Where Stars Won't Shine

by Patrick Lacey

  There was a loading screen. A small, nondescript bar appeared on the left and made its way to the right as whatever awaited Ivy prepared to install. The computer was oddly primitive. It reminded her of the one she’d had back in high school, when connecting to the Internet meant looking at simple websites and finding the occasional funny picture.

  Every ounce of her body tingled. The air grew electric. She’d made a grave mistake. Whatever program was about to be unveiled was worse than anything she’d witnessed tonight. She’d never been more certain of anything in her life. This was Tucker’s private sanctuary. It felt voyeuristic to be down here, like he hadn’t yet realized she’d entered his home. But when he did, he would surely be angry.

  The bar made its way across the screen slowly, as if taunting her. There was still time to leave, she told herself.

  Her feet were growing numb. The moldy water on the floor had soaked through her shoes. The smell was getting to her. Breathing took great effort. She thought about turning around and climbing the steps but a small beeping sound broke her thoughts.

  She looked back at the screen.

  The bar had reached its destination.

  The black screen vanished, replaced with a moving image. A video of some sort. The camera operator was far from professional as they maneuvered through what looked like a forest. Branches and leaves spun every which way. The audio quality was horrid. Wind assaulted the speakers, made the scene even more disorienting. The camera steadied long enough to focus on a woman. She had once been beautiful, with long, strawberry blond hair and a flawless complexion save for the blood that lined her cheeks and mouth. Her eyes were half-open. She said something indecipherable, then stared at whoever held the camera.

  And screamed.

  It echoed through the trees. Birds fled in response. She held up her hands as if to block something, begged for mercy, received no such thing.

  From off screen something heavy came into frame. Ivy thought it was one of the frightened birds but it slowed long enough for her to recognize the object.

  A rock, large and jagged and stained red.

  The operator lifted it, lowered it again. The woman screamed, much quieter this time. The process was repeated several more times until her face lost its features, turned to a pile of ruined flesh, bone peeking from newly formed crevices. She stopped moving after that.

  The camera turned around, focused on a face that was quite familiar by now.

  Tucker smiled, breathed heavily, and turned the camera off.

  Moments later, a new scene formed. It was a different location this time, some sort of factory in the background, but its theme was very much the same. Another victim, another weapon.

  More screaming and pleading.

  Ivy covered her eyes but it didn’t help. The scene played in her mind as each video wound through her thoughts. She’d never watched any of Tucker’s snuff films but she’d heard of their brutality. The reality was much worse.

  Each shriek, each heavy thud that brought with it more blood, threatened her with unconsciousness. She could not faint down here, in this dark place, lest she wake up starring in her own video.

  When she looked at the monitor again, it had changed somehow. Before, the plastic had been covered with roots. Now, the material morphed into something that looked a lot like skin. It was distinctly organic. Like a liver or an appendix or a—

  A heart.

  Gears worked inside her mind. This was the heart of Marlowe. The birthplace of a maniac. The monitor expanded and contracted, as if connected to unseen lungs, pumping life into the town, providing this nightmare place with all the blood it needed to keep existing.

  But all hearts stopped beating eventually. No matter how strong, there was always an expiration date.

  She balled her hands into tight fists.

  Something touched her shoulder. It was cold and moist and leathery. She batted it away, thinking a rat had dropped from the ceiling. When she spun around, she saw the truth was infinitely worse.

  One of the dead had managed to get inside. She hadn’t seen this one among the crowds. Hadn’t seen him since he’d still been alive. She held in a scream and managed to speak a single word.

  “Scott?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ALL AROUND ETHAN, the ground caved in. With each step of the thing behind him, gaining by the second, the landscape disappeared into the abyss that awaited him. What had once been a circular canyon now turned into a sinkhole.

  The mouths making up Tucker’s true form screamed louder by the moment. They knew what was down there, in the never-ending shadows. Tucker laughed in response. It sounded like a million car crashes.

  Ethan’s mind swam with plans, each of them a dead end. This from the man who had thought he could scale the crack and make it back to the real world. This from the man who’d been tricked into coming here by way of a scumbag brother and a bag of stolen pills. He could run all he wanted. If he managed to make it across town, what then? It was just as sealed off as it was here. Where did that leave him?

  Nowhere. That’s where it leaves you.

  He heard a tearing sound followed by a cool breeze. To his left, a tree landed in the road. He turned to the right, missed its jagged branches by centimeters. More shrapnel followed: chunks of concrete, ruined cars, what looked like the carcass of some long dead animal. Tucker’s aim was getting better each time.

  If these things did not bludgeon him in the next few moments, the screams would be his downfall. They were horribly out of tune yet formed a melody just the same. A symphony for the damned.

  Ethan had been raised Catholic, had been given a very specific idea of what hell looked like. Flames and demons and billions of wails from those banished there, tortured for their sins for all eternity. He’d grown numb to the notion, had seen too many cheesy movies about exorcisms and satanic cults. Now, running from the devil himself, he realized that portrayal paled in comparison to the reality.

  Marlowe was the real hell.

