Movement again, but no—
Could this be?
No…
And yet I saw her.
I saw them.
In a blast, blinding light like a flash grenade broke apart the little party of aliens that had clustered around my death scene.
The killer’s face contorted into a rage mask, and he lashed out at the light, snarling, flailing his hands and feet. He ducked and dodged, kicking my mouth and cutting my lower lip. But the light helicoptered about, disorienting him, and he dropped the gun as he sought refuge on the ground beside me. His weapon thumped into the dirt.
I lay there in silence next to him, both of us deep-breathing. He seemed stunned, shaken.
Meanwhile, this turn of events had heartened me. I twisted my head, gazing into the cemetery’s misty night. I saw no dark beings, but through the trees and beyond the branches, I glimpsed concentrated light among the stars.
A certain feeling came with this, something that harkened back to the days of my youth. The sensation was strange, foreign—of me, but not of me. I was forgetting myself. Truly, I had been reborn another person. My experience in the grave had prevailed. Being resurrected on the wave of blood had consecrated my entire body, and now every inch of me felt holy, felt pure.
And then I knew who hung up there, fastened with light to the canopy of heaven. And I longed. I longed for the cosmos.
“Come to me,” I whispered. “I choose this. I choose my power. Bring down the ointment to fill my broken chalice, and help me to finish this. I want to send this evil back where it came from.”
A near-nonexistent blink shot through the cemetery, as the light in the sky fizzled out. My power resurged—my gift. Even my body, riddled with pain, refortified itself, fueled by the psychic force, blotting out the wounds and frailties of my physical body.
What had that psychopath called me? A vessel. Yes, and that’s how I felt…like a vessel being filled with psychic energy, coming from…her; no—from them.
The pain didn’t vanish completely, though it was restrained, held at bay by the fullness of my own inner forces. I spit out blood and rose, struggling to my feet.
The killer stood too, wiping his face and brushing himself off. “No wonder the Dream Beings call you the Vessel,” he said. “There’s no way in hell you could do this on your own.”
“Perhaps not before,” I said, and smiled. I was feeling cocky. “Go ahead; give me your best shot.”
He chuckled in a sad way and said, “Drastic times call for drastic measures.” Opening his mouth horrifically wide, one of Dream Beings suddenly shimmered and appeared next to him. In an instant, it had darted down his throat. His torso, lower abdomen and waist immediately began to swell.
I reeled and teetered on my bloody legs, watching as the killer adopted the form of the alien being, merging with it, creating a kind of hybrid. He retained both eyes, unlike the other beings, as well as his straight black hair, but otherwise he slowly became one of them.
When he completed the transformation, he glared at me with a fierce rage. More creatures shimmered to life around him, forming his posse. His hands, clawed now, came up as he barreled toward me, looking like an eagle seizing its prey.
I tried to move but he was unbelievably fast, plus my legs felt like dead weights. He crashed into me; however, I managed to guide his weight so that we both landed on the ground. A bright light reappeared, which in my periphery seemed to encircle the alien beings and to enchant them. I couldn’t fully grasp what I was seeing but I fended off the killer’s claws with my forearm, until eventually he got through and scored my chest, ripping my clothes with a long, deep gash. It burned and I screamed.
“Yes!” he hissed. “Vessel no more! Vessel ripped to shreds!”
His voice sounded insane, more and more like the aliens. Furiously he intensified his clawing, but I reached down and scoured the dirt until I found a loose rock. I would’ve preferred something large, but it would make do. I slammed it vigorously with all my psychic force three times against the back of his head, only relenting when I heard the revelatory crack.
He collapsed slightly, mumbling something incoherent, and I took the opportunity to hoist him off of me. His body struck the ground and rolled, as I pushed through my pain and broken body to get back on my feet. The aliens seethed in a black cloud, swarming after me like moths at a light bulb.
