by Sara Clancy
The horrific sound of the horseman’s voice cut through all of the pain raging within his body. The ghastly, disembodied voice ripped and curled around the first syllables of Nicole’s name.
Benton screamed.
The walls shook as his banshee wail rose to a deafening pitch. The fires flamed and shot higher until they washed over the ceiling like a raging flood. An ear-splitting shrill, wild as flooding rapids, cracking like thunder, the sound drowned out everything else within existence.
Nicole rushed from the flaming pit. She balled her hands into his jacket and yanked him to his feet. The sharp yank shook him from his stunned stupor and the scream died off into a sharp whine. The flames were still blinding as they scrambled back towards the tunnel. For once, Nicole didn’t argue when he shoved her before him. He felt every grain of earth as it pressed against the rising boils of his hand. The pain almost brought him down each time he put pressure on it, but fear alone kept him moving, twisting deeper into the consuming darkness. Every inch, every second, he waited to feel the horseman’s hand around his ankle.
The shifting light of Nicole’s phone scurried out of sight. After the bonfire, his eyes refused to adjust and he was forced to carry on in the impenetrable darkness. He only stopped when Nicole grabbed his arm with both hands, her insistent tugs letting him know that it was time to stand. Grasping each other tight, they thundered up the trembling staircase. Loose dirt drifted down from the mouth of the trapdoor as chunks of wet dirt dropped from the walls. Benton could hear their feet slam against the steps, could feel the wood bend under their weight, but the wood itself didn’t make a sound. It’s still here, a voice in the back of his mind whispered.
He focused on the rectangle of sunlight above them, the patch of salvation they were racing towards. The gentle warmth of the sun welcomed him as the stairs gave way to grassy earth. Fresh air drew deep into his lungs and he found himself reeling with the sensation. Even as his eyes adjusted to the softer light, details still abandoned him. The pain of his burn was no longer contained to only his hand. He could feel his flesh continuing to cook, the burn growing deeper, spreading wider. Sparks of agony flushed along his nerves and veins, charring his bones as it claimed his entire arm. With a broken cry, his legs buckled in and he slumped onto the earth.
Nicole gasped his name breathlessly as she knelt down beside him. He ground his teeth, but he couldn’t keep the pain from escaping him in a long string of whimpered sobs. Blinking and shaking, with his vision steadily returning, he let go of her and dragged his throbbing hand into his line of sight. The skin of his hand was ripped raw and molten. Thin trails of puss trickled down his fingers where his skin couldn’t pull to the lengths the forming blisters demanded. The seeping liquid carved through the layers of grim that covered his broken skin. Nicole’s hand was gentle as it wrapped around his wrist, but even that pressure was enough to make him cry out.
“You need to get up,” Nicole struggled to keep her panic out of her voice.
He tried, but his legs were too weak to hold his weight and he crumbled in on himself, pressing his forehead against the slick grass that layered the ground. Nicole kept hold of his wrist, keeping him from cradling the smoldering limb against his chest.
“Benton,” Nicole said. He could barely hear her over his barely suppressed sobs. “We need to get you to a hospital. Your hand could become infected.”
Benton nodded, smearing his head against the soil. He resisted the urge to curl tighter when she released his wrist. Feeling clammy and weak, he trembled as she passed behind him and looped his good arm over her shoulders. He wasn’t a big guy, more lanky than muscled, but it was still a struggle for Nicole to lift his dead weight. His feeble attempts to help made it possible for him to get his feet back under himself. The tips of his sneakers dug grooves through the soft dirt and twisted up in the roots of the grass as he failed to take a proper step. He cradled his hand, palm up to his chest. Each time he lurched a step, his hand struck his chest. The contact sent a fresh burst of blinding pain through him and left a smear of mud and puss across his stained shirt.
