The Corruption Within

by Ty Griffin

  Something had kicked the door through the door frame, ripping it from two of its hinges. The force required to knock a door in like that was absolutely baffling to me.

  “What the hell could do something like that?” I asked.

  “Something big,” Veikr answered.

  I swallowed my fear and forced myself to step into the building. The exterior door was leaning against the front stairwell door, and years of experience had ingrained in me a fear of leaving fingerprints at a potential crime scene. So I ran to the back stairwell and up the stairs.

  The apartment building was quiet, almost eerily, deathly quiet. As I climbed the stairs, I could hear my heart racing.

  I opened the door at the top of the stairs and entered darkness. The hallway was completely dark. The lights by each of the three tenants’ doors, as well as the handful of overhead lights, were all off. It seemed unlikely that they all had burned out at the same time, so maybe they had been broken intentionally? There was light coming in from the stairwell, so it wasn’t a power outage, although I guessed it could have been a tripped breaker. But when the stairwell door closed behind me, I was enveloped in absolute black. Not a hint of light creeped through the crack between the door and floor, as if some force was preventing light from passing through.

  Living in the city, you rarely experience true darkness. There are always street lights, or cars passing, or lit signs and storefronts. Over time you grow so used to being surrounded by artificial light that the dark of nature becomes uncomfortable.

  I have heard that in the nineties, Los Angeles suffered a major blackout, and its population flooded 911 with panicked calls describing strange lights in the sky. The lights turned out to be stars. Stars in numbers and with such brightness that people living their entire lives in the city could not even fathom existed. In reality, even people living in the middle of nowhere rarely experience absolute darkness, because nature has its own way of illuminating the night.

  But as I stood in that hallway, I realized that not a trace of light entered through any of the windows. Not a streetlight or a car brake light. No reflection of the moon or twinkling of a star. It was darkness I had never experienced before, an unnatural darkness. It felt like the darkness was not just the absence of light but a force in itself, consuming light before it could enter the hallway.

  It was disorienting. To be honest, it was terrifying.

  I stumbled forward with my hands out in front of me until I felt the smooth surface of the wall. I stayed there for a moment, grateful to be tethered to a tangible reminder of reality, and tried to calm my racing heart. I took an extra moment to listen for sounds of a struggle or potential threat. It took a second to realize there was no sound—not only was there no sound of a struggle, there was no sound at all. Just as the darkness seemed like a physical force resisting the light, the silence was a presence absorbing all sound.

  I pushed myself off the wall and swung my hands wildly until I made contact with the opposite wall. I started making my way down the hallway, letting my hand slide down the wall to maintain a point of reference. My hand bumped the molding around the door to the first apartment, and I quietly ran my fingers across the door and back to the wall.

  As I drew closer to Kayla’s apartment, the worry in my chest turned into full-blown panic. Every muscle in my body was twitching, begging to turn and run the other direction. My mind was racing, flooding me with images of what gruesome scene I might find. Still I walked, step after step—not the determined march of the courageous, but the slow plod of someone barely hanging on to composure.

  My hand hit Kayla’s doorframe. I reached forward, trying to find the doorknob, but found only empty air. Her door was already standing open—or was completely gone. I leaned my back against the wall to the side of the door.

  “Veikr,” I said.

  “Quiet, Vessel,” he responded urgently. “Just because you cannot hear does not mean he cannot. And whatever spirit was able to remove so much light and sound in such a large area must be incredibly powerful.”

  “You said you would help me save Kayla,” I whispered. “That was our deal.” I tried to sound assertive, but even I could hear the tremble in my voice.

  “Fine,” he grumbled, and I thought I heard a trace of worry in his voice as well.

  I felt a quick, sharp pressure behind my eyes and suddenly I could see the hallway. Only it didn’t look how the hallway should have looked. Everything was cast in shades of dark red. The walls and fixtures seemed to move like I was in the desert surrounded by a mirage.

