The Last Rite

by Chad Morgan

  Growing up without a dad, she sometimes made one up in her head. She looked at her friends’ fathers and, in her mind, mixed and matched parts and personalities until she came up with what she thought was the perfect imaginary father. To Bethany, her father would be funny, and just a little portly but not too fat, and would hug her and give her embarrassing kisses on the check when her friends were looking. When the shadows came and Mommy became scared all the time, her fantasy father evolved to become brave and strong. Gone were the round belly and jowls as her fictitious dad grew the muscles of a comic book hero. As she watched Daniel enter the clinic with the slow and deliberate steps of a tiger on the hunt, she thought about how her real father stacked to the one she had envisioned most of her life. He was brave, and while Daniel was no super hero he was strong, but she realized she’d trade all of that for a father that would hug her. She felt her heart tie into a knot as she missed Mommy’s hugs and wondered if she’d ever be hugged again. She thought about running to Daniel and throwing her arms around his waist, just squeeze him tight and bury her face against him until all the bad things went away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. What would Daniel do if she did? Would he hug her back? Just stand there and take it, all the while wishing it would end? Or would he get angry and push her away? She didn’t know, and when she thought about it, she realized it didn’t matter. What she wanted was a daddy to hold her tight and chase all the nightmares away, but while Daniel might be her father, he wasn’t her daddy. They were just two strangers that were stuck with each other.

  Daniel was too far into the clinic now, too far away from her for her to feel safe. She clutched Chrissy tight and stepped into the clinic, biting back a whimper. Bethany nudged the door, and it began to swing shut on its own. As the light was being shut off, Bethany caught a glimpse of something walking by the clinic on the street outside. It looked like a large dog, and as it walked by the door it stared in at her. Their eyes met for the second or so before the clinic door closed, and for some reason, Bethany no longer felt afraid. It was as if her mother had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Then the door closed, and she was alone with Daniel in the dim building.

  She stood just inside the clinic for a moment, letting her eyes and her courage adjust to the dark. Rays of light did spill through between the boards covering the windows, but the room was cast in shadows, and she remembered how dangerous shadows could be. Behind the door were the piles of building materials that Daniel had shoved aside when he had pushed the door open. Boards, nails, and one or two hammers lay out-of-place about the medical clinic’s waiting room.

  “Daniel?” she asked. “Why is there all this wood and nails and stuff?”

  Daniel was leaning over the receptionist’s counter, trying to see what was in the back side of the clinic, when he turned back and looked at what Bethany was talking about. “Looks like they were boarding up the place, except . . .” Daniel’s thoughts trailed off. Mommy used to do that when she realized mid-sentence she was talking to her daughter and not another adult.

  “What?” Bethany asked.

  “Nothing.”

  She was not too curious to feel scared. “Tell me.”

  Daniel waved it off. “Forget it, it’s probably nothing.”

  Stupidest adult line ever. If it was nothing, then why was it worth hiding? “Tell me, c’mon.”

  Daniel thought for a moment, then said, “It’s just that when you boarder up a window, like if there’s a storm, you’re doing it to keep them from being broken by flying debris.”

  Bethany waited, but Daniel stood there with an expression that said he hoped that was enough. It wasn’t. “So?”

  Daniel pointed to the windows. “These boards are nailed up from the inside.”

  She looked to the windows, then back to Daniel. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. Let’s get this taken care of.”

  He held up his wounded and bleeding arm. In the dim light, the blood soaking through the bandages looked black to Bethany. On one end of the waiting room was a door ajar that lead deeper into the clinic, and Bethany swallowed back a scream as Daniel disappeared through it. She darted after him, afraid of being out of his line of sight, only to run into the back of his legs. In the center of the room was a U-shaped table where the nurses and doctors would sit. Scattered amongst the computer keyboards and telephones were clipboard and papers. Along two walls were patient rooms, their cabinets open and their contents were strewn over the floor. At the third wall was a break room and an office, also ransacked.