The sun-warmed metal of the jeep burned him and thrilled him as Nicole propped him up against it. Barely able to keep his eyes open through the constant surges of pain, it was hard to keep track of everything that was going on around him. It was hard to even keep his head up. As much as he could, he trailed his eyes over the grasslands, searching for any sign of the horseman. Beside him, Nicole began to search through her pockets, muttering a long string of whispered swears as she tried to free her keys from her jeans.
Lost within a fog of panic and fear, neither of them had noticed the car pulled up next to Nicole’s jeep. Not until Nicole victoriously pulled the keys out of her pocket. She froze, keys still held high, the slips of metal catching the light. In the same moment, Benton’s mind cleared just enough that he was able to attach meaning to what he was seeing; a police cruiser. His stomach plummeted as a figure lunged from the basement door, a sharp bellow of ‘freeze’ announcing its arrival.
Shaking with the beginning tendrils of shock, Benton could only stare as Constable Rider moved closer to both of them, the sunlight glistening off of the smooth barrel of her gun. There wasn’t enough within him to fully understand the emotions that played across the woman’s face, or the greater meanings attached to them, the consequences. He slumped heavily against the side of the car as a pained cry rattled his teeth. The fire was spreading. It never appeared on his skin, but he could feel the blisters climbing up the length of his arm.
“Nicole?”
“Mom, I will explain everything,” Nicole said in a sudden rush of words, “but we need to get Benton to the hospital.”
“There are bodies down there,” Constable Rider snapped. Her voice didn’t carry any of the uncertainty that lurked within her eyes.
“He’s really hurt,” Nicole pleaded.
“What are you even doing here?” she stammered and hesitated before she was able to voice, “What was making that scream?”
Nicole’s hands trembled as she tried to unlock the passenger side door. The sharp edge of the key scraped across the metal of the door, producing a squeak that was brutal to Benton’s ears.
“I can explain everything, I promise,” Nicole begged on the verge of tears. “But we need to get out of here. It’s not safe.”
“Get away from the jeep, Nicole.”
“Mom, please! He’s going into shock.”
Constable Rider’s dark eyes flicked between Benton and her daughter for an excruciating moment before she finally holstered her forgotten gun and rushed forward to grab Benton’s arm.
“We’re taking my car.”
“Thank you,” Nicole rushed to say, but the words were lost under her mother’s angry gaze.
“The second he’s checked in, you and I are having a very long conversation.”
Chapter 6
It had taken two members of the hospital staff to pry Benton away from Nicole. She hadn’t wanted to let him go, not when he was left so vulnerable. The drive into town had been torture. With every passing second, his pain had only gotten worse until he could barely move any limb without screaming. He had clung to her the entire time. Each breath he took carried a strained whimper and was released with an agonized moan. Nicole could only watch helplessly as he writhed in increasing anguish. The muscles of his neck strained against his skin as he attempted to keep his screams contained. There had been nothing she could do to help him. The closer they got to town, the more it seemed that her attempts to soothe him only made things worse. Finally, the nurses had managed to pry the fingers on Benton’s good hand off of Nicole’s jacket, and he was led down the hallway. She wasn’t allowed to follow.
Her staring contest with the now empty hallway was cut short when her mother grabbed her shoulder and whirled her around.
During the car ride, Nicole had resolved to tell Dorothy everything. The option to be discrete was well and truly gone. She was scared and in d
eep over her head. She couldn’t even trust her judgment. They needed help. So when Dorothy had started with a seemingly endless stream of questions, Nicole hadn’t even thought about selecting her words with care.
Everything that she had kept inside for so long, exploded out in an untamed current of raw information. From her first encounter with the demonic force that had latched onto Victor, to discovering the meaning of the symbol over Oliver’s grave, to resolving to destroy the creature that had slaughtered everyone who now filled the basement. She hadn’t meant to be so honest about Benton, about what he was and all of the possible implications, but it had rambled out with everything else and there was no taking it back.
