by Alex Smith
“He sees everything,” the man went on. “He always has, always will. He is nameless, and timeless. He has been here forever. He came for me, he pulled me out of life, he made me… he made me do it. I didn’t want to do it but he made me.”
“Made you do what?” Blake asked, looking up. The guy shook his head.
“Made me hunt them. Made me kill them. I thought I wanted… I wanted something else, I thought I needed him, needed all the ones like him.”
“The ones like him?” Blake said. “What do you mean?”
“He’s not alone, they’re never alone. They work in packs and they talk to each other, compete with each other. Devils, pig-headed demons, there are too many of them but he’s the worst. I didn’t want him to kill them.”
“Kill who?” Blake said. “These people? The Nevills? Did you do that?”
The guy’s face dropped into his chest and he sobbed uncontrollably, speaking in snatches between each racking breath.
“No, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t… He killed them but I was there… I helped him. I held them… We all did.”
“Who? Who’s we?”
“Others,” said the guy. “There are so many. He stole us all, he has our names, we can’t fight him. I used to… Some of them like it. Some of them worship him. And I did too, at the beginning. They were just people, just nobodies. It doesn’t matter if they die because we all die. Who cares if we kill them? People die every single day and we just… we were just helping them die, helping them die, it wasn’t bad.”
Blake frowned, trying to make sense of everything that was pouring out of the guy’s mouth.
“So there’s more than two of you,” he said, thinking about the man in the delivery truck, and the locksmith. “How many?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been a part of it since… I can’t be a part of it anymore. They’re in danger, only I can help them.”
“They?”
“Lizzie,” the man said. “Her children. I can’t let him take them.”
“They’re already dead,” said Blake. “Fuck, they’re already dead, are you… Can you not see that?”
“Nonononono,” the man said, starting to struggle again. “No, it’s not true, you’re lying.”
“I’m, look, calm down,” Blake said. “It’s too late for them, but I’m still alive, and my wife, my son, you can help us, you can save us. Please.”
The man’s kicks grew weaker and he looked at Blake, really looked at him, like this was the first time he was truly aware of who he was talking to. He licked the snot and blood from his lips, trying to wipe his face on the coils of hose around his chest. He was growing even paler, as white as parchment. It seemed, for a moment, as if Blake could see the garden through him, as if he was a ghost.
“Please,” Blake said again. “I just need to know who he is.”
“You already know,” said the man, sniffing. “We all know him. He’s the bad thing that lies inside us all, the hate, the greed, the fury. He’s the darkness at the end of the world, the… the night that will swallow the day. You cannot hide from him, you cannot run from him, you cannot fight him. Once he chooses you, he will hunt you. Six days, six hours, six minutes exactly, from the moment he marks you to the moment he ends you.”
“But why?” Blake asked.
“Why not?” the man answered, shrugging as best he could. “Why anything?”
“Then why six days? Why not just kill me straight away?”
“Because it’s not your death he wants, not really.” He coughed, hard, and for a terrible second his eyes rolled up in their sockets again, like he was staring at something above them. His head lolled, but before Blake could get up he was back, blinking furiously. “He doesn’t care about your death. It’s not what he wants.”
“What does he want?” Blake said.
“Fear,” said the guy. “Your fear. He feeds on it. It’s what makes him who he is.”
“Are you serious?” Blake said, hissing a humourless laugh out of his nose. “Fear?”
But he could see him now, the devil man, standing in his living room on that first day, breathing in slowly, like he was savouring the scent of a gourmet dinner. And again at Homebase, when he stood there with the axe, his nostrils flaring. And last night, too. He’d breathed in so deeply Blake had felt it against his skin, as if he was trying to suck him up.
“It’s all he wants,” the guy said. “The more frightened you are, the harder he’ll push. It’s why he chooses people like you, weak people, it’s why he comes after you the way he does, why he tells you he’ll kill your family too. It’s all to make you afraid. And when you’re afraid, he feeds on you.”
