The slightly purple cover, crumpled on all corners, as if it had been chewed by the other articles in the box. The edges were stained with dark liquid, most likely coffee or a soft drink. Then again, perhaps it was a beer.
The door to his office was cracked, he looked up again, trying to see if there was any indication of movement before he turned his attention back to the tattered notebook, and grabbed it, placing it on top of the other sheets of paper that he had laid in front of him. Notes from his last session had been thorough, he was sure, they could wait for another time. With a swig of water that was sealed in a bottle on his desk he flipped open the cover.
He was met with an intricate, detailed drawing, covering the whole page, of the eye that he had become all too familiar with. It was sideways on the paper, facing him longways. He saw the iris was divided by the symbol, that was facing him normally. Down the center of the eye was a line, drawn neatly and perfectly straight. It made the eye itself look like a door. A pair of twin doors that were sealed shut with the symbol on it.
Clark ran his finger across the line, feeling the light texture of the line as opposed to the deeper indentations of the drawing of the eye. They were separate drawings, the line had been added later and by another pen. Perhaps by a more steady pen.
He turned the page, and was met with a series of chaotic notes. Post-It’s littered the page, bright squares of yellow against the stark white and black background of the written notes. It was a narrative, he could tell, but it was more like a narrative that was less of fiction and more along the lines of what he would see in a history book.
He flipped the page again, and saw a drawing, hastily done in pencil, of a young woman sitting in a bathroom. On the edge of a tub, and in her hand was a straight razor.
Breath caught in his throat.
Next to it, was another drawing, of a man with a gun. He saw the face, shrouded by crazy strands of long hair, facing down the barrel of what appeared to be a revolver.
What were you doing?
He flipped the page again, and saw a table, large and solid, like the communion table that would be found in some churches. On it was a person, a woman, but he couldn’t tell who. There was a black robed figure standing over her, with a long knife in his hands. On his head was a headdress, with a crucified rat on it.
The next image was what struck him deeply. It was an image of the door, cracked open at the hinge, and reaching out was a sea of hands. Below it, the Latin phrase was inscribed, and a series of characters that he did not know, but they rang of familiarity. He had seen them somewhere before.
The bottle of water fell to the floor. He saw that his hand had been reaching for it, but he hadn’t remembered consciously wanting it. He pulled his eyes away from the door, with the hands, all of them of different shapes, long and short, and wide and slender—some of them looked as if they were on the ends of tentacles rather than actual arms, others were raw muscle, viscerally chiseled out and fleshless—long dead and waiting for the time to reach out of the darkness that was doubtless beyond and into the land of the living where they did not belong. The land of reality as he knew it. He bent down and reached for the water bottle, thinking of the hands, reaching ever out for him.
He leaned back up in his chair, setting the water bottle down.
When he looked back up, he found Carol staring back at him.
5
Samantha watched the man for a moment. He did not avert his eyes, he just continued to stare, there was a dead look in his eyes that made her feel uncomfortable. It was a look that in the back of her mind she remembered, as a young teenager, staring into the dead eyes as they scanned her, searching her young body that was barely blossoming into puberty. They ran over her young hips and undeveloped chest, and wiped the hair away with bloodstained hands.
“Are you okay?” Capaldi asked.
She pulled herself out of the thought and nodded. “Sorry, Father. Just a little distracted today.”
“Is something on your mind?”
She shrugged, “Nothing that I feel like needs to be talked about. It’s just been one of those weeks.” She rubbed her hands together, “a lot to deal with at one time, if you know what I mean.”
He looked understanding. “I understand.” He rubbed the side of his coffee cup. “I lost one of my siblings a few years ago, myself. He was older than me, and honestly with the way he took care of himself it wasn’t very surprising that he passed, but it still hurt.”
“I’m sorry, Father.”
“It’s okay, it was something that happens the older you get.” His eyes shifted to her, with the dimness of memory and age plastered to them, and he sighed, “I wonder now more and more when my time is going to come.”
The man stood up at the table, reaching for his cup, shaking it as if he was unsure if it was empty though she could tell it had been long ago emptied, he was just trying to blend into the crowd, to look normal. But why was he trying so hard to be undetected? His eyes never left her.
She shifted back to the priest. “How well did you know him?”
A smile, “I was the best of friends with my older brother.” He took a sip of his coffee. “We grew up in a very rural area out in Kansas on a farm. We went to school in the morning, and as soon as we got home, we would run the fields causing all kinds of trouble. It’s the kind of life a kid of my type dreams of. We only had a few chores, and had a lot of time to ourselves. The world was a carefree place at that point.” He set the cup down. “My brother was a mentor to me and a friend in the best of ways and the worst, if you take my meaning. I learned a lot about hard work and women that way.”
Sam smiled. “Did you stay that way?”
“Mostly.” He nodded, “We grew our own ways. Me to ministry and him to drink. But in a lot of ways we stayed the same, talking to each other almost every week on the phone.” He looked past her into the crowded street that was sitting beyond the window.