By the time she got to the end of the story, where Benton had been kidnapped and Nicole had resolved to save him, she knew her mother had stopped listening. But the confession of stealing a firearm from the RCMP lockup, directed her from disinterested frustration to barely contained rage. Dorothy grabbed Nicole’s arm, dragged her down the hallway to the nearest empty room, and hurled her inside.
“You better be lying to me right now,” Dorothy hissed.
“Mom …”
“No. You listen to me! What you’re talking about is a crime. You’re confessing a crime to a member of the law enforcement. Do you understand that? I’d have to arrest you.”
Nicole stuttered, “You … you wouldn’t do that.”
“This is not on me!” Dorothy snapped as she jabbed a finger towards Nicole. “You abused my position to break into a police station. This is all on you.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
Dorothy threw her hands wide. “Call the police! Tell me what was happening!”
“You never would have believed me. I was on my own and terrified and I did what I had to do.” Squaring her shoulders, Nicole met her mother’s furious glare and refused to back down. “Benton is alive today because of what I did.”
“Stop it!”
“Mom–” Nicole pleaded, only to be cut off.
“Monsters don’t exist, Nicole. You should have outgrown these childish notions years ago. And that Bertrand boy,” Dorothy continued on in a rush. “He’s injured right now and probably scarred for life.”
“So am I,” Nicole shot back.
“There are bodies down there. This isn’t the time for foolishness.”
Raking her hands through her hair, Nicole was a second away from screaming when a thought occurred to her.
“The dash cam,” she said.
Her mother only furrowed her brow. “What?”
“Your police cruiser is fitted with a dash cam, right? It would have recorded everything.”
Dorothy huffed. “It wouldn’t have had a view into the basement, Nicole.”
“But it would have recorded Benton’s scream.”
Her mother’s voice lost all its hot temper as she asked, “What?”
“You heard it. You asked about it,” Nicole insisted. She watched as the anger seemed to escape from her mother’s features and she knew that she finally had something not easily denied. She had proof. “You remember it, don’t you?”
“I heard something.”
Nicole rushed forward a step. “That was Benton. It wasn’t exactly how he sounded the first time, but it was him. You heard a banshee wail.”
“I don’t know what I heard. It could have been anything.”
“Are you kidding me?” Nicole said. “Let’s go listen to it right now and you tell me what else it could have been.”
Dorothy shook her head and Nicole felt her advantage slipping away.
“Mom, none of this matters.”
“Yes, it damn well does,” Dorothy shot back.
“Not right now,” Nicole said. “I know what killed Kimberly.”
“What killed her?” her mother said with a hint of warning.
“I haven’t figured out what it is by name but–”
“Stop,” Dorothy demanded as she lifted her hand. After a long pause, she shook her head and motioned her daughter to the door. “Get in the car. I’m taking you home.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t argue,” Dorothy spat back. “I don’t know what is going on with you and Benton, but it’s clear that this relationship is sick and is getting dangerous for that poor boy. You’re going home and you’re not contacting him again.”
Nicole crossed her arms over her chest. “I have a shift tonight. I can’t just not go. People will start to talk and as so as they do that they’ll start suspecting something’s up.”
“Something is up,” Dorothy said, her voice both infuriated and slightly mocking. “You’re facing some serious charges.”
Nicole toyed with her fingers, wringing them together as she watched her mother carefully.
“Are you going to do that?”
In the longest moment of her life, she could only watch as her mother shifted between parental love, to the obligations of duty, and back again.
“I haven’t decided. It is possible that you are merely delirious after ingesting some kind of drug. Not to mention the shock you must have had. I’ll need to investigate further. For now, get in the car and I’ll give you a lift to the museum.”