“You’re wrong,” said Blake. “You’re fucking insane. Listen to yourself, feeding on fear. It’s bullshit. He’s just a man, just a fucking cowardly, murdering prick who gets snivelling shits like you to do his dirty work because you don’t know any different. It’s like a… like a cult. He’s just a man.”
“He’s not,” said the guy. “You haven’t seen what he’s capable of. What he does to them. I’ve seen him.”
“Yeah, you’ve seen him,” Blake pushed himself up, jabbing the crowbar at the man. “You were here. You helped him kill a whole family. Kids, for fuck’s sake, they were just kids. How could you do it?”
“No no no,” the guy said. “You don’t understand, you weren’t there. You can’t fight him, he’s too strong.”
“You could have fought him, you could have stopped him. They’d be alive now if you’d done something.”
“No!” the man screamed, struggling, the veranda groaning. “No!”
“You could have stopped him,” Blake said again. “How many times?”
“No!”
“How many people has he killed?”
“No!”
“How many people have you killed?”
“No! No!”
Blake dug the end of the crowbar into the man’s throat, pushing it deep. He gargled.
“Enough of this,” said Blake. “Just tell me where he is.”
“He’s nowhere,” the guy replied. “He’s everywhere. He’s watching us right now, he’s watching us right now.”
The old phone beside Blake emitted a loud bleep and the guy began to wail—the noise of a man on the electric chair watching the lever being thrown.
“Ohfuckohfuckohfuckheknows.”
“Calm down,” Blake said, but the guy was growing more panicked by the second, thrashing against the makeshift rope. Blake lifted the phone. “What’s the code?”
“Don’t do it, please don’t,” said the guy. “Please.”
“The code!” Blake roared, pushing the crowbar in further, leaning into it, feeling it push against the ridge of his Adam’s apple. The guy choked, spitting blood. Blake pulled it free and he gasped.
“One f—” he wheezed, catching his breath. “One five three four.”
Blake thumbed in the code. The phone seemed to take an age to respond, and it took Blake even longer to find where the messages were stored. There were three now, waiting. The oldest read:
I am here. You are not.
He clicked on the second:
Do not disobey me.
“Yeah, sees everything,” Blake spat. “Except where you are and what you’re doing. He’s texting you, for Christ’s sake.”
“You don’t understand,” said the guy. He was calmer now, like he’d run out of fuel. He stared at the floor, his face so slack it could be about to slop right off the bone. “You don’t understand.”
“Yeah, I do,” said Blake. “I understand that no devil needs to talk to his followers on a Nokia 3310.”
Then he loaded up the final message, the one that had just come through, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe.
Hello Blake.
Forty
His heart stammered back, his pulse roaring like it was trying to make up for those missing beats. He read the text message again, because he couldn’t believe wh
at he was seeing.
Hello Blake.
The words didn’t make sense.
Hello Blake.
He dropped the phone and it bounced hard. Then he kicked it into the grass, half expecting it to slither away like a snake. He looked down at the young man and opened his mouth to speak before finding that he couldn’t.
“It’s too late,” said the man, just a whisper. “He knows. He knows everything. He knows what you’re thinking, what you’re doing. He knows even before you do.”
“How?” Blake croaked. “It’s not possible.”
“I told you,” was all he said.
Blake paced from side to side, his feet thumping on the wooden deck. It had to have been a lucky guess. There was no way the man could have known he’d be here, no way. Not unless the guy was right.
He’s a devil.
“Fuck!” Blake said. He paced some more then whirled around, the crowbar raised. “You did this! You told him you were meeting me!”
Even as he spoke, he knew it didn’t make sense. Nobody had known he was here.
Blake’s thoughts were a maelstrom, circling his head impossibly fast. He clutched his skull to slow them down, trying to pick out anything relevant, anything that made sense.
