Darkborn

by Matthew J. Costello

  Maybe James was wrong. Maybe we have this thing screwed up somehow. He looked at his watch: 12:15.

  Unless . . . unless I’m late.

  Like the White Rabbit, tumbling down a hole to the best little tea party in hell.

  He turned back to the hooker, someone’s little girl, all grown-up. Launching her career.

  Making a name for herself in the Big Apple.

  She was gone. He didn’t see her, and he couldn’t hear her.

  She’s a ghost. A phantom hooker. Down the street were half a dozen dark cars. Maybe one of them had her pimp, watching over her trade. Maybe not.

  Maybe she simply gave up.

  A cop car came down the block. Slowly. Cautiously.

  His paranoia snapped back into place. I’ve got to get out of here, Will thought. He tried to decide on which way to walk. The understaffed, under-the-gun cops might decide to pull him over for questions. And then look inside his bag.

  Is this your gun, sir? And this bottle, would you mind telling us what this is, sir? And here, in the bottom of the bag, could you tell us — ?

  Will turned and walked down Park Avenue. Damn! he thought. I won’t be able to see the black building. I won’t see him come out, see him melt into the streets . . .

  He kept walking, looking over his shoulder, searching for the peaceful blue and white colors of the cop car that terrified him.

  He passed an electronic teller. Ready to spit out money for those post-midnight moments when you’re a bit tapped out.

  Will looked back again. He saw the nose of the patrol car at the corner of 30th Street. Go straight, he ordered. Keep on going, Officers. He took more steps. Another look. The car edged closer to the corner until Will was sure that the two cops must have a clear view of him.

  Shit!

  He kept walking.

  He listened to his steps. Counted his breaths.

  One. Two. Three.

  He turned around.

  Thinking:

  The light must have changed by now. But the patrol car was still there, and he cursed himself for looking again, alerting them.

  I’m here, he was saying. I’m here and I’m nervous.

  Looking pretty suspicious, don’t you think?

  Now he picked up his pace. Twenty-ninth Street was just ahead. He walked into a breeze. A steady gust blew from the Battery, up through Chinatown and SoHo, and all the way to Harlem. An Atlantic breeze slicing through the stone canals of the city.

  He was nearly at the next corner.

  Nearly there, and he had to risk another look back. Just to make sure that the patrol car had really continued across Park Avenue, trolling other waters, out of the way.

  The cops should be his allies. But not tonight. Not here.

  He looked.

  Just as the patrol car took the damn corner, slowly, tentatively, a big cat spotting an undersized gazelle.

  No, he thought, got to get away. He walked briskly to the corner. . . he reached 29th Street, moving further away from where he needed to be.

  Near the black building.

  If I ‘m not too late . . . if it isn’t already too late.

  He took the corner, and he was swallowed by the darkness . . .

  Will kept on going down the gloomy block. Past closed restaurants, and than an import shop, and a hotel with no lights anywhere. Was it closed forever, or merely sealed up to keep the streetwalkers and their johns at bay?

  He was alone on the block.

  All by his lonesome.

  It’s past midnight.

  Do you know where you are?

  He didn’t want to walk this way. The breeze had been cut off, and now he smelled the street, the sidewalk. The stench of years of garbage and food and spit and oil and droppings from hundreds of air conditioners groaning to keep the horrible city heat away. Now silent, braced for winter.

  He sniffed.

  His bag swung from his arm.

  He turned.

  Will watched the patrol car fly down Park Avenue, picking up speed. They weren’t interested in me after all, Will thought. I’m just jittery. Paranoid.

  Maybe crazy.

  It was a possibility.

  Three times 3 times 3. The number danced in his head.

  He stopped.

  I have to go back, he thought. I have to go back to the black building and wait for him . . .

  If I haven’t screwed up, if it isn’t all screwed up …

  He stood there.

  And then he heard a sound . . .

  It was a voice, soft, plaintive, calling out from some stone steps leading to a basement, to a small restaurant.

  But Will just stood there a second.

  He licked his lips.

  Probably just a wino rolling around in his perpetual lost weekend, fighting off hordes of imaginary — and perhaps real — vermin.

  But he listened to the sound.

  It was a woman’s voice, raspy, full, as if —

  He walked closer to the side of the building to the steps leading down.

  He leaned over the edge of the railing.

  And he saw the entrance to the closed restaurant. L’ Auberge Savoie.

  He saw the girl. The confident hooker he had seen only minutes ago . . . only minutes ago . . .

  Lying at the bottom of the stone steps, all crumpled up, one leg bent back at a sick angle, her head tilted backward. The red of her lips had spread, and now her chin, and her neck, were filled with red blotches.

  Not lipstick.

  She had her hand crossed in front of her midriff. Her cute, sexy midriff.

  As if she were holding something there.

  “Help . . . me . . .” she wheezed. All of a sudden she was a hundred years old.

  “Please.”

  She moved her head a bit, so that her eyes could see him. Will nodded, and moved to the steps, hurrying now, wondering why he had hesitated.

  Knowing that he was too late. He’s out.

