by Sara Clancy
“What if I had drawn them in? What if my dreams are like blood in water to them? Maybe that’s what the symbol is really for.”
“We’ve been over this. Professor Lester says that the symbol was used by an ancient cult to keep the death of paranormal creatures from luring others in,” Nicole explained again.
“Why would a symbol, from a cult that was a dead religion before Rome was even a thing, be in my barn?” Benton asked. “Maybe Oliver was like me. Maybe his presence drew things into the town and that’s why they killed him.”
“Or maybe the cult isn’t dead,” Nicole countered. “Maybe it’s just obscure. And sure, Oliver had to be something. That’s why they put the symbol there, but that doesn’t mean that he, or you, were affecting anything. All it means was that they thought his death might lure in other paranormal creatures.”
“When someone dies of natural causes, they don’t end up buried in a barn. And what about the fire? The one that only burns me. It could be to keep me out.”
“You’re forgetting that it didn’t affect the Dullahan,” she said.
“So? Maybe I was the bigger threat. When a dam is breaking, you seal the crack, you don’t put down a bucket.”
“If you’re the crack in that scenario, what exactly is the dam, then?” she asked.
“You’re not listening to me.”
“No, I’m not. Do you know why? Because no one should listen to the wild, fear-induced speculations of someone who hasn’t slept in two weeks. You’re not the cause of any of this.”
His voice was weak as he challenged her. “Are you really so sure?”
“I am. And I’m always right. So close your eyes.”
Benton’s body instantly began to obey when he caught sight of a figure lingering within the corner. He jolted and would have sat if it weren’t for the tightening of Nicole’s grip.
“I’m right here,” she whispered. “Just tell me what you see.”
The consuming darkness congealed and formed into a mass of shadow and smoke. The edges of the figure trailed off and bled into the air while the stark, white disk of its face emerged. There was no definition to its features, but that didn’t stop Benton from feeling the now familiar presence of Death’s gaze.
“It’s here,” Benton’s voice sounding low and solemn. He knew he didn’t need to specify. There was only one It that appeared with such regularity in his life that it no longer needed any real explanation. Even as Benton locked his gaze onto Nicole’s, the specter of Death lingered in the edges of his vision.
“You know, manners don’t cost you anything,” Nicole chastised.
“What do you want me to do? Say ‘hi’ and offer him a drink?”
Nicole shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a start.”
“It’s Death!” Benton retorted.
“And you’re a banshee,” she said. “You two have a bond. And you would be dead right now, if It hadn’t helped me out. At the very least, you can you tell it I say ‘hello!’”
Benton rolled his eyes, any motion making his head spin. She squeezed his hand again, the grip acting as an anchor that he clung to as the rest of his mind reeled and rocked. When the earth settled again, Death had drifted closer. Benton's heartbeat quickened until his blood rushed through his ears. Nicole’s thumb rubbed over his marred palm, tracing an endless pattern of figure eights.
“It’s coming closer,” he said.
Nicole told him again to close his eyes and, with a broken sigh, he obeyed. Even while his insides raged and boiled, he couldn’t keep the lead weight of his eyelids up. Still, he could feel Death lurking closer. It made it impossible to keep his breath from turning into short, sharp pants.
“You’re safe,” Nicole whispered. “It’s just here to help.”
Benton scoffed, but the sound didn’t come out of his throat. His attempt to tell her that there was no possible way that she could know what was being thwarted by his body’s exhausted rebellion. Her voice mingled with the music, almost becoming the words to a tune without lyrics. Each soothing whisper eased the ache inside of him. Every promise sounded to him like a siren’s call, drawing him deeper into himself. Death touched him. It wasn’t like the touch of a hand. It was like tar pouring over his skin, rising up from under him, encasing him, cradling him. Leaving him floating.
Nicole’s words began to echo, as if her voice had extended downwards to reach him, as he began to sink into the shell of his skin. Tar poured down his throat, but he could still breathe. Temperature lost all meaning, as the thick sludge filled him, holding him gently as he plummeted down into unfathomable depths. Nicole’s words drifted away, spreading into oblivion. The music played some sweet notes and then, they too, were lost.