  If a torch were set in the middle of the hallway, the flickering light would have cast moving shadows down the wall. But this light pulsed and shimmered in the air, on the surfaces it touched, and inside my pupils. It was unsettling, but I could see.

  “Why didn’t you do this sooner?” I asked.

  “You didn’t ask,” he said dryly. I had a suspicion he wasn’t telling me everything, but I pushed the thought out of my mind. One unattainable task at a time.

  I poked my head around the corner to peer inside the apartment. From the doorway, I could see half of Kayla’s living room, although most of the view was blocked by the back of her couch. I could see an open door to the left of the living room, but from the angle I couldn’t tell if it was to a bathroom or bedroom. Straight through the living room was the kitchen, and while I could not see much over the waist-high bar separating the room, I could see through the entryway to the kitchen that one of her chairs was lying on its side.

  “Kayla,” I whispered. I listened for a response, but couldn’t hear anything. “Kayla!” I whisper-shouted. Still there was only silence. With a deep, steadying breath, I pushed myself off the wall and entered the apartment. I took a few steps to reach the living room, carefully placing each foot to make as little noise as possible.

  The living room was immaculate. There was not even a mess of papers or a dirty coffee mug on the coffee table, much less any sign of a struggle. I had a brief flash of doubt, wondering if I had amped myself up over nothing. I looked back at the front door to assure myself that it being left open was a sign something was wrong. That’s when I noticed the door, while still on its hinges, had a dent the size of a man’s boot just to the side of the knob. Little cracks spiderwebbed out from the center of the dent. The door frame itself was splintered right where the deadbolt and latch slid into place.

  It would have taken a lot of strength to kick the solid wood door in like that. I shuddered at the realization that anything with that kind of strength could do even greater damage to the body of any idiot dumb enough to sneak around the place. I ducked low like a child playing a spy game, feeling ridiculous but also not wanting to offer myself up as a target.

  I snuck into the kitchen, holding my breath. But other than the chair on its side and an orange sitting on a cutting board on the counter—only half cut—nothing seemed out of place. I walked back into the living room, careful to not touch anything that might be checked for fingerprints later. I passed through the living room to the door I had seen open. I stepped up and used the back of my hand to push the door open further. The bathroom was empty.

  Stepping back, I saw one other door to my left. It was closed. It was the only other place Kayla might be, and my heart started to race like a band geek’s drum roll. I nearly screamed when I felt a whiff of wind flick at my hair. I spun but found nothing out of the ordinary behind me.

  I slunk to the door and turned the doorknob as quietly as possible, my concern over leaving fingerprints forgotten in my fear. The door opened smoothly, and I walked in to the bedroom. The walls were peppered with band posters, picture collages, and canvases that were likely some of Kayla’s original pieces, but I did not slow down enough to pay them much attention. I noticed the bed with blankets piled in disorder; likely evidence of a restless attempt at sleep. I walked around the bed on trembling legs, sure of what I would find sprawled on the floor.

  But other than a couple pieces of discard
ed clothing lying before the open closet, there was nothing. I stared at the empty floor for a solid minute, trying to get my thoughts in order. Kayla wasn’t there. Obviously something had happened. Someone, or something, had broken in to her apartment. Whatever it was had to still be having an effect on the place, extending its will in a smothering blanket of darkness and silence. But Kayla was gone.

  Had Kayla not been home, and Gabe left in frustration? Had Gabe beat me there with enough time to grab her and take her somewhere? If so, where would he take her? To the bar? That didn’t seem likely. Maybe to his house? Or his garage? If he got off on the idea of terrorizing his victims, taking her there would make sense. Would he want to sacrifice her before the altar?

  He had to know I would find out Kayla was missing and call the cops. But if he thought he was going to be caught soon, maybe he was desperate to finish what he had started and had given up all pretense of caution. A wave of nausea swept over me when I thought about the things I had heard criminals did when they were desperate and expecting to be caught.

