Where Darkness Dwells (45 page)

Jimmy saw her eyes (how could someone lacking a soul have such emotion, such fury?), and vaguely recalled a similar face. A face imbued with warmth and hope and tranquility. It was Charles Banyon's wife, Mabel. Long dead. No details from his recollection existed in the woman standing before him. But it was her, no doubt, and somehow she still moved. Somehow she had held his baby boy as he died. She had taken what little time his child had in this world, had looked on his face with those crazed eyes as he took his last breath.

Mabel grabbed her husband's shirt collar, pulling him close to her, as if to embrace him. She pinned him to the wall, forcing the breath from his lungs. She went at him with her long, razor-like nails, ripping fabric, flesh, burrowing rails of muscle and bone. Blood pulsed from his wounds, falling in a wash, forming a growing puddle at his feet.

He never put up a fight. His expression, while pained, never wavered as he gazed with ill-fitting affection at his wife. His life was draining as quickly as his blood.

Jimmy didn't have long. Crouched low, keeping to the shadows, he reached the rag-draped boy and rewrapped him, as if his actions could stave off the cold. He hefted the form to his body, and oh God was he a light thing! Not much more a burden than the rags themselves. Before he was seen, he turned away from the Banyons. The baby felt like bones in a sack against his chest. Hollow bird bones, undeveloped, fragile, and… dead.

He was crying. He couldn't help it. He never thought he would ever want this baby. He was too young, not sure yet what he would do with his life, but now he wanted his boy to be alive and sighing in his arms like a contented, thriving bundle of joy.

Eyes blurred with tears, he didn't want to look back. Seeing any more just might break something inside him.

But then a brief explosion flashed behind him. Loud enough to ring his ears even at a distance. It
had
been brief, and he
did
look back, and he was astonished that a shotgun blast could be so earth shaking.

One of those Borland brothers wore a wicked grin, the barrel of his weapon threading smoke through the air. The blast had catapulted Mabel Banyon into a wall. She slid to the floor, painting the wall with a crimson streak like a misplaced shadow.

Charles was still alive. Barely. Flayed bands of flesh trembled on the floor next to Mabel. It disgusted Jimmy to see him still trying to get at that Borland brother. His loyalty to his wife remained even though she had effectively killed him.

Borland laughed and launched a shit-brown gob of spit in Charles's face. He waited until that hopeless mess on the floor got real close, then placed the gun barrel against his forehead and pulled the trigger. The concussion of the blast and barrel flash assaulted Jimmy's senses.

Charles no longer moved. When the ringing in Jimmy's ears dissipated, he could hear Borland laughing even harder.

Mabel's knife-sharp fingernails stopped his laughter. At once, the sound seized inside him as if he were choking on a hambone. Mabel had circled around to his side so he couldn't see her movement in the shadows (how a beast can be so cunning but can't properly rock a baby, Jimmy thought), then jammed her nails into his chest, wriggled them with a twisting motion, impaling him to the third knuckle. She coiled her wrist as if searching for something, and Borland let out a bewildered shriek of pain. Mabel probed some more, each movement punctuated by a more perplexed yet fading cry from Borland.

Jimmy didn't wait for Mabel to notice him. He turned back, heading toward Jacob, Ellie and… Louise. He had almost forgotten about Louise. How could he forget about Louise? His love, his child's mother. She had died in his arms. Only minutes ago.

Now she could never leave.

What had he done to deserve this? He was damned to never leave this place as well, to never walk under the warm sun, never enjoy the fragrance of spring carried by the wind. And his family, stunted before it could find its roots.

Sprinting through the near-dark, he resolved to not spend his damnation alone. Louise was dead, but would she have yet risen? The thought gave him the briefest, dimmest spark of hope. But he clung to it as if it were a blazing nova. It was all he had.

15.

Within seconds Cooper would loose consciousness, and once that empty black wall descended on him, he would never wake.

Pinned beneath him, Jane moaned. Through the murk, he reached out to touch her face. The rock that had hit her above the right eye had left a nasty welt. His fingers came away bloody, but she was twitching below him. Remarkably, her eyes flickered open.

"Don't move," he said, the dark veil of unconsciousness thrown aside.

"I don't think I could if I tried."

"If we don't move, they'll think we're dead."

"My skin--"

"It's tingling?"
"Yes. What is it?"

"I think, somehow, it's healing. I feel it, too."

"What is this place?"

Cooper didn't have a chance to respond. A concussive blast trembled through the cave floor, through the walls, shook the ceiling until still more rocks and still larger boulders, collapsed in on them. The air itself vibrated with violent energy. A blanketing wind throttled down the tunnel, came crashing full-tilt into the people gathered at the lip of the pit, sending a handful over the edge. Screams rose from above; rocks fell; people flailed against each other to get away. The world was chaos. The ground trembled, then again with less force, and then a final time a faded echo of the first.

"What happened?" Jane huddle against Cooper's chest. While the ground no longer quaked, boulders still dislodged from above, thudding to the floor nearby.

Many of the torches had gone out. He could barely see. "Some kind of explosion. The walls are coming in." He grabbed her as he stood, pulling them both flat against the wall, trying to make themselves as small a target as possible for falling debris.

The crowd was recovering. Dust showered down now with only intermittent stones. Whatever caused the explosion, it seemed to be behind them.

