The Corruption Within

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The Corruption Within Page 6

by Ty Griffin


  “You can see me,” it said.

  It said.

  It had spoken. The winged, wall-running, wolf-thing had spoken. To me.

  Looking back, I realize how lucky it was that I had gone to the bathroom a few minutes before Kayla had shown up that morning. Otherwise I would have made an embarrassment of myself right then.

  I didn’t say anything back. I think part of me worried that the creature was in my head, and I wasn’t ready to go quite so far as to communicate with my psychosis. The rest of me thought that if it was real, engaging a real-life monster in conversation could not be a good idea.

  And not to harp on the subject too much, but I was so terrified that I likely could not have spoken if I wanted to. I did notice, in the back of my mind, that my fear at that moment was different from what I had felt when faced with the shadowy thing. That first time, I had been filled with a horrific premonition that the thing was going to devour my soul, to consume my mind and cast me into an eternal nightmare. This fear, facing this new creature, was more like how I imagined I would feel if I accidentally came between a grizzly bear mother and her cubs.

  As it watched me, it cocked its head to the opposite side, its dark eyes steady and intense. “You can see me,” it said again. Its voice was dry and gravelly, its tone matter of fact. There was maybe a hint of curiosity in its voice, but not a trace of malice.

  I think it was that hint of curiosity that gave me the courage to finally speak. “Uh, yeah.” That’s me. My first words to a supernatural creature, and I lead with the grace and gravitas of “uh, yeah.”

  The thing hopped off the wall and moved even closer to me, sniffing at my shirt, hair, neck. Its sharp teeth clicked together in excitement. “How is it that you can see me, human? You have the smell of one of us on you. Is this how?”

  ‘“I … I don’t know. I’ve never seen something like you before,” I said, the tremble obvious in my voice.

  “Lies.” It sneered. “You have seen one of us. Recently.” It sniffed at me again and extended a single, clawed finger toward me. I tried to back away, but my back bumped into the wall. The creature poked my chest with its nail and said, “Your soul is ready, as well. You would make a great … partner. I can give you the life you have dreamed of, human. I can give you power, great power.”

  I stared at the creature in petrified confusion. “What?”

  “Power!” it exclaimed. “I can give you power. Power to live how you want to live. To take what you want to have. Money. Respect. Women. I can turn you into someone people admire or fear”—it leaned in closer and whispered as if sharing an enticing secret—“or someone people lust after. I can give you the life you desire, the life you deserve. An easy life. The life you have always dreamed of.”

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it. Easy is not a word anyone would have used to describe my life to that point. Pushed around, looked past, forgotten and ignored, except when someone needed an outlet for their anger; these had been my experiences, nothing that could be described as a life with power or respect. Power to make people respect me, to be the one taking what I wanted, instead of the one taken from—it was an alluring thought.

  The creature twitched its ears and, almost as if it could hear my thoughts, said, “Never again would you be the victim. Together we could make your enemies our victims.”

  I thought about the people who had hurt me. Bullies in the group homes who took their anger out on the new kid when the adults were not around. Others who wanted to prove their dominance and not be the lowest rung on the ladder. Adults taking advantage of their position of authority.

  “How?” I whispered.

  “Invite me in,” it said simply. “Invite me, and together we will gather power to us in ways you never dreamed possible.”

  Just then there was a scream to my left. The creature and I both jerked our heads to see Kayla standing on the sidewalk, wide-eyed and pale, staring at the creature.

  “You see me too!” the thing said, and took two quick steps toward Kayla, its claws outstretched.

  “NO!” I shouted, fear causing my heart to forget to pump for a beat or two.

  Just as the creature reached her and laid a clawed hand on each of her shoulders, Kayla did the strangest thing. Her face scrunched up in fear and anger, she balled up a fist and punched the thing square in the nose. It stopped. The creature dropped its hands to its sides and shook its head. I didn’t think she had hurt the thing as much as startled it, but whatever it had planned for her, it was rethinking. The thing snorted, a disgusted, contemptuous sound, and said, “No, not you. You are not right.”

  It looked back toward me and said, “You are the one, human. Think about my offer.” Then it dropped to all fours and ran up the freaking wall, disappearing onto the roof. Kayla and I looked at each other in shock.

  “What the hell was that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I’m just glad you saw it too so I know I am not going crazy. Or at least not going crazy by myself.”

  We gathered ourselves as best we could and walked back into the bar. Kayla sat quietly on a bar stool while I made us both a cup of coffee. We sipped our coffees quietly for several minutes, lost in our own thoughts. I collected myself a little quicker than Kayla, probably because it wasn’t the first time I had been scared witless that week.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  The coffee mug rattled against the bar as she set it down with trembling hands. “That was real, right? That actually happened? I mean. That was a legitimate werewolf or monster or whatever, right? And it just spoke to us?”

  “Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “It was real.”

  “God, that thing was terrifying,” she said. Then her eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Wait, was that the same thing you and Paul saw?”

  “No,” I answered firmly. “That was a whole other thing. This one seemed—aggressive and feral, but the one Paul and I saw—I don’t know how to explain it, but it was different. Darker. Crueler. Evil.”