  The cracks in the ground began to catch up to him. Fissures formed along his periphery. He swore he saw things clapping with joy as the sinkhole enveloped more and more of the landscape.

  An opening formed a few feet in front of him. He tried to dodge it but was off by a fraction of a second. His foot caught and he went down hard. He felt the ground giving way. He rolled at the last moment and managed to avoid falling to his death.

  Tucker slowed to a stop. “I’d hoped you would put up a fight. You’re even more pathetic than I thought.” His voice was barbed wire against Ethan’s eardrums. He prayed to grow deaf, to be put out of his misery.

  From beneath his bruised and broken body, he felt the ground shaking. His stomach lurched. It wouldn’t be long now. Soon he would fall forever.

  He closed his eyes, pictured a time before all this. It was nearly impossible to block out the sounds around him but he managed for a few moments. In those moments, he saw his family. He saw his wife, happy as could be that they’d brought a lovely little girl into the world. He’d been hesitant about having children, wasn’t too keen on the idea of such responsibility, but when he’d laid eyes on his little Lisa, he’d known this tiny creature would be the love of his life.

  He wanted those days back. Was willing to do whatever it took. If that meant ending all of this before he was thrust into the chasm below, then so be it. He’d die knowing that his wife and daughter loved him, no matter how stressed he’d been. No matter how many sleepless nights or angry outbursts. He’d done the best he could.

  He felt the ground around him, caving in at an exponential rate. His hand touched something thin and sharp. A sliver of windshield from one of the cars Tucker had tossed. He held it up.

  The thing that had been Tucker Ashton, the thing much worse than that skinny young man who’d turned to killing, giggled. “Quite the knife you’ve got there.”

  Ethan shook his head. “It’s not for you.”

  He brought the glass to his throat. For
a split second, Tucker looked concerned. It was strange to see such a ghastly face convey emotion.

  Ethan pushed the glass deeper into his skin, prepared for the sting and the blood. Prepared for whatever came after.

  He closed his eyes again and he was in Princess Lisa’s kingdom, far away from this place.

  This is it, Ivy thought. This is the part in every bad horror film where the ghost or the slasher decides to fuck with the main character. Find a fear and exploit it. Usually a dead lover. Bring them back to life, stand them in front of the camera, and watch the hero perish.

  She’d always rolled her eyes at such scenes. You knew the dead person was just that—dead—and so did the main character. Yet they always seemed to fall for the charade just the same, delaying their escape so they became trapped or worse.

  “It’s bullshit,” she’d say to Scott after such a movie would end.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you wouldn’t hesitate like that. You’d know enough to get the hell out of there. They’re dead, so what’s the point in thinking otherwise?”

  “It’s just a movie. You don’t know what it would be like since it’s not possible. Not something you’d ever be faced with. But mark my words, if you ever saw a dead loved one—take me, for example—your mind would come undone.”

  “Agree to disagree.”

  Ivy blinked and was back in the basement, cursing Scott for being right. Every inch of her body came alive with tingling and no matter how much she reasoned that this corpse standing before her was not the man she’d once loved—still loved—it was no use.

  Real life was nothing like the movies.

  It was much worse.

  Scott tilted his head and reached for her.

  For a moment, she too reached but then leapt as if she’d been about to touch something poisonous. It wasn’t Scott, she reminded herself.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “I thought you’d be happy to see me. Isn’t that why you came to Marlowe?”

  She shook her head. “I … I just wanted to get over you. I thought it might help. I was wrong.”

  He stepped closer. “Get over me? Why would you want to do a thing like that?” This close, with the computer’s glare—still spinning through videos at random—she could see all of Scott’s wounds. The slices from Tucker’s blade were like mouths. The flesh had dried, gray and bloated and rotten. She imagined what lay inside those openings, wondered if his organs had shriveled to nothing. His face was the worst. He no longer resembled the man she’d met at a small private school in Oregon. He was just another corpse reborn at the hands of a madman.

  “Where were you?” she said, backing away from him.

  “What do you mean? I was here the whole time. In Marlowe. This is my home now. We can be together again. Don’t you want that? We never have to be apart, not even for a second.”

  Her mind further unraveled at the sight of him but a small portion—infinitesimal really—called bullshit. “If you were here then why didn’t you show yourself sooner?”

  “I was nervous. I didn’t know how you’d react. Didn’t know if you’d want to see me again.”

  She shook her head. “You were a great man, Scott. The best man. You know I haven’t washed the sheets since you died? They’re yellow and stiff and disgusting but I can’t bring myself to throw them in the wash because then the last bit of you will be gone. I miss you every day of my life. I see blood everywhere I go because I’m so traumatized. Or maybe that’s part of this hellhole. Maybe that was its way of calling me.”

  He reached out with rotten fingers, bone peeking from within.

  She recoiled, hit the computer. Screams still sounded, Tucker’s victims being killed by the minute. “You were a caring man, a patient man, but you were a terrible liar.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here and go back to the graveyard. It’s time for you to come home.”

