Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II)

by Robert J. Duperre

  Why can’t they hear me? she thought.

  “I am the only one for you,” laughed the voice. “I love you.”

  Marcy drew together all the strength she could and balled her fists. Anger rose in her gullet and streamed from her pores like acid. “Fuck you!” she screamed. “If you love me so much, then why are you hiding?”

  The intruder paused. An eerie silence followed. A thousand microscopic needles pricked at her flesh, giving physical sensation to her moment of doubt.

  “I am afraid you would not love me,” the voice said finally. There was no sincerity in its alien tone.

  “That’s a load of crap,” she snarled. “You’re a fucking liar.”

  It laughed. “There is no need for vulgarity, my sweet.”

  The tentacle pressing against her abdomen squirmed yet again. Trudy’s final words rang in her ears. Despite the queasiness the sensation founded, she grinned.

  “Fuck you, asshole,” she said. “I know what scares you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, it is. So stop being a goddamn coward and show yourself.”

  “Are you sure you want to be so belligerent, Marcy? You do not know what I am capable of.”

  “Try me.”

  The voice chuckled. A nauseous gargling sound followed and a huge, black mass uncoiled above her. It descended from inside the ceiling like a spider. When it reached the ground and turned to her, Marcy’s eyes swelled.

  The thing looming before her had to be at least eight feet tall. It stood on four appendages covered with spines that ended in monstrous, sharp hooves. Rolls of loose, scaly flesh spooled across its back. The tentacles holding her in place were just a few of the seemingly hundreds that germinated from its torso; they writhed in the air like a tangle of rapacious snakes. The behemoth had a tail, as well, and it too was covered in spikes. The tail swooshed to one side, then the other.

  The worst part emerged. From the center of its body rose a long, serpentine neck. On top of this neck sat the fusion of every nightmare she’d ever dreamt: a skeletal cranium, like that of a horse, whose bottom jaw jutted out a foot farther than the upper; the eyes of a fly, covered with a translucent membrane that blinked every few seconds; the upturned, pinkish nose of a bat; and finally those oversized jaws themselves, fitted with immense teeth of varying sizes. A pair of monstrous tusks sprung up from both sides of its lower jowl. The tips rested on the top of its head when it closed its mouth.

  The thing moved closer, until they were virtually rubbing noses. Hot, stinking breath stung Marcy’s face. She couldn’t move. All she could do was stare at the tubes of flesh that covered its body. The thought came to mind that her sudden dose of brazenness had been a tad misplaced.

  “I…know…your…name…” she said, recalling Trudy’s final warning. The limb around her throat tightened in panic. She gasped.

  “Per…cy…you’re name’s…Percy…”

  The tentacle loosened. The monster cackled. “Who is this Percy?” it said.

  Marcy’s heart plummeted. Tears flowed down her cheeks. I don’t wanna die, she thought, and braced for just that possibility. Her cheeks grew hot as the tentacle tightened yet again. The air trapped in her lungs threatened to implode her.

  She was about to give up, to surrender to the inevitability of fate, when a new stream of words and concepts that hadn’t been there before suddenly flooded her brain. They rolled across her mind’s eye like blips on a computer screen. Part of it went something like this: T.S. Eliot, though a Nazi apologist, was the greatest poet of the twentieth century…I should have known better than to fall for a student…she would still be alive if not for me…the world must know my story…it is the only gift I have to offer…

  Finally, she understood Trudy’s instructions. Call out his name.

  She bit her tongue and, clenching her elbows to her sides, screamed as loud as she could a name she hadn’t known – couldn’t have known – only two seconds before.

  “WILLIAM!”

  The creature Percy turned its head. Its bug eyes pointed towards the wall, where the liquid sheen of the room within a room had lain. Marcy followed its gaze. To her surprise the area wasn’t partitioned off any longer; it had become nothing but her bedroom once more. She saw something in the corner, the older black man from the other side. His legs were crossed and he appeared slightly bewildered. He lifted his brow. Those intense, dark eyes looked at her, through her. Percy’s feelers squeezed even harder. Breath left her with a whimper.

