Remains

by Cull, Andrew;

She shifted against the door. The slightest movement made her want to scream out in agony. She clamped a hand over her mouth to cover the sound of her crying. Even in the dim light of the living room she could see that her foot twisted away from her leg at an angle that was awkward and wrong. She wouldn’t be able to run when it came for her.

  Lucy pressed her ear to the living room door. To one of the living room doors. She’d slammed this one closed on the thing. On the other side of the room, the second door was wide open.

  40

  Lucy listened at the door, trying to make out any noise from the hallway. Where was it? The house had fallen silent.

  Behind Lucy, on the other side of the room, pieces of the shattered mirror specked the floor, a thousand dead stars reflecting only darkness. Long shadows stretched onto the living room wall like doorways to unthinkable realms. Another message had been scored into the plaster.

  SAME FOR ALL

  Did something move against the wall?

  Lucy reached up for the doorknob. It was freezing. Unnaturally cold. Was the black thing waiting for her on the other side of the door? Its terrible form coiled in the hallway, biding its time, waiting for a chance to drive that sharpened bone into her flesh?

  She had no choice. She had to get out of the house! That meant going through the hallway.

  No! She couldn’t do it! She couldn’t turn the handle, face the horror that stalked the house. She leaned against the door, her fear too strong. Behind her the darkness swelled, thick and fluid.

  She had to get out of the house. Maybe, if she stuck to the very edges of the hall, clung to the darkest parts of the room, she might be able to make it to the front door unseen.

  If she didn’t move, it would stalk her.

  If she didn’t move, it would find her.

  She could already smell its stench on the air.

  What had she done?

  Get out, Lucy! Get out now!

  Bracing against the door, in case the thing charged it, Lucy began to turn the handle.

  41

  The door shifted in its frame. The movement made Lucy start; a small, frightened cry escaped her lips. It was swallowed into the vast blackness of the hallway. Had she given herself away? Had it heard her?

  She shuffled backwards, little by little pulling the living room door towards her, until she was able to see around it into the hallway. She stayed behind the door, sheltering behind it, as she looked across to the staircase and the remains of the wardrobe.

  The hallway was still. It seemed deserted. Nothing moved near the wardrobe, and the space beneath it seemed empty. Where had it gone?

  Lucy pulled the door open further, edging round it until there was no barrier between her and whatever might lurk in the hall.

  Oh, God, please don’t let it see me!

  Trailing her shattered foot behind her, Lucy began to pull herself for­ward, out from her hiding spot. As she rounded the door’s frame she snatched a look towards the front door.

  It had curled into the shadows against the living room wall, underneath the words it had gouged. Now the shadows shifted: the thing began to move along the cold plaster.

  The bone hit the ground and began to carve. The floorboards screeched as it scraped along the wood, scoring into the living room floor the way it had torn into the walls of the house.

  Lucy spun to the noise. Utterly terrified, she fell onto her back. She’d only made it halfway through the living room door. Although her mind screamed for her to flee, to haul herself away, her body had stopped listen­ing to her.

  No! Not now! Please!

  Move! MOVE!

  Paralysed by her fear, Lucy could only listen to the sound of the bone screeching across the floor as, inch by inch, it gained on her.

  42

  Matt leaned forward in his seat, trying to pull the road ahead from the snow swarming in his headlights. The Camaro’s wipers arced back and forth, a futile attempt to sweep the endless drifts from the windscreen. The downfall had grown heavier with every mile. He knew he was driving too fast—driving blind—but he had to get to Lucy. He didn’t realize he’d drifted into the oncoming lane.

  43

  High beams tore out of the storm, headed straight for the Camaro.

  Matt jerked hard on the wheel.

  It was already too late for the other driver to change course.

  The Camaro swerved, skidding on the frozen road.

  For a moment the snow was on fire, ash swirling in a firestorm. It was terrible, and somehow strangely beautiful. This is the last thing I’ll ever see, thought Matt.

  Please, God, let me see Alex again.

  Glass exploded, metal sheared apart. The wing mirrors of the two cars clipped and were torn off. Their bodies roared past each other, inches from colliding. The wail of the other driver’s horn was swallowed into the white and gone.

  The Camaro kept skidding.

  Matt slammed on the brakes, but the car hit the barrier, the edge of the road overlooking the bay.

  Metal ground on metal, the Camaro bucking against the guard rail as if it were looking for a way through. Matt fought to get the car under control, the wheel shook so violently he could barely hold onto it. The barrier screamed along the side of the car. But it held, and Matt managed to wrestle the Camaro back onto the road.

  His hands were bleeding, rubbed raw by the wheel. His driver’s side headlamp had blown out. None of that mattered. Matt put his foot down again. He had to get to Lucy.

  44

  Death had come for Lucy. She had hauled it from the black with her pleas, a monster made of tears, wrapped in the dead skin of her grief. She had created it and now it was going to kill her.

  The bone carved deep into the wooden floor, corkscrews of peeled wood trailing behind it as it gained on her. Soon that would be her flesh. It was over. She would never see Alex again.

