The Last Rite

by Chad Morgan

  The Lisa-thing followed the edge of the circle, growling and hissing, but never able to cross over the lines drawn on the ground. Daniel sat back down, even more careful than he was when he stood up to not cross the chalk circle or disturb the items Charlie so carefully placed around it. He ignored Lisa, or whatever it was, and rested his face in his hands. His head hurt. He was thirsty. He was dizzy and tired.

  “Go away,” Daniel mumbled into his hands. “Leave me alone.”

  Daniel looked up. Lisa was gone. It must have been a dream or a hallucination. He looked down at his arm. It wasn’t any more or any less infected than when he started. Daniel turned his stare back to the fire. What had Charlie put in it? Charlie said he’d be tripping pretty hard. Maybe he added some hallucinogenic drugs, something that he inhaled through the smoke? Only there was no smoke. How could a fire have no smoke? For that matter, how could it burn blue?

  He sat and stared at the fire. It could have been minutes, it could have been days. Time lost meaning. He stripped off his shirt and was stripped to the waist, the infected would on his stomach looking black and ugly. It buried the gun shot from the small child who shot him in an alley because Daniel couldn’t bring himself to shoot the child even in self-defense, at least the first time. When he tried to run, however, dragging himself behind a dumpster and hoping in vain that the child wouldn’t pursue him, and when the child aimed the gun at Daniel’s head, Daniel fired. He aimed to wound, to incapacitate, but the small body bled out too fast and the boy died before the paramedics arrived.

  From behind him came a rapid clicking sound, a light flickering and shining bright from behind him, aiming to the large screen over the stage. The projector was starting up. Daniel got to his feet to see over the edge of the stage to the screen. On the screen was Bethany, staring down at him in black-and-white, her head twenty feet tall. Maybe it was because Daniel was standing below her, but he felt like Bethany was looking down at him figuratively as well as literally.

  “Daniel?” she asked.

  Daniel swayed on his feet. “Bethany?”

  “Why are you doing this, Daniel?” she asked.

  Daniel thought a moment. It was hard for him to think, the heat making his head fuzzy. “I’m doing it so I can save you.”

  “You can’t save me,” Bethany said. “You can’t save yourself.”

  “She may have a point,” a familiar voice came from behind and above him. Daniel turned and looked up, struggling to stay on his feet. Sitting in the balcony was the man who took Bethany, the guy with the military-cropped blond hair and the business suit.

  “He’s clueless,” came another sound. He turned to see a blond woman in a business suit in the opposite balcony.

  “It will be entertaining to watch him flounder about,” the man in the business suit said

  “What the hell . . .” Daniel murmured. His knees were getting weak. He wanted to lay down.

  “Why are you here?” the blond woman in the business suit asked.

  “To save my daughter,” Daniel said.

  “That does not adequately answer the question,” the man in the business suit said, his voice deep and resonating. “Why are you here?”

  Daniel turned to face him and regretted it. The spinning made his head swirl. “I don’t understand. I’m here to save my daughter.”

  “Why?” Bethany asked.

  “Why?” the business man asked.

  “Why?” his female partner asked.

  They asked repeatedly, talking over themselves, the word coming at him in jarring offsets like a misplayed chord. The assault on Daniel’s senses made the world spin.

  “I don’t understand,” he called out. “She’s my daughter. What else matters?”

  The chanting continued louder, the theater rocked. The world grew dark, and Daniel fell.

  Daniel’s face hit soft sand. The cool ocean wind felt good on the bare skin on his back, which was so hot. Daniel could feel his skin growing goosebumps as the thin hairs on the back of his neck rose on end. The skin against the cool sand kept more of its heat. He blinked his eyes, and pushed himself up from the beach, squinting against the bright sun. Lifting his head, Daniel saw the wolf standing a few feet away from him. She stood there, staring at Daniel, then turned and walked down the beach away from Daniel.

  Getting to his feet, he reached out and called to the wolf, “Wait! I’m not supposed to leave . . . “

  It was then he realized there was no more wooden floor, no more chalk drawing under his feet.

