Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1)
Page 38
“Well, what exactly do you think I should do?” she stammered, wiping her eyes.
“You shouldn’t have to do anything,” he said, squinting and shaking his head as though that were obvious. “Don’t you get that? You shouldn’t have to lift a finger against creeps like them. Nobody should. All I’m asking is that you let me handle it when- -”
He stopped in mid sentence when she slapped him across the arm, her face curled into bitter contempt for a moment. “I do not need you to save me, Mike, so you can give up the damn hero act because I’m getting sick of it. Sick. Everyone’s lining up to choose everything for me. Tommy and Sud think I’m a slut, you and Xander think I’m a saint... and the only thing all four of you have in common is that not one of you asks me what I think I am.”
He let out a puff of air, turning away from her angrily. His lower lip curled up as her words swarmed around in his mind, forcing him to look at his encounter with Tommy a different way even though he didn’t want to. Like a gear being forced to turn in the wrong direction, his train of thought came to a screeching halt, then slowly started to chug along its new path.
Slowly, her face lost its intensity as she watched him be at war with himself, knowing how much her words must have been cutting into him. She reached out and laid her hand in the crook of his arm, smiling gently.
He turned back, gentler now for having been touched by her. “I just wanna make sure that they know what they do --” He paused again, making sure to get the words just right. “... that they know what they do is not gonna fly anytime soon. I love you, Cat. I can’t stand the thought of them thinking they’re righteous for the way they act.”
She pulled him into a hug, squeezing him tight, then lifted her head off his shoulder with a massive smile on her face as she looked him in the eye. “And I love you, Mike.”
He leaned down and kissed her, all thought lost as his heart started to race faster and faster with each movement of her silky lips.
She pulled back a little, ending the kiss with her lips still only millimeters from his. “But if you ever raise your voice to me like that again, I’ll punch you right in the throat.”
“Yes, dear,” he said, smirking.
She leaned back into the kiss.
There was a moment at the beginning of every kiss where the act didn’t feel quite right to her. He’d move one way when she moved the other, their lips bending into odd directions and their teeth sometimes clacking together. Yet somehow, a few moments in, they each seemed to succumb to the other’s will and move as one, the warm moisture of their lips bringing heat to the rest of their bodies.
Mike opened his eyes.
“What?” Cathy asked as she pulled on his arm, only to be met with restraint. The cool night air whipped about the fog created by the bay around them. “Come on. If we’re late, my parents will kill me.”
“Bad choice of words,” he said, his voice low and almost angry. But not at her. “Look at where we are.”
She turned her head from side to side. She was confused at first, seeing only alleys and corners. Then it hit her like a punch in the gut. Her eyes widened. “This is where we were attacked.”
“Yeah,” Mike muttered, pacing slightly, spitting onto the curb in disgust.
They’d always chosen another route to get to Cathy’s, just to avoid this spot. The spot where they lost the carefree nature of childhood and gained the hardness of reality. The death of their innocence and very nearly their lives as well.
“You feel that?” Mike said.
“What?” she asked, her eyes bulging as she leaned in close to him. After a moment, she forced a laugh, giving him a little slap on the arm. “Do not do that, Mike! You know how much this spot creeps me out... even in the daytime.”
“No, really. This is exactly the type of night it was when it happened. And...”
“What?” Cathy exclaimed, clutching his arm tightly, “What is it?”
“Déjà Vu.”
“That’s not something that I wanna hear right now.”
Mike paused for a second and looked around. All the hairs on his body were on end. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
They began walking, not overly fast at first, then began to pick up speed after a few seconds. They crossed the street in a hurry even though it was devoid of traffic, Mike dragging her by the hand. This had been the spot where they’d kissed. It had seemed like the perfect end to the perfect night. But the night had been far from over, and its true end would be far from perfect. Mike and Cathy kept walking, the street lamplight illuminating their jackets. Cathy began to walk a little faster, as did Mike, dragging each other along. They were at the spot now, where they’d first heard it, that ear-shattering sound of metal on metal.
Mike stopped moving.
“What is it?” Cathy asked, putting her hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder. “What’s wrong now?”
Mike was silent for a moment, as if waiting for something. “There!” he finally exclaimed. “Did you hear that?”
Cathy’s eyes suddenly went wide. “That’s not funny, Mike,” she said quickly. But as she leaned in close to him and held his hand, she could feel the clammy sweat pouring off him. Nervous sweat.
“Just listen,” he told her, holding her close to his chest.
They both perked their ears. The streets were silent tonight. The slightest footfall could have been heard for miles. At this moment, Cathy and Mike strained their ears to hear even the slightest sound to indicate that they were wrong. That Mike had been mistaken. A rat or a pair of teenagers, even a police car would be welcomed. He didn’t want to be right, possibly for the first time in his life.