  I realized I had to call the cops. I couldn’t risk Kayla’s life just because I didn’t have fond feelings for the police. I went back into the living room, hoping Kayla for some reason had the mentality of an eighty-year-old grandmother and still had a landline phone. I looked on the end tables with no luck. I was just about to check the kitchen wall by the fridge when I felt another breeze, this time gently blowing my hair into my face.

  I looked in the direction of the wind and saw a faint rustle of a curtain. Kicking myself for not even considering such an obvious possibility, I ran for the window and flung the curtain back. The window was larger than average, designed to be a fire exit. It was pushed all the way up and easily provided enough space for someone to climb through to the fire escape stairs attached to the outside brick wall.

  I thought about the drawings in Gabe’s garage. He would have made notes about the fire escape.

  I stuck my head out the window and was immediately overwhelmed by the ambient lights and sounds of the city. Coming from the absolute silence and darkness of the apartment complex, the lights were nearly blinding and the sounds deafening. I shut my eyes and shook my head, trying to clear the disorientation. When I opened my eyes again, Veikr had released his influence on my sight, and all the colors of the night lights returned to their regular hues.

  I looked down and could see the ladder at the bottom of the stairs was fully extended, nearly reaching the ground. Obviously, someone had gone down the stairs recently. I tried to sort out the cacophony of sounds to identify any clue as to where Kayla might have gone, but all I could hear was the roar of a regular city night. To the right, I could see street lights on the street I had come from. A car sped by, but nothing of significance seemed to be happening. When I looked to the left, I saw a beat-up, old, red Toyota pickup truck. Gabe’s truck.

  I pulled my upper body back into the apartment and was again immersed in the complete isolation of silence and darkness. I felt around for the window ledge to maintain a frame of reference and slowly, carefully stuck a leg through the window. Once I had one leg planted firmly on the fire escape, I ducked my head through the window and out into the night air.

  Again, the rush of sights and sounds was nearly overwhelming, but I expected it this time and was able to adjust quicker. I pulled my other leg through the window and made my way for the stairs. I grabbed the hand rails and ran down the steps two at a time before reaching the ladder and finishing the descent as quickly as my awkward self could.

  Once my feet touched the pavement, I sprinted for Gabe’s truck. I placed a hand on the hood and could tell from its warmth that it had not been parked there very long. I looked inside the cab as well as the bed, but did not find anything of note. I ran past the truck and into the alley behind Kayla’s apartment.

  The building behind Kayla’s was a massive warehouse, taking up most of that side of the block. When I reached the corner of her building I ran into a T intersection with another alley. I looked down both ends of the alley but could see no sign of movement or hint of someone’s passing in either direction.

  “Veikr! Do you see anything?” I asked.

  “No,” he said unenthusiastically. Something in his response rung insincere to me.

  “You’re lying!” I demanded.

  “Vessel, I have told you that we would not be powerful enough to defeat your friend Gabe. Yet you seem to continuously run toward a danger you cannot possibly overcome.”

  “Kayla is in danger!” I whisper-yelled.

  “That very well may be true, but as I have said, you will not be able to defeat him. You will only be putting yourself in danger, while the fate of your female friend will not be changed. He will kill you, Vessel, and you will have died for nothing.”

  “You mean we will have died for nothing.” I put as much venom as I could into words said beneath my breath.

  “Yes, I do,” he said without a trace of shame. “But the fact remains that you will die.”

  “Kayla is in danger,” I said again. “You promised to help her.”

  “What good is keeping my promise if you end up dead and unable to keep your word as well?” he asked.

  “Veikr!” I shouted, not bothering to whisper anymore. “I am going to help my friend! Now just tell me where to go!” I felt the faintest crack in the demon’s resolve, and so I added, “Please.”

  Veikr growled in frustration. “Fine. Thirty yards to your right, a door is open to whatever that large building is in front of you. I hear movement in there, but I don’t know what it is.”