  Out here, in the streets. Anywhere, everywhere.

  And now I may never find him.

  He squeezed close to the girl.

  She extended a hand to him, reached out to him.

  Which she shouldn’t have done. Because now her insides were all open.

  She had been neatly filleted. The skin of her flat stomach had been cut with a cross, up and down.

  Another bit of irony? Will thought.

  Then peeled back until everything inside just hung there, exposed.

  James had told him he might see this.

  “You might see the Ordeal,” he had said. “Don’t let the signs, the works, get to you.”

  But it got to him. It got to him good. Will froze, unable to take her hand.

  Even in the sallow pit by the restaurant door, her viscera glistened with a slimy life that was at once horrible and de-pressing.

  “No,” he whispered. “Put your hand back. Put it on top of your —”

  Will smelled something. The blood, of course. And her perfume. Yes — but there was something else, wasn’t there?

  Sure, there was another smell.

  “If you get that,” James said, “if you’re lucky enough to smell something, anything, of the emanations, then move!”

  Right, thought Will. Move.

  Do what the man says.

  Get up and get out of here.

  “Please,” the girl said.

  Will thought he saw her try to speak. She opened her mouth. Her tongue moved. But the smells — they were definitely there — suddenly overwhelming.

  There was no breeze down here, nowhere for the vapors to escape.

  He sucked them in.

  There was a squishy sound from the girl’s innards. A coiling and an uncoiling.

  A pit of snakes.

  Will reached out for the wall.

  I’ve got to get up. Get up, turn around, get out of here.

  ‘‘I’ll get you help,” he lied.

  But the girl’s eyes flashed.

  Y
ou can’t lie to the liar.

  Never works. Never has. Never will.

  Her other hand came off her midsection, exposing the perfect symmetry of the dissection performed on her. The girl’s bloody hand closed on his.

  “I said — I need some fucking help,” she screamed, a hissing belch of disgusting air flowing over him. He thought he’d faint. He gasped, choking on it, coughing and dragging phlegm up from his throat.

  Then there was the sound.

  As if he only heard it yesterday.

  Chatter, chatter, the nasty, busy little sound of teeth. Clicking away, thunderous, echoing off the cement walls of their intimate alcove.

  A bloody bubble popped from the girl’s midsection, and another, and another . . . louder, mixing with the clicking sounds, a regular party.

  He tried to jerk his hand away.

  Her grip was strong. The only way that hand is coming off is if I hack it away.

  Another great bubble popped from the girl’s viscera. And then a shape squirmed out, a weird offspring released by the grotesque cesarean section.

  Will started yammering, “No, no, no!”

  Losing it. All gone, he thought. All gone.

  I fucked up.

  His bag, his stupid dumb bag, was next to him, sitting there, while this —

  Head. A bulbous Uncle Fester head squirmed out, and then Will saw two eyes, dripping the girl’s blood. They blinked open. They looked at Will.

  The smell was beyond anything Will had ever sensed.

  His stomach spasmed and clenched — fist-like, fighting to expel anything inside it.

  But James had told him to eat nothing.

  Nothing. No food. No liquid.

  And so Will just felt the sick tightness in his midsection and around his chest.

  Arms now dug out of the girl’s midsection, two, three, maybe more, crawling out. It was hard to tell. Then a gigantic membranous tissue, a panel, wing, a flap of some kind, jutted out of the thing’s back.

  Will jerked away, yelling at the thing.

  But he felt something hot on the wrist where the girl held him. He looked down. He saw that her fingers had all melted together, blurring into some kind of flipper shape. And now those fingers were melting against his flesh, joining him to her.

  The Uncle Fester head groaned.

  A mouth. The thing has a mouth. At least it has a black opening.

  It had only taken seconds. Will kept screaming at it.

  No. No. No.

  Over and over.

  Until he heard James’s voice again.

  Right there, in his ear, above the bubbling and the clicking.

  James had looked in Will’s face and told him clearly, calmly:

  “Turn away from it, Will. That will be your only chance. Turn away.”

  The burning was worse. Flesh melting into flesh.

  The red-black membrane spread above him, above the head, the girl, whose body rocked left and right with horrible spasms of this hellish birth.

  Will closed his eyes.

  Did he feel his bone rubbing against the girl’s bone, joining?

  He turned against the wall.

  He closed his eyes.

  The clicking, the chattering …

  The teeth were everywhere. The universe was teeth. His other hand felt the bag.

  “God help me,” he said.

  And he opened his eyes . . .

  * * *

  DARKBORN

  A Mid-book Reverie

  By

  Rick Hautala

  All right … you’re about halfway through Darkborn, and it’s time for a little break … an intermission, if you will. And I’ll say this right up front: You can skip this and keep going with the book. I know I would because things are heating up, are they not? You’re hooked. Admit it.

  But I want to take a moment of your time to reflect a bit on what you’ve already experienced and hint at what’s in store for you.

  (I promise: “No spoilers.”)