Then, from out of the darkness, it finally came:
- click -
The sound of metal striking briefly against metal. It echoed off of the brick street corners, making it impossible to tell exactly where it was coming from. It came once again,
-click-
Without so much as taking the time to look at one another, Mike and Cathy burst into a run, trotting past street lamps and garbage cans. They couldn’t tell which direction the sound was coming from and they realized that the sound could have been coming from any direction. For all they knew, they could’ve been running straight into their follower’s arms. They didn’t really care. They just had to run. Because if they were dealing with what they both secretly thought they were dealing with, then they’d have no chance either way.
The Black Womb.
Mike turned around to see if it was following them. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew that didn’t mean nothing was there. Not if it was Xander.
-click-
It was closer now. Louder, too. Mike wondered if indeed they were running into a waiting trap set by their opponent. Then he banished the thought from his mind. If it was Xander, under the influence of the Black Womb, then the creature would know their next moves like the back of its hand. Nobody knew them better than Xander. Nobody.
Mike stopped running again.
“Mike, are you alright?” Cathy asked, remembering the horrors of the last time this had happened.
“The last time we crossed this corner, he almost killed me,” he replied grimly.
They both stared silently at it. It was only stone and mortar, but it held so many beastly memories for the both of them. All at once, Mike could feel it again. That sharp pain as something long and jagged punctured his skin and ripped through his body. He could feel the redness trickling down his side and into a little pool on the bench next to Cathy’s house. He could see the blood and saliva being hurled from his mouth, staining the cold stone sidewalks. All at once, he was there again. He was dying again.
-click-
This time, the sound felt like it had been coming from both the front and the behind, and he shivered in raw, primal fear. This night, these circumstances, they were all too familiar; too familiar to be a coincidence. Someone had planned this. Planned it perfectly.
The sound was right next to them, but it still came from all directions. The two lovers stood perfectly still for a moment. She looked at him, her eyes blurred by tears of fear. She tried to say the word ‘go’ to him, but her throat was too parched and it ended up just being the silent moving of her lips. Still, he got the message. He grabbed her arm and they ran around the corner.
There was nothing there and Cathy’s home was now in sight.
They ran before their brains could even process what had happened, their legs moving of their own fruition rather than by choice. The arches of their feet ached with every step they made, the calloused flesh turning a light red from the pressure. Cathy felt the back of her heel rub raw against her shoe, tiny trickles of blood seeping out into her sock.
She tripped a hundred feet into the sprint to her house, falling to her knees. They both bounced off the pavement in awkward, misshapen half-circles, her flesh tearing away as though it were silk to let the crimson cascade into her jeans. She felt her kneecap bend out of place and then snap itself back in. She opened her mouth to curse, but her jaw slammed against the ground before she could, twisting sharply to the right without the rest of her head following. A tooth in the back of her mouth came loose and flushed down her throat when she gasped for air, ripping and tearing at her esophagus as blood washed it down. “Fuck,” she swore finally, spitting blood onto the curb.
Mike grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her to her feet, her legs already moving to run before her soles were even touching the ground. When he thought she was balanced enough, he let her go, turning briefly to glance at the windows they were passing. There were no lights on, not even the faint blue flicker of televisions glowing. It was like Coral Beach had turned into a ghost town in an Old West movie, the streets deserted and awaiting a visceral showdown. When he turned around, he thought he saw something behind him duck behind a light pole, its lanky frame completely obscured by the wooden shaft. Still, he knew what it was. Could almost see the opaque aquamarine eyes as they glared at him with their pupil-less stare. The sharp row of yellowed, germ-ridden teeth that came down over the normal ones, rendering them obsolete. The claws that danced about gracefully on the air around the creature until it chose to use them in movements so quick you wouldn’t even know that they had occurred until you felt your own intestines splatter against your feet. He could see the Black Womb, even if he couldn’t. In fact the invisibility of whatever was behind them only added to his certainty of what was coming.
Cathy turned in front of him, making him spin his head back around to the front and pulled him onto the concrete stairs of her house.
He slipped once on the smooth cement, then steadied himself against the black metal guardrail as they both caught their breath. “Made it,” he said between gasps, almost laughing a little as he kept an eye trained over one shoulder.
Cathy did not respond, but he heard a soft plop from in front of him as a small drop of salt water fell from her round chin onto her porch step.
Mike turned, finally pulling his vision away from the street as he felt his heart skip several beats, the color draining quickly from his face.
The lock on the door had been kicked in, with enough ferocity to splinter the frame.
They both stood staring for a moment, feeling their salvation slip away.
-click-
The door creaked in the wind, but did not open.
“Come on Cathy,” Mike whispered. “Let’s get to a neighbour’s house and call the cops.”
Cathy’s eyes darted from the door to Mike. “But Mike,” she stammered, “What about my parents?”
Mike froze in his tracks. The Kennessy’s had always been good to him. They’d supported him and Cathy’s relationship from the very beginning, even when his own parents did not. Her father had been the one to help him the night that Xander had first attacked him and Cathy. He couldn’t just leave them to the Black Womb. As he considered the force that must have gone into kicking a hole into the Kennessy’s metal door, Mike didn’t figure it could be anybody else. “Go to your neighbour’s, Cathy.”
