by Tim Waggoner
A jolt of adrenaline disperses his brain fog, and his thoughts become clear and sharp. Mackenzie is in Vegas. Emory’s in school. No one is supposed to be here. Did someone find the front door unlocked, enter the house, and…what? Go down to the basement and listen to some tunes? It doesn’t make sense.
You came home, Mother says. Maybe Emory did too. And maybe she’s not alone.
He tells himself it’s a ridiculous thought, but it prompts him to turn away from the stairs and head for the kitchen, where the basement door is located. He puts his hand on the knob and hesitates. He can feel the pounding vibrations of the music through the metal. He turns the knob and opens the door. The basement light is on, and the music, without any barriers to muffle it, is louder now. The pounding beat reverberates through his body, and he feels his heart trying to match its rhythm. His head starts to throb in time with the beat as well, and as he descends the stairs, he grips the hand railing tight to steady himself. The last thing he wants to do is lose his balance, tumble down the stairs, and end up in a crumpled, broken heap on the floor.
The steps are carpeted and his footfalls make no sound. But given how loud the music is, he knows he could stomp as hard as he wants without being heard. He recognizes the music, although he can’t remember the title of the song. It’s an older tune, from a heavy metal group that was popular back when he was Emory’s age called Slogeny. Their music is dark, even for the metal of the time, and he remembers it being linked to cult activity and a number of suicides. It’s a far cry from the sort of weightless pop that Emory listens to. It’s dissonant, grating, and unsettling, and overlying the pounding beat is a sound like a dozen whirring chainsaws. There’s screaming too, or something like it, along with a mournful wailing that doesn’t sound close to human.
The basement serves as a rec room, and Jayce did it up right before he moved out. Flat-screen TV mounted on one of the paneled walls for watching movies or playing video games. Multi-game table that can be turned into a ping-pong, air hockey, or pool table. A leather couch and recliner, and in front of them a glass coffee table. And, of course, a kick-ass stereo system from which the pounding music is coming. He created the rec room to keep Emory at home, where she’d be safe. Why go to a friend’s house when she had all this cool stuff at her place? Instead, her friends came here. When they were younger, they had sleepovers in the basement, but now that they are in their teens, they mostly hang out here after school and on weekends. And why not? It’s a fun, comfortable place. But the sight that awaits him when he reaches the bottom of the stairs is about as far from comforting as it’s possible to get.
Emory hangs naked in midair, her back arched, eyes closed, mouth wide open. Jayce hasn’t seen her unclothed since he bathed her when she was a toddler, and her nakedness startles him almost as much as seeing her suspended in the air. Her breasts are larger than he’d realized, and her dark thatch of pubic hair seems obscene, a violation of the smooth pink skin she’d had down there when she was a child.
She’s not levitating in the air, though. She’s being held there. Purple-red tentacles extrude from the walls and ceiling, a dozen of them, each the thickness of a large snake, a boa or python. They’re coiled around Emory’s body – her wrists, ankles, torso – holding her aloft. That’s not the worst part, though. Three of the tentacles have penetrated her body – one in the mouth, one in her vagina, and one in her ass. They slide in and out of her, blue-green surfaces pulsing and rippling. She makes mmmmm sounds as her body twists and undulates, and he wants to believe that she’s being attacked, raped by whatever the hell these things are. But she’s not resisting, and the sounds she makes are ones of pleasure, not pain.
Now that he’s gotten a good look at the tentacles – which, now that he thinks of it, look more like large veins – he realizes they haven’t emerged from the walls and ceiling as he originally thought. Their far ends protrude from blurry patches in the air near the walls and ceiling. He wonders what those blurry patches are. Portals of some kind? Openings that lead to somewhere else? Somewhere bad?
A memory hits him then. Those giraffes.… The things that emerged from the rock…cankerworms. These are like those, not exactly, but similar, he thinks. And although they don’t seem to be hurting Emory – quite the opposite, in fact – he remembers what happened to the giraffe the cankerworms attacked. Panic sweeps aside his emotional paralysis and he runs toward his daughter, his illness forgotten.
