeth were long and white; almost luminescent in the gloom. The lips were drawn back, baring the teeth in a snarl. As he watched in horrified amazement, the mouth grew even wider, the teeth longer. Through the growl that issued from between those teeth he heard . . . cracking. Snapping. The sounds of bones shifting, moving and locking in place. The jaws opened, impossibly wide, and within that cavernous maw a tongue, long, and black in the shadows, writhed. Flicked along teeth growing longer still, thicker, stretching their sockets in the pink gums. The jaws came together, slowly, lips stretching down to cover most of the teeth, the tongue slipping out to moisten the lips. The voice came once more, but the halting, straining quality of the speech hinted at a mouth no longer suited for forming words. As that mouth spoke, straining to articulate, Benny noticed that those impossibly wide lips were stained with color.

His favorite. Ruby Red.

“
Give . . . me a . . . scream . . . lover!
”

He did.

Edith Hammond saw the girl hitchhiking on Route 1 in Ipswich, and she just had to stop. Edith was seventy-two, and people said she shouldn’t drive anymore, but her eyes were still good enough to see that the poor girl was wearing cast-off clothes. Her jeans were too big, and that blue spring jacket was far too large for her. They didn’t look like something a young girl would wear; not at all. She almost looked as if she were wearing her father’s clothes.

“I don’t usually do this, dear, but I just had to stop for you,” said Edith as her Buick pulled away from the curb. “A young girl like you shouldn’t be out here alone, hitchhiking! Where are you going?”

“I’m going to Spreewald, Maine, but as long as you can take me north, that’s fine.”

“You need to be more careful, dear! You can meet some dangerous people out here on the road, you know.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Valerie Redfern replied, a small smile playing across her Ruby Red lips. “I am aware.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ROB SMALES
is the author of
Dead of Winter
, which won the Superior Achievement in Dark Fiction Award from Firbolg Publishing’s Gothic Library in 2014. His short stories have been published in over two dozen anthologies and magazines. His story “Photo Finish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the Preditors & Editors’ Readers’ Choice Award for Best Horror Short Story of 2012. Most recently, his story “A Night at the Show” received an honorable mention on Ellen Datlow’s list of the Best Horror of 2014, and was also nominated as best short story by the eFestival of Words in 2015. More about his work can be found at
RobSmales.com
,
thestoryside.com
, or on Facebook at
facebook.com/Robert.T.Smales
.