  Chapter 20

  ◆◆◆

  I sprinted down the alley, hardly noticing the lack of physical assistance from Veikr. I saw the open door to my left and tried to plant my foot to cut into the building. My foot slipped on some loose gravel, and I ended up slamming into the door with a loud bang. I pushed off the door and stared at the warehouse around me.

  It was dark inside. Fortunately, it was not the same kind of dark as in Kayla’s apartment. Just the regular, creepy darkness of a work building at night. There was enough light to see that the building was, in fact, a warehouse of some type. Large, heavy metal shelves broke the area into rows. Each row was spaced far enough apart that a forklift or pallet jack could navigate easily. There wasn’t enough light to make out what was on the shelves from a distance, and I didn’t care enough to look closely anyway.

  I figured the graceless impact of my body slamming into the door had been loud enough to ruin any element of surprise and hoped additional noise would maybe scare Gabe off.

  “Kayla!” I yelled. “Kayla, it’s Wesley!”

  My voice echoed around the warehouse for a moment and then the place was silent again. I took off at a run, trying to look down each aisle as I passed. “Kayla! Where are you?” I yelled again and again. I reached the end of the building and turned down the last aisle. I hoped the far side of each aisle was so dark that I had just run past her without seeing her and started working my way back on the opposite end of the building. “Kayla!”

  “Wes?”

  I heard Kayla’s faint voice coming from one of the aisles. I slid to a stop and turned down the aisle. “Kayla?” I said softly.

  “Wes!” she cried. “I’m here.”

  I saw her hand waving and her head poke out from behind a stack of boxes on one of the bottom shelves. I ran to her. “Kayla, are you okay?”

  “Shhh,” she hushed me desperately.

  But it was too late. Every sense in my body was cut off. I was again trapped in a sea of absolute silence and dark. “Kayla!” I yelled, or at least I think I yelled. I felt the vibrations of my voice in my throat, but I could not even hear my own voice. This silent void was different than the one in Kayla’s apartment. It was more acute, more intense. It did not just mute the sounds around me, it permeated my body and mind, like it was preventing my brain from processing the existence of sound.

  “Veikr!” I shouted in
a panic.

  I felt the fiery pop behind my eyes again, and the world lit up in shades of molten red. I saw Kayla crouched before me. Her mouth was open in a violent silent scream.

  Oh god, I led him right to her.

  I felt an ice-cold hand grab the back of my neck with enough strength to crush bone. Then I was off my feet and hurtling through the air. I flew down the aisle at least twenty feet, tumbling end over end. In a split second of clarity right before impact I realized that, depending on how I landed, I was likely to snap my back or crush my head.

  And then an explosion of pain, beginning in my stomach and reaching out through my extremities, went through me with the speed of a thought. I felt Veikr’s wings spread out from my shoulders, catching wind, and as a reflex I tensed the muscles in my back, angling the wings to soften my fall.

  It still hurt when I hit the ground and when I tumbled several feet farther down the aisle. But the half-second to control how I landed mitigated the impact and likely saved me from breaking at least a couple bones.

  I don’t know if Veikr was unable to return my ability to hear or if he was just distracted by what was going on; when I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, I could see Kayla still trying to scream at the figure before her but could not hear her. It dawned on me that the thing had either not affected Kayla’s sight or had made it so that it was the only thing she could see.

  I froze the length of a couple heartbeats as I stared at the creature towering over Kayla. Even with Veikr’s assisted sight I could not make out many details. The creature was massive, maybe nine feet tall, with long, clawed arms that scraped the floor when it moved. The red hues of light from Veikr’s power seemed to get sucked into the monster, making the shadows around it slither and move as if the shadows themselves were alive. The creature was slightly translucent, and I could see that inside the creature, as if it were wearing a suit of armor, was a man. He was a little shorter than me but stocky, with slightly rounded shoulders from years of hard labor. It was Gabe.