Death Highway

by J C Walsh

  My jaw works uselessly, trying to find the words to say to her. I can’t think; the muddiness is back and all I see is this new house, ridden of the stains of the past. I see my smiling wife, yes, she is my wife this time. I see the wedding ring sparkling on her left hand. I see our baby, alive and well, her lively sounds are heaven. This is all I see in front of me and nothing else. This is all I want.

  Heart fluttering, my wife makes her way to me with our child. I feel my friends stir uncomfortably behind me, but it feels like they are far away. They’re not even in this house. It’s just us. My family.

  I see the baby’s soft skin wiggle within the confines of the blankets. Laura helps the infant’s struggles by peeling a little away, revealing the small round head coated with light brown hair. The new baby smell is wonderful; it’s mixed with the scent of shampoo. Laura must’ve just given the baby a bath, which would explain why the baby is still naked. The overprotective father in me wants to tell Laura to cover the baby so it doesn’t get sick.

  “Boy or girl?” I ask. I bring my hand, my left hand, up to touch the soft skin; the baby is real. It giggles, the small hand grips my finger.

  “Girl.” Laura says, her eyes are wet.

  She’s acting like this is the first time we have reunited. It would make sense since I was in jail and had just been released. No. That doesn’t make sense; My little girl would be two years old by now. But the way Laura was acting when we came in was like she was waiting for me to come home from work. What the hell is going on?

  “You want to hold her?”

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t say anything; I just hold out my shaking hands.

  “Randy,” Jack says. “Don’t. This isn’t real, man.”

  Laura looks at him with daggers in her eyes. When she looks at me, she’s smiling again. “Of course, this is real, sweetie. This is all we worked hard for. Didn’t you want this?”

  “Yes… Yes. Of course.” What would it feel like to hold my daughter? To feel her small body wiggle in my arms, her warmth against my chest?

  A hand gently lands on my shoulder. For a moment, I thought it might be Grandpa’s hand, which confuses me. Grandpa would only place his hand on my shoulder when I was distressed, when I was losing control. I can’t be losing control when I finally understand what true happiness is like. Can I?

  It’s not Grandpa’s hand, but Jack’s. He’s starting to agitate me; he’s taking my moment away from me. I fight closing my hands into fists. I want my baby in my hands, but I cannot bring myself to take her from Laura’s hands, and she’s not lowering the baby into them either.

  “Randy,” Jack says, “Listen to me. Listen to us. Don’t take the baby. She’s not real, none of this is real. This is the Red Plane feeding off your regrets. You said it yourself, the house was in shambles when you first came here. How did it everything become new so quickly? Think man.”

  “Yeah, Randy,” Alex adds, his hand on my right shoulder, “Fight this.”

  Will joins them. His hand is on my left shoulder with Jack’s, “You got this, bro.”

  I almost shake their hands off me when I see Laura’s face change from pure happiness to a mask of pure disgust. It makes me feel disgust at her and the writhing thing in her arms. I imagine myself reaching into the blanket, wrapping my hands tightly around the small head--

  Stop. This is madness.

  The house shudders. The walls groan as cracks slowly appears in the newly painted walls. Deep in the catacombs of my home, a baby wail. It did not come from the baby in front of me; this sound was distant, lost and sorrowful. My body trembles, the walls are peeling.

  “Randy,” Laura says intensely, “I don’t like your friends disrespecting me in our home.” Her neck cracks as it bends to one side, her skin slowly turns to an ashen gray. The bright warmness of the inside of the house dims to the color of blue flesh.

  “You going to hold the fucking baby or what?” Laura barks, her voice guttural.

  My hands turn to fists. My pain level is a motherfucking ten. I back away from the thing Laura has become. This is not some alternate timeline where I can leave all the shit I’ve done behind and live a happy and fulfilled life. This is the house of illusions, and it just had me in its maw, like a Venus fly trap. I just hope I can save her like I saved the others.

  The blanket in Laura’s arm is soaked in blood.

