The Cleansing

by Shane Staley

  Keeping my eye on the leeches I had cast aside, I dug around the hole. My shovel struck a hard spot several times.

  I excavated the location.

  Tossing the shovel aside, I peered into the hole.

  Bleached bone glinted in the setting sun.

  A tiny ribcage. Long narrow finger bones. A malformed skull.

  And the last thing I saw sent my mind reeling. Tiny nubs of what looked like horns sprouting from the top of that skull.

  Chapter 24

  I returned to my apartment, feeling broken and numb. I saw no one. I did nothing outside but venture to the grocery store. The only one I spoke to was my mother. She talked about God quite often during our late night phone call. She talked about my father being in heaven. She’d always been such a religious woman. I let her talk. I let her hope. I let her dream. But I felt coldly distant from the subject. I felt trapped in a world that no longer made any sense, where my own purpose in life didn’t matter. I no longer felt safe. My mind lingered on a cold and vengeful God that controlled my very fate.

  At first my mind was in a terrorized haze. When I finally settled, I opened the Book of Eclipse and I shook with fright when I finally realized what was taking place.

  The leeches were collecting Legion from mankind. And that evil would eventually resurrect The Unnamed One.

  I told my mother nothing about this.

  I couldn’t tell her the truth; it would crush her soul.

  Our conversation suddenly shifted that night. My mother seemed concerned by something she saw on the news. I turned on the TV, watched the newscast and witnessed something that chilled me.

  The beginning of the end of the human race.

  The first cases erupted slowly. First, the news reported a new disease. The hospital where I stayed was quarantined. Reports surfaced of a nurse’s strange behavior there. He was later shot by local police.

  A truck driver on his way home from work attacked a police officer who had pulled him over for driving recklessly. The driver was only miles away from the campground when he was pulled over.

  This all happened the day Audra left the hospital.

  Outside my apartment, the once quiet nights have turned restless. I hear the endless chaos of sirens wailing in the distance.

  It’s getting worse out there.

  Audra still haunts me. Her arms held out, seeking to embrace me. Her face looking at me in dream, wanting that final kiss.

  I’ve imagined what life would have been like if I had met her before this all happened. If I had been given the chance to actually live. The hope of one day having my own child, of finding that one true love, and living a full life was suddenly wiped away. Cleansed from my mind.

  Life’s not fair, my father said to me. That’s just the way it is.

  I told my mother that we needed to leave. I thought about taking her on a road trip, far away. But she refused; she had to work, to make money and she didn’t want to be away from where my father rested. The threat of a plague didn’t deter her. In the back of my mind, I sensed she wanted to die and join my father. She had lost her will to live.

  I toss and turn at night. When dreams of Audra aren’t haunting me, I wake, screaming, feeling something slithering in the sheets. I dream the floor of my bedroom is covered in a black, slithering mass. The blackness creeps up the side of my bed, covers me like a blanket and the world fades to nothing.

  I shall hope that it will be that easy. But I fear that death may not come. I fear that I will be trapped in my body, with my mind controlled by an entity that will ultimately serve to destroy mankind.

  Chapter 25

  It has been more than a week since I last talked to my mother. I call, but she never answers. The phone lines went dead the same day as the sirens stopped.

  The neighboring apartments are no longer quiet. I sense the shifting of bodies, but I hear no voices.

  It has spread faster than I first imagined.

  Outside, there’s a man looking up at my apartment window. He’s standing on the sidewalk, staring. It’s as if he senses my presence.

  His clothes are ragged-looking, his face pale in the sunlight. His head looks oddly-shaped and his long spindly fingers are draped motionless by his side. To the back of his skull, there are two bone-like projections twisting to a point.

  The sight of him horrifies me.

  The Unnamed One has developed, finally nurtured by mankind’s darkness.

  I grab the largest kitchen knife in the drawer and return to the window.

  Upon returning to the window, there are now several people standing outside on the street, looking up at me.

  They aren’t moving. They aren’t communicating with one another. They are just staring, waiting for something.

  Three loud knocks erupt at my front door.

  Damn, I need a gun. I need to get the hell away from here before it’s too late.

  I hear footsteps on the fire escape leading up to my back door.

  More people have assembled outside.

  The knocking persists. More bodies shift in the adjoining apartments.

  Legion knows who I am, I realize.

  The TV is the only sound in my apartment besides the knocking.

  On the TV screen, the news shows troops getting killed overseas. Terrorist suicide bombs today killed innocent children. A teenage mother has left her newborn in the trash to die. A new video shows a female store clerk getting abducted. Her body was just discovered in a creek bed fifty miles from where she was taken.

  For more than five minutes, I am sucked in, watching the horrors on TV while other horrors mount outside.

  The TV image shifts. Bodies are videotaped draped in trees and strewn across washed-out roadways. Mass graves are being dug and children are crying in the streets.

  I feel the first tear skimming my cheek. I realize that the emotion I feel is not from being in a threatening situation, but from being a part of this world.

  This ugly world.

  And, for the first time in my life, I feel I have a chance to do something about it.

  I drop the knife on the floor and walk over to the stove. I turn the gas on, but I do not light it.

  I hear more shifting beyond the walls. I return to the living room and watch the scenes unfolding on the TV screen. I glance outside and see more bodies collecting there.

  The knocks grow louder and then a voice.

  “Chris, let me in, please,” my mother says.

  I sit straight up, look around.

  She knocks again.

  “Mom?”

  “Oh, thank God you’re in there,” she says. “Please let me in.”

  Did her voice sound strange? I wonder. It is hard to tell through the door.

  I pull her in and quickly shut the door. I step back away from her, noticing one of her shirtsleeves is torn off. She seems pale, but mother has always been fair-skinned.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I tell her.

  She shows no emotion, doesn’t say a word.

  I watch her arm twitch. Muscle spasm? Trick of the light?

  It doesn’t matter.

  I take one last look at the world through the window and the TV screen and I breathe deeply.

  “Have a seat, Mom.”

  She obviously doesn’t smell the gas leaking into the small apartment. Or, she can’t smell it. But the fumes are now overpowering me, causing me to become light-headed.

  She doesn’t sit; she just stands there.

  Then she holds out her arms, offering her embrace.

  At first, I step away, but I can’t let it end like this. In this life my mother was the first one to touch me, to hold me. And now she’ll be the last.

  I wrap my arms around her.

  She’s cold.

  Behind her back, I pull open the book of matches, then extract three of them.

  “I love you, Mom,” I tell her.

  She says nothing.

  Nothing.

  About The Author

&
nbsp; Shane Ryan Staley is better known as the founder and editor-in-chief of one of the most successful independent horror presses of the modern era, Delirium Books (www.deliriumbooks.com). He is also the founder and owner of the horror e-commerce site, Horror Mall (www.horror-mall.com). His alter-ego, Patrick Kill (www.patrickkill.com), is an established underground author considered by many as one of the leading figures in extreme fiction.