Harold screamed again, kicked his hands and his feet to try to swim away, but as he looked down he saw his ankle had been clamped, too. And the woman’s corpse had a subtle smile on her face.
Her lips didn’t move; a voice struck his mind: “The key, Harold. Find the key.”
“I don’t have it,” he answered, and somehow his voice came out perfectly clear as if he wasn’t chained to the bottom of large body of water.
“I do, in my shirt pocket. Come closer.”
Harold hesitated. The dead eyes just stared at him blankly. He must’ve been going crazy. Must’ve been accepting that fact, too, because he swam closer, or as far as the chain would let him go, which was about a foot too close to the body.
She might’ve once been pretty a hundred years ago, might’ve had the ghostly features of a Russian supermodel if the water had not taken her skin and turned it into pulp.
His hand reached out to the woman, snaking through her floating arms towards the breast pocket, feeling like the woman would change into the face of an unnatural baby and bite his fingers off at any moment, feeling the fear wrenching at his insides.
She didn’t. Instead, she just bobbed, rocked back and forth with the same dead look on her face.
His fingers dug into the pocket, and he felt the unmistakable metal between them. The jagged edge of a key, the loop of a keyring, and a hard plastic keychain. He pulled it free, and saw it as clear as day. The keychain had a crudely drawn wave on it and a little stick figure surfing, with a wave at his back. The words read: THE LAKE, Bar and Grill, FIRST DRINK’S ON US!
Was this the Lake Sahara spoke of? Harold thought.
Sahara.
A hint of consciousness washed over him. He was asleep, but not. Half awake, stuck in Dream’s Realm, one foot in Reality’s.
He had forgotten about Sahara. How long had he been gone? She might’ve already been dead now, all because Harold wanted a nap. But it was either that or fall asleep behind the wheel and kill them both.
The chains jingled when he jerked because the woman’s eyes weren’t so dead anymore, and neither was her hand as it gripped his wrist.
The corpse smiled a bloody smile, waters worms hung from her teeth like question marks.
“The girl will be alright,” she said. “Bring her to me.”
But Harold thrashed, too frightened to comprehend the words. The grip grew tighter and tighter until he feared his bone might snap. And the gimp arm would just float in the current like a plastic bag — useless to him. He had the key, and he was not the old Harold.
“You don’t belong here,” the woman said. “I see it in your eyes.”
She pulled him closer. Somehow under the water, he could smell the stench of death, that rotting, sickening sweet smell of finality and the cedar of a casket.
Her smile grew wilder; worms floated out of her mouth.
The key, he fumbled the key. She squeezed so hard that the blood had stopped pumping through his body. His head swelled like it threatened to blow, skin turned a sickening shade of red and purple, reminding him of his true self.
He tried to raise his ankle, tried to find the keyhole, but whatever he was chained to was much too strong. And the woman’s mouth closed in on him. An alarm shrieked inside of his body; someone spoke: sink or swim.
“Come see me, Harold Storm. I can make the girl better. I can help you find your true purpose. No longer is Harold Storm a failure.”
She let go of him, and he wasted no time scrambling down to the ankle bracelet around his leg. The key went right in and there was a satisfying click — a click of freedom — and he shot up, straight to the surface.
“See you soon, Harry,” the corpse said.
He woke up gasping in the driver’s seat of the Audi. Stale drool dried on his chin. He raised his hand to wipe it away, and felt the roughness of his burnt, but healing, skin.
Just a dream, Harry. Nothing to pull your hair out about.
Unsurprisingly, his fifteen minute power nap wound up being about forty-five minutes longer than expected. He leaned over the middle console to look at Sahara. She seemed bad still — sweaty forehead, skin too pale, and cheeks that had begun sink in — but she was alive, and that was all that mattered.
He turned the overhead light on the lowest setting and brought a hand to her face. A stream of water spilled from his sleeve, and his heart froze — just stopped beating completely.
