by DC Alexander
I rolled to my feet, grabbed Carl’s flashlight and followed, “Carl, come on, stay with me. They might be more of them.” I didn’t want this one to get away. If it got outside we’d never catch it.
I made it to the bottom of the stairs and saw it at the end; I pulled the hammer back and aimed with the flashlight in my hand pointing along the barrel, and shot it in the head. It went down and twitched a few times and was still. I walked over to it and poked it with my foot, then rolled it over. Its face was bulged out from overpressure and it looked real dead.
Carl came up to me and put his hand on my good shoulder and I spun and stuck the gun in his stomach. I just barely missed shooting him.
He looked like he was going to puke. What was left of the front of his shirt was soaked with blood. He ignored when he got a look at me, “Oh shit, we got to get you to a hospital, come on.” He put his arm around me and drug me toward the exit stair.
“No, Carl, stop. We got to go see if they any more of these in that room, we can’t leave now. They get away we never catch them outside, Carl! Hey! Are you listenin to me?”
He never slowed down. He didn’t even hear me maybe. He kept right on dragging me.
I poked him in the shoulder and that got his attention. “Ouch! Shit, watch that, that shoulder’s hurt.”
“I know it is, turn loose of me now.” He loosened up and I turned and went back to the ghoul room. “You can come with me or you go ahead and open the stairs up. If one comes your way you shoot it, alright? Get the gun ready now so you can shoot it.” I couldn’t believe he was beating on the damn thing with a perfectly good gun, using it like a hammer. We were going to talk about that.
“I run out of bullets. I didn’t have but the three, I didn’t get more. I’ll get more bullets soon as we out of here. I won’t run out again, sorry about that. Look, we got to get you out of here, you need to go get some stitches and shots and shit. You’re tore up pretty bad. ”
“We’ll take care of that in a minute, I gotta check that room out first.”
The room was still dark and stinking, I shined the light in it, and it was déjà vue. It wasn’t as cluttered and there was only one heap of clothes, but the smell and the feel were the same as the cellar.
“Carl, hold the light for me so we can get done here. They might be another one buried in the clothes, if they is, it should move slower if it’s the other kind. I need a stick but my pistol should do.
I kicked through the clothes and uncovered ribs, a pelvis, bones. There was no place for anything else to hide, the room was clear. I needed to heal, badly, I was shivering. I blocked the pain but the blood coming from my face and shoulder ran down my back. My shirt was wet and sticky and warm on front and back. The teeth on one side of my mouth were cold when I breathed and it felt like somebody else’s mouth when I ran my tongue over that side. Carl was insistent, “Come on and let’s go, you can relax now, let’s get you to the hospital now and they can fix you up. Just hang on a little and we’ll be right there.” He grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled toward the stairs, I dropped the pistol. I knew I dropped when I heard it hit the floor; my hand was just a club of meat on the end of my arm.
“We need to check the door, are there more of them?” I sounded strange, my voice wasn’t working right, and I was dizzy. Black spots floated everywhere I looked.
“Damn the door, you’re bleedin to death and we got to get you fixed up. We’ll come back and deal with the rest later. Come on.” I was vaguely surprised he understood me and worried about something. Everything was getting far away and nothing seemed to matter much. Carl had me on the stairs; he’d turned backwards and held me tight as he backed down. “You getting awful damn friendly, have we been introduced?” It was getting funny. I remembered the gun, I couldn’t leave the gun, I had to have it. We wouldn’t make it out without it. It was a stone bitch to get a gun too. “Get the gun!” Sounded more like ‘ge t guh’ to me, he ignored me and we staggered down another couple steps. I tried to get loose and all I could manage was a little wiggle, my legs were folding up and I was just hanging, nothing was responding. At least I had the pain blocked, I gave up on getting the gun, I had to fix some of this. I Looked at the damage and slowed the blood loss. My body had already slowed the flow of blood to my skin. That was fascinating. I had a deep bite on the right side of my neck in the back where the neck turned into shoulder; a bite sized chunk of meat and skin were just gone. Right next to it and over my spine another shallower chunk was missing and there were grooves on my vertebra where its teeth had tried to get a grip. My left cheek had a flap hanging loose, it hadn’t torn off, maybe I could put it back together and close the hole.
