NightWhere (29 page)

“Tease,” Damia complained.

“Fuck off,” he said.

“We’ve got a few minutes,” she said, moving back to the bed and climbing up on the mattress to kneel in front of him. “Let’s fuck off together.”

Mark rolled out of bed and looked for his jeans, hiding his crotch from her view.

“You’re not going to find those here,” the voice from the bed warned. “Kharon won’t allow you to hide yourself from us. We get to see you all the time. All of you. No secrets. Have to say, the view’s not too bad.”

Mark thought about how enjoyable it would be to put both of his hands around that thin neck and strangle the life from Damia until her fruity musical voice was silent for good.

“You’d have a much harder time strangling me than you think,” Damia said. Her voice was dangerously low.

Mark looked back at her and saw that her face held none of the sarcastic, playful humor she normally teased him with. She looked very ready to see him try to do her harm. And he sensed that if he did…despite her willowy form and half-female softness…he’d take the harder fall.

Mark didn’t risk it. He slipped off the bed and used the bathroom. When he came out, he joined the waiting Damia at the door.

“What’s the evil of the day?” he asked, half joking.

“Pain,” she replied, not joking at all.

Once again, Mark followed the leering skull tattoos of Damia’s backside down a long hallway. When their walk began, he’d thought they were in the dark, but soon he realized that there was always a darker place than the place he’d been before. The red haze that had glowed along the floor at the start of their walk soon deteriorated into pitch. Every few yards, a candle sconce lit the walls, which all looked strangely shiny and wet. But in between, the shadows seemed impenetrable. He hurried to keep up with Damia, as sometimes her pale rear disappeared into that blackness, and as afraid as he was of what was to come, he was more afraid of being lost out here in the corridor. There were movements as they passed along, and sometimes, far away, the echo of screams. God knew what lurked in the corners.

“God doesn’t know,” Damia answered his thoughts from ahead.

“Stop doing that,” he said. It was disturbing to know that the freak could tell every thought that went through his head.

“Not every thought,” Damia laughed, answering his head again. “But when your thoughts scream, I can hear you. And if I’m a freak, well…” she stopped and turned, and Mark almost ran into her. She leaned forward and planted a wet kiss on his mouth. “…well then you’re a freak lover!”

Mark wiped her spit off his lips with the back of his hand. “Not by choice,” he said.

“You chose to be here,” she retorted. “You know you want it.”

He opened his mouth to answer, but she put two fingers to his lips. “Later,” she promised. “You can have your way with me then. Now, Kharon is waiting. You don’t want to make him wait. Trust me on this, if nothing else.”

Mark nodded, and Damia motioned for him to step through a dark doorway that exited the hall.

They were waiting.

Twin rows of black-robed figures stood in a line that led down the rough-hewn stone floor. The foreground of the place was shadowed and warm, but Mark could see the orange glow of flames far down the other end. The place seemed to stretch on to infinity, an endless floor of grey-stone bricks and shadowed walls far to the left and right that were lined with wall sconces belching gutters of flame that both lit the room with dancing light and scorched the air with sulphur.

Damia’s cool hands pressed him forward, and Mark walked down the aisle between the figures. They didn’t move as he passed, but he could see the flare of light in their eyes as they watched him walk.

Kharon stood at the end of the aisle. His long pale face was instantly recognizable to Mark from yards away.

“You’ve gone through humiliation for Rae,” Kharon said as Mark drew closer. “But now you must go through pain.”

Kharon gestured to one of the figures at the head of the line of still figures. A large man separated himself from the rest and walked to stand at Kharon’s side. “This is Gordon,” Kharon said. “He’ll be your guide through this maze of hurt. I can guarantee you that he won’t be gentle. Many people in NightWhere bear the scars of his beatings. His wife did not survive them. But in the end, he is just your guide. You will decide how fast and how far you want to go. I have only this warning: There is no going back. Once you begin this path, the only way out is through. If you try to return to where we stand now…you will die.”