***
He dreamed. A dream of an endless black void. A wasteland of sheer nothingness. He didn’t have a stranger’s hand, nor skin, nor eyes. His mind was his own and it too seemed to evaporate into the eternal. So he drifted, unable to move or speak. Unable to be certain that he even had a body of his own anymore.
From somewhere that was both far beyond and right above him, a light began to shine and the darkness receded. It bubbled and dripped. It bled away to reveal a place he had never been. A place of land and sky and yet was still nothing. Nowhere. Wind began to blow, rushing across and through his shapeless form, howling in his ears like an enraged beast. It would have been impossible to withstand the onslaught if his body was intact.
The hurricane gales grew and shattered, becoming shards of glass against his mind, sweeping the land that was something and nothing, dragging a looming wall of white smoke behind it. The clouds rose up like a tidal wave and rushed towards him, its surface swelling, and crawling as if a swarm of deformed creatures was contained within the cloud. Then he heard the laughter.
A thousand voices were conversing over each other. Each distinct. Each part of the whole. They all dripped with an unhinged, unbridled malice. The air howled. It cackled and shrieked. It giggled with frenzied bloodlust that, for all the horrors his mind had absorbed, he couldn’t begin to fathom.
The wall of madness was now only a few yards before him. It consumed his vision. Writhing as it hunted him down. Fear kept his disbelieving eyes open as the smoke stretched into gigantic faces. Their eyes burned as points of crimson red within their gaping sockets. The bones bulged and twisted under their milky, transparent skin. Their mouths were their dominating feature. As each one opened its jaws to join in on their depraved laughter of the chorus, he could see rows of needlelike teeth filling the space.
The storm hit and each one of the horde spiraled down upon him to consume his soul.
Chapter 6
Nicole felt it the second he finally drifted off to sleep. His body went limp on the thin mattress and his hand became a dead weight within her own. Still, she waited a few extra moments, just to make sure that her movements wouldn’t wake him. When his breathing became even and deep, she slowly slipped her hand from his own and crept off of the bed. It was hard not to get tangled up in the wires, especially with a shifting colored light being the only ray to see by. But eventually she was free and able to tiptoe back out of the room.
A two-way mirror allowed for anyone in the control room to monitor the sleeper without disrupting them. It was a tiny room, barely able to fit Kyle along with the equipment, so the door had to remain open to accommodate the addition of Dorothy. As Nicole gently closed the examination room door behind her, she only needed to glance down the hall to meet her mother’s smile.
“Good job,” Dorothy said, leaning back against the doorframe of the control room.
“I think exhaustion did most of the work,” Nicole replied. “He just needed to calm down for second.”
She jogged the remaining steps that separated them, anxious to see what was happening on the wall of monitors. There wasn’t enough space in the room for a chair, so Kyle was forced to hunch and rest his hands on the tabletop. His attention was fixed on one monitor. Little lines fluttered across
the screen, mapping out things Nicole wasn’t able to decipher.
“What stage is he in?” Nicole asked as she crammed herself into the minimal patch of space still vacant in the room.
While Kyle’s face clearly showed his annoyance, he didn’t comment on it. “He’s just left stage one.” He tapped a long, tapered finger against the screen at a particular patch of squiggles that seemed to be no different from the other patches. “And he’s well on his way through stage two.”
“So, one more stage and he should be dreaming?” she asked.
“That’s right,” he said absently as he checked everything once more with fleeting glances. “Everything looks normal so far.”
Nicole sucked her lips between her teeth and bit down. Energy strummed under her skin, growing stronger and sharper the longer she struggled to gather even the slightest meaning from the monitors. On the other side of the glass, Benton shifted in his sleep, snuggled down on his back and absently pulled up the blanket higher. He was still cold. It was nothing compared to the way his body heat had plummeted while he traveled the Highway of The Lost, but she couldn’t help the twist she felt in her gut every time he shivered. In her mind, the movement had come to mean that there might be a ghost hanging nearby. She had seen what they could do. She never wanted to see it again.