  I’ve known Matt Costello for a lot of years. I consider him closer than a brother. We and our families have been through a lot of ups and downs together, personally and professionally. The fact that this book is dedicated to me should lead you to believe that I have nothing but good things to say about Matt and his writing.

  For the most part, that’s true; but in this brief pause, I also want to include some of the reasons why I don’t like Matt Costello OR his writing. Why I can’t stand him personally and why I cannot abide his writing.

  The intention, of course, was to be humorous because that’s one thing about Matt that everyone who knows him knows. He is funny. I don’t mean droll or dry. I mean whack-a-doodle, bust-a-gut funny. Even at the most inappropriate times, Matt is there with a comment that comes out of left field and catches you unawares.

  Now I could say something about how Matt at least once in a while should get serious, but levity is rarely a flaw, much less a crime.

  We all need to laugh because, let’s face it, boys and girls, life is one damned serious mutha-fucka.

  When he’s not being funny — or even when he is — Matt is also an intelligent, caring, and sensitive person who has helped me deal with a lot of things that have happened in my life. He has, as they say, “always been there for me,” and I hope he feels I have always been there for him.

  So I can’t mock Matt’s personality.

  How about his writing?

  Even if you’ve never read a Matthew J. Costello novel until now, you’re halfway through Darkborn, and you know the boy can write.

  But you must have noticed something about Matt’s writing style.

  His sentences are short.

  And his paragraphs?

  Short.

  Maybe even choppy.

  Or fragments.

  Like what I’m doing now.

  The English teacher in me wants to complain about this and tell him to write full sentences, damnit, and not to rely on fragments and phrases when a full sentence will do.

  Sure, this economic style gives Matt’s stories a crackling energy that compels you to keep reading. You’ve already experienced that. Your eyes fly down the page. The images (fragmentary though they are) hit you with the random power of thought.

  But what good is that?

  I’m kidding.

  It’s amazing because Matt doesn’t just do it in short bursts, like I’m doing here.

  He sustains it through an entire novel. His style gives his story a punch (well, several punches, really) that deliver the goods much faster and much better than long, meandering sentences and ruminations that some writers (present company included) rely on to (eventually) get their points across.

  So now, what about Darkborn?

  Are you enjoying it?

  Are you into the story?

  Are you getting anxious about what’s going happen next?

  For one thing, I’ll tell you that this isn’t your “typical” horror novel (if there ever was or is such a thing). Okay. I’ll confess. Matt is hitting on certain horror tropes, like the “coming of age” story and the “summoning the devil” story that results in chaos, but the characters, you have to admit, are unique while familiar at the same time. With Matt’s swift style, they are also beautifully drawn and given life with a minimum of words.

  We know these guys.

  For the men reading this book, perhaps we were these guys … even if we didn’t go to a Catholic high school or grow up in Brooklyn.

  But you have no idea what you’re in for in the second half of this book.

  I’d say: “Fasten your seatbelts, boys and girls,” but you might think this was a bunch of hooey, some bullshit, log-rolling hype because Matt’s a friend, and I do love this book, and not just because Matt dedicated it to me.

  (Okay. I’ve mentioned that fact twice now, and of course I’m thrilled to have my name associated with this book in any way. I’m proud to have this book dedicated to me.)

  But trust me on
this, boys and girls: If you think at this point that Darkborn is not your “typical” horror novel, wait. You are in for some special treats as you finish the book.

  Yes. There are more “horror tropes” to come. You still have the scene with “the rats” … and the one with “the ants” … and … Owww, the scene with that thing at the door!

  (Those aren’t spoilers because they’re completely out of context.)

  This book was, after all, marketed as “horror,” but Matt does something here that I believe — and I mean this sincerely — is pure genius.

  Yeah.

  You heard me.

  Pure genius.

  Because this isn’t your mother and father’s horror novel. It’s so much more than that. I promised no spoilers, and I meant it, but if when you get to the end of this book, you don’t sit back in your chair and let out an audible gasp, you missed something truly amazing.

  The fault will be yours, not Matt’s.

  Now, how Matt came up with this idea to end the story is a mystery … I think even to Matt.

  And that is the one thing I can genuinely say irritates the hell out of me about Matt Costello.

  His fertile imagination and creativity make the rest of us writers look like we’re trying to farm a bumper crop while gardening in the Mojave Desert.

  Ideas for novels and stories and screenplays and games pop out of his mind like a Jiffy Popper on a rampage. I can say with all honesty and sincerity that I have never met another person — writer, artist, or musician — who gets ideas at the rate Matt does. And they’re almost always really good ideas. (Okay, there was that one time… but I won’t discuss it …)

  And in a person who — to be honest — I admire and envy for his creativity, I will say that “in my humble opinion” (as many an egoist will say), Darkborn is the most amazingly creative and compelling story Matt Costello has ever written.

  And that, my friends, is saying a lot!

  So why are you listening to me yak away?

  Get back to your reading, and once you finish it, tell me I’m not right.

  I dare yah!

  Westbrook, Maine

  2:25 p.m. Hallowe’en Day

  October 31, 2010

  * * *

  Kiff

  * * *

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