The basement ceiling is high, fifteen feet from the floor, but Emory is being held – Being fucked, Mother’s voice cuts in – about five feet below the ceiling. He can’t reach her from a standing position, but the veins are holding her over the leather couch. He sees her clothes lying in a small pile between the couch and the coffee table, and he guesses that she was lying on the couch, naked, waiting for the veins to appear, slither downward through the air, encircle her in their rubbery coils, and bear her upward.
He doesn’t have a weapon, doesn’t know if he needs one. There’s nothing nearby, not unless you count a goddamned ping-pong paddle. He’s just going to have to use his hands.
He reaches the couch and jumps onto it, moving so fast he nearly loses his balance and falls off. Emory’s eyes have been closed the entire time, and he’s made so little noise up to this point that there is no way she could hear him over the music. But now something – instinct, perhaps – alerts her to his presence, and her eyes snap open and she looks toward him. Her eyes widen in surprise, which is followed almost instantly by shock and then by an anger so strong it feels like a slap across the face. He ignores her glare and grabs hold of her torso, his fingers brushing against several of the veins. Their surface is just as rubbery as it appears, but he’s surprised by how cold they are. So cold that his skin feels like it’s burning, and he wonders how Emory can stand to have the disgusting things touch her. Especially on the inside. He thrusts the thought away, ignores the sensation of his daughter’s naked flesh beneath his hands, tightens his grip, and pulls downward as hard as he can.
The veins stretch but their hold on Emory doesn’t slacken. The three that are fucking her begin thrusting frantically, as if desperate to finish the job before Jayce stops them. He realizes then that the things aren’t fucking her, or if they are, that’s not all they’re doing. They’re pumping some kind of substance into her. Cum or blood or something alien that he can’t put a name to. With every pulse, Emory’s skin reddens, as if she’s blushing all over her body. The color quickly fades, only to return in an instant when the pulse comes. Emory’s eyes blaze with fury at him, and she thrashes back and forth, as if trying to shrug him off. He doesn’t let go, instead tightens his grip further, to the point where his fingernails are cutting into her skin. Her voice is still muffled by the vein she’s fellating, but her volume rises and it’s clear that she would be yelling at the top of her lungs if she could. Yelling at him.
Jayce pulls harder and the veins stretch thinner, their surfaces darkening from blue-green to deep purple. He can feel them straining to hold on to Emory, to pull her out of his hands, but he refuses to give in. Through gritted teeth, he says, “Let go of my daughter!”
A scent comes to his nostrils then – a blend of fresh soil, autumn leaves, and the sweet odor of rot. He feels a coldness deep inside him, roiling, seething as it rises upward.
“Let. Her. Go!”
As he shouts the last word, a black cloud gusts from his mouth. It spreads outward, engulfing both Emory and the throbbing purple veins that have penetrated her. He’s so startled, so sickened by what has emerged from inside him, that he takes in a gasp of air without thinking. As if he has summoned the black cloud back to him, it reverses direction, rolling back into his mouth and going down deep inside him, returning to wherever it came. When it’s gone, he feels no different than he did a moment ago, and he seems to be uninjured. The same can’t be said, however, for the python-sized veins. They begin to shrivel and blacken, their surface
s becoming dry and brittle. As the veins weaken, so too does their hold on Emory. Jayce pulls her free easily now, and the two of them fall backward onto the couch. He doesn’t care that his daughter is naked. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight in case the veins recover and try to reclaim her. But they continue to wither, growing thinner, their substance beginning to peel away in small, black flakes that drift lazily to the floor like ash. A few moments later, and the things are gone, leaving nothing behind but black flakes which are also in the process of disintegrating. Soon there will be nothing left.
He reaches up to stroke Emory’s hair.
“It’s okay, Emmy. Whatever those fucking things were, they’re gone now.”
