Masters of Horror (17 page)

She gave a curt nod. “Very well,” she said and moved away from the door. It shut silently behind her.

Warwick looked shaken by her visit. “That was weird,” he said.

“
What makes you say that?”

“
She comes in when I’m talking about the panther.”

Dr Chandler smiled. “You’re starting to sound like Jerry and Dean, with their conspiracy theories.”

Warwick shrugged. “You never know,” he whispered.

He was starting to lose Warwick again—Damn that nurse barging in! He tried to think of a way to get back on track, he could still save this. But how?
Progress,
he thought.
Keep moving forward
. “What did the panther want?”

Seeming to study him, Warwick came to a decision. “You.”

“
Me?”

“
Not
you
exactly, but, like,
people
. Meat. Blood. Bones. Tasty.”

“
I find that hard to believe.”

“
You would, you’re a doctor.”

“
What I find hard to believe is that a panther from Hell would swim through the core of the Earth, enter the ocean and swim up through your scars, just for a feed.”

Warwick smiled.

The doctor’s eyebrows arched. “You know how that sounds, don’t you?”

“
Sounds like I’m crazy.”

Dr. Chandler nodded.

“
Maybe not to feed, then.”

“
Maybe not,” he copied, and then waited for Warwick to continue. When he didn’t, Dr. Chandler said, “What’s the link you need to fix?” When he saw his patient’s eyes light up and a smile cross his face, Dr. Chandler quickly said, “I’m not saying I believe you—”
Because I don’t
, he thought. “—but I need to understand what you want to do.”

“
No problem.” Warwick dropped his shirt to the floor. “Can you see that red spot?”

“
Yes, I saw it earlier.”

“
It’s breaking a link and the panther gets through that opening. I need to cut through the dot to reset the line.”

“
What makes you think the design works?”

Warwick took a step back as if he’d just been slapped. His eyes narrowed. “You know it works.”

“
I don’t know.” Dr. Chandler struggled to keep his voice neutral. “Explain it to me.”

“
The voice told me.”

“
Voice?”

“
Inside my head. The voice that carried the screams.” He looked toward the window. “When I was depressed and cut my wrist, the voice came to me then. Told me I wasn’t going to die.” He ran his hands though his hair. “I didn’t listen to it at first. It was silent for a very long time. But when Sally screwed around on me, the voice returned. I was so hurt—and—it seemed to understand my pain. It told me to cut her name into my arm. It taught me that pain can be ignored. It silenced the screams.”

Dr. Chandler was stunned. He looked at his notepad and realized he hadn’t written anything.

“
But I should never have carved anything into my arm. Once you start cutting, the beast comes.”

“
The panther?”

“
Yes. And with this break it can enter our reality, again. Time is running short, doc.”

“
Are you saying that if you never cut yourself, the panther would never have appeared?”

Warwick nodded. “And the voice would have gone away.”

“
Only one voice?”

“
Yes, a male, older than me, I guess. The guy sounded like he was in—” Warwick groaned and clutched his chest. The groan turned into a grunt. His breath came in hard and fast.

Dr. Chandler got to his feet, turned towards the door for assistance, when it opened and Jerry entered followed by Dean and Tina. The two were discussing aliens again and Tina’s mascara was a messy blur, as if she’d been crying.

Jerry was the first to notice Warwick. “Dude, are you okay?”

“
I’ll get a nurse,” Dean added. He turned to go.

“
No,” Warwick said through gritted teeth. “It’s here.”

Ignoring him, Dean opened the door. “Hello!” He faced Dr. Chandler. “Back in a sec. They probably couldn’t hear me.” He ran out the door.

Warwick dropped to his knees. Jerry was at his side instantly. “Hey, everything’s gonna be okay,” he said in a soothing tone. He gave Warwick’s shoulder a gentle rub. His hand came away red.

“
It’s chosen us,” Warwick said.

Tina walked up to him. Squatting down, she said, “Here you are, sweetheart,” and handed him razor blade.

He smiled.

Dr. Chandler got to his feet, ready to take the blade away, but surprisingly, Warwick didn’t accept it.

“
It’s too late,” he said. “It’s behind you.”

Tina turned. “There’s nothing—” Her head snapped to the side. Blood poured from four claw marks. She tried to scream but only a gurgle came out. Suddenly, her neck split apart. Ripped flaps of skin drooped to her collar bone. Dr. Chandler watched her tongue slide out through her neck, forming a Columbian necktie.

Jerry rushed to the door. He grabbed the handle but the door wouldn’t budge. “It won’t allow you to escape,” Warwick said. Facing Dr. Chandler, he said, “I’m sorry.”