  Kayla shuddered a little. “God, I can’t even imagine.” Then her face hardened, and she looked at me seriously. “We have to do something. Paul needs to know he isn’t crazy. We have to figure out a way to prove it to him.”

  “Oh, right!” I said. “Did you have any luck with the security camera?”

  She shook her head in renewed disappointment, “No. Apparently, the camera hasn’t worked in months. God, there has to be something else we can—”

  Her words were cut off by the ringing of the bell above the door. Two men, looking to be in their mid-forties, wearing tailored suits and expensive shoes, stopped just inside the door and looked at us quizzically. “Are y’all open?” one asked in a pronounced southern drawl.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I replied hastily. “Have a seat anywhere. I’ll be right with you.”

  I looked back at Kayla to excuse myself, but she was already getting to her feet. “The studio is about to open, anyway,” she said. “I’m going to keep thinking about this. I’ve gotta be somewhere tonight, but I will come by tomorrow morning so we can plan something out.”

  I smiled. “That sounds good.” My excitement was obviously about the idea of helping Paul, not getting to see Kayla again.

  Gabe made it in an hour before the dinner rush. The afternoon had gone by slowly, with only a handful of customers coming into the restaurant. I had all the dinner prep work done and was quietly working my way through my book by the time he got there.

  “Hey, Gabe, feeling better?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Thanks for watching the shop for me.”

  “No problem. It was pretty quiet, to be honest.”

  “Figured,” he grumbled.

  We worked our way through a moderate dinner rush in awkwardly polite tension. Or maybe it was all in my head. The doubts and suspicions I had been carefully shoving away began to pile up to such an extent that I was having trouble ignoring them.

  Why did all these strange thing
s happen around Gabe’s bar, and how could he act so ignorant of them? Why did the cops think he would have information about some people being attacked? I know people tend to speak more openly with bartenders, but Tilley’s question felt more pointed, almost accusatory, than it would have been for a typical bartender in the know.

  What about Barnett’s accusation that Gabe’s Bar and Grill couldn’t possibly be making enough money to provide for Gabe’s lifestyle? Was he lying to manipulate me into spying on Gabe, or was it possible that there was more going on behind the scenes that I hadn’t seen?

  And why was Gabe lying to me, and to Paul, about what was in the alley? Was he scared too? Maybe in denial? Or was he trying to hide something? Like the source of the flashes of light I had seen?

  I found myself constantly side-eyeing Gabe, looking for hints of the secretive, possibly criminal, person hidden beneath the mask. All I could see, though, was the genial, kindly old man laughing and swapping stories with customers-turned-friends.

  The night passed quicker than the afternoon and significantly smoother than the previous evenings. I was especially relieved to take the trash out at the end of the night and not be threatened by any type of monster, human or inhuman.

  I walked back into the bar to find Gabe counting out my payment for the day from the register. “I’ll need to get you a W-2 soon. The last thing I need is a tax audit,” he said with a casual smile as he handed me the cash.

  “Yeah, of course.” I looked at the cash in my hand and had a small crisis of conscience. Still unsure why it mattered to me, I counted out a few dollars and held them out to Gabe. “Paul came by this morning and seemed kind of out of it, so I cooked him a burger and didn’t charge him for it,” I said.

  Gabe looked at the money in my hand, then up to me. “You gave him free food?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I’m going to pay for it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said defensively. “I thought he could use a break, you know? Look, I’m trying to pay for it. I wasn’t trying to steal anything.”

  Gabe grunted before saying, “Keep your money, kid.”

  “What?” I asked, taken back.

  He looked me square in the eye for a moment before saying, “Can you honestly tell me that you were doing your best to take care of someone that walked through our door?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Then keep your money,” he said, cutting me off. “It sounds to me like you did your job perfectly.” After a moment’s thought, he added, “This doesn’t mean you can give out free food all the damn time, understand?”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” I said. I put the money in my pocket, mentally kicking myself for doubting the man who seemed so willing to make sacrifices for others.

  “You said it was Paul who stopped by?” he asked after a moment.

  “Yeah, just after I opened.”

  “Hmm. What did he want?” Gabe asked. His words were smooth, but there was something in his body language that gave me the impression he was working hard to sound so casual.

  The suspicion and doubts came flooding back in a rush. I took a deep breath, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tension in my voice. “He said he lost his wallet the other night and was wondering if someone had turned it in. I told him no.”

  It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw Gabe physically relax before he said, “Huh, interesting. Well, I’m going to head home. I’ll see you in the morning, kid.”

  I followed him to the door to lock it behind him.

  “Good night, Gabe.”

  “Night, kid.”

  He stepped out into the night and turned left toward his beat-up, old pickup truck. I closed the door behind him, turned out the lights, and watched for a minute. He walked to the driver side of his truck and fumbled in his pocket as if searching for his keys. Then, looking back toward the bar, he quickly walked across the street and headed back to the right.

  I watched him for a few more seconds as he walked into the darkness. And then, in an instant, I decided what I was going to do. There was more to Gabe than met the eye, and I had to know what it was.

