When he stepped into the kitchen he stopped cold. Scattered across the floor were the contents of a drawer. Spoons, forks and knives glittered in the weak light. Standing amid the scattered silverware he called to each of them again. Not even the wind answered this time. He was about to call out again when a sound stopped him, low and muffled. Whispering? Who was whispering?
Bishop inched closer to the basement stairs. There was nothing at first, then he heard it again. Soft and low, he couldn’t make it out, but someone was whispering in the basement.
He took the creaking wooden stairs slowly to the bottom and snapped on the wall switch.
The bare sixty-watt bulb that hung from the ceiling sparked to life and cast shadows from the washer and dryer, the battered laundry basket piled high with dirty clothes, and the boxes of detergent and dryer sheets that sat to one side of the wobbly metal table.
“Sara? Eve? Are you down here?” he asked, as he moved slowly through the basement.
After they had moved in, Sara had installed, instead of a door, a curtain that separated the main basement from the room she called the “junk drawer.” The curtain was greenish brown and covered in a smattering of orange and blue flowers. It was hideous, but she loved it and that was enough for him.
The whispering continued, clearly now, the words came fast in a steady stream. They sounded foreign. For the first time since arriving home and finding his wife and daughter missing, Bishop was nervous. He stopped in his tracks and looked around for a weapon. His golf clubs were the first thing he spotted. He pulled the putter out of the bag and gripped it like a baseball bat, already feeling silly.
At the curtain he stopped. The voice behind it was not one he was used to. It sounded older, deeper. His hand reached for the curtain and as his fingers touched the cloth the whispering was cut short. Silence flooded in. A deep chill ran through him. Bishop checked his grip on the putter, grabbed the curtain and yanked it back.
The junk drawer was filled with boxes and odds and ends accumulated over years of living with a packrat. His wife was infamous for saving, packing and storing useless or broken items, like legs to a table they no longer owned, or old calendars.
Boxes were stacked to the ceiling, filled with unsorted pictures that were supposed to make it into an album one day. Christmas decorations that never made it up to the main floor anymore dominated one corner, and along the right hand wall a paint- splattered shelf stretched the length of the room where half-used cans of paint, varsol, paint thinner, rollers and trays, new and old, sat waiting for their next project.
Bishop found them in the center of the room and the sight took his breath away, like a physical blow. He couldn’t move or speak, and it felt as if his heart would burst through his ribcage.
His wife had been stripped naked. She lay prone on the bare concrete floor. His daughter Eve, in her nightgown, stood over her. His eyes were riveted to his wife. Her beautiful green eyes stared straight at the ceiling, unblinking. Her chest rose and fell quickly. Her pale skin looked almost gray. Strange characters and symbols seemed branded on her skin, but the brands looked as though they were rising up through her skin, pushing against her flesh. Sara’s breathing quickened until she was nearly panting. The putter slipped through Bishop’s fingers to the floor.
Eve stared at her father through the sweaty tangles of her dark hair. Her body was still. The very air around her seemed to tremble.
“What happened?” Bishop whispered breathlessly. “What did you do?”
For a moment Eve didn’t speak. A small smile curled her lips up at the corners. The same markings that marred his wife’s body traced their way over her ivory skin. Delicate and intricate, the writing wrapped around her limbs like the thin tendrils of a living thing. And when she spoke, it was not her voice, not the voice of a ten-year-old girl, but of a nation. A nation of hate. A nation of power, speaking as one.
“This is only the beginning,” she whispered. “She is the first.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Eve, please.”
Bishop felt like he was drowning right there in his basement. He wanted to say something, anything, but his throat was filled with sand.
In her right hand, Eve held the handle of a filleting knife. Its thin blade winked menacingly in the weak light.
For a moment, a mere flash, he thought he saw his daughter standing there, his Eve, his little angel. Alone. Afraid.
“I can hear them ... screaming,” she whispered.
Bishop took a half step toward her and she sliced the air between them, freezing him in place.
