Where Stars Won't Shine

by Patrick Lacey

  Ethan rubbed his aching legs, bent over and tried to catch his breath. He closed his eyes for a long time. The Frisbee game continued in his mind, neurons refusing to stop firing. When he opened them again, the scene faded. The sun was gone—and the stars, of course—and so were Eddie and Todd. But the figure remained.

  And it was much closer now.

  “What’s this about?” Ethan said, trying to sound brave but failing miserably. “Are you going to give a long speech about how we should’ve included you more? How we should’ve invited you into our circle? Because that’s bullshit. I talked to you in class. I was nice to you. And you know what? I’m sorry about your mom and your dad but you can’t blame all of this, the killing and the torturing and the videos, on a shitty childhood. Everyone has a choice, Tucker. Even you.”

  The figure did not react, save for its lopsided smile growing wider.

  For a moment, Ethan thought he heard footsteps. He spun around, doing his best not to lose Tucker in his periphery, but there was nothing. Despite that, he could sense something approaching. It could’ve been the parade of victims or something else. A sense of dread filled him, so overwhelming he thought he might vomit.

  “Fuck this,” he said before he jogged off.

  For a while the scenery was normal. Everything was in the right place. He sped by Eddie’s old house. The wraparound porch his parents had added was still there but it was badly dilapidated. Next door was the old candy store, still condemned, the wood splintered and charred from the fire, but it looked hundreds of years older than it should’ve been. If he kept in this direction, he’d end up near city hall.

  Except when he turned the corner the scenery changed entirely. The houses vanished, as did any sign of businesses. Trees grew from nowhere and a lake appeared to his left.

  He was back on River Road.

  He stopped suddenly. The disorientation sent shivers through his skin. The world spun around him. He couldn’t have traveled this far in such a short time, never mind the road was in the opposite direction.

  Tucker was playing games with him.

  Up ahead were the burnt remains of the stolen car. It still lay in the middle of the road. There was something sitting atop the front end, a small circular object he instantly recognized.

  He wasn’t sure how Lisa’s crumpled picture had ended up here, miles from the hotel, but he did not question it. Instead he picked it up, uncrumpled it—

  And nearly screamed.

  It wasn’t the same picture. It was still crudely drawn, as if by a child, but the scene was all wrong. It was the dragon that ruled the kingdom now. It sat atop the highest peak of a misshapen castle. The towers jutted at odd angles that reminded Ethan of a German Expressionist painting. In the background, mountains ran with tiny rivers of red. Blood, no doubt.

  And in the foreground, the princess lay in pieces.

  Her stick figure body had been torn apart and her severed head frowned at him, the dying eyes following his every move.

  Above her head was a speech bubble. The message was too long to fit within the lines, let alone the page itself. Yet he read it just fine.

  I wasn’t brave at all, Daddy. The dragon was too powerful. It came while I was sleeping. I was so tired from the medicine and the doctor visits. I thought you would save me but I was wrong. Now I’m a dead princess and the kingdom is going to hell.

  Ethan covered his mouth to hide his sobs. He knew it was Tucker messing with his mind, knew this wasn’t the real version of Lisa’s drawing, but that sense of dread he felt from earlier—it took him over. He felt like giving up. The ground called to him, seemed as comfortable as an aeropedic mattress. He could just lie down and give up and all of this would go away. The nightmare would be over.

  From nearby someone snickered. He looked around, saw no one.

  The laughter came again. It could’ve been inside his head.

  “Don’t be so silly,” a voice said. “The nightmare is never over. Not in my town.”

  Something wriggled in Ethan’s hands.

  The drawing was gone, replaced with hundreds of centipedes. They crawled along his fingers and arms, explored his flesh. He tried to wipe them off but to no avail. They climbed and climbed until they were in his mouth and nose, invading his airways. He wasn’t sure if this was real, if Tucker had conjured another hallucination or if this was where he died.

  He closed his eyes as the things burrowed deeper into him.

  The shattered photo was not the only portrait in Tucker Ashton’s home.

  The faint light cast a glow on the rest. There could’ve been hundreds, though Ivy was in no frame of mind to count them all. Many seemed to be taken by an unknown source. She couldn’t prove this, of course, yet she knew it to be true.

  The closest frame to her left, atop a busted fireplace mantle, showed Tucker as a young teenager, sitting at his desk and staring at something on the computer screen. It could’ve been taken by his mother or father, she reasoned, but some part of her was certain they hadn’t been there when it was snapped. The angle didn’t allow a view of the screen but whatever he watched fascinated him. His eyes were wide, his mouth curled partway between disgust and happiness. There was something erotic about the expression but something told her he wasn’t watching porn.

  She looked at another photo. This one of Tucker standing to the side during what looked like a middle school dance. His face was expressionless. No one noticed him. They danced and laughed without paying him any mind. That had been Tucker’s greatest strength, she realized now, though she hated to give him credit for anything. He’d managed to go unnoticed for so long, to slip between the cracks during his childhood. And then when he wanted to be noticed, he’d turned into a psychopath.