We were outside in the bright sunlight suddenly. Carl cradled me like a baby and tried to open the door, pushing me against the side of the car to help hold me up.
He got the car door open and pushed it the rest of the way with his knee, I put my hand over my cheek and raised my head and said “Hang on a sec, just relax, let me see if I can do this.” I managed to get it clear enough maybe he could understand me.
He ignored my babble and pushed me into the car, he pushed on me to get me far enough in to close the door. “We goin to the hospital, just hang on. I got you, it’s gonna be ok.”
He ran around the car and I got a hand on the handle to the door and pulled it, I leaned on the door and got it open as he opened his side up. I fell out against the door as he was getting in, he shouted “Damn! “and grabbed me by the arm. I put my other hand on my cheek so I could talk “Carl, I got to get on the ground, listen to me! Turn loose of my arm!”
He acted pissed, “Hang on! You don’t need to fight me. Let me help you. Don’t fall out of the damn car.” He crawled to my side holding on to me. I leaned out and reached down. He tried to slow my fall by holding my arm. I finally got my ass off the seat and fell out of the car, hitting the bottom of the door and dragging hard all the way, but it was worth the damage when I finally landed on the soft, welcoming earth. He had my left arm over my head and it was in a strain, I could just reach the earth with my right hand, I had to look to tell, the hand was numb.
Carl begged “Please Rosalee, get in the damn car. You need some stitches, you got a hole in your face I can see your teeth through. You bleedin like a stuck pig and you’re gonna get infected from them bites.”
I held my hand up and showed him the broken fingers; my pinkie and the one next to it were blue and swollen.
“Oh god, I did that, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to!“ He turned loose of my wrist. Thank god! It was slipping loose anyway.
“Carl, shut up. I know. Let me show you this.” I reached down and sank both hands to the wrists in the cool, welcoming earth, and pulled the healing energies through my fingers and up my arms. I damped the pain to a manageable level and Looked at the fingers on my hand, some of the bone had splintered and it was swelling, the bones were out of alignment inside the skin.
I pulled my hands out, Carl lying across the seat, watched as I caught the fingers one at a time with my other hand and pulled them straight. I didn’t feel the pain. I was able to look inside the fingers as I lined up the bone. He made a gagging sound as he slid back across the seat to get out.
I pressed my hands back into the earth and pulled energy through my tattoo and back out my broken fingers. The bone wanted to be whole; all I had to do was supply the energy. Some of the small broken pieces couldn’t sit back in the spots they came from so I migrated them to the surface of my skin. I flushed the overabundance of blood out of the fingers through the skin and the fragments were carried away as the swelling went down. Carl loomed over me, wringing his hands, he squatted down facing me and reached out toward my face, his hand hovered just before he touched me. “Oh my god, your face. Rose, we got to go get this sewed up.”
I pulled my right hand out of the dirt. The fingers were covered with blood and dirt, a couple of tiny fragments of bone showed white and clean. The fingers were just a little puf
fy but it was obvious they were right, straight where they should be without the sharp angles and dents. I was above it all, the black spots were gone, I was energized but still shaky.
I put my hand on my cheek so I could talk “It will take a little time to finish, but I got this started. How bad are you hurt?” I pointed to the ground and gestured “Sit down and let me see what I can do with you.”
Carl sank down on the ground and stared at me like he had never seen me before. He might have been looking at the hole in my cheek though.
He leaned against the car and let his head loll back against it. His arms fell limp at his sides. I put my hands back in the earth and left my healing going on autopilot while I Looked at him. He had muscle tears where he had been grabbed, the bite, missing muscle and skin, blood loss and some scratches.
