The road ahead came to a T and the colorful carriage was upended in the grass, its wheels spinning but sticking up in the air. Tourists ran and screamed. As they rocketed around the corner, heading left and leaning steeply into it, he saw that while the two horses kicked their legs, they’d been bungled in their harnesses, trapped, flipped over when the carriage took them down. A half-dozen figures climbed over them, biting them and tearing at them with their fingers. Blood arced through the air.
He bit his lips and drove his legs harder, gaining on Brit, the terrified whinnying of the horses bringing tears to his eyes.
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Afterword
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Shane McRory lives on a haunted farm in the woods with a bunch of animals.
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A preview of Blackshift
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Sousse, Tunisia
Ty
Ty Corby swore this was the girl from the pool. The one wearing the pale yellow bikini accompanied by the boyfriend whose menacing stare kept Ty’s eyes off her tanned skin and long legs. God, up close like this she was just a kid, and it made him feel dirty for having watched her so carefully today. He was a man in his thirties, married, his wife Janie locked in the suite’s bathroom after having a row unrelated to his wandering eye.
The girl stood on the threshold of his open hotel room door. After a loud series of bangs and knocks, followed by the sound of yelling in the hall, he opened the door—a little frightened—to see what was the matter. Through the narrow gap he had allowed, he could see the girl stumbling, weaving, aimless; making her way down the corridor in his direction. Feeling safer (seeing it was a slender girl with bare legs and feet, and a baggy sweat-shirt), he opened the door wide, and without encouragement she caught his eye and stumbled toward him, her face twisting up like she would cry. Her hands were tucked inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt and she had them folded across her chest. Now standing before him he saw she cradled one against her, holding it like a bird with a broken wing.
He said, “What ... What’s going on? ...”
One step into the room and he realized something was wrong with her. Her mouth opened and closed dryly, making no sound, her lips stretched to a trembling ring around her clenched teeth. The orange dusky light seeping into his room through the sheer curtains lit her up, and he saw that she was dirty.
Past her shoulder, he registered for the first time the hall was strangely dark. The lights that lined the center had been knocked out. She’d just been a dim figure to him, but now, in his room, she was detailed by the setting sun. Something had spilled on her. Her sweatshirt had been stained darkly, splashes, drips, and runs. More rivulets ran the length of her legs in jagged wandering lines, tracing the curves and knobs of her knees, settling on her feet and running between her toes.
“Janie,” he called loudly over his shoulder, surprised by the rising fear in his own voice. Then to the girl, “What’s happened?”
He extended his arms to her, as if to cradle her, afraid to commit because she was a pretty young girl and holding her seemed a bit untoward given the nasty thoughts that had raced through his mind all afternoon while he downed Whisky Rocks and Moroccan coffees, watching her from his lounger. “Janie,” he called again, but she didn’t come.
“C’mon pet,” he said with sudden paternal cooing, his hands cupping the points of her elbows and attempting to guide her deeper into his room. A tremble wracked her body and its energy traveled through his hands. Urging her more forcefully, trying to get her to take a seat in the room so they could sort out the trouble, she began to panic. A bright fearful voice chirped from her, incoherent barking, not whole words but attempted words.
“Hey, hey,” he soothed, trying to ease her, but the frightened yelps kept coming, her pretty lips trying to form words. She was in shock.
It just came to him—everything happening so fast but his brain trudging in slow motion because of this unexpected development in his evening—the tremor that passed through her, the wild eyes, the whites fully visible around her emerald iris, the pupils shrunk to black pinpoints … and the dirt, the splashes ...? It was blood, wasn’t it?
Yes, it was. He could smell it. Hot and coppery.
“Jesus, is this ... is this your blood?” he stammered.
She bounced as she stood, feet firmly on the carpet floor, dipping at her knees; a howl began, a long note, ululating, rising in pitch and intensity, making him hunch his shoulders. His eyes teared up inexplicably, one human communicating fear and pain to another, creating a sympathetic response. “Oh my God, you ... come, please ...” he said, and he tried pushing her toward the bed again.
The girl’s cries took shape, her moan becoming one solid vowel sound, a long ‘O’; chugging, repeating, this time her howl trailing to an ‘R’ sound. Her eyes rolled wildly, like a panicking horse, darting to the right. She was hunched, frozen to the spot, clutching herself. Her neck stiff, too stiff to turn to the hall, her body too rigid to do anything but bounce and emit a sound of fright.
“Door? ...” he said, her cries and her eyes telling him what she was too frightened to do. Did she want him to close the door?
“Is someone after you?” he said, eyes on hers, his hand moving to the lever of the heavy hotel room door. He looked down the dim hall, saw nothing, closed the door. A sound came to him, a hissing, wet pattering. Streams of urine trickled down the insides of her skinny legs, running clear through the blood, and the smell of it hit him.
“Oh God, oh shit,” he shouted, clamping his hands to the sides of his head as this poor girl wet herself right in front of him, dry-crying and wailing gibberish. “Janie, get out here,” he shouted again.
The door to the bedroom opened behind him, his wife’s frightened voice ventured a shaky call, “Ty?”