  “Holy fucking fuck,” Alex says, “That’s not good.”

  “Yo,” Will says, “The windows are flashing red; I think we are merging again.”

  For the first time since this journey started, I am truly afraid. I could fight thousands of blood hounds and Nazi’s to the death, and fucking smile while I was doing it. But this. This is my true nightmare come to life, all my hopes and dreams turned on me. This isn’t just Laura’s Red Plane, this is mine as well.

  “I think I see those things running towards the house,” Will says, “I told you we shouldn’t have left the fucking guns! But no one listens to the crazy conspiracy guy!”

  “Shut up, Will,” Alex screams, “You’re not helping!”

  The baby snarls. The bloodied blanket falls from it. as the small body thrashes around, revealing flesh the same deathly blue color as the spoiled walls of the house. Scales cover the baby from head to toe. Her fingernails are tiny black talons. The eyes don’t look at me with the recognition of a child for a parent; they are cold and full of dread. Laura is smiling maddingly now, a smile I’ve seen too many times on the ghoulish faces of this plane.

  “You won’t take her, fine. She’ll come to you,” Laura says.

  The thing leaps from Laura’s hands and lands on my chest. My vision is full of those tiny black talons and a tiny mouth full of teeth. I suffer lacerations to my face, hands and arms as I try and fight off the dead baby’s attack. It’s little body scampers along my body, evading me swiftly every time I make a grab for it. I dance around, like a lunatic, trying to shake it off me. Alex and Jack are nearby, unsure how to proceed. Alex throws a punch, missing the creature entirely, striking me on the side of the head. I stumble back.

  “Watch what you’re doing!” Jack yells at Alex.

  “I don’t see you fucking trying anything,” Alex yells back.

  The dead baby climbs to my shoulder, perching there just long enough to screech at Alex, then turn the tiny mouth on me, taking a bite out of my neck.

  I scream as the razor-sharp teeth tear into my flesh. I grab hold and yank it off my shoulder. It squirms violently in my hands as I squeeze. I don’t feel the pain as its teeth and claws tear into my fingers and my hands. I want to squeeze until its fucking brains pop out of its head. This creature, posing as my unborn child, feeding off my fears and guilt, gluttonously fills me with such anger that my scars go into an insane fury of a flare up. Its eyes bug out from its small head as I continue to squeeze, then, with my right hand, with all the might my power will allow me, I slam its body to the floor. It explodes like a porcelain doll. I swear I can hear the fragile glass shattering upon impact. My vision grows dark around the edges. I don’t think it got a major artery, but it’s enough damage that the blood from the wound has run down and soaked most of the right side of my shirt. I need to heal myself soon or all of this will be for nothing.

  Chaos erupts around me. The wide screen TV to my left is shaking crazily from its place on the wall; the attachment is a neck with pulsing black veins. The screen explodes, then pushes outward until a round head breaks through. The scaly creature has no eyes; its head splits open into a mouth; three or four appendages slither out and sniff the air. The blood hound screeches as it slowly climbs out of its imprisonment. The sound is met with numerous screeches outside the house. Alex and Jack advance on the one coming out of the TV. The creature doesn’t get a chance to lash out at them, as they are able to get their hands around the thing’s neck and pull downward. There’s a tearing sound as the flesh is severed from the shards of the TV, decapitating the head from the body.

  “I he
ar them,” Will says, “But, I don’t see them.” The world flashes red outside. “Oh fuck, there they are!” Then it flashes back to normal. There’s a grave look on his face. “There’re a lot of them.”

  “Kitchen,” Alex says, “There have to be knives in this house.”

  “This house is fake as fuck!” Will yells, “We’re not going to find anything useful in here!”

  I’m trying to yell to them, but the words won’t come to my mouth. Where’s Laura? I haven’t seen her since she let the dead baby loose on me. The house flickers, leaving me in a split second of darkness. When I can see again, Laura is there, smiling.

  I feel the knife plunge into my stomach.