Completely aware of the penalty for a mistake, I very carefully encouraged his body to replace the muscle tissue, I touched his belly where his shirt rode up with my right hand and pulled energy through his body to help with the healing. It started, but he wasn’t guiding it, the individual parts knew what they could do but the repairs were random and accidental.
I went in and guided the repairs. Muscle cells needed to be replicated to replace the missing muscle. The skin needed to speed up its normal replacement cycle, a layer of tissue needed knitting. I sank into the details and pressed here and there, encouraged, and led the process till the skin closed over the new muscle and fat. I stopped with that, I could feel the tattoo poised, watching, wound tight and ready to snap like a spring when I screwed up.
It relaxed when I withdrew my attention from Carl, it didn’t care what I did to me. I opened my eyes and noticed the bright sunlight was dim, it was twilight. Carl’s eyes were closed and he snored gently with his mouth open, he had slumped down against the car and his head was tilted way forward. He was gonna have a hell of a crick in his neck from that.
My wounds had pretty much stopped bleeding. I hoped I wouldn’t have to tear them up to fix them. A feeling of urgency was growing in me, I was missing something important, I tried to think what it was but I was so damn tired even with the energy flowing strongly. I was hungry, no, starved! I had to have something to eat. I Looked within, my reserves were low. The new tissue had to have material from somewhere and I had nothing to spare.
The urgency grew, I realized Dirt was trying to communicate. “Yes, what is it?”
My vision suddenly showed a spot on the other side of the car that didn’t exist, Dirt’s aggravation filled me, and I took stock of what I could do.
Not much. No gun. Carl had his but was out of bullets. No sword. No time. I was weak. I might be able to sink out of reach in the dirt, that gave me a moment of hope, but I couldn’t leave Carl, he was in worse shape than I was. I didn’t know if I could keep him breathing if I sank him out of reach.
I Touched the glow that was the disc and pressed power into it, I covered myself and Carl. For the first time I saw the effect on something else, he disappeared from sight, the only clue he was there was the pressed down grass. His gentle snores continued, I thought frantically and then it was too late.
The absence walked around the front of the car and paused thoughtfully.
I had the strangest feeling, I could see the vacancy through whatever sense Dirt loaned me, but my eyes saw a human figure standing in that spot. He wore old tattered jeans and a ragged button up shirt, frayed and dirty, the collar had threads sticking out from the fold. I would have said he were homeless if I saw him on the street. He didn’t have shoes on. His pale, tender looking feet glowed against the grass. He was bald as an egg, thin, looked like he was starving, the bone of his face and hands pressed hard against his thin, translucent skin. He looked fragile and delicate and birdlike. I got the impression of age, a very elderly man, but he stood straight with good posture, no slumping or leaning, but alert and ready to move.
He looked mildly surprised that nobody was visible. He addressed the empty area; “That’s interesting.” He smiled, exposing bright white teeth, and thank god, no fangs. They were just normal teeth. “There are two of you, and one of you snores. Would you care to explain why you came to my house and killed my people?” He was conversational, not excited, interested, the tone I’d used to ask someone at a store if they had oranges. Carl continued to snore softly. This thing was looking at me patiently, not exactly at me but he knew where I was.
My hands were stuck into the dirt and where they went in was pretty obvious. Whoops. “Those things attacked us. We had to kill them to stop them.” My voice was mushy but he seemed to understand it well enough.
He zeroed in on my voice and dropped the smile. “You are trespassing on my property. Those were my guards. You committed murder.” He took a deep breath with his mouth open and his lips pursed, “And, hmm, you’re injured. You are both injured.” He crouched down a little and his lips pulled back from those pretty white teeth. No, the teeth had outgrown the mouth and pressed out, he was growing some seriously bad shark dentures and they were coming on fast.
“I’m going to have to leave you now. I will be in touch with you later.” It sounded mushy. He was done talking though, he turned and sprang away and moved like he was snatched away by an elastic band, just that fast he was gone. There was no point in the disguise, we were found and we had to leave. I cut power to the charm and it fell into the background, I could see Carl. I pressed the flap on my cheek together and tied the tissue together so it wouldn’t flap, pulled my hands out and crawled over to Carl. “Wake up, we gotta go.” If that thing came back we were out of luck, I had nothing left.