  Help me, William, she thought. Help me now.

  The man, this William, rose to his feet with the dexterity of a tiger. He rushed forward and jumped on the enormous, misshapen back of the creature. His arms wrapped around its neck. Tentacles waved about him, but he was undeterred. He yanked back and began to pummel its repulsive head with his fists. A high-pitched shriek, like a dog whistle, caused her brain to cramp. Her protector didn’t seem to notice. He kept up the attack. It was violent. It was merciless.

  The grip on Marcy’s neck loosened. She dropped from against the wall and crumpled to the floor. She brought her hands up and felt the welts now imprinted just below her cheeks. Dizziness wrapped her in its tornado. Her body went numb. It felt as if a cosmic vacuum cleaner had sucked the vivacity from her soul.

  As her world grew dim, she lay on the carpet and watched the struggle. Her protector (William, his name’s William) continued to pummel the creature’s hide with a brutal salvo of fists, elbows, and feet. Percy’s hideous legs crumpled beneath it. Still the beating continued. Yellow and red pus oozed with every blow William landed.

  Before long, the body of the creature that would be Percy the Nasty Crocodile lost any semblance of structure. It bubbled like a lump of hot tar. The last remnants of its former self were the giant set of tusks, protruding from the center of the mess like arbitrary stalactites. Even those disintegrated after time, and finally the monster that had held her captive was reduced to a steaming puddle of black mucus. She wanted to smile as she watched Billy raise his fist as if to strike one last time. Strands of viscous stuck to his knuckles.

  Everything fell silent. Billy, her knight in grimy fleece, stood alone in the center of the rapidly depleting pool of muck. His teeth bared, arms held out with elbows bent, the pose of a boxer standing over a defeated foe. Gradually his face softened and he looked at her. His eyes penetrated her – it felt odd, though pleasurable, like a can of compressed air blown through her veins – and she finally managed to smile. She tried to mouth thank you, but her strength slipped away. So she did the next best thing; she concentrated as hard as she could and hummed old jazz staples.

  Somehow, she knew he’d like that.

  Chapter 6

  Walkabout

  “Hey, Mister Mathis, what’s up? Mister Mathis? Professor?”

  Billy shook his head. Visions of a dark-haired damsel in distress withered away, as did the hideous monster with a thousand waggling limbs. He stared at his hands. For a moment he saw them covered in blood. A type of fury he hadn’t felt in a very long time emerged. Fingers snapped in front of his face. His hand shot up and snatched the invader by the wrist.

  “Ouch, that hurts!” a young voice squealed.

  He released his grip and ground his fists into his eyes. When he pulled his hands away there was no blood on them any longer. Where am I? he thought. What is going on here? Gradually it all came back to him and he sheepishly glanced about.

  He was in the cramped office of the storehouse, sitting on the dirty rug with a mahogany desk to his right and the kerosene heater to his left. His new young friend sat across from him. The boy held the arm Billy had squeezed, an expression of betrayed shock plastered across his narrowed brow.

  “I am sorry, Christopher,” he said.

  The teenager bit his quivering lip. “Why’d you do that?” he asked.

  “It is nothing you must be wary of,” he replied. He reached across the space between them and patted him on his knee. Christopher re
coiled slightly but seemed to settle in. Billy smiled. The unreal event he’d just experienced started to fade from his memory, and he wanted to facilitate a return to normalcy. “That does not matter now, and again I apologize. Now, remind me of what we were speaking about.”

  Christopher appeared confounded, yet he pulled himself together and replied in a conciliatory tone. “You were telling me about a book. Heart of Darkness. The one they made that war movie about.”