Dr Chandler had fallen back onto his chair. His mind was reeling and his muscles had turned to jelly. He couldn’t take his eyes off Tina. In the background, as if a million miles away, he heard Jerry screaming. A few moments later, Jerry was silent. Maybe Warwick was right; the panther from Hell came for a feed.

Something wet licked his cheek.

He couldn’t recoil from it, he was frozen solid. The panther’s hot, putrid breath hit his face, stroked his hair. A wet guttural growl rose up from the beast’s throat.

“
What?”

Warwick’s voice broke the trance on Dr. Chandler and he quickly got up from his chair. He stumbled to the desk, eyes searching madly for the panther.

“
Why?” Warwick was backpedaling. He held his hands up. “But I’m the vessel. Without me, you can’t—”

The door opened. Dean walked in. He smiled as he stepped over the torn body of Jerry. He looked from Jerry to Tina. “Nice work.”

“
Now I understand,” Warwick said.

“
Good.”

“
You’re not having me.” Warwick ran for the window.

Dr. Chandler reached out for him, “Warwick. No!”

Warwick’s body was locked in slow motion as he hit the glass. It shattered around him. Each chunk and sliver hung the air, suspended momentarily, drifting to the floor like feathers. Suddenly time sped up and Warwick disappeared through the window. The glass clinked on the floor.

Forgetting the panther, Dr. Chandler was instantly at the window, his arm still stretched out, until he saw the crumpled body and the halo of blood slowly spreading out. He noticed the park was empty. No parents, no children. The hospital grounds were also empty. No patients, no doctors, no nurses. There was no wind. Looking to the park, he saw the trees turn black and crumble to the ground, the grass brown and rotted and quickly vanishing, leaving white space in its wake. It took only moments for the park to no longer exist.
What the—

“
Warwick’s reality is breaking down, now that he’s dead.” Dean stroked the bulky head of a black panther that sat at his side like an obedient dog. Dr. Chandler stepped away.

“
Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you. You can even pet him if you like.”

Dr. Chandler shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Dean smiled. “There has to be two of us, always. You as the doctor, and me as the protector. The others were getting in the way, and at first I was pissed you had created them, but I forgive you. I believe you were testing my skills. Am I right?”

The panther growled. Thinking fast, Dr. Chandler said, “And you passed with flying colors.”

The panther went quiet and Dean sat on the fold out chair. “That was a good test,” he said. “I knew I had to silence Warwick straight away, but you introduced Jerry to keep me talking about my favorite subject and Tina to keep me satisfied.” He nodded at the memory. “You’re a fucking genius.”

“
You passed. You’re the genius.” Dr. Chandler took a seat next to him. What else could he do? He bent down and petted the panther.

* * *

Doctor Betty Jones entered the observation room. She nodded to the other doctors in the room. She took off the white apron and hung it on the clothes hanger and pulled off a clip-on nurse collar. She hated playing the nurse. She had far more important things to attend to, but it did further the case study in schizophrenia.

“
Where are we at?” she asked her assistant.

“
Dr. Jones, since your entry into their room, things have escalated.”

She raised an eyebrow and looked at the large rectangle sheet of two-way glass. Why they never saw the mirror and only a wall was a question she couldn’t answer.
Maybe they didn’t want to see it
? She doubted she would ever know the reason.

“
Only the personalities of Dr. Chandler and Dean remain.”

“
Dean?”

“
Yes.”

“
Well I’ll be...” her voice trailed off. “Dean? Are you sure?”

The assistant pointed to the two-way mirror.

“
Why were the others killed off?”

The assistant shrugged. “We’re trying to work that one out.”

Dr Jones sat at her console and attached the headset. She adjusted the headphones and listened in to the conversation of one man talking to himself and answering back.

Liked Lee’s story? Check out his latest title:

2007, Agent Baxter pursues the entity, Darkness, following an accident that slew Doctor Hayden’s wife and son. Dr. Hayden studied the Darkness without realizing it was studying him. Shadows, however, have a way of vanishing into light and the entity flees the compound where Hayden thought it was contained.

In 27 B.C. a peaceful man’s family is slaughtered, turning his life upside down and bringing forth a leader. A leader who will drive an army into the bowels of hell for vengeance. At the moment of his death, he offers his soul to the dark gods of the underworld for revenge which is granted swift and deadly.

Thrown from his stead on his return to Hell, Darian crawls out of the blackness and into the modern world under the new name of Darkness and carrying an infection. An infection that will take mankind to a new level of evolution.

http://panicpress.org/2011/02/13/the-armageddon-shadow-by-lee-pletzers/

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Take a small but decent-sized American city and slaughter its entire population, over the course of a year. (Well, don’t, actually.) If a hostile country did that to one of our cities, we’d probably give them the Hiroshima treatment.