  Daniel reached over and grabbed one of the receivers. Holding it up to his ear, he then tapped the button to end the call. Bethany watched as Daniel pulled on the cord until he pulled up the frayed end into his hand. He dropped the phone onto its cradle, and Bethany jumped as the hard plastic clattered together. Something caught Daniel’s eye, and he leaned over and brushed some of the papers away. Bethany leaned over to see what he was looking at. Scratched into the desk was “Who’s the key?”

  “What happened here?” Bethany asked Daniel.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Let’s get this arm cleaned out and let’s get out of here.”

  Daniel started heading towards one of the exam rooms, but Bethany froze. The exam room was even darker, but the darkness was nothing compared to the other horrors Daniel wanted to show her. She had barely kept from getting sick the last time when Daniel insisted she help dress his bite wound, and now he wanted to clean it out. She knew what that meant. Daniel was not going to wash it out, he was going to dig out the old stuff, maybe even sew it up like a torn jacket. She thought about those holes that went into him, how she could see inside him like punching a hole in a hollow chocolate Easter bunny . . .

  “What’s wrong?” Daniel asked.

  Bethany snapped out of her thoughts. She looked at Daniel with pleading eyes. “It’s going to be gross, isn’t it?”

  “No more than the last time,” he said. His voice was trying to be encouraging, but it wasn’t working. “You were such a big help.”

  Bethany looked at the arm, and even covered in gauze and bandages she knew that wasn’t going to be true. She could tell herself that the blood stains looking black were a trick of the dim lighting, but she could smell it wasn’t right. It reminded her of the time the power went out and the meat went bad in the refrigerator. The odor had flooded out of the refrigerator door when they opened it, and the smell forced her and Mommy to gag. The odor had pushed them away like an invisible hand. Daniel’s arm was only a tiny drop of that smell, but while it wasn’t as strong it was the same smell. The arm was going to be gross.

  “I can do it myself if you don’t want to see,” he said. “Why don’t you stay here at the desk, I’ll be right back.”

  Bethany glanced around the empty clinic. Now looking at the gross dog bite wasn’t the worst idea in the world. She started weighing her equally intolerable options trying to figure out which offense was worse, disgust or fear. “Okay?”

  “It’ll be okay. There’s no one here,” Daniel said. He pointed to an open room right in front of her. “I’ll be three feet away, and the door will be open. Just keep talking to me, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said in a weak voice. She didn’t like this plan, but as long as could still see Daniel she felt okay.

  Daniel walked into one of the open exam rooms. Bethany watched him stepping over things laying on the floor, searching amongst the packaged medical supplies and starting a pile of things he needed. He laid the tire iron on the counter, shoving some things out of the way to make room. “Talk to me, Bethany,” he called out. While he was only in the next room, his voice sounded like he was miles away.

  “About what?” Bethany called back.

  Bethany could barely see Daniel, but she thought he was taking off the dirty bandages. “Doesn’t matter. Anything . . . what the fuck?”

  Bethany’s eyes went wide. She didn’t bother t
o try to hide the fear from her voice. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” he said, but his voice was constricted like he couldn’t breathe. “Talk to me. What’s . . . I don’t know, your favorite food?”

  Daniel was unscrewing the top of a square bottle, but it was too dark for Bethany to read the label. “Spaghetti,” she replied.

  “Spaghetti? Really?” At first, Bethany thought he was making fun of her answer, but then he shouted out, “I make an awesome spaghetti sauce. Your mother taught me. She won awards for her spaghetti sauce.”

  Bethany remembered her mother cooking the sauce in a large pot. She always made too much, but then she’d put the rest into jars and share with the people in the apartment complex. Mommy would spend all day on the sauce, chopping onions and slicing sausages into small bite-size pieces, simmering it over a low heat as she stirred it. The smell of the herbs whose names Bethany couldn’t pronounce and others she couldn’t remember would fill the apartment . . .

