A-Sides

by Victor Allen

  **********

  Headhunted by a national conglomerate to engineer humans for deep space travel, geneticist Ingrid Milner can read between the lines. She is wanted  for a Frankenstein project; to fabricate a genetic werewolf. She works in secret, but she is not unknown. Set against her is the enigmatic Josh Hall, a fire-breathing minister with a sordid past. As the forces build against each other, a new player emerges, one part and parcel of the overwhelming coalescence of insanity and hubris. Nothing so powerful can be contained, and it will lash out…

  Available at www.wandilland.com

  Katerina Cheplik

  by

  Victor Allen

  Copyright © 2006 all rights reserved

  From Katerina Cheplik...

  22

  “I went home to visit one weekend after you had left for Colorado,” Sharon began. “I wouldn't have told you then, but I was terrified. You had been the only friend I could count on. I didn't have many of those left.

  “Mama and I were so far apart and we had always been so close. I had lost Vince, I had lost you, and I was close to losing my family. And when you've lost everything, you belong to the devil.

  “Oh, I know people won't believe me when I tell them, but I came face to face with the devil one night. He came into my room, through the window and stood by the end of my bed. He was huge, Bernie, and red with a kind of black sheen to him, like someone who has been badly burned. His eyes were dark, oh, awful dark, like gargoyle's eyes. I wasn't even scared, as if I had expected it all along. He taunted me, told me I belonged to him. He looked down at me with those black eyes and called me his child.

  “I told him to leave and he laughed at me. He was, I don't know, liquid in the dark, the way he moved and the way the moonlight shone off his skin. I argued and moaned and cried for at least an hour, but nobody ever came to my room. Not mama, or daddy, or my brother Kevin. It was like something kept them away. I told him I would never be his.

  “‘But you already are, my child,’ he said. ‘Once you've let me in, I never go away.’ His voice was horrible, a deep, rumbling bass like an underwater earthquake. Then he left, going out the window. I watched him go, so huge and scary, sort of skipping away toward the road on those cloven hooves. Sparks jumped on the pavement before he vanished into the woods. I listened to the sounds of branches snapping and crashing for a long time before it stopped. The next day, I went out and looked in the road and the hoof prints were still there, struck into the pavement like the hoof prints at Bath. They were still there the last time I went home, and probably will be until the town paves the road over.”

  Bernie said nothing. Sharon wasn't scared, but very intense, as if reliving the episode. He had no choice but to believe her. The devil didn't waste his time on sinners. He went after the pure at heart.

  “I had a long talk with mama that morning. Besides you and Father O'Donovan, she's the only other person I've ever told about it. Mama and I came to a reconciliation. I had put my faith in earthly things, the princes of the world, not where it belonged. Not with you and my family and the people that really cared about me. I did what you did. I redefined myself and brought back the little girl I didn't see in the mirror anymore.”

  Bernie's heart broke when he realized she was crying.

  “I'm just so afraid he'll come back, that he'll never leave me alone, that I'll have to fight him again and again, every single day of my life. That he'll take everything I love just to get to me.

  “So when you ask if I want anything for myself, I can say yes. All I want is to love and be loved. Is that so much to ask?”

  “Shh, baby,” Bernie said. He stroked her hair, feeling warm tears on his shoulder. “It's not so much at all.”

  “All I want is for you to hold me tonight. Will you do that? Just hold me?”

  “Yes, “ he said in a trembling voice. “For as long as you want.”

  And he did.

  23

  And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold...

  24

  Mother and child had fled their home in the late hours of the night. The little boy was crying, half-asleep, not knowing why his mother had spirited him away from his daddy. He was cold, only slightly comforted by his mother's warmth. The gamin smiles of the stars were blurred through his tears. His head bounced painfully with every half-running step his mother took.