  She pointed to the computer, still fleshy and bulbous like a heart. “Tucker was saving you as a last ditch effort. A secret weapon. He knew I wouldn’t be able to turn you down, knew I’d lose my fucking mind—and that’s saying something—if I saw you again. He senses me here, in his room, in his safe haven. This house is a rib cage, Scott. And this place is the heart. He knows I’m close to figuring out his one weakness.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let’s get out of here.” His face was fighting off anger and worry. Two emotions the real Scott rarely showed.

  She nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  She spun around, heard him break the act and leap for her but it was too late. Her hands were already reaching forth, grabbing onto the computer, and digging in. The mass was warm and sticky, like something left in the sun to spoil. There were no wires or circuit boards inside, only flesh. She gouged the screen with her fingers, tore away strips of it. The video faded. Another screen appeared in its place. Something that looked like the blue screen of death, the warning that popped up just before a system crash.

  Scott grabbed her shoulders and squeezed but he was weak. With each new chunk torn away from the mainframe, he yelped as if his undead nerves were linked to a single database.

  The world spun around her. Her hands were deep within the object now. It no longer resembled a computer—or a heart for that matter. It was an amorphous thing and it was losing its form by the second. Outside, houses and buildings toppled. The ground broke apart. The moldy floor shifted beneath her feet.

  Marlowe, much like her mind, had finally come undone.

  Scott shouted something, begged her to stop, but she’d stopped listening. He wasn’t the same man. He’d died—for good—and if she never came to terms with that, so be it. As long as she took this place with her.

  She closed her eyes, screamed with every last bit of energy, and dug further into the heart of this nightmare.

  TWENTY-SIX

  MARIAH LONGWOOD WAS out of ideas.

  After sunset, after pacing in front of Hotel Marlowe for a full hour, she’d found a loose board and pried it away. She shivered as she stepped inside and searched its shadowed hallways, leaving no room behind. Most of the doors were unlocked, the rooms empty, and somehow that was worse, like no vagrants would even consider coming here. There was no evidence of bums or hobos, no evidence of life at all.

  Wherever Ivy was, she wasn’t here.

  Her chest grew heavy at the possibilities. Her imagination spun like a film reel, showing her every worst-case scenario. Ivy hadn’t even gotten on the plane. She’d killed herself in one of the bathroom stalls back at the airport. Or maybe she’d done it at Logan, just after landing. Maybe she’d gotten abducted at a rest stop along her journey. Maybe this very moment, she was tied up somewhere, in a stranger’s basement, screaming for help, each plea unheard.

  Defeated and desperate, Mariah went to the last place on her list. The place she’d dreaded the most after deciding to come to Marlowe. She took her time walking there, telling herself it was a lost cause, though truthfully she was just scared shitless.

  She stopped in front of a nondescript house, looking much worse than the picture from killwithathrill.com. It had been uninhabited for many years. A house that oozed dread the moment you laid eyes on it.

  The former Ashton residence.

  Like the hotel, the windows and doors had been boarded up, but even from the street she could see it was a hack job. There were several spots where the wood had loosened. Like the house itself would never remain sealed.

  Like it begged whoever was stupid enough to come here to step inside.

  She checked her phone. Still no messages. She’d been using it as a flashlight and her battery had drained to ten percent. She wasn’t sure how long it would last. In the distance, the sky was turning pink. Morning wasn’t far off, though she didn’t think much light would shine in that house, not even if she tore away every last board.

  You can do this. You can step into that place, where a maniac was born and raised, and
you can look through the rooms where he dreamt of killing. You can do this because you love your sister and she’s been through more than anyone deserves. You owe her that much. You owe Scott that much.

  She stepped through the yard. The grass had not been cut for a long time. She wasn’t certain who was in charge, perhaps the city since the home had foreclosed, but she didn’t blame them for hesitating to come here. The long blades reminded her of claws or teeth or both.

  She forced herself to grow tunnel vision as she ascended the front steps, each of them creaking and moaning. She found the loosest of the boards and tore them away just as she’d done earlier. She looked back once, hoping for a cop car, but Marlowe was just as abandoned as ever.

  She tossed the boards into a pile until the space was big enough to enter.

  She stepped inside, holding her breath. Listening closely for anything that might have breathed. In her mind, every nook and cranny swam with life but it wasn’t Ivy hiding in the shadows.

  She checked the kitchen, the dining room. Nothing. They were decrepit, filled to the brim with dust. Her pulse sped, like she was being watched from every angle, but she saw no evidence.

  In the living room, she was just about to climb the steps when a noise caught her attention. She spun around, certain something stood just behind her. The noise had not come from this floor or the one above.

  It came from the door to her left.

  The basement.

  She shook her head. No way in hell. Ivy may have been sick, may have had a list of mental health issues, but she wasn’t dumb enough to go down there.

  Was she?

  Mariah held in a gasp. She would never know for sure if she didn’t check. And she wanted to make sure she never had to come here again. She touched the knob, cold like ice, and turned it. With the door open, she covered her nose against the smell of mold. She sensed a presence down there.

  Whatever it was sounded large. She thought she heard it aspirating. Perhaps an animal had snuck through a broken window and was dying in the darkness. She steadied her hand, shining the pitiful light down the stairs. It lit only a few feet in front of her, did nothing for the shadows below.