“Eve, please,” he pleaded.
Bishop advanced again and reached out for her, but Eve’s movements were fluid, quick and sure. She sidestepped her father’s advance and shot out her right arm. Her blade flashed before she buried it in her father. Bishop screamed and twisted away, but she held him close, driving the blade up and back through his stomach until the blade struck the bone of his ribcage. Bishop yanked himself from her grip and fell backwards into a stack of boxes before falling awkwardly to the floor where hundreds of snapshots spilled from the broken crates.
Eve turned away and stepped toward the long wall of painting supplies. She stood at the shelf and ran the fingers of her left hand over the labels. Her fingers trailed over the robin’s egg blue that her mother had painted the sunroom, the
rose of the living room, and the countless cans of white.
On the floor, Bishop’s wife was frozen in place, her gray skin taut with the markings that threatened to rip through her. Suddenly, she stopped panting and grew still.
Eve selected a can, pulled it from the shelf and placed it at her feet. With the tip of her knife she pried off the lid.
“Eve. Please. Stop.” Bishop begged from where he lay. He pressed his hand to his wound, but he could not stop the bleeding. It flowed through his fingers, pooling beneath him. If Eve heard, she gave no notice. The lid came off and she set it down neatly beside the can.
Bishop fought against the bright sparks of pain that shot through his side as he dragged himself to his feet.
“Eve,” he said. There was no response as she lifted the can of paint thinner off the ground.
“Eve! Look at me!” he barked.
Eve’s eyes snapped up and bore straight through him. Her black hair hung in thick tangles, framing her thin white face. Bishop thought she looked stripped, like a car built for speed, reduced to only a tank of gas and a seat, a machine built for a single purpose.
But for a moment, a flicker that could have been a trick of the light, he saw the girl he once knew, just beneath the surface, as if she struggled for control inside her own body. Her eyes were red and swollen with tears.
“Run,” she begged.
Suddenly, Sara dug her fingernails into the concrete, snapping them off and sending them skittering across the floor. Her back arched and she screamed.
“Oh, Jesus God,” was all Bishop could muster. “Oh, God,
Eve.”
“Run .” Eve said as she lifted the can of paint thinner over her head.
Sara’s skin split down the middle with the sound of ripping leather, revealing a gray-skinned body crisscrossed with a network of black veins. Her muscles stretched and grew, lining her expanding frame as her mouth snapped shut crushing her old teeth to reveal a new set of razor sharp replacements.
“Run, daddy,” Eve begged, her voice thick with desperation.
Bishop couldn’t take his eyes off Sara, or the creature that she had become. The creature’s head snapped to the right and its black eyes found Bishop.
“Go!” Eve screamed.
Eve splashed the can’s contents around the room, coating boxes and bolts of material and letting the remainder pool at her feet, soaking the hem of her nightgown. In her right hand she held a Zippo.
The creature leapt into a crouch behind her, waiting.
Eve spun the wheel and opened the flame. She held the lighter for a moment, calmly letting the flame dance in f
ront of her eyes. And then she let it fall.
The creature leapt across the gap for Bishop, but he was already gone.
Bishop tore through the curtain that hung in the doorway and raced to the stairs. The creature charged at him from behind, but he didn’t dare look back. He was bleeding badly, but at that moment his body ran on fear. He topped the risers, slipped into the kitchen and locked the door behind him.
Sean watched him. His cigarette was long gone.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“I turned on the gas stove and waited.”
“You blew up your house?”
Bishop nodded.
“Killed your wife and your daughter.”
“No,” Bishop replied. “Eve killed my wife. Or rather, what was inside Eve killed her. Eve didn’t die.”
“So ...”
“Petra is Eve,” Bishop said. “Petra, or whatever the hell she’s calling herself these days, is my daughter. After I died, it turned out that I was rather special, in that I had a choice. Rot in the earth for all eternity, or—”
“Hunt monsters?”