  The rushing cold stung Carolyn Table's eyes, burning and raw from sobbing. Her feet and nose hurt. Jeremy was heavy, but she couldn't put him down to walk for himself. Even with her stumbling, he wouldn't be able to keep up. She glanced fretfully behind her from time to time, as if some fearful fiend in the person of her drunken, bullying husband close behind her trod. But Frank had passed out an hour before, drunk and abusive to her for the last time.

  Frank kept his utility hatchet on top of the kitchen cabinets, and she had spent the better part of that hour with it in her hands, debating murder or flight.

  I'll kill you if you ever leave me, he had said, a shotgun held unsteadily in his hands. His eyes were black slashes, puffy and glassy as those of a barfly. His sweat stank yellowly of alcohol. He had hit her three times by then, the last blow bloodying her nose and making stars burst through her head. He had grabbed her roughly and hauled her to her feet, pawing at her blouse. She had jerked away from him.

  Get away from me, you bastard, she had hissed. I'm calling the police. You've hurt me for the last time.

  He had stalked her, hitting her again. The heavy class ring he wore plowed a bloody gorge high on her cheekbone. He yanked the phone cord out of the wall. The plastic connector popped out and shattered into winter icicle shapes. She stayed still on the floor while he kicked her in the belly, stifling a grunt of pain that would only further enrage him. He kicked her again, rolling her over. He cursed and roared and drank, tipping a bottle of Vodka, draining it. A few minutes later he toppled over with a titanic crash.

  She had pulled herself painfully up, wincing at the fiery stab of a broken rib. She glared murderously at the man she had once loved. Her hatred was blacker than an ocean abyss. It would be so easy to take the shotgun from him, hold it against his throat, and pull both triggers. She had reached for it, intending to pull it from beneath him. He had stirred slightly and she had yanked her hand back. It would have to be some other way. She couldn't risk his waking up.

  She had held the hatchet in an upraised hand, even testing her aim once or twice against his head, knowing all she had to do was follow through once with all her strength and cave his skull in.

  But in the end she had chosen flight with her son. The car keys were in Frank's pocket, but she dared not roll him over to get at them. They lived in a tumble down shack on a backwoods lot that belonged to Frank's father. They had running water and electricity, but not much more than that. The nearest pay phone was a half a mile away. She would call the police from there, then take a cab to the bus station. She had hoarded her last three measly paychecks for the month for just such an occasion. She handled the finances and Frank had been too drunk over the past month to even notice it.

  Cold, wet grass slashed at her bare ankles. She inhaled through her mouth, parching her tongue and palate. Jeremy wept, but she didn't mind that as long as he was safe.

  She reached the end of the long, dirt driveway and struck asphalt at a secondary road. The glow of Red River's city lights pushed up into the night sky over a wall of pines. She set Jeremy down. An automobile swooped down the hill behind her, lighting up the road with cold, white brilliance. She waved her arms wildly at the approaching vehicle, thinking she must look like a scarecrow version of Sylvester Stallone from the Rocky movies with her swollen nose and disheveled hair. The car eased to the left and flashed by her, never slowing. She turned after it passed, watching its red taillights recede over the top of the upcoming hill.

  She hoisted Jeremy up and started walking again. She would have welcomed a good Samaritan, would have sold her soul fo
r someone to help her for just these few minutes. But the chances of happening on someone on this backwoods road late at night were almost nil. Oh, there might be a couple necking in a car, or some teenagers on a ‘ghost hunt’, but of someone with a kind heart and a car, she felt was a futile hope.

  So she was surprised instead of afraid when she saw the man stumbling down the road just at the top of the rise. Hopeful and a little fearful, she hailed him, crying out like a charwoman begging for alms.

  The shadowy figure of the man crossed the road to her side, moving closer. The figure appeared to be a teenager rather than a full grown man. His face was a pale bone in the moonlight, his eyes unfocused. He walked slowly, not as if drunk, but very, very weak. Carolyn felt the sturdy weight of the hatchet in her purse. Jeremy stirred fitfully in her arms.