For a moment, all she does is lie in his arms, limp, scarcely breathing. But then she struggles and squirms, trying to free herself from his embrace.
“Let me go, you dumbass!”
He’s so shocked to hear her call him this that he does as she asks. Once freed, Emory jumps off the couch, goes to the stereo to turn off the music, then turns back around to face him. She stands without the least hint of self-consciousness at her nakedness. Lines of reddish-white goo trickle down the insides of her thighs, and when she speaks, he sees the same substance smeared on the corners of her mouth. He saw her ass when she turned off the stereo, and he knows she’s leaking from there too.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to summon the Sanguinem Seminis? I studied and practiced for two whole months, and it still took me five tries!”
Jayce has no idea how to respond to her anger. Without realizing it, he presses himself back against the couch, as if he’s trying to escape her.
“I know you don’t want to have anything to do with this kind of stuff. Hell, you do everything you can to forget about it. That time with the giraffe at the zoo. The time you took me to the park and we watched a group of kids turn each other inside out. The day the sun never set, and you and I seemed to be the only two people who noticed it.…”
Other than the giraffe, Jayce has no idea what she’s talking about. And yet there’s something, not memories exactly, but a sense that there are things in his head that he’s better off keeping locked away.
“Well, I do remember, Daddy, and I’m interested in learning more. And in the future, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay the fuck out of my way.”
She glares at him for a moment longer and then sighs.
“Why am I bothering? You’re just going to forget this too, aren’t you?”
She gives him a final look that’s part exasperation, part pity. Then she picks up her clothes, walks toward the stairs, and starts climbing them. He hears the door open and then close. He expects her to slam it shut, but she closes it quietly, almost as if she doesn’t want to disturb him any further.
He pushes himself into a sitting position and remains like that for several minutes, not thinking, not feeling, staring at the wall. Finally, he stands and starts walking toward the stairs. He wishes he could remember what he came down here for, but he supposes if it’s important enough it’ll come back to him eventually. As he mounts the stairs, he realizes that he feels better. Much better, like he never had the flu in the first place. Must’ve been a twenty-four-hour thing, he thinks. Or in his case, a six-hour thing. Still, he should probably take it easy the rest of the day. Work has been a bit stressful lately, and he could use a nice, quiet, boring day at home with his daughter.
* * *
After they’d managed to escape Crimson Splendor – and more important, the Harvest Man – Nicola led Jayce through the Cannery’s streets until they reached a shithole bar called The Tears of Your Enemies. He now sat at a table, alone, while Nicola got drinks for the both of them.
As he’d waited, staring off into the distance, the memories had come flooding back, the images and sensations crashing into him like a tidal wave of information. For several moments he couldn’t do anything other than let the recovered data settle in his mind. But as it did, he felt an increasingly strong mixture of rage and sorrow. The anger he felt was directed at himself. It was his fault that Emory had gotten caught up and eventually swallowed by the dark world of Shadow. After all, hadn’t she inherited the Eye from him? He’d witnessed her corruption happening that afternoon in the basement of their home – his former home. He’d seen how Emory had given herself to the.… What had she called them? The Sanguinem Seminis. Yes, he’d freed her from them, but the memory had slipped away from him like quicksilver, and instead of trying to convince Emory that her fascination with Shadow and its creatures could only damage her, maybe even lead to her death, he had done nothing. And because he’d forgotten – just as he’d always done with any experience that threatened his fragile grasp on reality – he’d allowed the darkness inside Emory to grow. He was her father. He was supposed to guide her, teach her, and above all, protect her. And he had failed to do any of those things, just as he’d failed to keep his marriage together for her sake. And now she was dead.
You’re forgetting something, Mother said. When Emory was getting fucked by the cum-veins, you breathed a cloud of darkness to destroy them – just like You-Know-Who.
“So what?” Jayce mumbled. He should’ve been horrified by that detail, should’ve worried that the Harvest Man had done something to change him that afternoon in the mall restroom when he’d been thirteen. But he couldn’t bring himself to care. Emory was gone, and that was all that mattered.