“I work for an organization called the Ministry of the Wraith. They use wraiths to find ... undesirables that have found their way into our world. Once the wraiths find the target, a hunter is dispatched to eliminate them.”
“If this is true—”
“Sean, you’ve seen them,” Bishop said. “You know it’s true.”
“So what is she?” he asked. “What is inside her?”
“The Ministry calls Eve an ‘open door,’ a kind of conduit between worlds. Eve was that portal for a race called the Zijin. It was as if the entire race had been downloaded into her DNA. Don’t ask me how. As soon as she was ready, physically, she began to reproduce the Zijin race through humans, starting with my wife.”
“How?”
“The writing on the floor, the language is Zijin. The Ministry calls it the Blood Figure. She has been doing this undetected for nearly thirty years. She moves from town to town infecting those she can use. They in turn infect others. The best part is that when they aren’t hunting, like they are now, they look just like you and me. They hold down jobs, drive your kids to school, serve your food. They are everywhere. Hiding in plain sight. Invisible. And their numbers are growing every day.” Sean closed his eyes. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. A world beneath the one he knew? It was impossible. Except, he had seen them, these Zijin. He had fought them. They were real. Real enough to kill. He believed. Everything. There were ghosts all around. Wraiths. Watching, silently. The dark was filled with gliding monsters that looked to feed and reproduce their race.
Sean opened his eyes. Jordan had found his way into his room. He looked scared and sick, and Sean knew that he had heard Bishop’s story.
“How long?” Sean asked.
“How long for what?”
“How long until Kevin ...” he stopped. “Until Kevin is one of those things? A Zijin?”
Bishop turned and faced Sean.
“Kevin is gone, Sean.”
“No. There has to be a chance.”
“There’s always a chance, but—”
“Then there’s a chance he’s still alive.”
Bishop nodded grudgingly. “There’s a chance, but you have to remember what we’re doing here. Look at all the people you lost tonight. This town is gone. Tomorrow when the sun comes up the people that will run the shops and look like your friends, won’t be. They won’t even be human. They will be the Zijin. We cannot allow that to happen. Cut off the head and the body dies. Killing Petra is our purpose. That is our mission. Do you understand?”
Sean nodded.
“She’s at the mine,” Bishop said.
Sean looked him in the eye. “Let’s do it.”
34
Jordan carried three lightweight backpacks out the back door of the Trading Post to where Sean and Bishop stood in front of a line of snowmobiles. He handed out the packs and the three men climbed aboard their sleds and fired up the engines.
It took about twenty minutes to reach the edge of the clearing near the Monk’s Head mine. The three men climbed off their snowmobiles and drew their weapons. It was dawn, or thereabouts. The sky was the color of a bad bruise, all purples and black, and the snow wasn’t letting up. It came from all angles, erasing their footsteps as fast as they made them.
Bishop scanned the mine and the surrounding area from the edge of the clearing. He couldn’t see much of the structure but he didn’t have to. Hundreds of wraiths surrounded the building from about fifty feet out. Their forms shuddered and blurred in the wind and snow, but their eyes were constant. Some stared at the building hidden behind the storm, but most stared at him.
For a long time after becoming a hunter, Bishop had thought that he was unnatural, a freak, something that shouldn’t be. But lately, especially now, when his mind wandered toward the philosophical nature of being, he wondered if it was his first life, his “normal” life, that had been a freak, a dream. It didn’t matter. What was happening now, in the present, was all that mattered. Death is a door. He had heard that phrase enough in the Ministry from other hunters and wraiths all around the world that it might as well have been the Ministry of the Wraith’s slogan. Death is a door to another room of your life.
He knew there was a very high probability that in the next few hours he could die, or be destroyed, whatever you wanted to call it. If death was a door, he wondered where the next door would take him, if indeed there was another door. For the first time in a long time, he felt afraid.