“What? We can’t just leave...” she started.
Mike cut her off, touching the side of her face. “We aren’t. Just you.”
“I can’t leave you again,” she whispered, pulling him close. “The last time... I won’t leave you.”
Turning his back on the door for only a fraction of a second, he pulled her head into his by the small of her neck, kissing her quickly, but passionately. “You never do,” he assured her. He’d always wanted to play hero, ever since he was little and saw the first episodes of Saturday morning cartoons, or heard those weird news stories from Atlanta. But when it was her, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t be the hero. Couldn’t think of the world or the town or even himself. It was just fear, the fear of losing her that drove every choice he made. “Go.”
Forcing herself to listen, she turned and ran.
He watched her go, making sure she actually got into the house safely, his backside still facing her front door until her neighbours’ closed shut behind her.
Then he turned to the real problem. A million and one scenarios bounced around in his mind. Even though not one of them ended with them living, he had to try.
He stepped back a bit, then rammed the door. It had already been partially off of its hinges and now ripped off of them, slammed to the hardwood floor with a loud thud. There was no need for stealth. He knew that whatever waited in there was expecting him. He reached to his left without taking his eyes off of the gaping darkness that now surrounded him, jiggling the light switch. No effect. If Black Womb was hidden here, he had made sure that he would stay hidden.
Mike stepped into the darkness surrounding him until it was all he could see. In the absence of shapes, his mind created its own images that danced about and lunged at him haphazardly. One looked so real that he almost jumped back a pace when it came at him. Shaking with fear, he bit his lip and closed his eyes as tight as he could, until small dots began spotting along his eyelids. When he opened them again, they had adjusted to the low-light and he could see. He almost wished he couldn’t.
He could see a blue-ish outline of many objects now. There was a chair a few metres in front of him that he moved to avoid, along with a Math textbook. Cathy’s computer and desk were there, off from the living room. The moonlight shone through a nearby window, bouncing off the desk and into his eyes.
The desk’s surface glimmered with a thick dark gel turned light purple in the blue glow of the moon. It dribbled down the sides of the desk in long, slow paths, turning this way and that every time it became obstructed by a nook or hole. The more he looked at it, the less it looked like blood. It looked like melted plastic, poured perfectly over the surface of the desk without any bumps or bubbles, just smooth and perfect. But the smell was unmistakable, that coppery vomit stench mixed in with putrid B.O. It was blood, enough to have almost covered the desk completely.
He gazed around the room once more. The lamp in the corner seemed to move suspiciously, rocking back and forth on its base. He’d noticed it once or twice before, even discussing it with Cathy’s father more than once, an optical illusion created by the feng shui of the room. Now, no matter how many times he told himself that it always seemed to be moving, he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. There was a long couch between him and the lamp where anything could be lurking, waiting. A shawl that Cathy’s mother had knit years ago was draped over it, filled with little black holes that could have easily been fingers gripping the top of the couch from behind it. Or claws. No matter how much he strained his ears, he could not hear anything, not even the sounds of the pipes or the house settling.
Forcing his foot forward, he took a step toward the table. Then another. He felt his foot collide with something on the floor, lifting to get over it as he walked toward the desk. When he reached it, he ran his finger over the desk, the path creating a long streak wherever it went. A
small cascading wave preceded his finger by a few millimeters, but did not ripple through the surface of the liquid like it would have if it had been water. He squished it between his thumb and forefinger before wiping it against the leg of his pants until the skin on the tips hurt. Even when he knew it was gone, he could still feel it there, clinging to him. The blood was thick and had already begun to coagulate, and had been sitting there for some time waiting for him to discover it. That meant something, but he wasn’t sure what, his train of thought moving along at a snail’s pace as he watched the pool of blood seep into the gap he had made in it with his finger, swallowing the space whole until he didn’t even know where it had been.
-cree
A sound from behind him stopped all thought immediately. It was a long, deliberate creek that seemed to cut itself off the moment he twitched. It had been no more than two feet behind him and he could already smell the rancid blackness that covered the Womb. It smelt like all the sweaty orifices of the body rolled up into one.
Sweat rolled down Mike’s brow as he waited, knowing how close it must be. Knowing that if he tried hard enough he might be able to feel the creature’s breath on his neck even now.
-eek
He spun the second the sound finished, fists coiled and flailing in a wide upward arch to cover as much ground as possible. They connected with nothing, sailing through the cool air with such force that he almost tipped over. There was nothing there except the gaping darkness leading out the doorway and into the street beyond. He could see the neighbors’ lights on now, wishing that they would shut them off before someone noticed. There was a shadow in the window partially obscured by the doorframe. He moved a step closer to try and see, his toe hitting something on the floor again. This time it moved to avoid him, and he heard the floorboards creek again.
His face went white, his mouth filling up with cotton balls as his stomach started to flutter. He’d almost managed to purge the memory of what this felt like from his mind in the past month, but now it all came flooding back to him.