  Daniel’s screams pulled Bethany from her pleasant memories. Bethany climbed onto the desk and peered into the dark room. Daniel had collapsed onto the floor, gasping and crying, cradling his arm. She clenched her doll tight to her chest as called, “Mr. Burns? Daniel? Are you okay?”

  Daniel fell silent. Bethany’s heart began to thunder in her chest. Daniel had died. He had died and left her all alone in this empty building in this empty town. She began to rock, not sure what she was going to do. Under her whimpers, she heard the whispering. She quieted down, looking to Daniel hopefully, but the whispering wasn’t coming from the exam room. Searching for the whispering, she looked around and found the phone on the desk where Daniel had left it, the receiver on its side and the cut phone cord curled over the discarded papers. Growing up with cell phones and wi-fi connected tablets, noise coming from a disconnected phone wasn’t as strange to her as it would have been to Daniel, so she picked up the receiver out of curiosity and put it to her ear.

  “Hello?” she asked. The whispers talked to her, but not in English, not in any language she recognized, but Bethany understood the whispers anyway. “Yes, I’m Bethany Sloan.”

  Daniel had been pulling the dressings off when he was talking to Bethany, trying to keep her reassured when he had gotten a good look at the wound. His exclamation and profanity had startled Bethany, but Daniel had told her he was fine.

  He wasn’t fine. Under the skin of his arm, black tendrils branched off from the bite marks like the spreading of a fungus. Was there a smell? Was the wound gangrenous? He took a whiff and almost gagged. How could the wound get this infected so quickly?

  As they had talked about Anna’s spaghetti sauce, Daniel unscrewed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He poured the bottle over the wound. He had expected pain, had poured hydrogen peroxide over exposed skin before, but this was beyond anything he had felt before, even worse than the gunshot to the gut that caused the circular scar. He screamed, then clenched his jaw tight to keep the rest inside. He couldn’t panic Bethany. His vision blurred from the pain so at first, he doubted his eyes, but the wound was bubbling and oozing black gunk from the deep puncture wounds. He had collapsed to the floor in the fetal position, clutching his arm as the black bubbling ooze came up between his fingers.

  Now on the floor, leaning against the corner of the exam table and the wall, Daniel fought off unconsciousness. He thought he heard Bethany calling out to him, but he was still trying to catch his breath. His visions swam, but it was settling back into focus as the pain ebbed. It still hurt like hell, but at least it was no long incapacitating. He reached up onto the counter where he had stacked what he needed. He pulled the gauze and bandages and tape to the floor to him. He opened the gauze packaging with his right hand and his teeth, not wanting to move his throbbing arm. It wasn’t a sterile technique, but that ship had sailed it seemed. He looked down at his arm as he placed the square gauze over the wounds and saw the skin color was a healthier pink, though the black tendrils still swam under his skin. He’d have to get on some serious antibiotics when he was out of this place and back to civilization.

  It was awkward wrapping his arm with only one hand. Bethany had been a big help the first time, but he didn’t want to push the young girl too hard. She had already been through a lot, and seeing her new dad’s arm chewed and rotting wasn’t going to make that any better. He wrapped it as tight as he could alone. While not as good as when Bethany had helped, it was clean again. He leaned back again and closed his eyes. The pain was tiring.

  A drop of water landed on his forehead, forcing Daniel to tighten his closed eyes. Why was water dripping from the ceiling? He reached up and wiped the drop from his forehead, but the smell was wrong. It was salty with a hint of copper. As he opened his eyes and saw his fingertips were coated not in water but in blood, another drop hit his forehead.

  He had no idea where it came from – nothing was dripping on him before - but as he looked up, he saw letters in thick blood. Written on the ceiling was, “THEY WANT BETHANY.”

  7

  Daniel bolted out of the exam room, the tire iron in his hand. The pain in his arm didn’t matter anymore, the fatigue swept away in a jolt of adrenaline. Someone had written that message while he was in the room. That meant someone was in there with them, someone who could have attacked them or taken Bethany. How they did it without being seen was a mystery, but it wasn’t as important as that they had done it, and that meant they could do it again.

