Remains

by Cull, Andrew;

  The door to Todd Lowe’s room was shut. Lucy closed her fingers around the freezing handle.

  As she opened the door, she started to scream.

  28

  “Oh no! No, no, no!” The Ouija board had been hurled at the wall. It lay broken, underneath the rough plaster where Alex had died. But that was not what made Lucy cry out.

  In the centre of the room lay Alex’s case. What was left of it. The case had been smashed open, its clasps shattered. The lid had been ripped from the bottom half, its leather stretched, skin pulled taut till it tore.

  The contents of Alex’s case had been cast around the room. His books had had their spines snapped, their pages torn out and shredded. His clothes had been ripped limb from limb. The red sweater Lucy had treated with such reverence had been gutted, sliced up the middle and peeled open.

  “No, no, no!”

  She dropped to her knees and began frantically trying to scoop up Alex’s things. His books fell to pieces in her hands, her fingers slipped through the tears in his clothes. She grabbed Alex’s Action Jack figure from the floor. As she turned it over she dropped it in horror.

  The doll’s skull had been cracked open. Where its eyes should have been, empty sockets glared at Lucy. The face bulged, stretched and deformed. Its limbs had been twisted and pulled from its torso.

  Lucy snatched the case from the floor, her arms filled with the broken remains of Alex’s things.

  She stuffed all the pieces—the torn paper, the ruined clothes, the smashed and broken toys—back into the case, trying hopelessly to put everything back how it had been.

  The lid was too damaged to close.

  She held the sides of the case together but Alex’s things spilled from its ripped open body.

  Everything she’d hoarded, protected. Everything she had left of Alex had been destroyed. She cradled the remains to her and she screamed. A terrible, desolate wail.

  “Why? Why have you done this?”

  She screamed again and again, her pitiful cries echoing through the house as the last piece of Lucy to survive her grief left her. The last breath of her dying mind, gone into the squirming void that had been at her back ever since Alex had been slaughtered.

  It fizzed and burned out.

  Like a filament in a bulb.

  Flaring and disintegrating.

  Irreparable.

  29

  She might have sat there for an hour, maybe two, weeping and rocking the broken case in her arms. In the end, it was the scent of him that pulled her back. Faint, fading from the shredded clothes she clung to. It was the scent of him that pulled her across the room, to the foot of the wall where the broken Ouija board lay.

  “It’s okay, Mommy’s here.” Her voice was hollow. Something had gone from it, never to return.

  She gathered up the pieces of the broken board. The planchette was now­here to be seen.

  She placed the pieces together on top of the shattered case. She stretched out her middle and index fingers and rested her hand gently in the centre of the board. She would be the planchette.

  “Alex, it’s me. It’s Mommy.” She whispered, afraid the kidnapper might hear her. “Can you hear me, Alex?”

  Her fingers remained still in the middle of the board.

  “Don’t be afraid.” She leaned over the board, shielding it from the darkness around her. “If you can talk to me, say something. I need to hear from you… I need…”

  Gently, slowly, Lucy’s hand began to move across the board. She followed her fingers as they came to rest on the letter P.

  Had she done that? Had the movement simply been her willing her hand to move, desperate for a message from Alex?

  She felt a tug at her wrist, her hand being guided across the board once more. A letter O followed the P. Then another O and an R. POOR. Next her hand was led to a D, then an E and back to D. DED. B, O, Y. BOY. An H then an A, another H, A, H, A, H, A. Ha, Ha, Ha.

  Lucy called out, “For God’s sake! Stop this! Please! I just want to talk to Alex! Why are you doing this? Why did you have to ruin his things? They were all I had left of him!”

  Her hand began to move again. P, then L, A then Y, I, N. PLAYIN.

  “Playing? You’re playing with me? You killed my son, you fuck! You’re a monster! You hear me? A monster!”

  Lucy tried to hold her hand still, didn’t want to hear what he had to say next, but the force that dragged her was too strong. Y, then O, U, R. YOUR. M, O, N, S, T, E, R. MONSTER.