But the bright illumination, whose source remained unknown, again intercepted the aliens and worked to divert them. I’d seen a lot in my days as a psychic, but this I could not understand. The light enclothed them, forming about them in a kind of chrysalis; it poured into their fat faces, and they responded with sinister cries, groping their single, unblinking eyes.
The gun. If I’m fast enough, I can use the light to find it.
I staggered back to where we’d fallen together and spotted Oscar’s Beretta near the mouth of one of the graves. It rested on the dirt like an ancient relic. As I stooped to retrieve it, I glanced down into the graves and saw the tide of blood receding.
“Thank you,” I whispered, hoping they would hear me. Then I wheeled and loped like the most pathetic animal, through the din and light and dreams, to the shadowy figure straining to get himself erect.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said, cracking him in the forehead this time with the butt of the gun. He grunted and sprawled into his back. For a moment I stared down at him, gawking at his mutated form. The light show carrying on behind me.
“You’re one ugly mutha,” I said.
“I will…cking kill you…” he growled, his words almost incomprehensible. “I will…cking kill you, do you hear m…?”
I fixed the mutant within the Beretta’s sights. “Not if I kill you first,” I said. Then I pulled the trigger until the chamber snapped empty and the ground was soaked in blood.
A rush of wind kicked up as the bright light dimmed and the Dream Beings came to flock around their broken vessel. They hovered, watching helplessly, their translucent bodies flickering in and out of reality.
Frightened, I stepped back, but it soon became clear they had no awareness of me. Their attention was directed toward the killer, their vessel, as if he were a sole beacon on the lonely sea. He had been their conduit into this world. Now he’d been pumped full of more bullets than Clyde Barrow. They seemed to lament this, and as they did, they started popping in and out of existence, until finally they flickered out and stayed out, hidden behind the veil of matter.
When I saw no more of them, I dropped, with a gasp, down onto my side, the life suddenly drained from me.
A sudden blast of wind and light shot up out of the open graves and I jerked my head in astonishment at the two spirits floating in the air, each with a dreamy, ghostlike body and long, flowing hair.
One was my Aunt Sylvia.
The other, my mom.
They glanced at each other, glanced at me, then waved. I was overcome by my emotions. They were like angels—no, they were angels. They had been there all along, guiding me through this.
“So…it is you,” I whispered. “I’ve really missed this. Life is lonely when you can’t tell anyone half of what you are.”
They nodded together, perfectly in unison. When my mother spoke to me, her voice was more in my head than outside it.
“You have learned to use your gift now,” she said. “You have remembered everything I taught you, and you are born anew to your power.”
“I am certainly impressed,” Aunt Sylvia added.
“I have so much I want to say—” I blurted out.
My mother glided over and gently placed a finger over her lips.
But I persisted, “Why did those Dream Being creatures come after me, just because I have this gift? There must be other people who have it.”
“There are,” my mother said, “but you are the only one who is…fit to receiv
e the power that flowed through you tonight. This is a power that must be felt more and more upon the Earth. The Dream Beings know this. Other beings know it too; worse beings. And they’ll come for you.”
I shook my head. “No! I don’t like the sound of that at all! Whose power is it? Why must it enter the world?”
Their silence caused a fleeting yet intense image of a man hanging on a cross, a large serpent about his shoulders, to flash before my eyes. I understood instantly, and the vision passed over into blackness.
I thrashed about on the ground. “No… He can keep it—I don’t want it!”
My mother glided back, and the two women smiled, then simply shot off like bottle rocks up into the sky, where I lost sight of them among the stars.
“But…will I be okay?” I asked.
I looked down at my wounds, and yet, to my surprise, they did not appear as terrible as I’d feared. In fact, they appeared to be—what?—healing?
I closed my eyes, letting the weight of everything settle over me like a mantle. When I returned my vision to the earth I found their holes filled in, the dirt mounds gone, the headstones back in place and standing and the grass somehow restored over their graves. Lying beside my mother’s headstone was the killer. Motionless. Unbloodied. No longer a hybrid creature. Just a dead, scared-looking little man.