  “Do you have a car,” Carolyn asked when the boy got close enough to hear her rasping, blood-clogged voice.

  “A car,” the boy said weakly. “No, no car. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  Carolyn reeled away from the man's voice. His breath was foul beyond description, like someone suffering from a bad throat infection.

  “I have to get to a phone,” she said uneasily. “If you don't have a car, I need to get going.”

  “No, wait,” the boy said in that deathbed voice. “I've been sick with the flu. I felt a little better tonight so I decided to go out. Can your boy walk? Are you okay to walk?”

  “Jeremy? Do you feel awake enough to walk by yourself?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I'll walk with you to a phone,” the boy said. “I need to get back. I'm weaker than I thought. If you need a place to stay for the night, I'll call some of the girls' dorms and see if they can put you up.”

  He turned and Carolyn saw him in profile, handsome despite his pallor. His thick hair was pulled back from his forehead very much unlike the way teenage boys wore their hair today. She judged him to be eighteen or nineteen. His nose was a sloping protrusion between cheekbones as sharp as arrow points. Moonlight fell over him in a cold glow. She felt safe with this wan, weak fellow.

  They started walking, a cozy trio with a tiny boy between the two adults. No cars passed as they moved up the hill. They had reached the top before the man introduced himself as Tommy Hopson, grinning at her madly with long, sharp canines surrounded by thick, liver-colored lips.

  25

  State street was dark an hour later when Tommy walked down to Katerina's house with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He looked like a typical college student going to wash a load of late night laundry.

  He felt strong, the bundle over his shoulder light as a feather, more precious than gold. It was his offering for his new life. He had been picked to bring the sacrifice. He remembered the woman clawing at him ineffectually, pathetically slashing at him with a pitiful little hatchet that found only thin air when he had snatched Jeremy from her.

  Monster, give me my child!

  Perhaps he was a monster. The moon filled him with a vitality and sureness he had never felt, probing its unearthly light into the darkest corners of his soul, freeing pockets of mindless, dark malevolence.

  His mouth was splashed with crimson and his eyes glowed like Venus in full phase. He mounted the steps to Kathy's door and dropped the bundle. It hit the boards with a dead thump. A small, pale hand flopped out of the top of the bag, its tiny fingers curled. The door cracked open and Tommy walked in, dragging the bag with him.

  The wind freshened and whistled through the night, whipping the trees into writhing titans tilting against the night.

  26

  William Davis awoke with a deadly chill clinging to his bones. His heart raced and his limbs trembled. The screams still echoed in his head. The memory of a nightmare as vivid and lurid as any he had ever had still pealed its dread toll in his brain.

  He sat up in his bed, his head in his hands. He glanced fearfully at the dark rectangle of his window. Moonlight streamed through the bars, turning them half- light, half-dark, like the terminator across the face of the moon. He thought of witches racing through the skies on brooms, their brittle hair streaming out; of monsters hiding greedily in the dark shadows of roadways, waiting to pounce; of vampires promising a world of glamor and allure, then draining the blood and the soul from their victims.

  He pulled his covers close to his chest and sat there the rest of the night, his eyes wide, wary and scared. He waited for the first rays of the sun to seal the nightmare away in a burial vault it could not escape before moon rise.

  27

  The light in Frank Table's house was still burning when he came around two hours later. His head thundered and his stomach was queasy with the beginnings of a grand mal hangover. His swollen mouth and tongue were as dry as talc. He squinted in the harsh light, shading his eyes with one hand.

  He hefted his upper body from the floor and rolled sideways, still not willing to try to stand. He supported himself with his arms, his palms flat on the floor. The phone lay on the floor, the blue, plastic receiver off its cradle. The cord curled and looped like a snake. An empty Popov vodka bottle lay between his hands.