“There, there,” he said to the girl, “the door’s closed, come on, sit down, breathe, pet, breathe, tell us what happened ...”
“Ty? Who is she?” Janie said through the crack in the door, the girl’s yelling probably frightening her into staying in the safety of the bedroom.
When he took the girl by the wrist, she stopped her sounds though her chin trembled uncontrollably and she stared a hole into the bed, looking at nothing.
“Please, we’ll call someone for you ...”
She took one shaky step towards him—
“Ty, who is she? What is going on?”
—he eased her along, pulling on her right wrist. As her right arm opened from her clutch, her left hand flopped away, folding in two like it was on a hinge, her forearm broken in the middle. The curled hand, peeking below the cuff of her bloody sweatshirt, tapped against her stomach, palm facing him. The sight of it, the obvious reality that it must be practically severed under the fabric, the way it dangled and swung loosely, set his brain reeling. He went instantly weak in the knees, dipping til he almost collapsed, his vision dim, the room quiet and distant ...
... but he snapped to with a bolt of adrenaline. “Oh shit,” he said, his stomach suddenly alive with a cave of bats taking flight, a horrible ticklish stabbing overwhelming him, his scrotum clenching in his shorts, his anus tightening. “Jesus, your arm,” he said, watching her look down at it dumbly, not comprehending her own body. “Oh honey,” he said, “oh Jesus.”
His hands shook wildly as he reached to her, took the dangling hand, his brain doing another somersault that almost had him blacking out again. Taking her uninjured hand he guided her to hold
her broken arm against herself, crossing them over her slender chest in an ‘X’. He felt a grinding of bone on bone rumble through her wrist. A sudden urge to retch rose up within him, acidic bile splashing at his esophagus, but he held it down. Two years ago, Nigel, from the Knightsbridge office had sent him an animated gif of what looked like some ISIS fighter losing his arm from a wild AK-47 burst from his own compatriot firing too closely as the two jockeyed for a position of cover by a sandstone wall. Nigel had titled the email: CAN YOU GIVE ME A HAND? He and Janie had been heading out for dinner that night, reservations at The Five Fields for their tenth wedding anniversary. Couldn’t shake the gruesome image all night. Ruined his dinner.
This was real life. Horrific Technicolor he could reach out and touch. No Liveleak logo in the corner, no way to shut it down, no way to close the laptop lid on this sight—this was real, this was happening right before him.
“Janie, get out here right now and help me, Goddamnit,” he shouted, the fear washing away for a moment, pushed out by a swell of aggressive testosterone.
“What is it, Ty? ... Has something happened to her?” Janie said as she emerged from the bedroom, the lapels of the hotel terry robe clutched at her chest.
“I need your help, Janie, please ...” he said.
She shuffled out of the dim and into the glowing orange light of the setting sun and Ty saw the mark he left on her. Her hair was disheveled, makeup staining her cheeks from where she cried. One eye had begun to swell.
“Please, Janie ...”
She shuffled closer, her bare feet raking the shallow pile of the carpet. Her trembling and worried face changed to one of shock when she saw the young girl.
“Is that ... blood?”
A scenario had already spiraled up out of the ether and chilled Ty with dread. The bangs in the hall, the knocked-out lights, the dazed and shocked young girl, the gruesome and terrible injury to her arm ...
Right now, little boy Robbie was down at the pool deck. Ty had sent him down there when he made the decision to confront Janie. Now it would seem the resort was under siege, probably by Muslim terrorists, some faction with grievances that Ty wouldn’t even be aware of. Revving to shore on dinghies, armed with AKs, maybe stun grenades. Something had caused trauma to this poor young girl. Something had knocked out the lights.
“Janie, listen to me ... don’t panic, but I think ...”
“Robbie,” she gasped with fright, her swollen eye popping almost as wide as the other.
Reading his mind, sweet Janie, who he loved for more than a decade and bore him his beloved son, went wide-eyed, said, “No, Ty ... ISIS?”
“You heard the bangs?” he said, wanting to take her in his arms and squeeze away all the bad of the last eight hours.
“Robbie,” she cried, their son’s possible peril suddenly leaping into her thoughts. The three of them stood huddled by the bed in the glowing setting sun. A man and his wife, and an injured stranger who needed their help. Janie bolted for the door and he yanked her back by her robe.
“Don’t!” she hissed, wheeling on him, axing her forearm across his outstretched hands, breaking his grip and making her free. Robe gaping open, she faced him, hair a tangled mess, expression twisted in harrowing anger.
“Don’t you dare,” she said, chin lowered, eyes looking up, challenging him through her brow.
With his hands up, he said, “Janie, stay with her,” then thumbed over his shoulder at the girl. “I’ll go to Robbie.”
“You fucking stay with her,” she said, hands at her sides clenched in fists. A glint of furious light reflected in the narrow slit of her swollen eye.
He put a hand out to her, extending an olive branch, but it was probably too late. Her eyes moved to the hand. While she didn’t slap it away her expression didn’t change either. Behind them, the girl wailed abruptly, and he turned to find her with eyes shocked, good hand holding the other lifeless hand in the cup of her palm, her forearm bent in two—the injury just discovered. Down on one knee, falling to her, hand smoothing her back, he encouraged her to cradle the arm against herself again.