  “Oh yes, I remember,” he said, thankful for the distraction. “Joseph Conrad wrote that novella in an attempt to fictionalize the effect of European extension on the indigenous cultures of Africa. The title, Heart of Darkness, refers to the dark places we all have, locked away behind a mask of compliance and forward thinking that has haunted our civilization since the morn we crafted tools and struck the first fatal blow to our brother in the name of righteous expansion…”

  * * *

  Billy lay on the floor and pulled the sleeping bag up to his shoulders. He opened his duffel bag, removed the plastic binder from within, flipped open the cover, and took out a blank sheet of lined paper. He closed the cover and gently placed the paper atop it. With pencil in hand he tapped the page, creating a random pattern of gray-black pockmarks.

  You must do this, he thought. Your story is important.

  Yet the words would not come.

  He peered at Christopher, rolled up in a ball, fast asleep, a few feet away. In no way did he envy the youngster, a fourteen-year-old high school student from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

  Chris had disclosed an abridged version of his tale after recovering from the initial shock of waking up with a strange black man slouched in the corner only a few feet away. He’d been in the city visiting extended family when, in his words, “these bumpy-headed dudes with big teeth” attacked and overturned his parents’ car. According to the boy’s story, he was able to crawl out the smashed rear window while his folks and younger brother screamed for help. He originally intended to go in search of that help, but the approaching mob caused him to simply run and hide while they massacred the rest of his family. The expression that appeared on Christopher’s face while he relayed this chapter spoke volumes. All color washed from his cheeks, his lower lip trembled, and tears dripped over the bridge of his nose. The guilt must have been unrelenting. This was a child with nothing left. Billy, a man he didn’t even know very well, was all he had. No, he did not envy the boy in the slightest.

  Billy appreciated the company, however. They’d spent the past three weeks stuck in the same place, the lonely back room of the retail clothing store, while nature continued its barrage outside the storefront windows. It was The Blizzard That Would Not End. Never in his life had he seen this much snow.

  Echoes of a now-meaningless past bombarded them in the most mundane of ways. Affordable, semi-fancy racks of clothing filled the store. Their price tags mocked, tempting them to remember a lost world. These things held no meaning any longer, and Billy found himself longing for that significance to return. If I believed in God, he thought, I might assume this was Hell.

  Still, the pencil was in his hand and the desire to work pressed in on him. The urge to recount his painful past hid its head behind the rise of his mind’s horizon, making it impossible for him to see anything but the moment. In a fit of frustration he jammed the sheet of paper back into the folder and stuffed that back into his bag. He sighed, rested his head upon the pile of high-end windbreakers he used for a pillow, and closed his eyes.

  Tomorrow, he thought. The words will return to me tomorrow.

  * * *

  The next day the clouds departed and Billy saw the sun as a free man for the first time in over a decade. It was beautiful. The icicles that hung from the outcropping over the front entrance began to melt. Water dripped on the fiberglass windowpanes, creating a soft and rhythmic patter. He stood in the doorway and beamed. Even though, by his best calculations, it was only the first week of February, and snowdrifts as tall as fifteen feet high still pressed against the outside walls of the building, it seemed he could smell spring in the air. It might’ve been a trick of the mind but he didn’t care. To his nose, these scents carried the aroma of liberty.

  It didn’t last. The vividness he felt also brought about a harrowing sense of dread. He thought of SCI Greensburg and of what the coming seasons might bring. Barrenness surrounded him, and Christopher was the only living being he’d rested his weary eyes upon since leaving the prison’s confines. He wondered if there were any other people left in the world at all. He mulled over the stories Chris had told him, stories of widespread sickness and violence that had seemingly brought about the end of western civilization, and found it hard to see a glimmer of hope. One question remained, and it was a query for which he, in his ignorance of the situation, had no answer.

  What next?

  He watched from a distance as Christopher lugged a pair of lawn chairs from the stockroom and placed them at the front of the store. The boy set them up, side-by-side, in a place where the day’s brightness radiated through the windows, encircling him in the glowing embrace of an invisible goddess.

  “Come on, Mr. Mathis,” he said as he plunked his body, still swathed in layers of clothes, on one of the chairs. He put on a pair of oversized sunglasses. “If you close your eyes and forget about the cold,” he said, ‘it feels like you’re sitting on a deck in Key West. It’s cool.”