“He, he sent you here,” he stuttered. “That’s the only explanation. He made you follow me, to freak me out. Like yesterday. You’re trying to… to fuck up my head. Why? To scare me?”
If that was it then it was working. He gagged at the sheer, unthinkable terror of it. He’d never been this scared before, he’d never been this angry either. He charged at the guy again, feigning a strike with the crowbar but holding it back.
“Tell me that’s what this is,” he said, a snarl.
The guy flinched, shaking his head.
“You can’t beat him,” he said. “Elizabeth tried. She tried to take her kids and run.”
“What?”
“She thought she could escape, but he knew that’s what she was going to do. The night she planned to leave—the fourth night after he had marked her—she packed up her stuff. She was going to run. But he knew. We were right here, right here.” The guy nodded at the house. “She opened the door, Alice in one hand, a bag in another, her two boys right behind her. She opened the door and… And I can still see it. I can see the moment she saw us, the moment she knew it was over.”
He groaned again, spittle hanging from his lip.
“She tried to run, she told the children to hide. And he knew, he knew exactly where they would go. One of us held her, Elizabeth. Two of us walked upstairs with him and he knew. Two under the bed, one in the wardrobe. He didn’t look, he knew exactly where they were.”
“Elizabeth was the one he marked?” Blake asked, the crowbar dropping limply to his side. “Not Luis?”
“Elizabeth,” the guy said.
“But why?”
“Why not?” the guy said again, instantly, like it was an answer he had told himself a million times. “Why not? He made her… He made her listen. He made them call out for her, call for their mother. And…” He rocked his head back and forth as if to dislodge the memories, the back of his skull crunching against the wood. “He killed her last, and slowly. They all died, and she was the last.”
“But what about her husband?” Blake asked. “Why didn’t he kill Luis?”
“Because he wanted him to suffer more,” the guy said. “I told you, that’s what he does. It’s what he feeds on. Her fear, and then her husband’s. He knew Luis would be charged with the murders, knew that it would drive him mad. He fed on him right up until he was thrown in prison. Then he killed him.”
“How?” Blake asked. “He was inside a secure hospital.”
The guy flashed him a look, one-part frustration and three-parts pity.
“I told you, there are many of us. You cannot count us, you cannot kill us, you cannot divide us, you cannot turn us. We are his and we…” He swallowed hard, finishing the sentence reluctantly, as if he was reciting a mantra. “We are legion.”
It was too much. Blake dropped the crowbar and ran his fingers through his hair, digging them into his scalp just to feel something that wasn’t this. Out in the grass the phone bleeped and he retrieved it. The message read: Are you talking about me, Blake? Tut tut.
A blind fury blasted everything from his head and he threw the phone onto the veranda. Picking up the crowbar he lashed out at it, missed, splinters detonating. He tried again and the phone’s screen cracked. Again, and this time the number pad detached and bounced away. He kept hitting until the phone was nothing but parts, strewn across the deck and the lawn. Even then, he expected it to bleep.
He turned his attention to the garden, to the driveway, to the forest beyond. Was the man here now? Was he watching? Blake took a few unsteady steps onto the grass, his weapon held high.
“Where are you?” he yelled, nowhere near as loud as he wanted to. “Come on!”
Nothing stirred. There was nobody there, he could feel that absence as clearly and as certainly as he could feel the crowbar in his hand. He lowered it again, walking onto the veranda and leaning against the side of the house. He felt like an asthmatic who had tried to run a marathon, his heart palpitating behind his ribs.
“What can I do?” he asked.
No response. He looked down at the guy, saw that his eyes had rolled back again.
“Hey!” Blake said. The guy came around, slowly. “What can I do?”
“Nothing,” he said, chewing the words like he didn’t know what they were. “I told you.”
“Then why are you here?” Blake said, no anger in his voice now. He had nothing left to give. “Why come here?”
“To be with them,” the man replied. “To tell them it will be okay. To show Lizzie that we’re not all monsters.”
