by Chad Morgan
Daniel moved before he was aware he was doing it, and before he could stop himself, it was over. Daniel grabbed the severed limb and held it out like a lance. Gravity did the rest, and Lisa impaled herself on her own leg. The thick black blood ran down the severed limb and onto the floor. Daniel looked at Lisa, the horror of what happened gripping him, not for almost dying himself but of killing Lisa. She looked at Daniel, and her face softened. Lisa came back, the real Lisa, possibly the Lisa that was before the nightmare of Shellington Heights had begun.
“Daniel?” she asked.
Daniel rolled her off of him, cradling her body and laying her as gently as possible onto the floor. The leg impaling her chest kept her from laying onto the ground, propping her up like a tripod. Under her, the black blood turned to red as it spilled on the floor. Daniel caressed Lisa’s face and brushed the hair out of the way.
“Lisa,” he said. “Lisa, I’m so sorry . . .”
“You didn’t have a choice,” Lisa said. Her voice was weak, but it was her voice. No more vibrato, no more savage hissing, just Lisa.
“Yes, I did,” he said. “I could have . . .”
“Let me kill you?” she asked, interrupting him. “That’s not a choice, Daniel. You can’t blame yourself.”
Lisa’s words forced Daniel to remember the last time he had that choice to make, trading a child’s life for his own. He could have let the child pull the trigger, but instead, he pulled his own. Now he did it again, choosing his life over another’s. The guilt was crushing him.
“You were safe in your apartment, and I brought you out . . .” Daniel began to say.
Lisa shook her head. “No, Daniel, you can’t blame yourself. You must forgive yourself, or you will never find Bethany.”
“Lisa?”
“Cold,” she said. “So cold.”
Daniel hugged her tight against him. As he held her, the remaining spider-like appendages shed from Lisa’s body and fell to the ground. He whispered in her ear, “I have you. I have you.”
“I know everything Daniel. Everything,” she said, her voice distant. Lisa looked up into Daniel’s face, and her eyes were wide, but not in pain or fear of death, but of sorrow. Sorrow for him. Her last thoughts were going to be of him. He didn’t deserve it, and his heart cramped in his chest as she said, “I’m so, so sorry.”
Daniel’s arms shook as he held Lisa. He looked to Charlie and shouted, “Help me!” Then he turned his head back to Lisa. He didn’t know he was crying until he heard it in his voice. “Stay with me. I’ll save you. I’m going to get you out of here. I promised.”
Lisa reached up and caressed Daniel’s cheek. “Find your daughter.”
“Lisa! Stay with me!”” Daniel shouted.
“She needs you. More than you know,” she said. Blood was trickling out the corner of her mouth, but Lisa grabbed Daniel by the back of the neck. With a shaking arm, she pulled her head up to Daniel’s ear and said, “The last rite. It’s not what they think.”
Daniel felt her life slipping from his arms as her body went limp. “Lisa!”
The last thing she said aloud was, “I’m not afraid anymore.”
Her head lolled to the side and stared at the wolf. The gray wolf stood motionless, staring back into Lisa’s eyes. Lisa smiled, as if understanding something for the first time, but whatever her revelation was, she would never say. The life went out of her eyes, but laying in Daniel’s arms, she looked like she was in peace. Daniel felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Charlie standing over him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were right. You did save her.”
The abominations outside hadn’t forgotten about them. Their persistent clawing and pounding was paying off, and pieces of the walls were giving way. Stray legs of more spider-monsters reached through and slashed books apart.
“We really need to go,” Charlie said.
Daniel heard him walk off, but it was like in a dream. The only thing that was real was Lisa’s corpse in his arms. The wolf didn’t move but watched over them. From across the room, Charlie yelled at him, but he couldn’t let her go. She was a friend, and Daniel failed her. Charlie walked back to Daniel and knelt beside him. He felt Charlie’s hand return to his shoulder.
“I lost someone too,” he said. “My cousin. She was twenty-three. Beautiful. Smart. But we have to go on. Your daughter needs you.”