  She started to sob. Not from fear, but because she’d truly believed she’d contacted Alex, that it was him holding her hand in Todd Lowe’s room, that, after everything she’d endured, she could have seen her broken, beautiful boy once more.

  Please don’t let it end like this!

  She fought to break free of her paralysis, her mind screaming at her motionless body. From where she lay, she could see her hands, streaked in blood and plaster dust, useless at her sides.

  Closer, ever closer. Now she could feel the bone’s approach vibrating through the boards beneath her.

  MOVE!

  PLEASE MOVE!

  If she died now, she’d leave Alex in the darkness. Scared and alone. If she died now, she’d fail him again. Just as she had nine months before.

  Like a shadow come alive, the black thing rounded the corner of the wall. Lucy could feel the cold pouring from it.

  “NO! NO! NO!” she screamed. She wouldn’t fail Alex again. In that instant her paralysis was gone. She threw her hands out to her sides and gripped onto the living room door frame. She shoved hard, propelling herself backwards, across the floor and out into the hallway. There, she rolled onto her front. She couldn’t run, her broken foot wouldn’t take her weight. So, she grabbed at the hallway floor and pulled with all the strength her exhausted, broken body had left. She dragged herself inch by excruciating inch across the cold boards.

  The bone scoring the floor grew closer.

  Lucy hauled herself towards the front door.

  The message carved into the wood of the door stopped her in her tracks.

  45

  Don’T LEeve mOMMY

  Lucy shook her head. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be! She raised a hand to her mouth but the words had already escaped: “Always me.”

  She couldn’t take them back.

  A cry tore from Lucy’s lips. Even muffled by her hand, it was a terrible sound. A w
ail of pure mad grief. Everything she’d seen and been through, suddenly made a dreadful, unthinkable sense. She understood! She under­stood what he’d been trying to tell her.

  “Oh no! No, no, no…” She choked the words through her sobbing. She hadn’t ever been talking to the kidnapper. The messages, the horrific, insane messages. They’d been Alex all along. Not the Alex she’d lost on that terrible night in April but what remained of a boy thrown into the barbaric place she’d witnessed when she’d been unconscious.

  Same for all.

  She couldn’t believe it. She refused to believe it. It was too cruel, too black, too much for her heart to bear.

  The sound of the bone gouging the floor had stopped. Lucy could feel the presence behind her.

  46

  YOUR MONSTER

  The Camaro sped through the storm. For a moment everything was still. Silent. As if the night had drawn its breath…

  Lucy pulled herself to her knees. She wasn’t running any more. She felt the slick cold press against her. The stench of decomposition, of liquifying flesh, closed around her. A bloated hand slithered under her arm and, on the other side, a sharpened bone, cut from the stump of an arm, pressed into her side. Alex’s corpse hugged his mother’s back.

  And the night screamed. The storm roared around the Camaro. The momentary silence was gone. In the same instant, Matt felt the Camaro lose power. The engine wound down, the car skidded across the road, sliding, losing speed the whole time.

  “No! No! Not now!”

  Matt pumped the gas but nothing happened. Then all the lights on the dashboard blinked out.

  Matt twisted the key in the ignition again and again. Nothing. The Camaro was dead. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel. Something was terribly wrong with Lucy. He was sure of it. He didn’t stop to think. He ditched the Camaro and began to run through the storm to Lucy.

  Lucy turned to face the remains of her son. “It’s okay… It’s okay, Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here now. I…I didn’t understand. I’m so sorry.” Lucy put her arms around the corpse and hugged it to her. “I thought I’d lost you! I thought I’d lost you forever! I’m so sorry. I won’t leave. It’s okay. You don’t have to worry. I promise, I won’t leave you again. I won’t leave you again.” A swollen child’s hand and the sharpened bone dug into Lucy’s back, gripping her tightly.

  Matt stopped. His breath tore from his body in smoking blasts. The storm circled him, surrounding him instantly, blinding white on all sides. He crumpled—a sickening sense that he was too late ripping the fight from him.

  47

  The truck driver found Matt by the side of the road. Half frozen, raving about his wife and 1428 Montgomery. He gave Matt his jacket, turned the heating up full blast. He offered to drive him to the hospital. That’s where he should have been heading in his state. But Matt went half crazy at that idea. Instead, he drove him out to the house.

  Matt sprinted across the weed-choked lawn, just as he’d done on the night the screaming had lured him to the house. The snow had hit the city proper now, the freezing air was thick with it. He skidded over the icy boards of the porch and slammed against the front door.

  “Lucy! Lucy!” he yelled, right up to the door, trying to listen for any noise as she shouted. “It’s Matt! Are you in there? Can you hear me?”

  He hammered frantically.

  “Lucy, please! Let me in!”

  Nothing. He had to get inside!

  Matt kicked at the door. He knew he wasn’t strong enough to force it. He’d tried that the last time. He rushed back down on to the frozen lawn.

  He could barely see through the tumbling snow, but he could just make out the right bedroom window. He watched it, looking for movement, a figure, any sign someone had heard him.

  “LUCY!” He cupped his hands and called again.

  He knew that was Todd Lowe’s room. He knew every room in the house. He’d learned their layout the same way Lucy had. He’d read all of her cuttings, every terrible word of them. He knew that if Lucy was in the house, she’d likely be in that room.