Gordon dropped the robe, and Mark could see the stature of the man. His gut was huge, but so were his shoulders. His arms and legs looked thick as stumps, and when he lifted his arm and cracked a whip against the stone floor…the huge room did not absorb the sound. It slapped loud and clear.

Mark looked around at the silent figures. None of them responded to his gaze in any way. He was just about to look back to Kharon when his eyes lit on one pale face beneath the dark hood of a robe. A face that looked familiar. He looked back and caught her eyes and instantly knew that, yes, he’d been right. She, contrary to all the others, met his gaze with a stare that was filled with empathy and hope.

Selena. What was she doing here?

He held her eyes for a moment, and was about to open his mouth to say something when she shook her head from side to side. The movement was quick and faint…but clear.

No. Betray nothing.

He nodded his head once and she smiled, just a hint of upturn to her lips. Then her eyes blinked, and Mark looked back at Kharon.

“Are you ready to face the pain?” the ghoulish man demanded. “I offer you this one last chance to turn around and go back to your little life. Let this all go. Forget about NightWhere. Forget about Rae.”

Mark took a breath. He would have liked nothing more than to have taken a pass on this. He didn’t think he would ever wash the events of yesterday from his mind. Every little while a horrible memory from the pit suddenly popped out of nowhere to flash before his eyes.

He looked away from Kharon and saw Selena staring at him. Her chin moved almost imperceptibly up and down. Yes, she was encouraging. Take the ‘out’.

Mark forced himself to look away from those eyes buried in the shadow of a black cloak.

He had come this far. He was not going to leave Rae at the hands of this…beast. God knows what Kharon had done to Rae already.

“I have to see Rae once more,” Mark announced.

Kharon nodded his head and answered with a sardonic smile. “As you wish.”

He stepped to the side and filled the gap where Gordon had been. Then he pointed towards the glow of fire on the room’s horizon. “Go in and sin.” He waited a moment and then added, “Or die.”

Mark walked past the Watchers and into the shadowed spaces beyond. Behind him, a whip cracked. He ignored it and walked forward, moving towards the orange light ahead. He couldn’t tell if there was a path there or not, but clearly he was meant to move towards the light.

Another crack echoed from behind him, only this one made him double over. The sting of the whip bit in just beneath his left shoulder blade, and the force of its slap pushed him off balance.

He walked faster, but Gordon continued to dole out the lash. It cracked against the right globe of his ass and he could feel the skin blistering with heat. It cracked against his spine and his back cried out in dull, continuing pain afterward. It ripped the skin of his shoulder blades and stung against his thighs. In minutes the entire backside of his body felt molten with heat, and when he walked he could feel the skin stretch and complain, telling him again and again where the whip had been.

Mark quickened his pace, almost running to escape the steady, rhythmic crack of the leather. But the faster he moved, the faster Gordon followed. The man matched Mark step for step.

He looked ahead. The path he walked appeared to be bordered by something just ahead. The darkness grew darker every few feet; something hung ahead in the shadows. Mark broke into a run. He did
not
want to be whipped anymore. That was Rae’s kink, never his. For a moment he escaped the sting of the whip; the bigger man couldn’t run as fast as he could, and Mark smiled at the little victory.

The murky shadows ahead grew closer and began to take shape as he ran. Almost triangles, the dark shapes peaked at the top and extended on either side lower to the ground. Mark ran towards the one closest to him, hoping to find some kind of shelter or escape from Gordon. But as he finally drew closer and the darkness slipped away, Mark knew that there was no shelter from this. He had found nothing of protection. He’d found, maybe, his own undoing.

The dark shapes were crosses. Great, wooden beams. Like the one that Jesus Christ hung from, only flipped upside down. Mark stopped in front of the one closest to him and stared at the eyeless corpse that hung upside down from the beams. It was a woman, her feet nailed ten feet in the air, her hands held with iron spikes to the wooden crossbeam at waist height above the ground. Her body was red.