Wrapping one arm around her waist, she began to toy with her other hand with the trails of beads dangling from her choker. She could swear that time itself was slowing just to spite her, and she bounced on the balls of her feet.
“Here we go,” Kyle said as he sunk down further, resting one forearm on the counter as he tapped at the screen again. “He’s slipping into stage three now.”
“So he’s dreaming?” Dorothy asked.
“He should be any second now.” Kyle jolted up. The easy calm drained from his face as his spine became a straight bar. His jaw dropped slightly, but he didn’t say anything. In rushing movements, he began to turn, trying to see every monitor at once.
“What is it?” Nicole asked.
He turned back to the first monitor and she quickly followed his gaze. The squiggly lines were now as flat as the horizon.
“What does that mean?” Nicole said, alarmed.
Dorothy pushed off from the doorframe. “Doctor?”
“The machines must be malfunctioning,” Kyle said in a rush, his words tumbling out of his mouth as he struggled to remain calm. “It’s probably the storm. Just let me check a few things.”
Nicole peered through the mirror, squinting at the one machine she recognized. A heart monitor. There were three bars and one jumped at a steady, strong rhythm. With the reassurance that he still at least had a pulse, she watched Benton carefully as Kyle continued checking the machines. Oblivious to the flurry of activity, Benton’s breathing was deep and even, his body still.
“What is going on, doctor?” Dorothy asked with a distraught voice.
Kyle put a hand up as if to fend off that very question. “It’s not possible.”
“Is Benton in any danger?” Dorothy asked, beginning to feel a touch of panic.
“No. All of his base vitals are fine. It has to be the machine. It just can’t happen like that.”
Dorothy’s patience had met its end and she growled in an imposing voice, “What is?”
Kyle stood still, took a steadying breath, and seemed to piece himself back together. When he had a resemblance of calm again, he turned to the two women.
“These monitors, that I’m sure are broken,” he stressed, “are registering Benton as being in a PVS. That’s just, I mean, he’s…” Shaking his head, he looked back at the monitors. “It’s saying he’s in a persistent vegetative state.”
“What?” Nicole whirled around to him. “He’s brain dead?”
“No. They’re two very different things,” Kyle assured her quickly. “All of his basic functions are still working. But these monitors are saying that his higher brain functions have all stopped.”
“The lights are on, but he’s not home?” Nicole questioned, metaphorically.
“If that helps you understand,” Kyle said. He shook his head and went back to fussing with the monitor. “Of course, that’s impossible. It has to be the machine. We should probably wake him up. None of this data is going to be useful.”
Nicole turned to find her mother who was already looking at her. Benton had always described the sensation as being absorbed by another person. She had never given much thought to how much the description could be accurate. It couldn’t be. Benton dreamed of the future.
In unison, every monitor within the room began to emit a static buzz, the glow of the monitors increasing until it hurt to look at them. Kyle pulled back and bumped into the two women who were blocking the exit. Their bodies knocked into each other as they stumbled out into the hall. The overhead lights began to strobe, flicking on and off, faster and faster as the bulbs strained. They all ducked, covering their heads as the monitors began to pop, sending the thick glass scattering onto the floor.
“Wake up Benton!” Dorothy commanded over the noise.
Nicole was already racing to the door. She flung it open. The rotating night light spun wildly, turning the dancing shapes into streaks of color over the shadows. Something smacked sharply against the outside of the window and she leaped back at the sound. The second sharp blow came with the pained cry of an owl and the thick creak of cracking glass. Then there was another. And another. Glass savagely slashed through the curtain as the next owl burst into the area.