She saw the man standing in line, looking up at the menu, eyes away from her. His hand was leaned into his belt, sweeping aside his jacket for a bit. She didn’t know why, but it made her feel wary, seeing him like that, who had been staring at them for so long. She didn’t think that it was her looks that was drawing him, as she had barely even put on any makeup that day—it was definitely something else that had drawn his gaze. She only didn’t know what. And as his longish hair shifted with his head as it turned gradually toward them she turned quickly back to Father Capaldi.
He was looking at her, with a small smile fixed on his face. “What are you looking at?” He asked, glancing over his shoulder to the shop beyond him, that was gradually thinning out as the morning crowd headed off to the jobs or classes that awaited them.
“Nothing.” She said, sweeping her hair away from her face. “Just staring. Nothing.”
His head tilted, “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”
She nodded vigorously, noticing that she was rubbing her arm again, her fingers involuntarily tracing the lines of her tattoo sleeve, following the narrow stem up to a rose and beginning to trace out the flower, following the smoothness of the petals as they opened, blossoming out to take in the world and display it’s own beauty. She had always been fascinated by roses, the way they were so deeply layered and beautiful, especially in the cold. There was something about a flower in bloom when it was not supposed to be that had spoken to her. She saw the priest staring at her hand, running up her arm, pulling back the sleeve of the black sweater that she was wearing.
“It’s a nice bit of work, there.” He said, gesturing to the tattoo that she was tracing.
“Oh,” she said, “I had it done a while back. A guy who works in the shop with me did it.”
“You work in a tattoo shop?”
“Yes, I’m one of the artists there.” Sam looked down at the rose, “It’s something that has always meant something to me. Drawing. Jon was always fascinated by it.” She thought of the paintings in his apartment, the one of her, modesty
veiled in otherworldly arms reaching around to hide her from the world, towering over the other people there—and of the black figure on the wall. Forever staring into her soul, reaching out from a dark beyond that made her feel cold and dead inside. “I just had to find the right medium.”
“It’s really amazing.” He said. “You have a good friend there.” The small smile returned, the one that seemed at once bemused and welcoming. She wondered if that had come from the time he had spent with his brother roaming the fields of the small family farm—scantily clad mischief hiding in the smile of a young boy with that same simple grin
The man across the store was stepping past the crowd that was in front of the counter. The cup in his hand found a trashcan, his heavy footsteps were almost audible above the din of movement, and his eyes were not on her, or on Father Capaldi, but rather on their direction, as if he were clearing out a path in his head, trying to calculate the exact amount of footsteps that it would take to reach them.
Her heart quickened pace.
“Thank you, he’s a good guy and an amazing artist.”
The man was reaching in his jacket, his massive arms sweeping aside the thick material easily, and his gaze made another sweep across the shop.
Samantha’s grip on her arm tightened as an all too-familiar terror came over her, dripping down from her memories and into the present, drenching her soul in cold terror that caused her to look away and at the priest, begging for comfort from him, anything, just something to take her mind off of the present situation—to tear her away from what was about to happen.
The man drew a gun from his belt line, and held it up in their direction.
6
Clark nearly fell back in his chair when he saw the figure before him.
Carol stared at him, her eyes were tired, filled with hours and hours of waiting and pain. He could smell decay and sickness fill the room, along with it the spicy notes of bleach that seemed to cut into the nasal passages and leave an eternal mark there—burning their way into your body’s memory. She was barely wrapped in a silken nightgown that he had bought for her, not long before the news, not long before it had all come to an end. He remembered the fabric, it was what he bought for her on their last trip to the lake house.
She reached out to him, dead and decrepit fingers wriggling in the air in what he was sure was some incarnation of a gesture for him to come to her, beckoning him from his world and into hers.
The lake house. He had taken the picture there, he could remember that. He remembered her smiling for what seemed to him like the last time she could honestly ever smile again out of the pure joy in her soul. The camera lens fixed on her face, the light from the lake framing it perfectly, her features on full display in the light breeze that swept across the narrow beach, slapping water against the posts of a worn out dock that had at one time held a fishing boat there.
Black veins roped around her narrow arms, looping across her emaciated chest, following up to her neck and face. The pouches of flesh on her face hung ragged and tired, tinted green in the light of his office, no doubt part of the process of decay. Her stomach was a disorderly lump of stitches, scars and fat, sagging against her narrow skeleton, pulling her forward.
Her lips parted in desperate desire.
The lake house trip had been the last good vacation they had. He remembered after the picture they had spent a long time on the beach, then on the porch, sipping wine by the light of a small lantern. The distant rumble of bugs hunting through the night along with the speckled flashes of lightning bugs deep in the woods. They had made love for the last time that night. He remembered her coming to him, the smoothness of her lips against his, the feeling of warmth on her flesh—her hands wrapping around his shoulders, pulling him in close, breathing his air, taking in his essence, and he leaned into her neck, soaking up her presence, her body smooth against the fabric of the gown. The last time they had before the diagnosis to be husband and wife. The last time they were truly lovers.