  Matt stepped backwards. His heel caught on a pile of snow-covered bricks and he almost went over. Ted had been building Anna a vegetable garden before they’d abandoned the house. Matt bent down and picked up one of the bricks.

  The living room window exploded inwards. The storm followed it in. The brick caught in the heavy curtains and dropped to the boards with a muffled thud. Matt pushed the rest of the shattered glass out of the frame and clambered inside. Snow swarmed after him.

  “LUCY! Lucy, are you here?”

  Matt hurried across the lounge, the electric dread that coursed through him flaring to full-blown panic when he saw the track carved into the floorboards.

  “Oh my God, Lucy!” He broke into a run.

  When he hit the hallway, he spotted the shattered wardrobe on the landing at the bottom of the staircase. He saw the trail of black liquid spilling over the stairs and down onto the boards.

  “Oh no! No!”

  He didn’t think, he didn’t stop to look around the hallway. He raced across the room to the wardrobe. He fumbled underneath it, grabbing for a handhold. As his fingers skirted the shattered wood around the door, he noticed the smell. Metal? Blood? He could taste it on the freezing air. He found an edge and gripped it, reaching into the darkness that had borne a monster.

  48

  Matt’s arms shook, splintered wood cut deep into his fingers. He strained to lift the weight of the wardrobe from the floor. He could hear wood cracking, splitting apart. He heaved the closet up, adrenaline giving him the strength to make the final push and tip the wardrobe onto its side against the wall.

  Lucy wasn’t under the wardrobe. Thank God. But now Matt could see the extent of the black liquid, could see how it was smeared all over the landing, how it seemed to have spilled from the broken wardrobe, as if the darkness itself had come alive. Just how he’d feared the shadows in his house might. Something white, in the farthest corner of the wardrobe’s insides, caught Matt’s attention. He leaned in towards the doorway.

  A startling creak from the crumbling frame almost sent him reeling backwards. He grabbed a hold of the edge of the doorway to steady himself. The wardrobe groaned again. It wouldn’t be able to support its own weight much longer. Matt looked into the darkness. The stench from inside the closet was overpowering now. It was blood. Blood and rot. It caught in his throat and made him gag. Turning his face away, he reached blind into the black.

  He reached in until his shoulder leaned against the frame, until his whole arm was swallowed into the wardrobe. His fingers swept through the fetid air. Then they fell upon the white shape.

  It was wet. Paper. He closed his hand around it and peeled it from the corner of the wardrobe. As he pulled the book toward him, he caught a glimpse of its cover. At the same moment there was a startling crack, and the wardrobe finally collapsed. The top and bottom gave way, and the two sides of the closet fell on one another like a giant jaw snapping shut.

  Matt snatched his hand away just as the mouth closed tight. He stumbled back across the landing, the copy of the BFG he’d retrieved from the ruined wardrobe dripping with the putrid fluid that had been smeared across the boards at his feet. It was Alex’s copy. His favorite book. He’d written his name in the front of it. But it was barely recognizable. The pages had been torn into, shredded. It was falling apart in Matt’s hands. He cradled it in his fingers, trying to hold it together.

  “Oh God, Lucy, what have you done?”

  Matt turned to the staircase.

  “LUCY? LUCY?”

  Please answer me!

  His calls were met with silence.

  Matt raced up the stairs.

  49

  His boots were still wet from the snow, and slick from the stinking fluid he’d trodden through on
the landing. Matt’s feet skidded over the steps as he ran. When he saw the words carved into wall, he was so startled that he stopped dead mid-step.

  ALL WAYS ME

  The letters were hacked down to the brick. Matt suddenly felt terribly small and vulnerable. How could this have happened? Had Lucy done this? Had someone, some thing else gouged out the words? His feet rocked on the edge of the stair where he’d stopped. Nervously, he glanced behind him, back down to the remains of the wardrobe. He’d rushed into the house, desperate to help Lucy, but now he felt like an animal lured into a trap.

  Matt threw out a hand for the handrail. He grabbed at it and clung on. This was the place where Alex had been murdered. Where all their lives had ended. A clapboard cadaver where grief inhabited every room. He’d tried to destroy it before, and he’d failed. He’d underestimated its power, and now it closed its black fingers around his heart.

  “Where are you, Lucy?” His voice was quiet, scared.

  Matt pulled himself up the last few stairs and into the corridor. He knew where the house was leading him, knew he had to go for Lucy’s sake, but this was the place where his nightmares took him, and he wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to face what lay ahead.

  He followed the wall, his apprehension growing with every step.

  Please, Lucy, say something!

  End this, don’t make me do this!

  His fingers grazed another message cut into the wall. He snatched his hand away.

  SKINNED FACES WATCHING

  Too soon he was at the door to Todd Lowe’s room.

  The door was ajar.

  Matt closed his eyes as he pushed the door open.

  50

  Dawn light had begun to dilute the darkness in Todd Lowe’s room. It fell softly upon Alex’s broken toys, the paper of his books, his clothes, all stacked neatly in the remains of his case. Carefully packed away by Lucy’s feet.