Vivisepulture (42 page)

     “I didn’t want to wake you,” Judy said, suppressing a sob. Now her grandson hugged her along with the mother. “I didn’t want to be selfish.”

     Vee stepped toward the doorway, but leaned in its threshold and said, “Maybe you guys will consider coming to Freetown yourself sometime. It might be worth the effort, if it’s as civilized as it seems, anyway.”

     “I don’t know…maybe,” Andrew said, but he didn’t sound convinced. Vee couldn’t blame him. Maybe if the apartment had been a little bigger – and maybe if she hadn’t been of such a restless spirit – she might have wanted to stay here insulated from the horrors outside, herself.

     “You can always come back and visit anytime,” Judy said hopefully. She smiled, and added, “Visit your new Aunt Judy.”

     “Thanks. Thanks, Aunt Judy.”

     Knowing that she would likely never see them again, Vee took a mental snapshot of the family grouped around the table. If she had no memories of a family of her own, at least she would have this. Then she turned away, to fetch her bone gun and return to Hell.

THE RECRUIT

by

DANIE WARE

The first thing I said to her was, “Call the Doctor, for God’s sake.”

Tari’s like my sister – she’s not blood, but it’s never mattered.  When she learned to braid hair, it was mine that she tangled.  When she kissed her first boy, it was me that counselled caution; when he broke her heart, I caught her.  She calls me her ‘rock’, and then laughs at the cliché.

This time, though, the only rock was the stone-cold lump that had settled in my belly.  

Dear God!
  I had no idea what I was looking at.

Tari’s hands were clutching her robe closed.  She was muttering, her voice soft with horror, “What the hell would I say?  Kate?  What the hell would I
say?”

I had no answer for her; I was groping through fear, denial and disbelief for a rationality that wasn’t there.  From the moment she’d called me, panicked, in the early hours and I’d jumped into the car still in my PJs…
Jesus!
  This was beyond bloody crazy.  

Sanity had packed its bags and fled.

In front of me, in the princess-pink bed, Tari’s little daughter was sweetly oblivious, curled round her new favourite toy.  Beside her, slumped boneless on the carpet, was Tari’s husband Rob, staring at the gently cycling nightlight.  

One of his hands was resting protectively on his sleeping daughter; he looked like he’d just slid off the edge of the bed.

But his
face…

In the soft yellow of the child’s moth-decorated light, his skin was dry and stretched and wax-pale; his cheeks corpse-hollow.  His lips were thin and parched, cracked in places, and a trail of black fluid had dried on his chin.  Staring at the lamp, his eyes were lost and blank, as dark as old blood; within them, the circling moths moved like ghosts.  He looked empty, terrifying – as though the creatures had alighted on his skin and sucked him dry, body and soul.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  I was frozen to the spot, an arachnophobe watching a spider, absolutely fucking convinced that he was going to
move,
that he was some sort of zombie, some nightmare creature that would come up and lunge for me, any minute,
any
minute now…

Choking on a throat full of terror, I gripped the doorframe and forced myself to think.

Don’t be ridiculous.  Focus, Kate!

I couldn’t quite make myself enter the room, but I blinked, shuddering, clearing my sight and mind.

Rob’s chest was moving, he was breathing – just.  What the hell had happened to him?  He was a node of horror, pulling my gaze and transfixing me.  A nameless threat lurked in his empty eyes, his hollow skin.

Crouching, Tari shook his shoulder.  “Rob?  Love?  Rob?”

She drew her hand back, as if stung, cupped it under her arm.  Turned to look up at me.  “Lyn was talking in her sleep.  She’s started having nightmares.  Rob came to see what…”  Her voice tailed off, she stared back at her husband’s face, almost as though she were deliberately trying to sear her memory with his expression, make herself believe.  “I just heard the thump.”

“Did you call anyone else?”  I wanted to lean forward, to close those blank eyes, those eyes with the moths in them, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.  My skin was crawling with cold; I felt like he was watching me, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away. Any second now, he was going to snatch at Tari’s wrist; his eyes would fill with darkness and he’d
come
for us.  My words were reflex.  “An ambulance?  The hospital?”