  “. . . the circle,” he finished, confused.

  The wolf was gone, its paw prints left in the sand the only sign it was ever there. Daniel turned in place, trying to decide what to do. Was he still in the circle? If he followed the trail, would he leave the circle in real life? Maybe he was sitting in place imagining all of this, and none of his actions would matter in the real world. He was so hot in spite of the cold air coming off the water, which suggested to Daniel that he was really sitting in front of the blue fire. The thought of him stumbling into the fire while hallucinating he was on a beach made him chuckle. The only thing he knew was that standing there wasn’t accomplishing anything. He took a tentative step forward, then another. The world didn’t end - well, didn’t end again - so Daniel followed the trail of paw prints.

  Daniel followed the trail for a few minutes, or a few hours, it was hard to tell. Then the trail came to a sudden stop, so Daniel did the same. He stood there, looking around, wondering what the point of this was.

  “Hello, Daniel,” came a familiar voice from behind him.

  Daniel spun around to see Anna standing there, her dress fluttering in the wind. She looked young and beautiful, exactly the way she did that day they shared on the beach, and that’s when Daniel realized he revisited this place once already. At the time, he thought it was just a dream, but now he could believe this was something more.

  “Anna,” Daniel said, and this time he believed it was Anna, not a hallucination or a dream but somehow, in some form, it was Anna.

  Anna gave a single nod, as if reading his mind and confirming his beliefs, and said, “It’s time, Daniel.”

  “Time for what?” Daniel asked.

  “For you to learn the truth,” she said.

  He furrowed his brow, trying to understand. “About what?”

  “About yourself, Daniel,” she said.

  Anna walked past Daniel, and when Daniel didn’t follow, she reached out and took his hand. Her skin felt cool against his, and Daniel thought he was holding a hand that no longer had warmth or life in it, but then he remembered he was, in reality, standing in front of a blazing bonfire. The ocean wind cooled her skin, while his was heated to unsafe temperatures. Anna pulled him until he started walking, then the two walked down the beach hand-in-hand.

  Daniel rubbed the back of his head. “I’ve missed you.”

  Anna gave another serene, single nod. “I know. I missed you too.”

  “You shouldn’t have left,” he said. “I mean, I get it now. I’m not mad. But we could have faced it together.”

  “Then they would have done to you what they did to me. Everyone has their limits, Daniel.” A warm smile grew on Anna’s face, one that reached to her eyes. “Even you, though you’ve shown more will and determination than I think anyone would have expected.” Her smile widened and she added, “Everyone but me, I mean.”

  “You didn’t need to go through it alone,” Daniel said. “And now I’m going through it alone.”

  Anna hugged his arm, resting her head against Daniel’s shoulder as they walked. “Oh, Daniel, you’ve never been alone.”

  The wind picked up, and a fog rolled in from over the ocean so thick Daniel was blinded. He froze in place, waiting for the fog to pass, but the fog only faded, becoming the ever-present fog of Shellington Heights. Daniel found himself standing in front of the medical clinic, the door hanging wide open. Daniel felt a wave of disorientation when he saw himself laying on the floor, then
he understood. Like in a Dickens novel, he was an observer to his own past. At this moment, the sleeping version of himself was, ironically enough, visiting Anna on that same beach. Daniel expected his past self to wake up at any moment and realize Bethany was gone but stepped back when the wolf walked out of the fog. The wolf ignored him, the present him anyway, which made sense to Daniel. This was a recording, the events of the past etched in time. He was only an observer. So, he walked closer and observed.