***
The passing hours felt like purgatory. While her mother had allowed her to retrieve her stuff from school, under strict orders that she wasn’t to talk to anyone, her phone had remained completely silent. The dwindling strum of tourists offered an ever-decreasing source of distraction, as she worked the gift shop, located on the middle floor of the museum, giving her the perfect view of one of her favorite exhibits. It was a buffalo herd stampeding across the far side of the room, their massive bodies forever frozen within a singular moment as they passed a real sized teepee and headed for the drop off of the makeshift cliff. Their taxidermy was extraordinary and the greatest care was taken in even the finest details. The exhibit even smelt of grass and sun warmed dirt. In a singular charge, the frozen buffalo displayed the moment the herd would have toppled over the edge of the Jump, with some suspended in the air as they tumbled down to the bottom floor.
More than one exhibit was fitted with motion sensors. They were each tripped by anyone who ventured too close. Over the hours, she had heard a thousand thunderstorms from the first floor, traditional songs repeated hundreds of times from the third, and more phantom hooves crushing the earth than she could count. Each time, she found herself sure that she must have missed her ringtone, and reached into Kimberly’s purse to check her phone.
Nicole was aware of the annoyed looks she was getting each time she began digging into the small purse, especially when she was supposed to be setting up the display for the newest shipment of gold necklaces. But time went by and still no one had called her on it. They hadn’t even asked her to put her bag away. News spread fast in small towns. By now, everyone must have known she had witnessed Kimberly’s death, and with Benton in the hospital, it seemed that everyone was willing to let her get away with a lot tonight. The lingering guilt Nicole felt for exploiting the situation wasn’t enough to make her willfully give up her only line of communication with Benton. She promised herself that she’d make it up to them later, as she once again stopped what she was doing to check the screen.
By the time the sun had set and the museum was closing, Benton still hadn’t called. The radio silence prickled at her nerves and crammed questions into her mind. What if they had knocked him out? a voice whispered in the back of her head. What if the burn had only gotten worse? Unable to get her laptop and do some actual research, she could only wildly speculate over what had actually injured him, and what was going to happen next. What if he didn’t tell them the truth? she wondered. Was there a lie I was supposed to tell? Why hadn’t we prepared for this?
“Nicole?”
“Huh?” She snapped her head up from the book she was supposed to be shelving to meet the annoyed gazes of her coworkers.
“Museum’s closed,” one of them said, as she waved her ha
nd out in a loose gesture to the rest of the museum.
Nicole glanced over her shoulder to see that even the overhead lights had been turned off already. Beyond the gift shop, the only sources of light was the small runway lights that lined the staircases and the few spotlights that were aimed at the exhibits. It hit home just how slack she had been. They were always gone, long before the cleaning staff mopped the floors. She still had to restock, vacuum, and do a final check around the exhibit for any missed trash.
“Why don’t you guys go on ahead,” Nicole suggested.
They glanced at each other for a moment. It was clear that they were all eager to leave, but no one wanted to be the first one to agree.
“I insist,” Nicole said with a forced smile. “No reason for us all to stay because of me. And someone will be by to pick me up soon.”
Since they all had families to get back to, it didn’t take much more prompting than that, and soon she was left alone to finish shelving the kids’ books. The rough sound of the cutter slicing through the tape of the final box punctuated the stillness that had settled around her. Cardinally, she filled the empty shelf, while her mind stormed and raged. That done, she insured that the jewelry cabinet was locked and stowed the key away in the now empty cash register.
She jumped as her mild ringtone burst to life. Her fingers fumbled over the latch of her bag, delaying her enough that she didn’t bother to check the caller ID before she answered.
“Nicole?” Benton’s voice whispered down the line.
Relief weakened her knees and she sagged against the counter.
“I’ve been going out of my mind,” Nicole gushed in way of greeting. “Are you okay? What happened? Why didn’t you call me earlier?”
“I’m on painkillers, Nic,” Benton groaned. “I can hardly remember why I called you right now, so can we do one question at a time?”
“Right. Sorry. Are you okay?”
“I think so. My hand’s bandaged up so I can’t see it. But they did say that I won’t need a skin graft, so, you know. Score,” he pulled the last word out like he had forgotten how it ended.