The cemetery grew quiet now; a kind of peace lay over everything; even the wind seemed to hush. Realizing I hadn’t had a cigarette in hours, I rummaged through my clothes for the pack, rejoicing when I found it crushed, but the cigarettes still smokable. My lighter was there too.
I felt the dim echoes of a migraine coming on, so I lit up and started puffing away to the sound of sirens in the distance. Someone from the surrounding neighborhood must’ve called 911 in response to all the gunfire.
With my head against the earth, I glanced up into the depthless black cosmos above me, uttering a quiet prayer of thanks to Mom, to Aunt Sylvia, to Oscar and to Becky, but most importantly to myself, for finally taking control of my personal power—my gift.
I told everyone I was very grateful.
About the Author
Aaron J. French is a book editor for JournalStone Publishing and the Editor-in-Chief for Dark Discoveries magazine. He has edited several anthologies, including Songs of the Satyrs, Monk Punk & Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus, and The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft (Winter 2015) from JournalStone Publishing, which includes new Mythos work from the biggest names in horror fiction, including Adam Nevill, Laird Barron, Bentley Little, Christopher Golden, Jonathan Maberry, Joe Lansdale, and Seanan McGuire.
2014 saw the publication of The Chapman Books, a supernatural thriller collection from Uncanny Books featuring Aaron’s novella “The Stain.” His single-author collection, Aberrations of Reality, was published by Crowded Quarantine Publications and it is the first book to collect Aaron’s fiction focusing on the occult, metaphysics, and the weird. His zombie collection Up From Soil Fresh was published by Hazardous Press in 2013; also in 2013 “The Order,” an occult thriller novella about a Lovecraftian secret society, was published in the Dreaming in Darkness collection. More info can be found on Exegeting the Mystery, Aaron’s website at: www.aaronjfrench.com.
There’s no escaping your past. Especially when it wants revenge.
Desolation
© 2016 Kristopher Rufty
Grant Marlowe hoped taking his family to their mountain cabin for Christmas would reunite them after his alcoholic past had torn them apart, but it only puts them into a life and death struggle. On Christmas Eve, a stranger from Grant’s past invades the vacation home and takes his wife and children hostage. His agenda is simple—make Grant suffer the same torment that Grant’s drunken antics have caused him. Now Grant must confront his demons head on and fight for his family’s lives. Because this man has nothing left to lose. The only thing keeping him alive is misery—Grant’s misery.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Desolation:
Dennis Hinshaw’s first thought when he awoke was he’d gone blind.
He tried to blink. A sticky residue lined his eyelids, crusting his eyelashes. Trying again, the dark film thinned, becoming slightly transparent. He realized he hadn’t gone blind after all—it was just blood.
His blood.
He had no idea why he was convinced of this, but somehow he knew it to be certain.
Tightness pressed against his chest and stomach. Even his shoulders were restrained. He could hardly move, and when he did, it elicited great jabs of pain all over that made it hard to breathe.
He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t get his mind moving in the direction he needed it to. Comprehension wasn’t clear, like trying to find something through a window frosted in thick layers of icy dust. Sluggishly, he felt around him.
Broken sharp pieces pricked his fingers as his hand crawled around the car.
Glass?
Fragments of a memory began to percolate into extended sequences: two bright orbs rocketed toward him. Lindsey screamed over Josh’s reciting the alphabet for the fifth time in a row from the backseat.
A loud crash, the crumpling of metal against metal—he vaguely remembered the car spinning out of control.
Dennis rubbed his hand along his chest, and could feel the safety harness under his bloody fingers. He wanted it off so he could move freely. Following the strap down to the buckle, his finger struggled with the latch as it tried to push the button. Finally, it went in. There was a click. He dropped. He bumped his head on the roof of the car, smearing the blood encrusting his face across its padded softness.