After a quick discussion about how to get in without being seen by the Zijin guarding the mine, Sean and Bishop followed Jordan through a stand of trees, and down a small slope to a nearly snow-covered sewer grate.
“A tunnel?” Sean asked.
“It’s our best shot,” Jordan replied.
The trio entered the tunnel and their flashlights sparked to life, playing over the curved steel walls and ceiling. Every sound echoed until they sounded like a shuffling herd of elephants. As they moved deeper into the tunnel what little sunlight there was disappeared behind them. When the tunnel veered to the right, it sealed the three men in darkness.
Ten minutes in, Jordan stopped and leaned against the wall, out of breath. They had to hunch over to keep their packs from dragging against the ceiling and the sides of the tunnel, and that put strain on their lower backs and their knees. They were all appreciative of the break.
“Where does this lead?” asked Sean.
“It runs right under the administration part of the building to the mine,” Jordan replied.
Bishop took a few steps and swept his light across another tunnel that branched off their own. His beam illuminated dripping water and an empty tunnel. No Zijin. Bishop waited for a moment and listened. After a long last look, he spun in place and trudged back to Sean and Jordan.
Jordan moved faster now, making quick lefts and rights through the maze of the sewer system. The trio moved at a near jog when Sean stopped suddenly and caused Bishop to pile into him from behind.
“What is it?” Bishop asked.
“Listen,” Sean whispered.
Water dripped all around and their breathing was harsh and tinny, but there was something else. Sean turned and swept his light behind them. Bishop lent his light to the cause and together they lit the entire width of the tunnel. Twenty yards back, Sean saw something, a tiny cloud of steam, a tiny cloud of breath. He waited, rooted to his spot until his light lit the face of a Zijin as it peered around the corner.
“Run!” Sean shouted.
Bishop grabbed Jordan and pushed him forward. Sean pulled his gun and fired down the tunnel. Bishop slipped in front of Sean, putting himself between the Zijin and his partners.
“Go,” he said. “Don’t wait for me.”
Sean turned and disappeared as he chased after Jordan.
With one hand Bishop laid down a suppressing fire and with the other he dug into his
coat pocket. He placed the small object he retrieved from his pocket against the tunnel wall. It was the size and color of a hockey puck. Then he moved, double-timing it backwards, reloading his weapon. His flashlight swept back and forth, flashing over the charging Zijin as they flooded through the tunnel, rippled with muscle and screaming for blood.
Bishop fired a few more shots into the rushing crowd and then turned and ran. In his hand he held a small remote control device. Until he was tackled and the remote was knocked away. Suddenly Bishop was on his back, pinned. His light lay broken and useless in the six inches of water that covered the floor. Bishop couldn’t see the creature, but he could feel its talons digging into the flesh of his shoulders, he could feel the monster’s rancid breath on his throat.
Further down the tunnel, Jordan slid to a stop under a grate. His flashlight swept over the grill and the surrounding area.
“This is it.” Jordan said. “The access grate I told you about.”
“Okay, let’s go. Let’s go!”
Jordan leapt up onto the grate and pulled. He hung from the metal grate, but it didn’t budge. Jordan dropped down into the dark water.
“Fuck!” he spat. “It must be rusted tight. We’re fucked. This tunnel ends about a hundred yards up ahead.”
Sean pocketed his weapon, jumped up and grabbed the bars of the grate. He pulled his head close to the metal frame.
“It’s padlocked,” he said. “From the inside.”
A scream, human or otherwise, ripped through the darkness. Sean leapt up onto the grate once again and drew his weapon. Jordan whispered, “Oh, shit,” and took a few steps back.
“Look away,” Sean said and fired.
Bishop bent his right wrist and the concealed, spring-loaded blade sprung from his sleeve straight through the Zijin’s throat.
The Zijin reeled backwards clutching at its windpipe as Bishop rolled to his feet and decapitated the creature with a single swipe. He searched wildly for the remote control as the sound of chittering and scratching talons drew near.
Sleepers Awake Page 18