  “Laura?”

  Her face almost becomes sympathetic, almost. Her hand caresses the left side of my face. There’s no comfort in her touch; the sadness in her eyes is full of mockery.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, I am really am. But you brought this upon yourself; you brought this upon us.” She stabs me again. This all seems so familiar. My knees grow weak, wanting to crumble beneath me.

  It’s familiar because it’s the same type of weapon the Nazi’s used against me back at the prison. I thought, at first, they were just shanks, nicely made. Now I’ve come to realize that’s not true; the weapon with the tentacle wrapped around its crimson color hilt has been made with a purpose.

  I fall forward when she twists the knife in my stomach. She whispers frantically in my ear. I’ve heard these words before. I don’t understand any of the syllables of the dead language, but one word, just one word, I remember. The last Nazi I killed, the big guy, had tried to say something while I held his guts in my right hand. I recognize it the moment it slithers from Laura’s mouth.

  “Alter Inhorruit.”

  She steps away. The knife is withering. I look down at it to find that it’s the tentacle on the hilt that’s withering, pulling free from the wood. It slowly moves forward, entering my body. The hilt starts to disintegrate, turning into gray ash, then disappears completely as if blown away by a small breeze.

  Laura crashes to the floor, tackled by Alex. Jack runs over to me. His hands are on my shoulders; he’s speaking but the words are muffled. I look over to Laura. She’s not fighting Alex; she’s laying still, face unreadable. Except for the single tear trailing down her cheek.

  Fissures rip into the walls. Jack leaves me, kitchen blade in hand and attacks a blood hound trying to get in from one of the fissures in the foyer. The fissure closes once Jack impales the side of the creature’s head with the knife, killing it. The foyer is back to normal, creature dead and gone. Alex leaves Laura where she lay, probably realizing she’s not going to do anything and he’s better suited joining the fight. He and Will kill a couple of creatures in the dining room; those openings close shortly after. The house is shaking; there’re far too many of them for my three friends to handle.

  A blood hound enters from a fissure that no one has noticed. The creature sneaks out of the fissure, crawling on all fours, and makes it way to me.

  I try to move. I try to heal myself. Ever since the tentacle entered my body, and Laura spoke those words, my right side is cemented, not allowing me to move it. I can move my left side freely; I pull forward. It’s like pulling dead weight. Sweat breaks out on my forehead. I try to close my right hand, to call upon the gift I have been cursed with, but I feel nothing. I feel the scars. They move freely while still attached to the right side of my body. The itching and burning drives me to insanity.

  “Don’t worry,” a voice says inside my head, “You don’t need to keep fighting. It’ll all be over soon.”

  I remember the voice. I heard it before, when I first entered my house. I heard it when the scars in my reflection talked to me before I had set out to save my friends.

  The fighting is still going. I hear Alex yell they are outnumbered. I fall to my knees. The world is slipping from me.

  My front door opens.

  8.

  Pain level is infinity. My body is trembling and drenched in sweat. The worst part of this whole ordeal is my right side. The scars are alive. This feeling of absolute hopelessness is equally as torturous as having the world decay within me while I was in prison. All I want to do is keep moving, keep fighting. I am locked into place in the middle of my living room, one half of me defeated into exhaustion while the other half weighs me down while it tries to pull from my body.

  I don’t need to look up to see who my visitor is because I can tell by the Converse on his feet.

  “Look at this!” he says excitedly. “The whole crew is here! Almost the whole crew.” He chuckles. He places a large red item near me, the liquid sloshes inside. The smell of gasoline hits my nostrils.

  “Man, if I knew we were going to have a reunion, I’ve would’ve dressed for the occasion. Nah, fuck it, I wouldn’t have.”

  He kneels, so he’s face to face with me.

  “Not looking too hot, Randy boy.”

  I didn’t feel too hot either. My body shivers uncontrollably; the chills give me the sensation of icicles growing inside my body. Despite feeling like absolute shit, I can’t help but get in a reply to Chris.