From the blackened and blue lips a dull rasp came, beckoning him forward, begging for him to come that close to her again, to let her breathe him in, to absorb him into her embrace the way that she had before, the way that she had a thousand times before, just as sweetly as that last trip.
He shook his head, feeling moisture slip down his face, “No.” He whispered. “I can’t.” The words came like rocks rolling out of his throat, scraping raw his vocal chords, scratching them down. He felt a pang of desire course through him for the first time in a long time.
“Come.” She whispered.
He shook his head again. “No.”
Her eyes looked desperate, and he felt the same desperation seeping into his soul. He reached out for her, his own hands grabbing at the dead air between them, knowing it was impossible, but desiring it to be possible for her to come to him, come to him as she was before. Before the cancer, before the rottenness that had eaten away at her body had turned her into the living dead, waiting for the final ringing of death’s bell to toll. He longed for her so much.
From beyond the reach of that black abyss, her hands reached out and grabbed his. The fingers were cold, and the flesh clammy with the viscous bleeding substance from the black corridor. He could feel them pulsing even in the cold, like there was blood running through them, but blood mingled with ice. He felt the chill sweep up his arm as she pulled herself toward him, walking around the corner of his desk, her fingers wrapping around his, intertwining deeply. Her eyes stared at him with what seemed like love, lust and what might have been pain from the deep blue surrounded by white. Her hands were gripping his tightly, just as they once had, during those final terrible moments, right before the end.
She rounded the desk and leaned toward him, her hands moving his arms down to the rests on the side of the chair. Her face moved toward his, tilted at a slight angle. Her lips were still full, still soft, just as they had once been, and she continued to move closer to him.
He felt his eyes close as he drifted into toward her as well, waiting for her lips to meet his.When they did, he felt a fire blaze within him, one that had been so long ago extinguished, and he pressed his mouth tightly against hers, pushing away the cold, ignoring the viscous feel to her skin, and he pressed deep into her mouth, sucking her in with fresh breath.
She kissed him back, pushing just as hard, a faint moan escaping her, then she pulled back.
His eyes opened and he saw her face still close to his, her eyes still filled with the same deep desperation, the same deep pain, and her lips parted again in a whisper that he could barely hear above the throbbing of his own pulse in his ears.
“Remember Providence.” She said.
Red and black drainage began to ooze from her mouth, rotted blood dripping from a long dead corpse, the cancerous decay mingling with the reek of death that hung around her. Her eyes began to change, the desperation and love slipping from them with the blood from her mouth, and what was left was cold, and shadowed. She leaned forward again, her arms suddenly wrapping around his head and pulled him into a kiss.
He fought back against her, but the dead strength of her arms was harsh and quick, she pulled his mouth against hers, and with a vomiting motion she kissed him again, spewing the substance into his mouth.
A scream tried to crawl out of him, but it was stifled by the blackness washing down his throat.
7
Her mind froze when the shooting began.
It didn’t come as a thunderclap as she thought it would have, it came instead in a thin, muted sound, overshadowed by fuzzy static that echoed in her ears. It wasn’t deafening, as she knew it probably actually was, but it was instead almost like the sound a balloon made when it popped.
The screaming began after the second shot, which took out a light fixture. The gun was high in the air, a revolver, with a silver barrel and a black handle, gripped tightly in the hands of the man who had been standing in line. His face was grim and set, and he was moving toward her.
>
The people around him scrambled, ducking under tables, knocking cups of coffee onto the ground and shattering the delicate ceramic of the mugs that some of the patrons had. The cracking of black plastic that was gripping the tops spilled out the lattes and espressos onto the floor, forming an ocean of dark liquid around him that he stepped a heavy, booted foot through, splashing it off to the side.
She felt her heart clench in her chest, like someone had just punched her in the chest, tightening around the point between her breasts, below where her necklace hung. She registered the thudding in her ears, and the throbbing that began to pulse through her forehead, but her mind could not comprehend that the man was heading for them.
Father Capaldi stood, and he turned with hands raised toward the gunman, his jacket twisted with him, pulling open a little bit as it snagged on a chair. She could hear the dull echo of his voice in the void, it was distant and pleading, “Son! My son, what are you doing?”
Sam looked at the face of the gunman. His eyes were not wide, not panicked, not even filled with sick desire, but she saw instead a sense of determination mixed with resignation. His features were set, jaw held tight and squared against the screaming. She realized that she recognized the face. It was the face of a young man she had seen before.
“What are you doing?” Capaldi echoed against the deadness around him, his voice barely a whisper above the screaming of patrons who were fleeing out of the doors on either side, leaving their drinks, wallets and purses behind, tying to do something—anything—to get away.
“Stop this! You don’t want to do this!”
“I have to. I don’t have any other choice.”
He raised the gun again, this time at the priest and stared at him, with less of the determination, and a little more of confusion, as if he were listening for something, but not the words that the priest was speaking, listening to something else. The voice of another. “The Elders told me to.”
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