His brain didn’t tell him to, but he did anyway, and reached into his trench coat’s pocket. Fingers closed around a key — and not the one he needed at the moment.
The Lake keychain dangled lazily from the ring (FIRST DRINK’S ON US!) and his heart came back to life like a slow moving train. First slow beats, then the rapid pumps of steam engine pistons kicking into gear.
Sahara groaned. “The Lake,” she whispered, “Take me there.”
The dead eyes of the unborn child, of the corpse burned in his mind. No way. No fucking way. He had no intention to go there. Wherever there was.
“Please, Storm, it hurts. He’s p-pulling apart my mind. Ripping it to shreds.”
And Harold looked at his beautiful companion — still somehow beautiful under the will of the Demon Venom — before letting his head fall into his hands.
He didn’t answer her with words. Instead, got out of the car and headed for the abandoned phone booth. Over the tall glass, a low fire burned in the night sky, illuminating the cityscape of Gloomsville miles away, and he saw the destruction, heard the screams, smelled the death.
God, how his shoulders ached with the weight of the world pressed down upon him.
See you soon, Harry.
CHAPTER 12
Frank awoke in a pool of blood that sizzled against his skin.
He had looked into the Demon’s open mouth as if he was looking into his open casket. He’d been sure he was a dead man.
But the creature just shrieked like a dying hyena and dropped. Frank fell with it.
He rubbed his head. Despite the mushy green floor — that faux earth feel — he had knocked it pretty hard and it took him a couple minutes to realize where he was — or who he was for that matter.
That son-of-a-bitch had left him there to die. Ran like a coward, clutching a woman with the sickness close to his chest. God, how he wanted to tear the yellow-belly’s burnt face off.
But he wasn’t the one the Shadow had told him about in his dreams. And he was beginning to think that person didn’t exist anymore, at least not on this planet.
Realm, he corrected himself. Right, like the burnt man named Storm had called it. The coward that had the nerve to name himself a Realm Protector. A term Frank had never heard before and one Storm had no right calling himself. The man might’ve been a pussy, but Frank was a fool for not killing him when he had the chance. Even if the man wasn’t the one who’d killed Travis. Some people are just better off dead. The world would’ve thanked him.
He eyed the collapsed Demon, feeling the pain in his body hit him full force. No, he was not as young as he once was, and though sometimes he had fits of youthful bursts — it was part of the reason he’d been able to survive in the Hunting business for so long — age caught up to everyone. Even his father in the end. That wise, wise man who’d put a modern spin on the Ten Rules had tripped on the root of a tree while running from a pack of Werewolves. Frank knew about the cataracts, that white film over his eyes, but he was a young hotheaded kid just eager for a taste of magic blood so he thought nothing of it, and growing up his father had been infallible. Nothing could’ve killed the man.
What a way to go out. Devoured by wolves then shat out the very next day. You were heading down that same path, you lucky bastard.
“Miss you, old man,” Frank whispered to himself quietly, not wanting to wake the dead. He looked up to the great, hollow blackness of the tree, then mouthed a silent prayer to his guardian angel. That Demon had just dropped. There had to be some sort of divine intervention at play. He was never this
lucky. Although, the arrow lodged in the Demon’s thigh might’ve had something to do with it.
When he pushed himself up, almost slipping in the black liquid pooled around him, drenching his clothes and soaking into his brain, his knees popped like a set of firecrackers, and he could only shake his head, knowing how he’d wake in the morning. The pain would be damn near crippling, but that was only if he let himself fall asleep. And after a near-death experience such as that and the rage burning in his belly for the wrong that Harold Storm had done him, he didn’t think sleep would come easily that night. Nor did he want it to. Anything to avoid those nightmares, the ones where he’d wake up covered in a cold sweat, shaking and in more pain than any bout with a horde of Vampires and Demons could do to you.
But sleep had a funny way of winning out in the end, didn’t it? Like it or not, he pushed retirement age, and nap time was nigh. Sooner than later he’d have to let it take him.