It was mentioning Bethany that pulled him back to reality. The sounds of the abominations tearing down the library walls came into sharp clarity. He looked to Charlie and nodded, then laid Lisa on the ground with as much care as he could manage. He closed her lifeless eyes, then bend over and kissed her forehead. Then he grabbed his shotgun and got to his feet. Turning to Charlie, he said, “Right. How are we going to get out of here?”
Charlie shrugged. “Same way I got in, I suppose.”
Charlie led Daniel to the main counter of the library. Behind the desk, a rug was crumpled to the side and a trap door was swung wide open. The stairs went down into darkness, but Charlie didn’t hesitate to head down, at least until all his gear started catching the frame of the trap door. Daniel and the wolf looked at each other, then back at the would-be rescuer as he tried to fit his gear through the trap door. He walked back up, unslung his bow and quiver, and then tossed something at Daniel as he said, “Here, take this.”
Daniel caught the bag. It felt lumpy, made from some animal skin. The wolf sniffed at it while Charlie slid his bow and quiver down the stairs, then followed them down. Once Charlie was gone, the wolf lost interest in the animal skin bag and followed Charlie down the stairs. Not for the first time, Daniel marveled at the animal as it navigated the stairs without effort. While dogs had learned to navigate stairs, he didn’t think that was a natural task for a canine, and Daniel took it as a sign that the wolf had been around humans before.
Daniel began down the stairs, but stopped and looked back at Lisa’s body, sitting in the dim moonlight in the center of the library. Part of him wanted to go back to her, to hold her as the walls came down around them. As the despair gripped him, he could feel the infection in his arm spreading, but he didn’t care. He could hear wood cracking and ripping apart as the abominations continued to tear at the doors and walls, but Lisa’s body tugged at his conscience like a magnet.
For Daniel, there was one force more powerful than guilt and that was duty. He had a mission to complete, a little girl that was relying on him. With great effort, he said a silent goodbye to Lisa, then went down the stairs, closing the trap door behind him.
35
The stairs creaked under his weight until he stepped off to the dirt floor underneath. Closing the trap door blocked out all light, but Daniel heard a snap and then a green glow immitted from Charlie. He tossed Daniel the glow stick, then cracked open a second for himself. The pale glow illuminated the room.
The cellar was empty, except for the three of them. Along the walls was a line of mold and mud that reached up to Daniel’s chest. The place smelled moist and dank, and the dirt floor was hard under his feet. The wood in the stairs felt weak and rubbery, rotted from moisture.
“They used to use the cellar to store old books until the flood a few years back,” Charlie said, re-slinging his bow and quiver. “They closed it up and forgot about it. Those guys in the suits won’t know it’s here.”
Daniel’s brain felt like the grinding gears in a manual transmission at Charlie’s last remark. There was some irony in Charlie wearing a business suit, talking down about other people in business suits. Granted, Charlie’s suit shown signs of abnormal wear and tear, and with that necklace instead of a tie, he wore it more casually than the other two business suit people, but he was still in a business suit. Daniel wondered if maybe Charlie started out as one of them but rebelled when he realized what they were doing.
“Yeah, talked to one of them,” Daniel said. “Who are they?”
“The ones who did all this,” Charlie said, gesturing to the room, but Dan
iel knew he meant the town, the abominations, all of it. “They’re the ones who took Bethany.”
Charlie started heading deeper into the cellar. The dim green light showed a stairwell going up to twin cellar doors. Charlie placed a foot on the first step, but Daniel grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. “And drove Anna to suicide?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Charlie said. “They were preparing Bethany for the last rite.”
“So exactly what the hell is going on here?” Daniel asked.
Charlie looked up, the sounds of the abominations tearing their way into the library floating down with the dust knocked from the rafters, then looked back to Daniel. “You want to have this conversation now?”
“I want answers,” Daniel said. “What the fuck is going on here? Where is my daughter?”
“My grandfather is the one you want to talk too,” Charlie said. “I don’t understand half of it myself.”
“Then tell me the half you do understand,” Daniel said.
