Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1)

by Matthew LeDrew

  “What?” he almost barked, getting up and walking over next to her. His scowl widened into shock as he looked out just in time to see the second of Sara’s two bedroom lights flicker on.

  “Her folks aren’t there, are they?” Cathy asked, her voice like ice as her eyes scanned the window relentlessly for any sign of movement.

  “No,” Xander said, clicking his tongue against his teeth and stroking his chin. After a moment, he stepped away from her side back to where he’d come from by the shattered remains of his computer.

  A shadow fell across the wall quickly as she watched, followed by another, larger one. “There are two people there, I think,” she said, leaning up against the window know. “I can’t see who. Xander, should we call the -”

  Her words fell short as she turned around. She wanted to scream but couldn’t, something deep inside her stopping the sound and beating it to death within her before it could escape from her lips.

  Xander’s wrists were already bathed in stringy red blood that ebbed its way against gravity up his arm, getting blacker and blacker as it went. He finished his slow slice with the thick chunk of polarized glass he’d taken off his desk, gritting his teeth together even as the larger, sharper one’s forced their way down. His eyes began to bleed tar as the vessels inside them burst, sending even more darkness surging over his body.

  He took a step toward her as it dropped the glass to the floor, landing in the charred circle he’d made days ago.

  “Xander, no,” Cathy tried to say sternly, backing up a pace and falling against the wall, then trying to get back on her feet quickly. “Xander... this is the opposite of why you brought me here!” she screamed, pleading with him.

  If he looked at her, she couldn’t tell. His eyes were completely black now, like most of his face.

  “Black Womb lives,” the creature stated as it walked past Cathy, as though she were not even there.

  She had to look and make sure its eyes were red just to be sure that Xander was in control, because right now she really couldn’t tell the difference as she sat on the bed and watched it go through the window. Somehow that single, blurred line was more terrifying than anything on either side of it had ever been.

  She couldn’t help but think that she had failed her friend.

  Tommy slid open the drawer with a hard thud, several patches of grey dust rubbing off onto his knuckles as he let go of the handles. He stared down at the treasure-trove before him, rubbing his thumbs against the edges of his enclosed fists for a moment before diving in, shoving great heaps of socks and underwear aside with great sweeping motions.

  A few feet away, Sud stood at the vanity, looking into the mirror with a somewhat quizzical expression on his face, not unlike a chimp upon first discovering such an object. Slowly, his eyes cast downward onto the dozens of small boxes and cases that lined the bottom of the mirror. He reached out carefully with one finger and opened a varnished, caramel-coloured box that looked like it might have contained jewelry, instead finding only its red velvet lining. He frowned, battling a tiny bell held by a small ceramic pig wearing a top hat before opening another box. This one was filled with earrings, but most of them were just the dime-store metal hoops that Sara had worn almost every day. “Pff,” he huffed, closing the lid unceremoniously.

  “Hey,” Tommy barked, smirking over his shoulder at Sud to get his attention. He turned around, holding a pair of white cotton panties stretched between his thumbs.

  Sud laughed, turning away from the mirror.

  Tommy turned them around, taking note of the small embroidered long-stem rose on the front. Smiling wickedly, he brought them to his face and took in a long breath through his nose before balling them up and throwing them at Sud, laughing. As Sud did the same, he turned and started rummaging through the drawer again. “You finding anything over there?”

  Sud looked up, letting the underwear fall to the floor as he turned back toward the vanity and opened a third box. “Nope,” he said simply, trying to act as though he hadn’t been distracted.

  “Fuck,” Tommy cursed, slamming the drawer shut and then pulling the next one all the way out, letting it fall to the floor with a crash. He had to back up quickly to make sure it didn’t smash his toes, then dug in and tossed anything he deemed unnecessary aside. “There’s gotta be something in here we can use to get under Xander’s skin. I don’t frigging care what it is, just so long as it makes that memorial memorable.”

  Sud chuckled.

  Tommy rolled his eyes, grabbing a large clump of bras at once and tossing them aside.

  Sud opened another jewelry box on her dresser, this one sterling silver. He was pleased to find it packed full of things, even though most of them looked ridiculous or campy at first glance. He picked up a little piece of wood from it, immediately cracking it in two and tossing it behind his shoulder. He picked up a necklace, wrapping it around his wrist and snapping its chain.

  Tommy took out a pair of silk panties and ran his finders along the front, feeling how soft they were. “I bet Grendel saw these a few times before he bought it,” he laughed at Sud, without turning towards him.

  Sud grunted in agreement as he shoved a small gold locket into his pant pocket.

  “Not to mention that skank Cathy. You just know they did it the night of his party, right? Just know it. Everyone knows it,” he grinned, waving a cautious finger at his friend. “I’ll have her one of these days, too. Just you wait.”

  Sud rolled his eyes, a small grin growing on his rubbery face.

  “What? You don’t think I could?” Tommy almost laughed, turning back away from Sud and continuing to sort through the drawer.

  Sud let out a short, snort-like laugh.

  “Keep it up, chuckle-brain. I’ll let you smell my fingers when I’m done.”