Four others were in the pit. Two women stood together, crying. An old man cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting for help from above. The women held one another, scurrying away when they noticed Cooper and Jane on the far side of the pit. They looked like they expected to be attacked or bludgeoned.

The fourth person was one of the bounty hunters who chased them from Greta's house. Blood flowed over his face from his gashed scalp, coating him in a red mask. His wicked grin was made more wicked by debris that had shattered most of his front teeth. He spit out the remains of teeth, and oblivious to the surrounding chaos, he advanced on them, flicking a machete at his side as if testing its weight.

Cooper stepped in front of Jane. They circled the pit as the bounty hunter stalked them with deliberate slowness.

Having heard the old man's screams for assistance, a kind soul tossed a thick rope down into the pit. Immediately, the two women began shoving each other to gain an advantage in reaching the rope first. They were soon scratching and clawing each other over who would first receive a lift to freedom. It was a catty thing, more bluster than anger, until a fingernail of the shorter of the two dug a furrow in the cheek of the other. This ended any possibility for a civil ending. Fists were thrown and landed with meaty thuds, hair was pulled and came loose at the bloody roots. The two ignored the saving rope, scourging one another during the time it would take to hoist both to safety one after the other.

After staring at the fight for a moment, the old man looped the rope around his waist, and with the help of those above, he crabbed walked up the wall. As his spindly legs disappeared from view, a sound with the sudden ferocity of a dozen locomotives nearly deafened Cooper.

He covered his ears instinctively, but his eardrums popped as the tunnel's air pressure abruptly changed. Jane cried out, and though she stood just behind him, the sound came as a whisper through a paper cone.

The bounty hunter was ten feet away when the uproarious sound ripped through the tunnel. After briefly hesitating, he quickened his advance.

There was no place to go. No hiding place. This is the last second of my life, Cooper thought morbidly. The machete glinted through an upward arc, leaving Cooper with only enough time to meet the blade with an upraised forearm. He waited the inevitable bite.

It didn't come.

What did come was water. A raging flood as mighty as Neptune's thrown fist, it hurtled down from the tunnel above, pouring into the pit, catching the bounty hunter squarely in the chest. The force bent him in half backwards, and if not for the water's beast-like roar, Cooper would hear a dozen bones snapping. The man disappeared in a flume of white water that crashed into the far wall. The curve of the pit redirected the water's energy, swirling it around to scour the edges, flooding higher.

The water had lost some of its punch, but it still upended Cooper when it reached him. He lost contact with Jane, and as he struggled to keep his head above water, she went under, her face falling forward as if she had simply fallen asleep. The water lapped over her, still higher, rising to fill the pit. If Cooper didn't find her within seconds, she would never survive this.

16.

Jimmy carried his dead son wrapped in the soiled rag. He heard their voices--bewildered and frightened and escalating in volume--long before he came upon them.

So Louise
had
risen.

He had hoped to reach them before it happened, if for no other reason than to prepare his brother and Ellie. But he was too late. Too late to save his son (his son… his son, would the boy ever have a name?), too late to shield Jacob and Ellie from the awful sight of Louise rising from the dead. His mother, she was down here too, and she'd been screaming in pain. Would he be too late to save her as well?

"Jimmy?" Louise's voice was stronger now than during her life's final moments.

There was a hesitation, but then Jacob said, "He's… he's not here. He left."

"Where? Where's Jimmy? I need him. Our boy, he was taken… taken by Banyon." Louise spoke the words Jimmy was hoping to never hear again, words he hoped Ellie would never have to hear.

"No, not Daddy. He would never. No! NO!"

Jimmy sprinted into the tunnel, the trio awash in meager light. All at once their gazes fell on him. Pinning him in place. Those stares seeking knowledge, truth, coherency. And then, as one, their eyes fell to the bundle in his arms.

"Jimmy!" Louise shouted and ran to him. He held her against his chest, the dead thing held between them.

She felt the bundle between them, understanding what it was. "Jimmy! You found him!"

"No. No, babe, I was too late. He's gone."

Ellie stepped toward them. "It's a lie, Jimmy. Why would she say something like that? Daddy would never do something so…" her own choked sob cut her off. Because she knew. No matter how hard the man had tried to live the straight and narrow, the gravid pull of darkness had an even stronger magnetism. Simple enough: she alone was not enough to keep him good.

Louise was still trying to pull away, stunned by knowing what he held in his arms. But he didn't let go. If anything, he held her more vehemently. He didn't want Ellie to see any more. Didn't want to let go of his first and only love. He wanted to never leave her side, he realized. He would never let her go.

"Ellie, please, don't." Jacob took hold of her arm.

She regained her voice. She trembled and stepped closer to him, "Say it, Jimmy. Say he didn't do it!" she screamed through streaming tears. Her wounded voice quaked. She was daring him to lie to her. As if lying to protect her feelings would confirm that her father was an evil man more so than the outward truth. She was challenging him, waiting his answer.

Jimmy didn't have a chance to speak. The explosion hammered through the tunnel, sending everyone sprawling.

Jacob fell atop Ellie and covered both their heads. Jimmy held fast to the unmoving bundle, Louise also still in his grasp. He didn't know what was happening, but if this was a final judgment sent down by some higher power, he didn't want to lose contact with his family. Jimmy leaned over--rocks peppering down in a violent hail--and pressed his lips against Louise's. She kissed him back, and her lips were still death-cold, leaching the warmth from him. A trail of blood had dried across her mouth, and he tasted the coppery tang, but he didn't care.