The Ford, rusty and nearly twenty years old, sat far off on the tree line, where the sun barely shone, but as he gazed the other way, he saw the fire touching the sky. The darkness. The Shadows, and doom struck him sour as if someone had played the wrong note while playing a beautiful piece of music.
Maybe sleep wouldn’t come at all, old age or not. Because maybe he didn’t have to dream the nightmares anymore.
Maybe he lived them.
But the thought of Harold Storm, how he had left Frank to be devoured by a Demon caused his blood to flare. He shook his head. Karma didn’t operate under a broken system.
And it would have to be done before the world murdered Frank.
Frank would have to force karma’s hand. And something told him that Storm would lead him to the one he wanted.
He climbed into the Ford, the smell of old cigarette smoke that still clung to the leather seats hit him hard — god, he’d quit ages ago — and he buckled himself up.
It was looking to be a wild night which could only grow wilder; and besides, Frank King could sleep when he was dead.
CHAPTER 13
There had only been one listing for The Lake in the phone book and it happened to be a bar and grill, but the phone book had been outdated twenty or so years. The pages were worn and had been thumbed through many times before the advent of cell phones and mobile internet. He wondered when the last time the damn thing had been updated actually was.
Until he saw the address, the words nearly popping off of the page as if he wore 3-D glasses. It wouldn’t have made sense for a small, touristy restaurant to be on the outskirts of some dark forest, or near the city, so of course The Lake had been on a lake, and it just so happened to be Lake Shallows — the toxic-infested dumping grounds of too many industrial companies to count.
Harold swallowed hard. It seemed he had no choice unless the nightmares — visions, he now called them, because nightmares are forgotten twenty minutes after you wake, and he’d never forget the child, the corpse, or the lake — stopped. And for some reason, he knew they wouldn’t, but they wouldn’t change either. They’d just come in different forms. Always the child; always the bloated corpse; always the lake.
It made him never want to sleep again. At least not until he purged the venom from his system, and whoever resided on the shores of toxic Lake Shallows just might be able to do that for him.
I can help you find your true purpose, the corpse whispered in his head.
But was that what he wanted? A true purpose meant more responsibility, more responsibility meant more assholes like that old man coming after him, and more people counting on him to save them.
I don’t think you’ll ever have more people counting on you than you do now, Harry. So get over it.
He closed the phone book with a dull thud; that moldy page smell wafted up to him, reminding him of an abandoned basement or someone’s rain-soaked attic. And he stepped out of the phone booth. The heat of the burning city washed over his skin. He thought of global warming and how the scientists blamed the pollution, when really what would do them all in happened to be a Portal somewhere, spouting off Hellfire.
Sahara stirred when he got back in the car and started the engine.
“The Lake…” she wheezed.
“That’s where we’re going, just hang in there, Sahara. You’re gonna be alright.” Then softly, under his breath: “We’re going to be alright. Both of us…I hope.”
She mumbled something else, but it was lost amongst the roar of the engine. He headed back towards the city that birthed the burned freak of a man, back towards the chaos. Harold drove, and didn’t stop until he reached the beach.
And when he did, the flames in the sky toasted the car, as if they were in their own personal oven. Sahara looked worse yet. The black venom had begun to snake its way up her flesh, visible at the throat, and bold, reaching up towards her face where the streaks faded. They were growing and when they hit her brain, there was no telling what that meant for her.
Death, Harold thought.
But she still had her key, and her blade, despite how decrepit it had become and it might be able to prolong her life just a bit longer. That’s all he needed: just a bit longer, a pushed deadline for death.
As he got out of the car, feeling the warmth bake him even more, the surroundings were empty, except for the trees, overgrowth, and the lake, its outskirts dusted with a few derelict buildings that would never had passed a health inspection in their prime, let alone now.