  She clamped her free hand over her wrist, fought to wrestle her hand from the board. “No!” But his grip was too powerful. He’d found a way to be heard and he was going to make her listen.

  H, E, A, R. HEAR

  H, E, A, R. HEAR

  HEAR what?

  “I don’t want to hear what you have to say!”

  H, E, A, R.

  H, E, A, R.

  Lucy’s fingers tore across the board, letter to letter, the grip getting tight­er, stronger.

  I, M.

  I, M.

  I, M, H, E, A, R. I’M HEAR!

  Suddenly, her hand was released. She snatched it away from the board. I’M HERE!

  Lucy froze. The bedroom had grown darker, shadows had stolen in and surrounded her while she’d been distracted.

  Then she felt it, behind her.

  “Please, no.”

  The words fell from her lips. It wasn’t Alex. She was sure of that. It couldn’t be. Whatever lurked in the darkness meant to hurt her. She shouldn’t have come back here.

  The stench wrapped around her. In her peripheral vision, she saw the darkness shift. At the last moment she turned to look. That was when the black thing pounced, the rotten carcass grabbing her, throwing her over, slamming her head into the floor with such force she was knocked out.

  30

  The scream tore out of the darkness. It jolted Matt from a thin and anxious sleep. He knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. The scream came again. His cell phone drummed angrily on the bedside table. He fumbled for the phone and answered it. He wasn’t thinking, he just wanted the screaming to stop.

  It wasn’t the first time that Matt had been woken by screaming in the night.

  About a month after Lucy had left, Matt had started awake at 4:00am. At first, he wasn’t sure what had woken him. He’d lain in the dark, listening, unable to fathom why he’d woken in fright. Then he’d heard it.

  Faint, off in the distance, an injured animal cried for help.

  He guessed it was coming from the woods that surrounded the house. It sounded like a deer, or maybe a fox, caught in the trap. What he could hear, even at a distance, was the desperation in each howl, it was a miserable sound. The sound of something dying.

  Matt had gotten out of bed. He’d stood in front of the large living room windows. He could see the edge of the woods, the treeline bordering his driveway. He’d watched, waiting, expecting to see the wounded animal stumble from the cover of the trees, buckling and falling onto the wet earth. No movement came.

  Still the wailing sound continued.

  The longer he heard it, the more it unnerved him. He’d stepped back away from the glass, moved through the house, but the sound had followed him. No matter where he stood, he could hear it. He’d begun to dread each cry, each pitiful howl. Eventually he couldn’t stand it anymore and he’d grabbed his car keys, headed into the garage and gotten into the Camaro. There he’d locked himself in, gripping the wheel with clenched fists as the garage door had risen, inch by inch, revealing the dark landscape ahead.

  Matt drove slowly along the driveway. The knot of anxiety that had made him step back from the living room windows had grown to real fear now. His headlights swept across the treeline as the driveway curled ahead. He squinted into the woods.

  Re
aching the end of the drive, he pulled out onto the single lane track that led, after a mile or so, back to the highway. He’d purposely rented a house out of the city; he had no interest in having neighbours, in having to see or speak to anyone anymore. After Alex had been murdered, he and Lucy had tried to cling to some semblance of a normal life. All that had brought them was agony. Now he just wanted to be left alone.

  There were no lights along the track and the steel glow of the moon had been smothered by heavy clouds overhead. Matt strained to look into the woods as he drove. All the time the track ahead developed, foot by foot, in the Camaro’s headlamps. A huddle of twisted figures, the trunks of oaks, crowded the edge of the dirt road. He cracked the window and the howls were closer now. Were they ahead? Coming from along the track?

  Matt drove until the rutted track became the highway. He wound the window tight against the sound and put his foot down. He left the woods behind, his fear beginning to recede as he put more distance between himself and the crying that had woken him. The motion of the car calmed his nerves, the repetition of the road lulling him towards sleep. He thought he was driving without direction, letting the road take him away from whatever stalked the woods. He was wrong.