Blake breathed out a sigh, one that turned into a sob. He pinched his nose to hold back the tears, fighting not to break down. If he started crying now, he thought, he would never be able to stop.
“This is just a coincidence?” he asked. “You being here?”
“Nothing is coincidence,” the man replied. “Coincidence is just the devil proving that he exists. I didn’t know. He did.”
“And yesterday?” Blake said. “In the mall. You told me you could have helped them. You said you could have done something. What did you mean?”
“I didn’t say that,” the guy replied, craning his head to both sides and shouting out for somebody else to hear. “I didn’t say that!”
Blake’s phone buzzed in his pocket but he ignored it, getting onto his knees beside the man, leaning into him.
“Please,” he said. “It’s not too late. You can help me, help us. My son is only one year old, he’s got his whole life to live. Julia’s a doctor, a surgeon, she helps people. Please, just give us a chance.”
“You had a chance,” the man spat back, raging. “You had a chance. Do nothing, just let him kill you. They would have lived; they would have had their lives. But you couldn’t do that, could you? You couldn’t put them first, you selfish fuck!”
Blake reeled back, suddenly weightless.
“You’ve killed them,” the guy said. “You’ve killed us all.”
Blake’s phone buzzed again and he pulled it out of his pocket. One text, from an unknown number.
He is mine, and we are legion.
Blake’s skin felt as if it might slither right off his bones.
“How does he know?” he said.
“He knows it all,” the guy whispered. “He controls everything. Nothing is yours anymore, don’t you get it? Your phone, your car, your house, your job, your life. He owns it. He’ll take your wife, he’ll take your son. If you’re lucky, he’ll kill you too.”
“Lucky?”
“Yeah, lucky. Because he might leave you alive, he might keep taking. Your name, your mind. He might make you one of his.”
Blake hovered on the edge of a mindless oblivion, a terrifying, insane hopelessness. The pol
ice, he had to go to them now. He didn’t have much evidence but at least he had this guy. He was a witness, he knew enough to at least get the devil man arrested. If they could hold him for a while it would give Blake enough time to get away, to find somewhere safe.
“I need you to come with me,” Blake said, sliding his phone back in his pocket.
The man shook his head, staring at something a thousand feet away, something only he could see. Blake pulled the blade from his back pocket, holding it for a second. He was taking a big risk by cutting the man loose. For all he knew he’d come after him again, try to gouge out his throat. He was seriously injured, though, his head still swelling. If it came to it, Blake could just hit him with the crowbar.
He crouched and sawed at the hose. The blade was rusty but sharp, and within a few seconds the rubber parted. Blake grabbed the severed end and began to unwind it from around the guy, tossing it away when he’d finished. The young man made no move to attack him, he made no move at all.
“Come on,” said Blake, tucking the knife back in his pocket and picking up the crowbar, just in case. “I’ll take you to the hospital first, they can sort out your head. Yeah?”
“He won’t let you,” the guy said.
“He can’t stop me,” Blake replied, softly though, not wanting to tempt fate. “He’s not here. Come on, my car’s just down the drive.”
The guy looked up at him, seeming to grow younger by the second. His face was a child’s face, the face of a boy waking up from a terrible dream. He blinked his big, moon-bright eyes at Blake, wiping a mud-caked hand over his bloodstained face. Blake offered his hand and the man looked at it like it was a loaded gun.
“We can beat him,” Blake said again. “I promise. We can find a way.”
“You promise?”
Blake nodded and the man reached out and took his hand. His grip was kitten weak and Blake had to hold tight in order to haul him to his feet. He looked for a moment like he was going to pass out again and Blake leaned him against the side of the house. Was he even going to make it to a hospital? Maybe he should call 999 and get an ambulance out here. But he couldn’t risk it, not without knowing where the devil man was. It might take the paramedics a while to get out here, and anything could happen in that time.