“Gladly,” Charlie said, “once we’re out of here. I promise I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Your grandfather and Bethany, where are they?” Daniel asked.
“They’re in the graveyard,” Charlie said.
Daniel let go of Charlie’s arm. Daniel’s whole body felt like he stepped on a live wire, every never firing at once. He felt his knees wobble. “They’re dead?”
“What?” Charlie asked. Even in the dim light of the glow stick, Daniel could see the understanding emerge on his face. “Oh, no, they’re just holed up there at the caretaker’s shack. The abominations aren’t strong enough to enter yet, so it’s safe.”
The relief was instant. Daniel nodded in understanding and said, “Then take me there now.”
Daniel made for the stairs himself, but now it was Charlie grabbing Daniel by the arm. The two looked at each other, the green light dancing off their eyes. Charlie shook his head and said. “We can’t. You’re impure.”
Charlie looked downwards, and Daniel followed his gaze to the infected dog bite. Daniel flexed his arm, feeling the stiffness and the swelling, then looked back up at Charlie. “You mean like Lisa was.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Before we take you to your daughter, we have to purify you.”
“How do we do that?” Daniel asked.
Charlie nodded to the animal skin bag he had given Daniel. “My grandfather has something we can try, but first we have to get out of here.”
Charlie walked up to the cellar doors and began to unbolt them when Daniel asked, “But what do we do about all the things climbing on the outside?”
“Doors open up behind the library,” he said, and his grin told Daniel how clever Charlie thought he was to come up with this plan. “I locked them up behind me when I came in. We can sneak into the woods before they know it. Here, hold this.”
Charlie handed Daniel his glow stick, which he took with the same hand he held his own. “Okay, but don’t forget what Lisa said. They’re linked. If one of them sees us, they all see us.”
That wiped the smile off Charlie’s face. They both turned back to the cellar doors. A pale light shown through the gaps in the warped and rotted planks, but as Charlie began to undo the chains keeping the doors shut, a shadow moved across. Both Charlie and Daniel froze as they heard sniffing coming from above them, followed by scratching by large claws. At first, the clawing and sniffing were casual, curious, but either the dog monster outside caught a sent or heard the two humans inside. The clawing grew in strength, not in a frenzied pace but with a definite purpose. Daniel sensed the abomination outside wasn’t sure what was in the cellar but was confident something of interest was. Even though the monster wasn’t in a hurry, it wouldn’t take the abomination long to rip through the weather-worn wood and find them trapped inside.
Charlie drew his bow, which made way too much sound for Daniel’s comfort. He was sure the dog monster would hear it, but its pace didn’t quicken. To the wolf's credit, she didn’t bark or growl. Daniel knelt and dropped the glow sticks to the ground, but as he reached for the shotgun the green glowing sticks rolled away then disappeared. Daniel looked down for the glow sticks, feeling around with his hand when his fingers gripped a large metal grate. Down below it, the sticks glowed in a large drainage pipe. Daniel wrapped his fingers around the rusted iron grate and pulled. The metal was solid, but the mortar around the bricks it was bolted too felt loose. He pulled at it with quick, jerking motions.
The dog monster outside began to growl. It heard him. Charlie looked down at Daniel, saw what he was trying to do, then grabbed one of his arrows and started scrapping at the mortar. The bricks broke loose and the two of them lifted the grate up. Daniel signaled for Charlie to climb down into the drainage pipe. Silently, Charlie tried to argue, but when one of the planks to the cellar door splintered open and they could see the long claws of the creature, Charlie was convinced. After he hopped down into the drainage pipe, Daniel motioned for the wolf to follow, but the wolf either didn’t understand or refused. He reached out for the wolf, trying to grab her by the scruff of her neck and drag her in, but the wolf backed away. Daniel stretched out as far as he could without letting go of the grate, but the wolf walked off and vanished into the darkness of the cellar.