“Janie, please call reception ... stay with her, I’ll go,” he said, but it was punctuated with the sound of their hotel room door being opened.
His eyes darted to see his wife thrusting the door aside, ready to take a step into the hall ... Something halted her. Frozen mid-stride, her face collapsed in puzzlement and wide-eyed awesome incomprehension. “Janie? ...”
Then Janie’s legs gave way as if the cords that kept her standing were cut. Her feet remained on the floor but her knees lost all their support and her rump came straight down onto the carpet with a painful thump.
Ty scrambled. Left the girl where she sat, mournfully crying; he made his way to his wife on all fours. As he got to the door, he threw a hand onto the handle and pulled himself to stand, feet astride Janie’s waist, facing into the hall. There, moving in the dark, he understood his wife’s expression of unreality. The fathomless thing in the hall challenged his brain to the ungraspable. Past the room door, the hallway extended straight and to the right. Their Panoramic Sea View suite sat on the northern corner of the fifth floor with a view of the Gulf of Hammamet. Straight ahead, only twenty feet, strode a man. Instead of walking upright along the hall, his torso suspended perhaps six feet off the corridor floor, held aloft on impossibly long, scissoring legs. Spindly, gangling arms stabilized him—outstretched, palms turned up, fingers crawling the ceiling.
The figure hitched and bucked as the multi-jointed limbs twitched and hooked, scrabbling for purchase, making his body bob and jolt with every bit of awkward progress he made. Ty froze to the spot, hands sweaty and weak but still clutching the stainless steel lever. His legs shook, mouth falling open; a tidal wave of nauseous heat raced up his back and over his scalp.
It was the young girl’s boyfriend. The handsome but surly man who sat with her, making sure none of the other middle-aged men around the pool dared put an eye on her. Something had happened to him. He was bare-chested, his ribs pressing against his tanned skin. The joints of his shoulders, wrists, elbows, and knees were swollen; pressed up against the skin, turning it white and shiny by limbs bent at impossible angles. He wore the same shorts he had at the pool today; navy blue jams with white stripes along the side, and a red band at the waist, white strings. The gruesomely long legs that sprouted out of those shorts were furred with hair.
All this horrifying perception transpired in the space of two heartbeats. Ty’s worry over his son blasted away with absolute bottomless terror.
The boyfriend’s black, animal eyes locked on his and Ty defecated. They were eyes of ultimate, predatory, evil and he was frozen prey; completely and 100% positive of this creature’s intention. It was all written on its twisted, writhing face.
“No, no, no, don’t ...” he murmured, his mouth bumbling words, letting them tumble over his dry, cracked lips.
His heart pounded furiously, his temples throbbed, everything in him that controlled action now taken over by some autonomous impulse. Alternate fuel sources firing turbo jets into his muscles, disconnected from his brain, every piece of him knowing it was about to be eaten, turned into energy for another creature. While his brain had been mesmerized, something within him struggled to survive.
Both hands jolted for the doorknob, twisted it clumsily and slammed it closed. Only it wouldn’t close. Slammed it again and again. The door came a fist’s length from closing. He slammed it once more, harder, a siren assailing his ears. He was going to die ... that insane creature lurking the hall would be here in a second and it would tear the door aside and rip his throat.
Falling to his knees, both hands clutched the door, his back heaving, trying to get it closed, brain overcome knowing that his life was finished. Underneath him, Janie struggled; he toppled onto her hips.
Her bare, sunburned legs blocked the door. Blood splashed up the trim and over the jam, smeared her shins, spattered up to her knees from where he’d injur
ed her, trying to slam the door closed on his own wife’s legs. The wailing siren was Janie screaming.
One hand jetted out, grabbed an ankle and pulled it to him. The creature lurched a dozen feet away, gaze boring holes in him, wanting to shoot its hate right through his eyeballs, trying to hypnotize him, paralyze him, but he would not die today. His systems were kicking back into life. He pulled up the other leg, turning Janie upside down and over, bending her knees, clearing her away, and she scrambled, slipper falling into the hall the instant before he slammed the door closed.
He let her go, pulled the lever making sure it was closed, and he slammed the bolt home. Now he was down on the ground with Janie and he held her.
There was no way he could say sorry, there was nothing to say in a moment like this so he held her, pulled her to him until she sat in his lap, his ass on the floor with his heels dug into the carpet, kicking them both backward, away from the door. Eyes wide and trembling, they both focused on the fragile barrier that separated them from a horrible death.
Janie’s wailing stopped, on their left the girl still cried, holding her hand, trying to make sense of her injury. The door boomed and shook. In that one instant, that one lone strike against the door, he knew it wouldn’t be enough to keep them separated. A thin crack split up its middle like a rifle shot. “Oh, Janie,” he whispered, his voice high and tight. His wife hugged his forearms tighter to her chest, her nails digging into the flesh. Another crack as the creature threw itself against it.
Janie began a low mantra. “Go away, go away, go away ...”
The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 1) Page 5