  The sound found him. It cut between the growling of the Camaro’s engine—a startling, mournful wail. Matt stood on the brakes. The car swerved to a stop, the front end veering into the oncoming lane. Had he been asleep? He killed the engine. The V8 wound down and stopped. The headlights blinked out.

  Matt sat in the darkness.

  A stillness descended on the Camaro.

  When it came again, the sound made him cry out. How could it have followed him? He’d driven for miles. Surely anything so badly injured couldn’t have kept pace all this way? It came again, louder now, closer than it had been on the dirt track.

  Matt spun, squinting into the dark behind him. The tree-lined road seemed empty. Another cry cut through the night air. Matt’s body was tight, he snatched for the key to start the Camaro. He twisted back to face the front…then he saw it.

  On the edge of the trees, just before the wet asphalt disappeared into the night, a sign leaned out towards the road. Matt recognized it straight away. He’d seen it before, on the night Alex had died. A few months before, two teenagers had run off the road and into the sign. It’d buckled over the hood of their car. The car was long gone, but the sign, bent over like an old man on the side of the highway, remained. On the night of Alex’s disappearance, he’d driven this road searching the treeline for any sign of his son. From a distance he’d mistaken the sign for someone standing on the edge of the road. He’d slowed as he’d passed, just long enough to see the wilting flowers that had been placed at the foot of the sign. He’d started to cry, overwhelmed by a terrible sense of the inevitable.

  Matt thought he’d been driving away from the sound.

  He’d been driving towards it.

  It would draw him all the way to 1428 Montgomery.

  The wailing grew louder, clearer with every mile he drove. He gripped the wheel, pleading for it to stop. He could tell now that it wasn’t a dying animal: it was a human cry, horribly distorted. They were Alex’s cries, terrified and in agony, screaming for someone, anyone, to help him. They were the cries he should have heard on that awful April night, the sound he should have followed to the black house to help his son.

  Matt drove too fast on the wet asphalt. He called to Alex, trying to soothe his pain but the awful mewling just grew louder as it pulled him through the night.

  Montgomery was still, deaf to Alex’s suffering. Matt threw the Camaro up onto the curb and ran for the house. He tore across the overgrown lawn. In his heart he knew it couldn’t be real, knew that Alex was gone, but still he could hear his son, he could hear him screaming! He jumped up onto the porch and ran for the door.

  “I’m here, son! I’m here! Daddy’s here! It’s okay! It’s going to be okay!” The moment Matt touched the front door, the screaming stopped. “No! Alex! Alex!” He barged against the door, slamming against it. “Alex, please!”

  No answer came.

  Matt threw himself against the door, again and again, trying to break it in, trying to get to Alex.

  But Alex was gone.

  “I’m sorry! Alex! I’m so sorry!”

  Matt fell against the door and wept.

  The scream jolted Matt awake. Immediately he was back, standing out­side 1428 Montgomery on that July night. The screaming was Alex’s—rising from what remained of his blasted-apart throat, blood choking his terrified cries. The screaming was Matt’s cell phone drumming angrily on the bedside table. Matt slammed against the door, trying to beat it down, trying to get to Alex.

  He fumbled for the phone and answered it. In the thick darkness, the nightmare of the night outside 1428 Montgomery clung to him. Matt grabbed for the bedside lamp and flicked it on. He was shaking. It was 4:00am.

  “Hello?” Matt’s voice was rough, hoarse from crying out to Alex in his sleep.

  The laugh that replied almost made him drop the phone. The sound was barely human. The breathing that followed was heavy, fast.

  “Who is this?” The night seemed to draw tighter around him. He moved closer to the dim light of his bedside lamp.

  “I’ve seen it!” the voice screamed. Then it was laughing, madness pulled taut, soaked in sweat and terror. Matt’s blood turned to ice. He knew the voice. Knew it but barely recognized it.