  Bethany was sitting on the edge of the desk, playing with the broken phone. Her eyes popped open in fear as he ran for her. “Daniel? What’s wrong?”

  Daniel slowed down just enough to grab Bethany’s hand and drag her behind him. He glanced around the empty clinic as they ran for the door. “Was there anyone here?”

  “No, no one,” she replied, but her tone told Daniel that, now that he planted the idea in her head, she was no longer sure.

  Daniel led Bethany back out of the clinic. Even though the sun wasn’t visible through the thick fog, the diffused light was blinding after getting used to the dim light of the inside of the clinic. Daniel ran by his car without slowing, Bethany stumbling to keep up.

  “Where are we going?” he heard her call from behind him.

  Daniel had his eyes on his target, the only place in this crazy town that might be safe. “Sheriff’s office.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said, breathing hard. There was little point in lying to keep her calm as she was already panicked, but how would he begin? He wasn’t sure himself what was happening, let alone explain it to a nine-year-old. “Just stay close.”

  The door to the sheriff’s office was ajar, and Daniel led Bethany through it into the reception area. Pamphlets and loose papers were strewn over the floor. There was no one behind the window at the receptionist’s desk, which wasn’t too different than the clinic except for the magnetically locked door that allowed entry into the rest of the building, which also hung open. Daniel looked around. It could be due to a power outage, but the door should have been closed for security reasons. Daniel leaned closer to the door and saw the deep claw marks gouging the side of the door. Running his fingers along the inner door, it looked like another one of those dog monsters had ripped the door open, but the claw marks were on the inside. If Daniel had to guess, the monster wasn’t trying to get in, it was breaking out.

  “Hello?” Daniel called, bending his knees and readying to bolt if his assessment was wrong and another dog monster was waiting inside. “Is there anybody here?”

  No dog monster ran out to attack, nor did any people call out. Daniel pulled the door open and, with Bethany in hand, stepped just inside the doorway. Unlike the clinic, some of the lights were on, possibly on a battery back-up or emergency generator. All illumination came from fluorescent lights attached to the ceiling. Some had broken off their brackets and swung on exposed wires. Several heavy metal desks made a simple maze, with a small cell and rows of file cabinets in the s
hadows to the rear of the sheriff’s station.

  “Do you smell something?” Bethany asked.

  Daniel didn’t hear her. He was more worried about a deputy whirling around and shooting them, but nothing moved. “Hello? Sheriff?”

  “No one’s here,” Bethany said.

  “C’mon,” he said. “There should be a weapon’s locker back there,”

  “I thought you didn’t like guns?” she said.

  With his clenched fist, he unconsciously rubbed the round scar on his abdomen, the tire iron in his hand rubbing against his leg. He hated guns. He hated carrying one as a police officer and hated them even more when he had to fire it to save his life by taking another, but the pain in his left arm and the small hand in his was all the encouragement he needed to better defend himself.

  Daniel crept around one of the metal desks when his foot hit something round and heavy. His first thought, as crazy as it was, was that he had thumped someone’s watermelon. Daniel looked down to see a head lolling to one side, its lifeless eyes staring unfocused in a permanent expression of terror. Daniel gazed at the body, or what was left of it. Its limbs were gnawed off, it’s face chewed up until it resembled uncooked hamburger more than a human face. The chest was ripped open, but the cavity was empty except for a small pool of congealing blood. A dismembered arm laid beside the body, still clutching a service revolver.

  “Oh, my God,” he said.

  “What?” Bethany asked.

  Daniel turned to see Bethany leaning around, trying to get a look. Daniel grabbed her and hugged her head against him. “Don’t look.”

  “No, don’t look,” came a voice deep in the station, making the both of them jump. Daniel brought up the tire iron, but no one came at them. He peered towards the cell. At first, he thought there was a shadow in the cell, standing alone without anyone casting it, but that was crazy. His eyes focused and he made out a figure of a person, crouched over and mumbling to himself. “Can’t look. Don’t want to see no more.”