“Here we go. Good for what ails you.”
Jayce looked over at Nicola. He hadn’t been aware of her sitting down opposite him, but she had, and she held a shot glass filled with multicolored liquid that reminded him of the way a puddle of gasoline looks when the light hits it just right. She had three more shots of the same stuff lined up on the table in front of her, and she’d gotten him four shots of the same iridescent booze. He hadn’t noticed her put the glasses in front of him, and he made no move to touch any of them now.
Nicola downed the first shot, grimaced, then put the glass down gently with an unsteady hand. Whatever that shit was, Jayce thought, it must pack a hell of a kick. She drank the second shot, and this one must’ve gone down easier than the first, for she barely made a face this time.
His ribs still ached from his fight with Ohio Pig, and his hand hurt too, although the bleeding from the torn stitches had stopped. He picked up one of his shots and sniffed the alcohol suspiciously. It smelled like kerosene, only stronger.
You put a match to that crap, the explosion will take off your arm, Mother said.
He didn’t bother replying, aloud or mentally. He was too exhausted – on all levels – to let her goad him.
He didn’t trust whatever the hell was in his glass, and instead of drinking it, he looked around. When Nicola had brought him in, he’d expected to find another nightmarish collection of freaks, like in Crimson Splendor, but the bar – and the patrons – looked almost normal. Beer signs on the walls, along with a flat-screen TV playing a raunchy sex comedy, liquor bottles arranged on shelves – no vessels here – a couple of pool tables, a dartboard, a jukebox playing Seventies and Eighties rock, and wooden chairs and tables: scratched, scuffed, and old. He knew just how they must feel. Like any small funky bar where people went to sit alone and get drunk, the place smelled like a basement – musty and slightly damp. Normally, he would’ve found it depressing, but right now he found the smell a welcome one.
The people were a mix of ages and races, but none seemed particularly weird. Not until you took a closer look, that is. A young Asian guy at one of the pool tables had ears that were too small, and a slow trail of tears ran from his eyes without stopping. He didn’t bother wiping the tears away, just let them fall wherever they would. Several people sat at the bar, and one of them – a heavyset middle-aged woman with short dark gray hair – quivered with full body tremors that came and went, some of them so strong they nearly knocked her off her seat. But
no one had tentacles growing out of their shoulders or tusks jutting from their mouths, so that was a relief.
He wondered if this was the sort of bar his mother had come to when she’d been a Shadower. If this place was old enough, she might even have come here, maybe even sat at this table, in this very chair. He tried to imagine Valerie Lewis – the woman who’d become his obsessively overprotective mother – sitting here and doing shots that looked and smelled like gasoline. As hard as he tried, he just couldn’t picture it.
When Nicola saw him looking around, she said, “This place is on the Outskirts, the edge of Shadow. Things are only slightly weird here. I thought you could use some normal right now.”
“You thought right.” He downed his drink in a single swallow. The liquid burned like fire going down, and he imagined it scouring flesh from his esophagus as it descended toward his stomach. As strong as the shit was, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it ate its way through his body like industrial-strength acid and continued going through the chair, the floor, and then all the way to the center of the Earth. He put the empty down and reached for another. He didn’t drink it right away, though. Too much of this stuff too soon and he’d end up unconscious on the floor. Although, considering everything that had happened tonight, that didn’t sound like a bad idea.
He looked at Nicola. She was a bit blurry around the edges, but he was able to focus his gaze on her – more or less.
“We’ll be safe from the Harvest Man here,” she said. “He’s a creature wholly of Shadow, and he won’t venture this far from the heart of it.”
Jayce hoped she was right, but how could she be certain? Before tonight, she’d believed the Harvest Man was only a dark fable. He glanced at the door, half-expecting the Harvest Man to enter at any moment and begin reducing the bar’s patrons to mounds of ash.