  Lucy’s mouth was pressed against the receiver; Matt could feel her frenzied breathing pulsing in his ear. One moment her voice was barely a whisper, the next screaming, out of control, as if two entities fought to control the same mouth.

  “Fuck! They use their bones to cut their flesh. Split and grind. Fuck the open wounds. Fuck the open wounds. Deep, deep, pushing, thrusting into the sticky meat!”

  “Lucy? Lucy? What’s going on?”

  Could she even hear him? Matt had once seen a woman speaking in tongues in a church. Lucy’s rambling, muttering and then screaming reminded him of that.

  “I’ve seen the place, in the messages! The place where he is. It’s horrible! The old ones. The oldest ones! They’ve been there forever. They’re insane. They’re all insane. So many bodies. Torn apart. There are children there!”

  “Lucy, listen to me, it’s okay. Can you hear me, Lucy? What you’re saying, it’s not real.”

  “No! It’s where they all go. Don’t you understand? The madness infects them all. They’re fucked, they’re all fucked!”

  Then she was laughing again, strained and painful, as if each bark forced itself up through her throat, rough and hard.

  “Are you fucking listening to me you cunt? They feed on the weak, wear their fucking skins! Hide! HIDE! I can smell the blood! So much blood! Slit you up the middle, see it all spill out, faster, faster, faster, faster, yellow fat in my hands, in my mouth.”

  Matt couldn’t listen to any more. “Stop! Lucy! Lucy, please! Stop! You’ve got to stop this!”

  The line went quiet.

  “Lucy? Are you there?”

  Lucy’s breathing came close to the phone once more. She was crying.

  “Make it stop. Please make it stop,” she pleaded. The line went dead.

  31

  NEVER OVER

  Matt sat on the edge of his bed, circled by darkness and silence. Both felt charged, as if they somehow teemed with the terrible things Lucy had described. As if they’d slithered out of her mouth and into the reality of his room. He’d known Lucy for more than ten years, and even when she’d been at her lowest, her most broken—before she’d checked herself into the hospital—he could never have imagined her saying the things he’d just heard.

  What she’d described was pure madness. He couldn’t get the images out of his head. He got up and crossed the bedroom to the light switch, slamming his hand down on it, floodi
ng the room with bright light. The thick shadows that had crowded his bed were chased back into the corridor. The silence remained behind, though. And it was filled with whispering: Lucy’s words, repeating over and over.

  Matt realized he was still gripping his phone. He wanted it to ring again, for Lucy to be at the other end of the line reassuring him she was okay, that it had been some kind of night terror, a fever dream. At the same time, he dreaded it ringing again, dreaded what might be waiting for him when he answered.

  When he’d found Lucy at the house he’d been heartbroken, sickened by what she’d done. But he didn’t blame her. He blamed Bachman. Why had Bachman let her leave the hospital when she was so clearly still consumed by grief? Matt thought she’d been getting better. That’s what the doctor had told him. He’d called Bachman, furious, demanding answers; then he’d implored him to do something.

  He should have gone back and dragged her out of that evil place himself.

  Matt eyed the darkness in the corridor. It seemed to shift and churn as he watched. He snapped the hallway light on to drive it away. Had Lucy been talking about Alex? The place where he is. Even the suggestion his little boy could be in the hell Lucy described filled him with a horror that seized around his heart. The same desperate helplessness he’d felt that night outside 1428 Montgomery.

  Matt moved from room to room until he’d switched on every light in his house.

  32

  It looked down at Lucy, unconscious on the cold boards of his room. It had watched her before, watched her for hours, studied every detail of her—the way her pale skin pulled taut over her bones, veins bulging fat just beneath the surface. She had locked herself away, cut her ties with the outside world, wasted away until she was a dead thing calling to the dead. They had answered.

  It had watched as the blood flowed freely from the wound on her fore­head. Watched as it clotted in black stars through her matted hair. Stood over her as it slowly congealed to a sticky red mouth just below her hairline.