It took a moment for it to register that he’d fallen upward. He contorted his body to see out his window. The glass was cracked, lines snaking in three directions, but he was still able to see the night outside, to hear the dueling chorales of crickets and frogs. He could see heavy barrages of trees, their tips facing down.
So this had to mean he was upside down.
Not just me…
The car was on its roof.
He groped the darkness above him, his fingers brushing the center console separating the two front seats. He reached under the lid and found the button. It dropped open, spilling papers and other various items of debris onto him. Something solid rapped him on the shoulder. And he assumed it was what he was looking for.
Dennis found the aluminum tube, gripped the rotund tip between his fingers and twisted. A bar of light pried through the darkness, illuminating everything caught in the bright spike. He saw the curve of the steering wheel, the radio with the broken CD player and the empty socket that used to hold a cigarette lighter that he couldn’t remember when it had been lost.
It was coming back to him stronger now. The two orbs he’d seen was the car in the other lane veering into theirs. Dennis had been driving. Lindsey, in the passenger seat, was telling him the baby was trying to kick her way out of her belly button while their firstborn, Josh, rehearsed the alphabet from the backseat, clapping every time he made it through without messing up. Lindsey had taken Dennis’s hand and placed it on her belly. He’d felt their daughter squirming through her clothes.
And it had warmed his heart.
Then he’d looked back to the road and saw the lights bearing down. The windshield had filled with a blinding glare as the car consumed his lane, heading straight for them.
Dennis began to sweat as he recalled the memory. Cold wetness streamed down from his forehead, mixing with the blood and nicks and scrapes on his skin, singeing like someone had put a match to him. He rubbed a finger along his jaw and snatched it back when something punctured it. Shining the light on his index finger, he saw fresh blood seeping from the tip as if it had been pricked at the doctor’s office.
He attempted touching his face again, being much more careful this time. His fingers tapped against something thin and sharp. Carefully tracing the edge, he realized a
triangular portion of glass had lodged into his face. It seemed to have entered his cheek at an angle, and poked down through the skin at his jaw. He worked his tongue against his cheek, tracing the smooth slant of glass inside.
Knowing it was there caused his face to sizzle with pain. Dennis gripped the shard, about to tear it loose, but quickly stopped himself before doing something so foolish. If he did, he’d not only dislodge the glass, he’d rip half his face off in the process. He took several deep breaths, then carefully pulled the shard, as if removing a splinter. He felt his cheek stretch as the fragment popped free.
Dennis dropped the glass without looking at it. Working his jaw up and down, he felt only minimal pain, but tasted a lot of blood.
They had been driving on Cunningham Road, and had only a few more miles before reaching home. Then it would have been time for the routine of getting Josh’s bath ready, and putting him in bed within the hour.
Josh should be in bed right now…
Josh.
He rolled onto his side, screwing his body in such an awkward way that his thighs began to constrict and sharp pains stabbed his hips. “Juh-Josh…buddy, are you all right?” Though he’d intended to shout, his voice had sounded groggy, as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep. Maybe he had. Dennis had no idea what time it was, so he wasn’t sure how long they’d been like this. “Josh?”
A steady chorus of crickets from the surrounding woods answered him.
“Den…nis…?”
Lindsey!
He turned to where his wife was in the passenger seat—sort of. The moonlight netted the car in diamonds of gray, underscoring Lindsey who was lying against her door at an awkward angle. The window behind her had been smashed, which explained the glass everywhere and the large piece in his face.
He crawled along the ceiling on his elbows, keeping his head ducked low so he wouldn’t bash it on the seats above him. Lindsey was on the roof as well, her seatbelt dangling above her. He wasn’t sure if she’d unhooked herself, or if she hadn’t even buckled up. She had a habit of not using her seatbelt and, unless Dennis checked before they drove away, he’d have no idea she hadn’t. The fuse that powered an annoying buzz whenever the seatbelts were unconnected had burned out and they’d never replaced it. It was on the long list of things that Dennis planned to do when he had the time.
The Dream Beings Page 9