  She thought back to the book and her plane ride, how the author had glorified Tucker. Something clicked into place. The book and website and the videos—all of them gave Tucker power. Whatever had happened in this home, while he’d been hiding away, had changed him. Allowed him to feed off others’ adoration of him.

  She chose one last photo. Tucker was not in the frame, nor were his parents or anyone, for that matter. Instead there was a network of roots and branches, sitting in a mostly ripped plastic bag. It could have once been a potato but time and darkness had turned it into something else. She couldn’t make sense of the image nor did she try, on account of the groaning sound to her right.

  She spun around, nearly dropped the light. A door had opened. It promised shadows, the dark so absolute she could almost taste it.

  And it tasted foul.

  Ivy wasn’t sure of the house’s layout but she’d passed a set of stairs near the entrance. Those had led upward but these, she would bet, led in the opposite direction.

  The basement.

  Ivy knew what was down there. It was all in the book, after all. That’s where Tucker had spent much of his childhood. Brad Ashton had locked him down there for days during his benders.

  And now his father is a servant, reborn into Tucker’s kingdom.

  Ivy’s sanity—what little of it remained—screamed with a warning. Whatever secret lay down there was best kept hidden. She was better off taking her chances outside, going house to house and biding her time.

  Except that’s all there was to do now. Bide her time and wait to be found. To be killed and unkilled. The horde would not stop until she was back at the graveyard. And those flames? She was quite certain they could burn for all eternity if need be.

  So why not go down those stairs, into who knew what? Why not face the shadows head on? When her mind conjured no better alternative, she held the lighter forward and walked toward the door.

  On the first step she thought she heard something down there. Voices perhaps. Speaking in tongues, some dead language well beyond her knowledge. She pretended not to hear as she stepped down.

  On the second step, she sensed movement. Something making its way through the basement with expert precision. Surely it had been down there for a lon
g time. It knew its way around.

  On the third step she felt something. It was the same sensation that came over her when she’d walked into her old apartment and knew something was wrong. The same gut punch she’d received moments before her life was eviscerated much like the man in her bathtub. The man she’d loved.

  On the fourth step she decided to take them two at a time. Whatever waited down there would either kill her or not. There were only two options and she was too exhausted to decide which was more likely.

  At the bottom her feet touched something wet. The floor felt spongy. When her eyes adjusted, she realized it was mold. Thick, sludge-like dew grew from the floor and walls. The room was perhaps the size of the kitchen above but that was where the similarities ended. Instead of a table and chairs, there was mold and must. The windows had been caked over with algae, the starless sky blocked from her view. Roots, just like in the photo upstairs, had grown through the floor. They covered almost every inch of the space. It felt like stepping into a tree’s base, deep within the ground. Each vein seemed to point in the same direction. She followed their length. They ended in the left corner of the basement, where a desk and computer sat.

  The screen was on.

  It illuminated the space enough that she could turn off the lighter. She kept it in her hand just in case. The roots had formed over the monitor so the plastic casing was mostly hidden. The mouse pad had shriveled with moisture, the graphic forever lost.

  The screen saver was a simple blue background that reminded her of the ocean, of better days gone by. It was hypnotizing. Her muscles relaxed, erasing their tender ache. Her mind cleared and she thought things might be okay if she stared into that deep shade of blue for the rest of her days.

  Until the text appeared.

  The keyboard was inches away from her, oddly unharmed from the moisture and mold, let alone the system of roots.

  She did not want to read the note yet her eyes were drawn to it.

  Would you like to know the Truth, Ivy? Y or N?

  And because she had nowhere else to go—because she was all out of options—she leaned forward and clicked a single key.

  Y.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  JUST AS ETHAN was accepting his death, the centipedes vanished, along with the choking sensation. He could breathe freely and breathe he did. Took in large gulps of air like they were his last. He didn’t like the analogy but he was too busy regaining function of his body to care.

  “Did you really think I’d make it that easy?” Tucker’s voice was deafening. It came from every direction at once. Ethan spun around, tried to find the source but it was useless.

  He was no longer at the river. The scene had changed once again. Each time he was transported, pieces of him came unraveled. His mind was not programmed for this sort of thing. It took a heavy toll on him and he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last.

  He heard something nearby. He squinted until he realized where he’d been taken.

  In the distance the gas station loomed. It was the most normal thing he’d ever seen. Inside, customers went about their daily business, blissfully ignorant how close to hell they shopped. The attendant read a magazine, flipped the pages without a care in the world. It was hard to imagine living like that. Such things seemed a lifetime away. Across the street from the store stood the sign, welcoming anyone who was dumb enough to pass into Marlowe, Massachusetts.

  Last stop.

  His mind did the math. If he was back here, this close to the gas station and town line, that meant—

  He stopped himself from taking a step forward. The pit lay inches in front of him. His left foot was rooted to the ground. His right touched empty space. He stumbled back and landed on his elbows. Skin tore in protest but pain was the least of his worries.

  He thought back to first discovering the gouge in the road, how he’d thrown a rock that hadn’t landed. “It doesn’t end,” he said to himself, though he received an answer.

  “You’re starting to catch on.” Tucker’s voice again, omnipresent. It belonged to nothing and everything at once.