It shrieked as it hurdled around the room, a blizzard of white feathers and murderous talons. A terrified scream escaped her as it swooped past her, its claws finding the arm she had thrown up to protect her face. Blood oozed from her slashed skin and dripped on the floor. The once steady rhythm of the heart monitor became the sound of a loud, shrilled drone that combated against the howling wind and manic animal that now filled the space.
Benton thrashed against the bed. He twisted and kicked in the air. The wires attached to him couldn’t withstand his violent movements and were being ripped out from both the monitors and his skin. His motions made the bed shake and shift over the floor. His spine ached, his neck strained, and his hands pawed across the thin mattress.
Nicole tried to step into the room once more but the owl had been joined by at least five more, their true numbers lost amidst the spinning lights, wind, and the rainwater streaming into the room. Standing in the doorway, her fingers uselessly trying to lessen the flow of blood, Nicole screamed for Benton. The wind fiercely blew at her long hair and tossed it across her face, blocking her vision momentarily. Still, she knew he hadn’t heard her. That her desperate cry hadn’t changed anything.
“Benton!”
Lightning streaked across the sky and for one, glaring moment, the room was filled to the brim with a stark light. Benton bolted upright. His eyes wide. Horror twisted up every muscle of his face and turned his body to stone. Nicole barely had time to cover her ears before Benton’s wail exploded through the room. The colossal sound was layered; a human scream, beneath a high-pitched shriek that emulated microphone feedback. The sound vibrated and pulsed, reaching notes no human vocal cord could reach.
The heavy monitors rattled across the floor as the room shook. Never pausing, Benton’s banshee wail rose to a pitch that the two-way mirror, the nightlight, and shards of the window couldn’t weather. Dorothy grabbed Nicole by the back of her shirt and yanked her off her feet as everything glass in the room detonated, like a bomb, all at once. Then there was silence.
Safe in her mother’s arms, Nicole tried to catch her breath as a piercing whine rang in her ears. Dorothy touched her shoulder and Nicole nodded that she was okay. The cuts on her arm weren’t too deep and the adrenaline that pulsed through her system dulled the sting. As Dorothy turned to soothe the rattled doctor, Nicole made her way back to the doorway. She had expected to see Benton heaving and confused. Or perhaps hurriedly covering himself with the blanket to protec
t himself from the still swirling owls. She hadn’t expected him to be already on his feet.
With complete disregard for the deadly talons swooshing past him at the height of his eyes, Benton crossed the debris barefoot, found his socks, and yanked them on.
“Benton?”
“We need to go,” he said as he put on his jacket. “Now!”
She ducked under a few of the birds as she moved to his side. “It’s okay. This wasn’t your fault.”
Benton laughed and her stomach dropped. She knew that laugh. It was the kind of manic, delirious, bellow laughter he gave when he knew something she didn’t; when he had something horrific captured within the cage of his ribs. The sound cleared the panic clashing within her just enough for her to remember what kind of wail he had just produced. It wasn’t the one she had heard him give as a furious warning. It was fear. Whatever he had seen was enough to terrify him to the core of his soul.
“Benton?”
He stormed to the door, only hesitating at her side long enough to whisper.
“Something is headed to Fort Wayward. And it’s going to kill everyone it finds.”
Chapter 7
Lightning stretched across the sky like skeletal fingers, its electric glow spreading across the world, subduing it in a sterile haze. Thunder trembled the earth as the wind clobbered into Benton’s wiry form. He staggered across the narrow parking lot, slumping against the few parked cars as he searched through the sheeting rain for any sign of the bus. The task was made all the harder by the obsidian clouds that choked off the sunlight. They left the day in a perpetual state of nightfall, and with the growing shadows and unrelenting rain, anything beyond a few feet was reduced to splotches on unsharpened color.
He was barely beyond the clinic’s doors and already his clothes were heavy from the downpour. Water streamed over his skin in thick rivulets and trickled off of his nose, his ears, and each of his fingertips. The icy deluge had only needed a few seconds to rob him of the warmth that his clothes had kept. Now, as he worked his way deeper into the chaos, the cold had seeped down into his bones.