Not because it was covered in blood.

But rather because it
wasn’t
covered in skin. She was a corpse scoured of skin, and her mouth hung open. She drooled, what little blood remained in her veins siphoning out of her mouth.

Not dead long, Mark thought.

He grimaced at the sight of her raw flesh, but the real things that made him sick to his stomach were the black pits of her eyes. A few bits of white skin still clung to the bridge of her nose, but her eyes…they were cut out; no lids covered the pits where her eyeballs once had been. They were just holes, gouged deep into her brain. Something dim and grey leaked from their sockets to drip on the stone below. Mark realized that the cross was anchored in a stone ditch on the side of what had been his path…apparently it was a truly defined path—on either side of him, a row of crosses stretched, anchored in the stone upside down. The end result was that the blood of the victims drained down the wood and into the stone ditches on the side of the road. Mark could see the ditch ran red with a flow of blood; it had to be a couple inches deep as it drained down the slight hill, back towards the edges of the room where he’d first entered.

Something cracked against his right shoulder and Mark cried out, turning around to face Gordon.

“I was just…”

“Do not turn around,” Gordon growled. “Never turn around. You’re looking at those who tried to turn back. If you turn back…there is a cross here for you.”

With that, the leather-clad “guide” sucker-punched Mark. He doubled over and fell to the ground on his ass, lifting his head to stare into the empty eyes of the dead woman. Something crawled in the flesh near her nose, just beneath the surface. He could see the tiny network of veins shift and move as something struggled to escape.

Mark shook his head and rolled to his feet. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he murmured and began to hurry along the path again. The familiar sting of the whip cracked his back again. His bare feet slapped along the uneven stone pavement, passing the flayed flesh of dozens of people who hung upside down, their skin removed, their breasts or genitals dangling from their bodies like raw meat. None of them had eyes—just empty holes in the fleshy decay of their heads. The farther he ran, the less scarlet their flesh became; their heads began to appear blackened and decayed, and some even betrayed the yellowed hint of bone protruding through elbows and the edges of eye sockets.

It was like a marathon through a nightmare. From ahead of him, the smell and sounds of the fire began to grow more palpable, and Mark strained his eyes to the path ahead, pulling his gaze away from the gore along the way.

The crosses did not stop at the fire.

Mark closed the gap quickly, now and then darting left and right to avoid the smack of the whip he knew was coming, and sometimes succeeding. He could hear the heavy breathing of Gordon behind him. The man wasn’t made for this kind of chase. And that gave Mark his only edge. In close quarters, Gordon could easily crush him.

But then again, this wasn’t so much a chase as a herding. According to Kharon, there was no way back. And Mark didn’t suspect there was any way to escape along the way. They were in some hellish dungeon that would only allow exit by running the gauntlet. Painful as that apparently was going to be.

The orange glow that he’d been seeing from a distance since entering the chamber and walking through the row of Watchers was finally at his feet. The air was thick with the smell of ash and cinder. Mark stopped at the edge of the fire pit, though Gordon’s whip did not. Mark cried out as it hit him again. He could feel the flesh turning raw and beginning to bleed in various places on his back. His skin cried out with every shift of muscle now. But he couldn’t go farther.

The path had ended in a sea of orange coals. He could see a stairway dozens of yards ahead, and an ominously high stone wall, but between here and there…was a glowing sea of embers. Smoke hung in clouds above it, almost hiding the rows of crucified corpses in a dismal fog. The crosses continued in a dual row on either side of him, straight into the coals, and the bodies in the midst of the fire pit were blackened and smoking. The scent of burned hair and overcooked meat hung in the air. Some appeared to have had all of their flesh sizzled and burned away; they were nothing but dark skeletons hung from the beams of wood, dusky teeth grinning sickly amid skulls skinned in char.