  “Where does it go?” He thought about backing away but what good would it do? If Tucker wanted him to fall, he’d fall. There was no choice in the matter.

  “Somewhere farther than you can imagine. Somewhere your mind can’t begin to comprehend. Your brain would come bleeding out of your asshole if you even caught a glimpse. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Too bad I don’t have any cameras on me. That would make for a great video.”

  “So this is it?” Ethan looked around, tried to find something to defend himself with. Nothing but rocks and sticks. Besides, it wouldn’t matter if he had a rocket launcher. There was no way to wound this man—this thing. In Marlowe, he was a god.

  “I’ve had fun during your stay.” The voice shook the ground beneath him. He could feel it in his teeth and bones. “We had some laughs, good times indeed, but I’ve got work to do. You know what they say about Rome and all that.”

  “But your commander in chief is dead. Not by your hand but a girl half his size. Which means he won’t be coming back as one of your undead ass kissers.”

  “Yes,” Tucker said. “That is unfortunate.”

  “How will you bring back new recruits? You needed Zeke more than the rest. You said so yourself.”

  Something moved in the pit. Whatever it was, it was massive enough to shake the earth. He sensed it climbing.

  Tucker laughed. “Lucky for me, I’ve got my new right hand man cowering in front of me. Would you like that, Ethan? Wouldn’t that be a cruel and ironic turn of events? If I let you live, only to do my bidding.”

  “I’d kill myself first.”

  “I thought you might say that but I have ways, Ethan. I have ways.”

  Ethan managed to stand up. He could see over the lip of the crack. There was something moving in the shadows, some shape seconds from emerging. He did not want to be anywhere near this place when the thing reached the surface. But running was no longer an option. Unless it was in the opposite direction.

  “So what are my options?” He kept stepping back until he judged the distance to be twenty yards. He stretched his legs and ankles. It had been ages since he’d run a marathon—since he’d run at all—but it seemed as good a plan as any. Maybe he’d scale it, maybe not.

  Most definitely not.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Tucker said. “You can check behind doors number one and two but that’s it. I’m not often a fair man but I do like to play games. Choose door number one and you can become my slave. Zeke 2.0, if you will. You’ll require some extra training but I believe in investing in this town’s future.” Another laugh, knives being slowly sharpened.

  Ethan nodded, ran in place. His pulse began to climb. Had the gap grown larger? “You already know my thoughts on that so tell me what’s behind door number two.”

  “Someone’s feeling adventurous. You want door number two? You’re looking at it. You get to spend the rest of eternity falling toward the place you can’t comprehend exists in the first place. I’ll make sure you don’t die, Ethan. I’ll make sure you fall forever.”

  Ethan whistled, steadied himself. “Quite the decision.”

  “It sure is. Now which do you choose?”

  “Neither. I choose to give you the middle finger and the get the hell out of this shit town.”

  Ethan sprinted. His legs protested from the start but he managed to gain some speed. He neared the pit, prepared to jump with every ounce of strength. Prepared to see Lisa again, no matter how impossible it seemed. For a time, he truly believed he’d scale the gap, that he’d make it back to reality after all. But he stopped at the last moment, just as the world shook more violently. Just as the object waiting beneath the surface finally emerged.

  He fell once again, skinning his elbows further, though he didn’t notice. His attention was drawn elsewhere. The thing before him, the thing climbing steadily out of the earth’s core—it defied all logic. At first,
Ethan couldn’t make sense of its shape. His eyes burned and his brain ached just trying to process what he was looking at.

  It seemed to have no form in particular. Or perhaps it changed every time he blinked. Hundreds of appendages clung to its every surface, wriggling and writhing on their own accord. At first he thought they were worms, more creepy crawlies to go with the centipedes from earlier, but the longer he stared the more he was able to come to a conclusion.

  They were not worms. Or bugs of any kind for that matter.

  They were limbs. Hundreds upon hundreds of limbs. Legs and arms and fingers and, he noted, severed heads. Its pattern was seemingly random and between the monstrosities there were stitches, keeping the flesh in place, keeping the dead at bay.

  No, not dead. They were very much alive, he realized, as the thing climbed further out of its tomb. Every face contorted with pain, screamed with agony. It was deafening, yet he couldn’t find the energy to cover his ears. The hands pointed toward him, reached for someone who could save them. The legs kicked frantically, as if hoping to detach from the mass in which they’d been attached.

  He recognized some of the faces from earlier.

  These were the true victims. The angry mob had been a façade. Tucker had granted them escape, at least for the night, but now they were back in their cage.

  In the center of it all was a massive face. It did not resemble the dragon from Lisa’s drawings but it embodied the evil she’d described. The thing was a cancer in and of itself. It was feasting on Marlowe, consuming everything it touched.

  And it was within reaching distance of Ethan.

  “What’s the matter?” Tucker said from within his true form. “You’re not scared, are you? Where’s all that piss and vinegar from earlier?” Its breath was a thousand landfills, years of dead things left to rot.

  Ethan dry heaved several times, and managed to get to his feet.

  He turned around and headed back toward River Road.

  From behind, the thing followed. Each step was an atom bomb detonating.