  Chapter 6

  ◆◆◆

  I double-checked the lock and ran to the back room. I bumped open the fire door and wedged my apron between the door and jamb. I didn’t have a key to the shop and had no desire to lock myself out. As I raced around the corner, I just hoped no one would find the open door and rob the place blind.

  As I got the street, I slowed down and tried to quiet my breathing. I put my back against the wall, trying to hide in shadow, and peeked around the corner. Gabe was still on the opposite side of the street, moving away from me, and hadn’t made it half a block yet. I gave him another minute to put some more space between us, then left the shadows and carefully followed him down the street.

  I stayed far enough behind him that I was fairly sure he wouldn’t recognize me if he turned around, and if he stopped I could duck into the shadow of a shop doorway. The street lights did a reasonable job of illuminating the sidewalk, but there were still enough shadows that I could keep myself hidden most of the time.

  Gabe turned the corner after a couple of blocks, and I had to cross the street quickly and run to make sure I didn’t lose him. I peeked around the corner and waited until Gabe had moved on a little bit again. I followed him for five or ten minutes, until he took a right turn on a darkened street. When I reached the corner, I noticed the street sign, Walshack Street. It was the street the cops had been asking Gabe about—where, they had said, the assaults had been happening.

  When I turned the corner, I jumped, barely keeping myself from shouting, and slid back around the corner, hiding against the side of the building. Gabe was only twenty feet or so away from me. He must have stopped for a minute, which allowed me to catch up. Was he waiting for me? Had he seen me and known I was following him? My heart was pounding so fast, if he walked up on me I wouldn’t hear him coming over the sound of it.

  I peeked around the corner again and saw Gabe peering into a store window on the opposite side of the street. After a moment, he turned and walked into an alley. I stayed where I was, not wanting to get too close. Just before I stepped out, I saw Gabe step back onto the sidewalk and continue down the street. He carried on for a while like that. Looking into windows, walking in and out of alleys. He tried the door to an old apartment complex, but it was locked, and after wiggling the handle he carried on.

  I tried to imagine why Gabe would be slinking around the shadows like that, peering in windows and testing doors. He looked like a man on a hunt. But hunting what?

  After a while, we came upon a little dive bar with neon signs advertising cheap beers and loud, twangy music pouring from the open door. Gabe entered the bar. I couldn’t follow him inside without risking being seen, so I stayed in the shadows across the street and waited. After maybe fifteen minutes had gone by, I started to get nervous. Had I somehow missed him coming out?

  It wasn’t inconceivable that he might leave his bar at the end of the day and head to another for a drink, but that wouldn’t explain the sneaking he had done on the way there. He hadn’t seemed to head in the direction of the bar but instead just stumble upon it. He had to have a reason to go in there. But what was he doing? Had he given up his hunt to enjoy a drink? Had he found whatever he was looking for?

  After five more minutes, I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to see what was going on, even if I was risking Gabe seeing me. If nothing else, I could tell him I had come in for a drink, and hopefully, he wouldn’t remember that I was still underage.

  As I was crossing the street, I heard a commotion in the alley beside the bar: the clang of a trash can getting knocked over and the scuffling sounds of violence. I peered around the corner and, in the dim light, saw Gabe, his clothes ruffled and torn. He held up a forearm, using it to pin someone against the wall. The man that was being held looked wild and afraid. He had shaggy, unkempt hair and a patchy beard.<
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  Gabe was leaning into the man with all his weight, his face only inches away from his captive’s. “Let go,” Gabe growled. His voice was hard and vicious in a way I hadn’t imagined him able to produce. “Let go. It will hurt much more if I have to take it from you!”

  The pinned man squirmed, but Gabe held him tight against the wall. “Let me go. Please just let me go,” the man wailed.

  “Not until you give it up,” Gabe sneered. And then, as I watched, Gabe’s arm turned an agonizing, fiercely bright white. The light filled the alley and flooded into the street behind me, casting odd shadows on the walls.

  Judging by the other man’s response, it must have been hot. The man started squealing in agony. He flung his arms around wildly. His knee must have caught Gabe in the stomach or somewhere worse, because Gabe suddenly doubled over, releasing the man. And in an instant, the light disappeared.

  Plunged into sudden darkness, I couldn’t see what happened next. But I heard the impact of flesh on flesh, followed by the stomping of feet on pavement growing quieter as someone ran away down the alley.

  I blinked a few times as my eyes readjusted to the darkness. I saw Gabe slowly rising from the ground. He leaned a hand against the wall and shook his head. I started to go to him but stopped myself. I didn’t know how Gabe would react if he saw me.

  Suddenly Gabe stood and, cursing, kicked a metal trash can down the alley. “Son of a bitch!” he screamed as the can flew into the opposite wall with a jarring crash.

  I ran. I ran all the way back to the restaurant, having to double back a couple of times after taking wrong turns. When I finally made it into the back of the bar, I closed the door behind me and slid down the wall until I sat on the floor, panting.

  My whole body was shaking. The adrenaline from the run had my body nearly convulsing with nervous energy. At least, I tried to tell myself it was from the run. My heart raced uncontrollably, and I was panting. I knew I was starting to hyperventilate.

 

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