Daniel looked down at Charlie in the storm drain, stooped over to fit. Both glow sticks in his hands, he was lit in the eerie green. Before Daniel could try to explain the situation, though he had no idea how without making a sound, a ragged arm broke through the cellar door. It groped with wild swings for anything within reach, then ripped back out of the door, ripping more rotten wood on its way. Daniel jumped down into the storm drain, Charlie jumping out of the way. Daniel reached up and pulled the grate down into place. Daniel looked back up through the grate for the wolf, though what he could do at this point he had no idea, but Charlie pulled him down the drainage pipe. Daniel stepped away from the grate just as moonlight from the outside poured in and the wooden doors blew apart. Daniel looked up to see claws walking over the grate, but no sound of biting or clawing. Where ever the wolf was, the abomination didn’t see her.
The drainage pipe came out of the side of a hill, deep in the woods and feeding into a small creek. When the sounds of the carnage from the library faded away, Daniel felt it was safe to talk.
“We just left the wolf behind,” he said.
“She wouldn’t fit,” Charlie replied.
Daniel wasn’t sure that was true. There was plenty of room in the storm drain, though it might have been a tight fit to get her down the grate. Regardless, whether the wolf couldn’t or wouldn’t come, she was left behind.
“Then we should have found another way,” Daniel said.
“There was no other way,” Charlie said. “Besides, I keep telling you, the wolf will find her own way.”
“It’s a wolf, not a magician,” Daniel said.
Charlie popped out of the end of the drain. As Daniel was about to follow, Charlie stopped and looked back at Daniel. He froze, not sure what was wrong, but Charlie smiled and said, “You sure about that?”
Charlie gestured with a nod of his head. As Daniel climbed out of the storm drain, standing in front of them was the wolf. There wasn’t a mark on her, no smudge of dirt, no hint on how the wolf escaped the cellar.
Charlie laid his hand on Daniel’s shoulder, nodded to the wolf, and said, “Well, you’re probably right about it not being a magician anyway. Would probably keep eating all the rabbits.”
The wolf licked her chops as if a nice rabbit meal sounded good to her. Daniel stood gap-jawed, but Charlie walked off into the woods, the wolf in tow, with not a word of explanation. Daniel followed them, trekking through the woods until they were away from the library and back on a paved road.
The streets were deserted except for Daniel, Charlie, and the wolf. The wolf led the way, while Charlie and Daniel walked side-by-side behind her. Daniel’s head was swimming with questions, but as he kept looking at Charlie he asked the
first question that came to mind.
“So, what’s with the bow anyway?”
“It’s ceremonial,” Charlie replied. “My grandfather gave it to me. Legend says it was given to the first chief of our tribe by the All-Father or something like that. I don’t remember, it was a long time ago when he told me the story.”
“The All-Father?” Daniel asked.
“God, for lack of a better term,” Charlie said.
“Okay?” Daniel said, trying to put the pieces together in his head. “Sounds like it should be in a museum. Why not grab a rifle?”
Charlie very purposefully looked forward. “Bow works fine.”
Daniel stared at Charlie as they walked, Charlie doing his very best to not look back at him. Daniel’s time as a police officer taught him how to sweat out a suspect as well as instincts to tell him when the suspect was hiding something.
Finally, Charlie mumbled, “It’s magic.”
Daniel blinked. “What?”
“It’s magic, okay?” Charlie said, his voice loud and clear. He had to speak up to be heard over Daniel’s hysterics. “Go ahead, laugh it up.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare laugh at you, Gandalf,” Daniel said. “Seriously? Magic? You’re as crazy as everyone else in this place.”
“Hey, all I know is I hit one of them with this . . .” Charlie patted the bow on his back. “They go poof. After that, I stopped being a skeptic and just went with it.”
Daniel stopped laughing. Charlie was right about one thing, whatever the cause, those arrows of his had a reaction when it hit the monsters. He doubted it was any kind of hocus pocus, but he couldn’t deny they were effective.
Daniel looked around the street. “Speaking of which, where are all the monsters at?”
“Which ones?” Charlie asked.
“Um, either?” Daniel asked.
“Well, the bad ones are probably still tearing apart the library,” Charlie said. “The good ones won’t come near you without wanting to kill you as long as you’re infected, so I thought it best to send them away.”