Carl opened his eyes and straightened his neck and grunted as he put his hand to his neck. “Ow, my neck is broke, oh, that hurts.” He remembered then “Hey, are you ok? Come on, let’s go” he got up and leaned on the car and reached a hand down for me, “Here, let me help you up.”
I took the offered hand. We struggled to get the doors open and climbed in the car. It started first try, I’d been expecting it to stall and not start and it was full dark, black and blinding.
Carl broke the companionable silence “That thing with your hand, did you really do that? My neck feels broke, but the rest of me is feelin a lot better, you fixed me too? ”
“Yeah, I did some quick repairs, what I could, I can finish after I get home.” I didn’t see any reason to fill him in on our visitor. The less he got involved with that the better off he would be, and I had no explanations anyway.
“Have you been awake the whole time? I must have passed out, the whole day is gone. Good thing there wasn’t some more of them, we would’ve had trouble. ”
I just didn’t say anything, I don’t like to lie; but keeping my mouth shut wasn’t exactly lying.
He glanced at me repeatedly “Your face looks awful, that’s gotta be hurtin. You shoulda took care of that before you did me.” He compressed his lips and concentrated on driving “I can take care of myself, you aint got to worry about me. You spendin so much time treatin me like a baby you lettin yourself go and that aint right.” I guess he was feeling insecure and had to be manly. I so didn’t want to deal with this drama shit.
“I did what I did. You got to drive us home and I aint goin to no hospital and tryin to explain what eat us up; I can see tellin them about this shit, I don’t think it would go over good. They’d lock us up in the psych ward, and I aint takin a chance on that. This aint hurtin, I blocked the pain and the worst is fixed.”
“It just aint right is all, I don’t like you havin to tend me like a baby.” Argh. Was there any way to just end this?
“Carl, we partners, we both took hits, I did what I could, you did what you could and we lived through it. Aint that enough? Why you gotta beat this to death, I aint got the energy to deal with it. Can you just let it go? I sure would appreciate it.” I was done. I decided I’d get out and walk if he kept on.
“You mean that?” He brightened up, sat a little straighter in his seat, and looked at me like
I offered him an ice cream cone.
I thought over what I’d said, I didn’t see anything to make him act like that, at least he wasn’t whining any more. “Do I mean what? The appreciation? Yeah, I meant what I said.”
“We partners, that what you said, do you mean that?” The answer was obviously important to him. I considered the question.
“Yeah, I guess we are. We aint got no formal business but as far as I can tell, we both puttin in what we can do and it looks like its workin. Can we stop talkin now? I got a sore mouth here.”
“Ouch, I’m sorry, I didn’t think. You just hang tight, we almost there.” He was the man now, happy and in control. If that was all it took to fix him up I could deal with it.
He let me out at the house with a barrage of questions, I waved him off and pointed at my cheek. He apologized and left reluctantly. I might just keep the torn cheek, it seemed to shortcut drama. I went straight downstairs to the basement and sat in my grounded spot, immersed my hand and let the healing proceed.
I woke up from a sound sleep. Ghouls. How did I know it was ghouls? Oh, yeah, Dirt. These were living things that procreated, they weren’t bound to the night, they would be cannibals except that they weren’t human, they were something other. .. I didn’t have all the knowledge, just what would seem to be common.
Ok, so they were ghouls. Big sharp teeth, tough, strong, but they went down when you shot them. They weren’t the blank spot Dirt was agitated about; that was the vampire for lack of a better word. I needed a stake for it, or would it be a ‘him’? I could use silver, maybe, everything I read said they were allergic to silver. I didn’t know where to get silver bullets. I didn’t think they sold them even at Wal-Mart. The sword might work; wonder if I could get some silver on it. If I got caught with it, the law would probably take it from me, same with the gun. I needed a concealed carry permit for the gun.