  The wolf walked up to Daniel’s other self and sniffed at his wounded right arm. The arm looked worse than he remembered, the black tendrils snaking up past his elbow and across his bicep, the skin molted and blistering. The wolf licked the wound on the sleeping Daniel’s arm like an animal would lick its own wound. Daniel – the real Daniel? Future Daniel? He wasn’t sure – watched the infection recede, the wolf swallowing the black tendrils, sucking them out through his skin. When the infection was again confined to under the fresh dressings, the wolf walked hunched over into the street. Daniel left his sleeping version alone and followed the wolf out into the street. The wolf stood there, bending over in an awkward pose and waiting, its belly quivering. Daniel had an idea what was coming next, but he was still shocked when, as the wolf vomited up the black blood it had licked up from Daniel’s wounded arm, the vomit quivered as if it was alive. When the wolf was done, it stood up straight, looking healthier. She glanced back at the Daniel sleeping in the clinic, unaware of the other Daniel watching it, then walked into the fog.

  The fog thickened, blinding Daniel. He could no longer see the clinic or the other him, only the never-ending gray. Then the fog faded, and Daniel found himself standing in the woods. No, not quite in the woods, but in the trees just off the road leading to Shellington Heights. He looked to his right, and the ocean faded in and out of the fog.

  Daniel heard Bethany scream, and Daniel turned to see himself fighting with the dog monsters by his car. Before he could do anything, Charlie Lightfoot ran by him, his bow in his hand. He came to a stop and readied his bow, but as he stepped forward to aim, the coastal road disappeared, along with Daniel, Bethany, and the two dog monsters.

  “What the hell?” he heard Charlie gasp. He took a step back, and the real world faded back into view. Charlie reached out with his hard, and as the fog swirled around his arm, it faded in and out of view. Charlie snapped his arm back and shouted, “Damn it! Damn it!”

  Daniel wasn’t sure, but he thought he understood what was happening. Charlie was on the edge of the other world, the world of the fog, the world that used to be a town called Shellington Heights. For whatever reason, he couldn’t cross over but could look across the threshold into the real world. They both watched as the dog monster dragged the past version of Daniel across the road. The fog swirled in its own eddies, not pushed by any wind but by some other force Daniel couldn’t see or feel. Charlie found a pocket where he could angle his shot and see the dog monster. He let the arrow fly, finding its pocket of ethereal fog, and hitting the dog monster in the rear. The Dog monster yelped in pain, letting go of the other Daniel. The current Daniel remembered what happened next. As past Daniel gripped the tire iron and beat the monster to death, the fog thickened, and all was gray again.

  The fog dissipated, and Daniel found himself back on the beach, Anna by his side. She was looking over the ocean as if they had been standing on the shore the entire time. Maybe they had been, from her perspective.

  “You’ve been helped this whole time,” Anna said.

  “The wolf,” Daniel said, looking down at Anna, “she helped keep me from changing like Lisa did.”

  Anna nodded, staring out into the horizon. “And the Lightfoots have sacrificed much to put this evil to an end.”

  “Anna, what’s the last rite?” he asked. “Lisa said it wasn’t what anyone thought it was.”

  “That’s a story for another time, I’m afraid,” she said. Daniel thought he heard the regret in her voice.

  “Anna . . .” he started to say, but Anna turned around and placed two fingers on Daniel’s lips to quiet him. It was such an Anna thing to do, something Daniel missed for so long, and it quieted him.

  “We have more important things to discuss, and time is short,” she said. “They know where you are, and they’re coming.”

  Daniel took Anna’s hand in his, pulling her slender fingers from his lips. “I need to get out of here, Anna. I need to save our daughter.”

  “Before you can save Bethany,” Anna said, “you need to understand why.”

  Anna turned and started walking down the beach. Why did this thing have to be so esoteric? Anna had answers, but she was still spoon-feeding them to him. Daniel stood his ground, watching Anna walk away. He called out, “We don’t have time for this Anna?”

  “It’s the only way,” she called back, not turning around.

  Hadn’t Anna said the abominations knew where he was and was coming for him? They didn’t have time for these games, but Daniel also understood he didn’t have time to argue his point. Anna was going to do it her way, no matter what. He cursed under his breath, then ran to catch up to her.

  The two walked together along the beach, just as they had in his first vision. He thought about that first dream, about what Anna talked to him about before the dream took a nightmarish turn and Daniel saw Anna standing there in the hospital pajamas with blood running down her wrists.