  “You don’t look so good yourself, asshole.”

  At this point, the guy could be a walking corpse. There’s a bruise on his face, an ugly spot of rot that’s a purplish green, and it looks like it’s spreading. While most of his skin is taut and tightly stretched across his skull, that one spot is an empty crater, the cheek bone parts of his jaw showing.

  He makes his tsk tsk tsk sound. His tongue clacking against his teeth is a grating sound; it sends a wave of pain and annoyance through my brain. I wish I could hit him in that same spot, watch with satisfaction as half of his face collapses.

  “Always defiant till the end. I wish I could’ve seen you at your weakest point in your life. At the hospital, suffering from your burns. I would’ve been there by your side, if we were still friends, but you had to take everything so fucking personal.” He cocks his head upward, closes his eyes and inhales deeply. “I can smell the despair, so much it covers your tough guy bullshit.”

  I force a smile. When my lips move on my right side, it feels like the scars are fighting the movement.

  “Let’s see how long you can hold that smile after I get my hands around your neck and fucking snap it.”

  Chris sighs. Death rides on his breath.

  He reaches into his back pocket. I flinch when I see the weapon.

  His icy blue eyes smile within the black abyss of his sockets.

  “I knew you would recognize this.” He holds it out in the palm of his hand, showing the knife with the crimson handle and tentacle wrapped around it. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to stab you, even though I would love to, multiple times, just for fun. Maybe cut out your tongue to finally shut you up.” He points the blade at Laura, who hasn’t moved since Alex tackled her during the attack. Her eyes are open, her breathing is steady, but there’s nothing else of her. it’s as if she’s gone comatose.

  “Your lovely girlfriend there already did what was needed. If anyone could do it, I knew it would be her. Not those idiot Nazis, but, then again, I don’t think any of us knew you could use your right arm to rip through a body like it was nothing.”

  A blood hound crawls through the front door. I can see the Red Plane beyond. The world hasn’t flickered between its existence and our world for some time now. I assume we are now fully covered, at least for the time being. Now these things don’t have to rip fissures through time and space. They can just walk in, uninvited, no matter the outcome. It goes to Chris like a loyal dog, in its talons a statue. It’s the statue that was at the bottom of the gun bag.

  Chris places it in front of me, so I can see every detail of the vile thing. The elongated head shaped like a tusk, the shape goes downward, the point almost touches the back. On its back are wings, not expanded to the full size; although, if the real thing was in front of me, I would imagine those wings could stretch o
ut to eternity. The body is lined with the faces frozen in their suffering. The design is supposed to be a representation of the Dead One in its true form. I been fortunate not to have witnessed it yet. I have only known The Dead One in his human form, which is sinister enough.

  “How about this, recognize this beauty?”

  “Yes,” I say. Each word is now growing painful to say. I fight for breath. “It’s what I am going to shove up your ass after I break your neck, or maybe the other way around, depending on how I feel.”

  Chris laughs. There’s no humor in it, just mockery.

  “Look around, Randy. You’re not doing shit, and neither is your crew.”

  I turn my head. Laura is nearby in her comatose state. The blood hounds that are the arachnid shaped things from before have surrounded Will, Jack, and Alex and wrapped them up, confining them in their webbings. The things stay nearby, waiting for the word to pounce and rip them to shreds. Jack is squirming in his trap, trying to rip out of it. One of the hounds hovers over him, growling.

  “Don’t listen to him, Randy! You can get us out of this! We haven’t lost yet.”

  “Oh, but you have, Jack.” Chris replies, “You’ve lost big time brother. And, once I am done with your fearless freak of a leader, I’m going to make sure you are stuck in your nightmares, constantly watching, on repeat, your father’s demise. I know your dreams, your father hanging from the hook that disemboweled him, his guts laying on the floor just inches away from his dangling feet. The other two will race eternally by your side, Randy. Slave to the wagers and their bets. And Laura, she’s just fine with your baby and the house, the two things you never wanted.”