  “No, thank you,” replied Billy. “I am fine where I am.”

  Christopher let the sunglasses drop to the tip of his freckled nose. He gazed at Billy over the dark frames and grinned. The frivolous expression he wore seemed familiar to him in the most sickening of ways.

  He is not Calhoun, he thought. Let it go.

  “C’mon, Professor,” pleaded Christopher. “Stop being such a bummer.”

  Billy closed his eyes. Images from the previous night’s sporadic sleep came back to him. His spirits dipped even more. He hated dreams. They confused him, they weren’t real. And yet he couldn’t force them, or his reservations about the future, from of his mind. It was as if his brain had gone walkabout and left his body behind.

  “Can I talk to you?” Christopher asked. Billy opened his eyes. The boy stood above him. His carefree air had vanished, replaced by the drawn-in lips of uncertainty.

  “Of course,” said Billy.

  Christopher sat across from him, a position they found themselves in quite often over the past month. He removed his sunglasses and placed them on the floor.

  “Back in Bethlehem,” he began, “there was a girl. Her name was Molly Weathers. The prettiest girl in school. I wanted to be with her so bad.”

  Billy nodded. He couldn’t understand where this was coming from or why the boy chose now, of all times, to talk about it.

  “She didn’t want nothing to do with me,” Christopher continued. His stare dropped to his shoes. He fiddled with his laces as he spoke. “She thought I was a jerk, but I wasn’t. Honestly. I just hung out with my friends and played hockey, and that’s it. I never said a bad word to no one. But every time I tried to talk to her, she’d blow me off.”

  Chris wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I never had a problem getting girls. They’d just kinda show up. You know? I mean, shoot, I was a popular dude…for a freshman. I guess I got a little big in the head. It pissed me off that she wouldn’t go out with me. That never happened before.”

  Billy frowned. He started shaking. “What did you do?”

  “I started making fun of her. Practical jokes and stuff. I spread rumors and told all the other boys she was a slut. I just acted like an asshole. And then…”

  As his voice trailed off Billy’s cheeks flushed. He knew what came next. It was the same old story with different players. He tried his best to keep his fists at his side.

  “It was just little stuff, you know?” said Christopher without looking up. “But I cared about her, man. I was, like, obsessed. I dreamed about her every night, and in those dreams
she liked me. But then I’d wake up and she didn’t want me all over again. I think I loved and hated her at the same time.”

  “What did you do to her?” asked Billy. His voice was starting to rise, but the boy, lost in memory, didn’t seem to notice. His eyes gazed off into the distance, contemplative.

  “Nothing. School ended and she transferred. To somewhere in Illinois, I think. But I still think about her every day, even now. She’s still in my dreams, and I can’t stand it. Sometimes I hear her laugh when I’m falling asleep. She had the cutest laugh. I mean, the world’s gone to hell, my family’s dead, and I spend my time worrying about her. It hurts so bad to think about how much of a dick I was. It’s weird. She never even liked me, but she’s still all I think about.”

  Billy’s defenses dropped. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Just because,” Christopher said with a shrug. He finally looked up, and his eyes were full of tears. “I gotta be honest with you, Mister Mathis. You’re all I got, and I don’t want no secrets, you know?”

  From the mouths of babes, thought Billy while lips said, “Yes.”

  “So don’t hold back from me, neither, okay? ‘Cause I don’t wanna lose you, too.”

  “What do you want to know?” he asked

  “Why were you in jail?”

  He sighed. “I did something very bad.”

  “What was it? You kill somebody?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Oh.”

  The boy drew back. Billy placed a reassuring hand on his knee. “You have nothing to worry about, son. What happened was nothing but a regrettable situation.”

  “Bad enough to kill someone?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A boy named Eric Calhoun. He dearly hurt someone very close to me. She was a girl, a student of mine. He took her life, and in response to that, I took his…to even the scales, if you will.”

  Christopher seemed baffled. “And you’re all right with that?”