  “Last time you asked me about my dad dying,” Daniel said, burying the final image of that first dream. “Is that what this is about? I’m supposed to realize I want to be a dad because I didn’t have one?”

  “It started there,” Anna said. “As a child, you learned what it was like to lose a parent.”

  “Okay, so now what?” Daniel asked.

  “You know what happened next,” Anna said.

  At first, Daniel didn’t understand, and when he did, it was too late to object. The scene changed around him before he could voice a complaint, and he found himself standing over an open grave. As before, this was a recording, and he was only an observer. Despite the weeping family standing by the grave, the sun was bright and warm and pleasant. Standing next to Daniel was a younger version of himself, dressed in his formal police uniform, holding himself up with a crutch. Daniel could feel the pain in his gut that his younger version was feeling, the gunshot wound in his belly only a couple of days old.

  Propped up on an easel by the casket was the face of a young boy, the boy Daniel shot. The boy in the picture smiled in that earnest way only a child could, his large eyes bright. Both Daniels looked at the photo and felt the crushing guilt. The funeral over, the family walked away from the grave. The mother bent over in tears, while the father forced himself to stand tall for his family, but Daniel could see the strain on his face. Then his younger self hobbled over to the family.

  “Ma’am. Sir,” young officer Daniel Burns started to say. The modern-day Daniel wanted to look away, embarrassed for himself. He knew what his younger self was wanting to do, and he also knew what was going to happen. “I just wanted to express my condolences. I never . . .”

  The mother slapped Daniel. She glared at him, her face quivering with a fierce anger that even the father couldn’t match. The younger Daniel didn’t say anything. In his mind, he deserved it, and if slapping him gave the poor mother any ounce of peace, he would stand there and take it, but the father took the mother by the shoulder, and the morning family walked away. Only when the family was some distance away from Daniel did the mother cry again, her wails echoing over the graveyard.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” a small voice said beside him.

  Daniel turned to see the boy, the same in the photograph, but he was wearing the same clothes he wore that day in the alley. Daniel knelt in front of the boy, and that’s when he saw the hole in the boy’s left shoulder, a wound that, on an adult, might have been a survivable wound.

  “I shouldn’t have pulled the trigger,” Daniel said.

  The boy gave a
childish, exaggerated shrug, as if he had just learned the gesture and still needed to practice it before being able to do it correctly. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have shot you first.”

  Daniel shook his head. “You were a kid. You didn’t know any better. It wasn’t your fault.”

  The boy looked up at him with his large eyes. “That doesn’t make it your fault.”

  “Then who’s fault is it?” Daniel asked.

  The boy shrugged again. “It’s nobody’s fault. Sometimes things just happen.”

  “Look how much pain I cause, to you,” Daniel said, the gestured to the family in the distance and added, “to them.”

  “Look how much pain I caused you,” the boy said.

  “I healed,” Daniel said.

  “No, you didn’t,” the boy said, shaking his head. He placed a hand against Daniel’s chest. “Not here. This never healed.”

  “How can I ever forget what I’ve done?” Daniel asked. He meant it as a rhetorical question, but as he asked it, he found himself hoping the boy would give him a real answer.

  “You don’t have to forget,” the boy said. “Just forgive.”

  From behind him, Daniel heard crying. He didn’t have to look to know it was his past self, kneeling at the grave. Daniel heard his past self mumble through the tears, “Never again. Never again.”

  Daniel stood up, still looking down at the boy. “You were going to shoot me.”

  What he should have said was the boy was going to shoot him again, but the boy understood. He nodded and said, “Uh huh.”

  “I sacrificed you so I could live,” Daniel said.

  “Uh huh,” the boy said again.

  “I was wrong,” Daniel said. “No child’s life is worth it.”

  “I would have killed you,” the boy said.

  “Maybe I should have let you,” Daniel said. “Maybe I could have found another way. I don’t know, something. All I know is, the price for my life was too high.”

  The boy smiled up at Daniel. “Then make the price we paid worth it.”