by C.G. Banks
Chapter 7: Samuel
The warehouse was dark now. William had left a half hour before but Samuel still sat virtually motionless in the small, dirty office. He picked at his eyebrows absently and watched the smoke make a lazy trail from the tip of his cigarette to the congealed nicotine haze which clouded the naked bulb.
He was having one of his days.
His left eye had been twitching maddeningly since early morning, forcing him to wear dark sunglasses for most of the afternoon, and subsequently he'd spent the majority of the day outside on the deck of a sea-going freighter that had pulled in late the previous night. He'd taken mild satisfaction from the unease he'd borne with him on deck, random sideways glances that always turned away when he looked their way.
William had ended up coming dockside for a while and Samuel had been ill at ease with him so close by. William had a knack for sensing the Dark Slope, and he always kept a wary eye out, being well versed in the troubles Samuel'd had over the years.
When William had gone back inside, Samuel breathed easier, although the twitching in his eye was bastardly worse and the sun beat down coal-hot on the back of his neck. He'd wanted to rip the eye out by its root and his fingernails were bitten to the quick.
The nightmares last night had brought on the whole business.
His mind burned with the Sickness. He feigned no ignorance because the madness was always poised on the doorstep. The damnable thing was he couldn't pinpoint what brought it on. Some days were okay (the days when he remained quiet and seemingly reflective: an active will to remain so, nothing more), but other times the tension built in slow progressive waves, menacing him from the shadows.
He remembered the time in the institution. The walls, the antiseptic cleanliness, the anvil hanging just above his head.
William was always too goddamn near, he was always watching. And it was not that Samuel was afraid of his brother, not by any means. But he did feel the intimate bond his brother had with his soul. He always knew when time was getting tight. Lucky for him he didn’t know how many times Samuel had sat alone, sweating in the gloom, a bottle of whiskey on the floor as he fought to hold back the rage.
It was impossible to ever clear the asylum. Even though the things that had put him there never left his mind, he knew the institution had turned out to be the necessary prerequisite to his legacy. He'd never asked anyone how long he'd been there, not even William. Alone in the sterile whiteness of the rooms, surrounded by endless miles of Mississippi forests, time had dwindled to thin threads, barely perceptible after a while. And it was there, lolling in time, that he'd had the opportunity to focus on his inhumanity. When he had, in fact, found himself.
He was acutely aware that the act with the whores had been the final straw (the past acts with the animals, and the even darker things not known by anyone else hardly seemed to count anymore), but it didn't seem important. Those things had simply been an initiation, a rite of passage.
After he'd been at the institution for a couple of weeks he began examining himself. Mentally far away from the reach of the psychologists' probes and the other know-nothing doctors, he'd built himself a wall against them. He hid the animal that'd come into being, full-fleshed the night of the massacre. He instinctively knew if he let them have a peek at the monstrosity within him he would never be free again. And that would be unconscionable.
He remembered the nights staring unblinking through the thick bars and plated glass, stabbing at the stars with his mind, attempting to pierce the vast emptiness of space. He'd felt unworldly then, trapped by the chemical compounds and double helixes in his body, repulsed by this double prison. The silence of the ward had only approximated the stillness and cold infinity of these silent regions of space, and it was only then that he'd truly discovered his alienation. Not only one of thought, but of being. He knew he was alone; the impulses that punched ragged holes in his psyche were far distant and unfathomably old. He'd known then that only if his cover were sufficiently maintained would he ever walk the grass outside the confines of the institution. The facade would have to be carefully constructed, piece by agonizing piece, and only after painstaking trial had it finally worked.
However, he could feel the persona beginning to crack.
He looked down and saw the dead cigarette in his hand. He threw the butt away and fished in his coat pocket for the rest of the pack. Found it, extracted the second to last cigarette, and lit it as he walked to the office doorway.
He glanced up at the ceiling, at the fiberglass panels that let the light in during the day. Now they glowed with a preternatural gloom. A tomb-like quiet stopped up every crack.
He closed his eyes and breathed in hard, training his ears to focus on the sound he made in the darkness. Momentarily it helped to slow the maddening twitch, but just as suddenly he heard a skittering on the floor, so vague at first he wasn’t sure it was real. His eyes flashed like a cat's as he stood stock-still in the doorway, his teeth clenched together and the skin of his face drum-tight.
He could feel it, slinking around out there in the darkness. Thinking it was safe.
He dropped the cigarette to the floor and a shower of sparks melted into the dusty floor. His breath came fast and sharp. He rubbed his neck and his hand came away slicked with perspiration. His other hand grabbed the jamb for support.
There…right there!
His eyes panned left. A gash of light lay across the floor, and as he watched a gigantic rat moved along the boundary between shelves.
The instant Samuel saw its eyes he charged forward, his attack so inexplicably sudden that the rat hadn't any time to make a move before the first kick from the nicely polished Clarks broke every rib on its right side. Samuel was on it before it stopped skidding along the floor, and he stomped it until it was such a mess that he slipped in the blood and went down hard on his side. He beat what remained with the palms of his hands, yelling, thrashing. By the time he ran out of gas his breath came in sobs, sweat dripping from his face into the blood.
Minutes later, he stretched out in the mess in the warehouse darkness. Found some rat hair stuck to his hands and wiped them absently on the front of his suit. Breathed in the smell of blood.
But nothing happened.
He didn't know how much time passed when he finally got to his knees, steadying himself mentally as he stood up all the way. Time had frozen on him again. After a while, he gradually came back to his senses and tore away what was left of the suit: shirt, shoes, pants, socks, underwear, everything. Looked around. Shook his head.
He rushed back to the office and turned on the hot water in the basin at the back near the toilet. The night was far from over. He scrubbed himself with soap until he stood dripping and flushed in front of the sink. Then, strangely composed, he grabbed the bucket and mop near the shower stall, and fished out the cleaning agents.
He spent the next two hours methodically erasing every drop of blood the rat had shed, working naked in the tomb-like darkness of the warehouse.