“God, no.  Jesus, his
eyes.
  Kate – what the hell do I do?  What..?”

I had absolutely no damned idea; the pale moths circled the room, mocking me.  They glided over my skin, crawling, teasing.  My hairs were standing up and I was shivering as though I could feel their wings, soft as a taunting breath.

I turned on the main light.

Lyn muttered and turned over, eyelids fluttering.  Her toy was still clutched in her hand.  It was some sort of grey doll, oddly shiny; I’d not seen it before.

When I tried to ease it gently from her grasp, she murmured and held it fast.  

“Crap.”  The moths were still there, under the light.  They mocked me, orbiting my head like sparks of failure.  “Get her out of here, put her on the sofa or something.”  Wide-eyed, Tari carefully scooped up her daughter, duvet and all.  I drew a breath and swallowed.

Crouched down. 

This is Rob.  He married your best mate.  You threw confetti at their wedding.  You snogged him at a party once and were coiled in shame for days.  You were there to greet him when he brought home his daughter.  There’s nothing to fear.

Sick to my stomach, I steeled myself to look into his sucked-empty face.

He didn’t move.

But…
Jesus…

His skin was fissured like sunbaked soil.  His lips were shrivelled and dry; they fluttered faintly, flakes of skin shivering as though he was trying to form words.  Determined, I rocked forwards to take a closer look, to assure myself I wasn’t dreaming, that this really was the man I’d known for the last ten years.

The lights that were moving in his eyes were not the child’s moths.

There was something
in
there.

Then a shriek from downstairs nearly stopped my heart for good.

In the front room, Tari was standing stock-still in the centre of the rug as if rats had surrounded her.  On the couch, Lyn was muttering, one hand twitching as if she fought something, or tried to push something away.  The other held her doll to her chest.

Tari pointed, wordless and terrified – but I’d already stopped., my mind screaming somewhere between denial and incomprehension.

I can’t be seeing this – I can’t be seeing this!

The little girl’s nightdress had pulled down over one of her pale shoulders and in her skin there was a tattoo – an angular and chaotic design of raw, hard colour, bright and savage.  While my mind told me, stupidly, that there was no way Tari and Rob had inked their six-year-old, my eyes could
see
the colours in her skin.

And they were moving, nonsensical and crazed, a harsh pattern of light and warfare that I had no way to even grasp.

There was a fight being raged on – in? – the girl’s little body, a screaming tumble of advancing lines and fractal detonations, explosions of shards and flesh and armour that were rippling across her shoulders, up the sides of her little neck and into her face.  Her skin was a screen, alight with a war from another world.

If this was a nightmare, then it was
alive.

It was the same thing I’d seen in Rob’s blank eyes.

Tari was hands over her mouth, muttering ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God’ as though she could do nothing else.  And I stood there, dumb, numb and baffled, while the colours grew swifter and more ferocious, while a silent, screaming rage of multi-coloured conflict glared from the little girl’s skin.

What the hell is this?

My head was pounding, my hands shaking, my mouth as dry as hopelessness.  I had no idea what was happening, never mind how to fix it.

This is insane!

Tari’s hands covered her face. She slid down the wall and started sobbing.  “Please,” she said, “Make it stop, make it go away.”

Then, as suddenly as it begun, it was gone.

Dark.  

Calm.

The raging in the little girl’s skin had snapped out of existence as through someone had thrown a switch.  The room was dark, quiet but for Tari’s sobs.  As I stood there, fighting an urge to knot my hands in my hair and shriek confusion, Lyn gave a deep sigh, cuddled her toy to her, and was asleep in a bundle of sparkly-pink, her little face all childhood peace.

Tari was crying, hope beyond despair.  “Kate!  What did you do?  Is she okay--?”

“I’ve got no bloody idea.”

Little Lyn was a picture of innocence, sleeping in front of me.  In the space of a split-second, she’d gone from hell-spawn to cherub and I was trembling with tension.

Distrust.

Tari crawled to her sleeping daughter on her hands and knees, stroked her little face, held her hand.  “But you must’ve done something?”

Her question was a plea. 
Tell me you did something!