The water smoked, vapors twirling off into the air, getting lost as they dispersed. He looked towards what might’ve once been blue a long time ago, what was now a sickly shade of gray-black thanks to the local warehouses and factories on the outskirts of the city. Across the lake, a few buildings were on fire, black tendrils curled into the horizon. Harold gulped. Doom was in the air, and he was a sitting duck — open season for this Realm Protector, this savior without his sword.
He knew what he had to do in order to save Sahara, knew he’d have to take the plunge into the toxic water to find the corpse, and that would give him the answers. But the water looked as if it’d kill him once it touched his skin, absorbed into his body, until he remembered the night Beth had burned him with the Spellfire. And the lake he’d gone to, to cool himself off, to extinguish the hidden flames working inside of his body.
It was the same lake he stood on the opposite side of. Yes, he peered over the calm, black water and saw the same beach he’d woken up on. His memory wasn’t at its peak — he’d felt like all his past memories were a lifetime ago — but he remembered that. How could he not? It happened only a few days ago, and so much had changed since then, but he remembered all the same.
Harold Storm was born on that beach, was a product of the lake, the toxic water.
So he pushed the horrible thoughts from his mind, and let his trench coat fall to the sand, covering shards of a broken beer bottles. Then he peeled off his tattered, bloodstained shirt and tossed it to the side. Unbuckled the belt looped through his pants, and kept going until he wore nothing but socks and loose underwear.
He caught a glance of his body, and in the orange glow from the ending world, he didn’t look half bad. The burns blended almost perfectly.
He stepped closer, letting the sand squish between his toes. Sand that was probably radioactive, but felt pleasant enough. Closer to the beach, his breath grew jittery, his teeth clattered, not in anticipation of the cold. No, the temperature was not a big deal at all because he knew his body would adapt. He shook because he didn’t know what the depths of the lake held.
Sahara’s sickly face floated up before him, and so did the guilt. It was his fault she’d been captured in the first place, his fault the Eaters had pumped her so full of venom. Why did he have to stop off at Chet’s bar to try to drown his sorrows? If he would’ve just chased them right when it happened, showed some goddamned initiative, then maybe Sahara wouldn’t be half-dead in the back of another dead friend’s stolen car.
They would’ve killed her if you never had
come. Be glad you did that much, he thought.
Sure, he saved her, but now the world was ending and he had no weapon to defend it with. No allies to help him.
His feet touched the water — ice cold, causing the ghost of his skin to prickle with goosebumps. He kept going until he felt the depth grow deeper, until the black water was up to his shins. God, he started to think he should’ve just jumped right in. A slow burn was too much, like a sucker punch to the balls — balls that began to shrivel up into his body.
He lifted his feet back out of the water, unable to see his toes through the transparency, and he smiled. Because he hadn’t suddenly grown an extra leg or another set of eyes on the bottom of his feet. No, they were still just his regular old feet. Burned to Hell, but regular enough. He stepped forward again, meaning to go all the way until a lightning bolt of fear nearly split his brain in half.
The water bubbled as if a snorkeler had let out a great burst of breath from the bottom. He froze until more bubbles came up and the fear seized his heart.
His head swiveled, and though he was only a few feet — maybe ten or twenty — into the lake, the black Audi seemed to disappear into a shroud of Shadows, seemed to look tiny as if he looked at it from high up in an airplane.
The fear, that’s all it was. He took a deep breath, inhaling the toxic fumes. But he couldn’t go any further. The fear was too much, prevented him from submerging himself, from finding the corpse of the woman and the key she held — both the physical one and the one to all of his questions.
The bubbles emerged again, and despite his best interests, he bent down, the curiosity overtaking the fear. He skimmed a finger over the surface, letting the coldness shock him, and momentarily push the fear and the curiosity away. The water had calmed for a minute. He looked onto the blackness, seeing his reflection gently swaying with the slight breeze that blew over the lake. Beyond, deep into the heart of the city, the chaos continued. People died. Buildings burned. Children lost their mothers and screamed into the night. The Demons and Hellions may have walked the Earth, the Disciples might’ve basked in the glory, but there on the lake, Harold was at peace.
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