  His greasy black hair had fallen over his forehead and stuck there, feeling like a crust attached to his skull. He looked up. His wife stood above him. The shotgun with which he had threatened her was held in her hands, both barrels carelessly pointed toward the bridge of his nose. She wore the same loose fitting, black dress she had been wearing when he had decked her. He could have sworn he had broken her nose, but it was unswollen and straight. Her dark hair shone like ink in the naked light. She looked like a dark angel let loose on the earth to strike down the iniquitous. She stared at him with eyes that were black gashes, as coldly unemotional as those of a space alien. Her skin was pale as a dream. He opened his mouth to speak, his eyes blinking, his brain still not focused enough to understand.

  “Carolyn, I...”

  He never got the chance to finish. The shotgun roared, flames belching from both barrels. Its voice was a shout, its words a hail of lead pellets. Frank's body rolled off his arms and flopped on the floor with a headless clump. Bright red dots and slivers of gray brain matter peppered the wall behind him.

  Carolyn dropped the gun on the floor, gliding toward the door with somnambulant, bridal-march steps. She appeared to drift down the porch steps and into the front yard.

  He awaited her, looming mighty and omnipotent. His eyes burned radiant in a face that was a study in cold dispassion. She came to him, a child enraptured by the strength of a father. She fell on her knees, staring up worshipfully. He had given her the strength to do what she should have done years ago.

  “All I have,” she whispered in telling, adoring tones. “All I have is yours.”

  He took her hand and they became as one, a spinning, phantasmagoric whirl in the face of the helpless night that screamed uselessly against a force it could not contain.

  28

  Marilyn had lain awake most of the night, afraid to open her eyes for fear of seeing the man who had come for her last night. She had been able to drift off for brief periods, but the little rest she got was fraught with frail dreams in which soft footsteps tripped lightly outside her window, and voices that were no more than whispers plotted just on the other side of the thin pane of glass. She thought she recognized Tommy's voice.

  And beneath it all, like the portentous rumblings of earthquakes and magma pits that boil unfettered in the bowels of the earth, another voice overriding all. It was only hinted at, never arrant or shrilling, but full of soporific power. It was as if the man she had seen had taken the world as his own, glowering over it possessively like the Roman gods of old. The moon was a blazing jewel in his forehead, the stars his all-seeing eyes. The clouds that boiled across the night sky were his facial expressions, showing one time black humor, another time rage as ominous as a runaway asteroid.

  The murmuring voices outside were insidious, hypnotic.

  Choose, Marilyn, they
whispered. Choose the night. Choose a life of freewheeling abandon where every lust is sated, every dream of power fulfilled, every hunger satisfied. A life where the gala runs all night, breaking off at cock's crow. Be one with us. Immortal, invincible. A queen in a world where those who have spurned you dare not tread. Vow your vengeance on those who cannot fulfill Shylock's bargain. Their hands are stained where they have torn out your bleeding soul. Our hands are clean. Choose a world where vengeance will be yours. Be forever young and beautiful. Come, Marilyn. Come learn of the night.

  She opened her eyes and looked at her window. A face, pale as snow, with wide, burning eyes, was pressed against it. Tommy grinned in at her with teeth like tusks curled inside the scarlet blush of his lips. Who, Marilyn wondered, could be so mad as to choose that life?

  You could, Marilyn, her mind taunted her. You could choose it easily.

  With the last of her tattered will she rolled away, closing her eyes and shivering beneath her covers. There was an angry rattling at her windowpane and the voices continued like unhappy winter winds. They whined and pleaded and moaned for what seemed like an eternity, but finally faded away…

  **********

  Youth is innocence, remembered in bloody cuts, scars, and insensitive barbs, but, still, the uncomplicated, wide-eyed time of your life. Sharon Hurley has weathered the storms of her troubled past and emerged into the sunny, lee waters. But life is not static, and life is not fair, and some have a cross to bear. She doesn't know why, but before Sharon can find true peace, she must pit her life -her very soul- and stand against the dark, demimondaine, Katerina Cheplik…

  Available at www.wandilland.com