Robbed of breath, of anything resembling understanding, I could find nothing to comfort either of us.  I stared at the little girl, sleeping contentedly, as though the whole damned thing had been in my head.

Had
it been in my--?

No.  Lyn’s nightdress was tugged down over her shoulder and the tattoo – whatever it was – had gone, her skin was soft and clean.  But I’d seen it, I’d
seen
her nightmare made manifest.

The savage battle living in her skin.

Outside, a car’s headlights shone briefly against the closed curtains and then turned away.  The world was still out there; life went on.  Time stumbled into motion.

“Okay.”  I heard the creak of my own voice.  “Okay.”  My thoughts coughed and stuttered; I fought to focus.  I had to get ahead of this, work out what the hell was going on.  “Tari – are you okay to stay here by yourself for ten minutes while I shoot home?”  When she didn’t reply, I turned to look at her, stroking her daughter’s hair back from her little face.  “Tari.  Stay with me.”

She looked up at me, expression torn by hope and dread.  “Yes,” she said faintly.  “Yes.  Ten minutes.  You’ve got your key?  I’ll just stay right here.  Please…” her voice caught “…please, Katy-Kat, don’t be long.” 

I knew I shouldn’t have left her, but I went anyway.

When I came back, the house was quiet.  In the front room, Lyn was awake, sitting watching a DVD as though nothing had happened.  She was nestled in a fleece blanket and still cuddling the odd grey doll.

There was no sign of her mother.

“Aunty Katy, can I have some squash?”

“It’s very late, darling, you can have milk.”  The answer was automatic.  I pushed open the kitchen door, then looked into the study.

No Tari.

What?

My skin crawled, crackled and froze.

“Lyn?”  My voice struggled for calm.  “Where’s your Mum?”

Her answer was absolute innocence.  “I don’t know.”

Oh, Jesus.
  On the drive home, I’d just about managed to convince myself that this was all in my head.  Now, it was more real than ever; it was laughing, harsh and cold and
utterly
bloody insane.  

I don’t know.

Where the hell was Tari?  There was no way she’d have left Lyn’s side.

My words seemed to come from someone else.  “Stay there, darling, I’ll get your milk in a second.”

Fighting nausea, my skin alive with the chill softness of moth-feet and my hand hitting every bloody light on the way, I took the stairs three at a time.  I checked the upstairs rooms; took a long, steadying breath before opening the door to Lyn’s bedroom…

Her slumped, sucked-dry father had also gone. 
Gone.
  Other than myself and Lyn, the house was empty…

At least, I bloody-well hoped so.

Oh, my fucking God.

In the room, the soft ghosts of the moths were still circling endlessly, wisps of forgotten nightmare.

Don’t tell me he got up?

For a timeless moment, I stood there terrified, staring at the space where Rob had been.  Where the hell was he?  Was he loose in the house?  Hiding?  Had Tari – maybe she’d taken him to the hospital?  No, the car was still in the drive.

The radiators juddered as the heating kicked in and the flash of terror nearly made me fold.

Where the hell had he gone?

Explanations circled like the moths, crazed and endless, zig-zag loops around the light.  I felt like I was grabbing for them, helpless.  I had no answer – I only knew that I couldn’t leave Lyn.  

Lyn!

One wing-beat too close and a moth was in my hand; images of crushed fragments floating to the carpet.

Something about the lights in her skin?

Whatever had happened to Tari and Rob –
Jesus, was there anything in here I could use as a weapon?
– I
had
to stay with the girl.

If there was an answer, it was Lyn that knew it.

When I went back downstairs, the little girl was yawning, cuddling further under her fleece and blinking sleepily at the cartoon on the plasma.  Her skin was calm, shadowed.  Other than the blue light of the television, the room was in darkness.

Scared to my soul, feeling faintly ludicrous, I picked up the ornamental poker from beside the fire.  It was cast-iron, a dead weight in my hand, and cold.    

I tried to visualise myself, smashing skull and face into blood and bone.  My friends--

A noise in the kitchen made me start, my heart hammering, my hand tightening on the poker’s sharp, metal grip.  For a moment, I stood petrified, the stillness at the centre of my own screaming terror.