  There was a loud crash and a blinding flash as the light above them snapped out, leaving both men in the dark. Sud didn’t even have time to yell before polarized glass before the bulb overhead came crashing down on him, making dozens over tiny cuts and gashes along his bald scalp that started to bleed immediately.

  “Jesus!” Tommy yelled, jumping to his feet immediately. His eyes went wide with panic as he searched the darkness for any sign of movement.

  There was none, just the shadowy grey of the room and the imprint of the bulbs last bright flash on his retinas.

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple throbbing up and down as he tried hard to catch his breath. “Sud, man, you okay?” he asked when he finally found his voice, turning in the direction he’d last seen his friend.

  There was no response. Not even a grunt of recognition, just the calm, stale sound of the wind blowing its way up from an open window downstairs, its draft making him break out in gooseflesh.

  “Dude,” Tommy said, forcing a nervous chuckle. “I can’t see you nod your head in the dark, you idiot.”

  Still there was nothing but the darkness.

  Biting his lower lip, he took a step forward and waved his hand around the air where Sud had been. It passed through the thick, dusty air unabated. Frowning, he let his hand drop back to his side as he looked around the darkness of the room again.

  He thought he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, turning toward it quickly. He sighed and almost laughed when he looked at his own shadowed reflection in his mirror, his features black and obscured.

  Behind his mirror-image, two red eyes opened.

  They were large and catlike, their rims glowing and shimmering like thousands of tiny chinks of scaly armor. They curled up at both the outside edges and down on the inside ones, unlike anything Tommy had ever seen before in his life. The shadows seemed like they passed right through it, as though it were just two eyes hanging in the air on their own.

  Until he saw the mouth open.

  Tommy went rigid, closing his eyes tight for a moment and wishing for it to go away. When he opened them it was still there, standing less than a foot behind him in the mirror. He couldn’t
feel it behind him at all, and that somehow made it even worse. If there were even a hint of its presence; an exhaled breath, a small sound; he could convince himself that he could get out of this.

  Steeling his jaw, Tommy spun around on his heels.

  Again, there was nothing but the darkness.

  Shivering, even though sweat was now pouring off him, he looked around the room once more. There were no eyes or mouths looking back at him, not even a hint to where they might be. He swallowed hard, then took two quick steps forward again until his knee hit the dresser. Fumbling clumsily and letting out a long string of small whines, his fingers found the lamp on the top of it and switched it on. He spun around quickly, eyes open and ready to face whatever was there.

  The room was empty. The drawer he had thrown onto the floor had been shoved back into place without his knowing and without a sound, all of the clothes shoved back in. The necklace that Sud had pocketed lay in a small, coiled heap on the vanity in the centre of the row of boxes, each one of which were spaced and lined perfectly against the mirror. There were no monsters with glowing red eyes.

  There was also no Sud.

  “Man?” Tommy called weakly, then cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey, Sud?”

  He frowned, then started tip-toeing his way to the door. He stopped when he got to the bedroom window, squinting as he turned to face it. Across the pathway was Xander’s bedroom window, dark and vacant. It looked so black that the windows might as well have been painted, but he still thought he could make out a figure there looking back at him. Gears started to turn in his head as he stepped closer to the open window, bending over and poking his head out to try and get a better view.

  There was an enormous pressure on his neck as something grabbed him. Something sharp touched his neck but didn’t cut him, but was only there for a moment before it hauled him out through the window, leaving his shoe behind in the room.

  There was a brief feeling of weightlessness, followed by a sharp tug as gravity took hold and flung him to earth where he landed gut-first onto Sud’s leg, the air rushing out of him as his face smacked into the lawn.

  Pulling himself back up onto the ledge, Xander squinted at them on the ground below through the Womb’s eyes as both men scrambled to their feet and took off for the road. Frowning, he turned back toward the bedroom and looked the mess that still remained. Sara’s room had once stood as a silent memorial to the beautiful person she had been. It was tidier than they would have left it, but a few things had been broken. He made a note to himself to sneak back in and try to fix them before Sara’s mother came in and found them that way.

  He opened the dresser drawer that Tommy had pulled out, the bras and underpants inside forced in un-glamorously. Glancing out the window briefly, he started picking through it and folding it neatly back the way it had been, until it looked at least a little closer to the way she would have left it. “Best I can do,” he said, as much to Sara as to himself.

  He opened the top dresser to make sure nothing was too out of place there as well, noticing a tiny chunk of wood along the edge that was a slightly lighter tint than the rest. Curious, he placed one of his claws against it to try and pry it loose. It separated from the rest of the drawer easily, leaning against a pair of socks. He recognized it as soon as he picked it up, his touch as delicate as he could make it to try not to damage it.

  He remembered his lush, green lawn where she had found out how they felt when they were twelve. He had had a huge crush on her that summer and had been sitting on the sidewalk, burning their initials into a piece of wood. She started toward him on roller blades and he dropped the wood and ran into the house. She had picked it up, looked at it, and thrown it into the trees on her way down the street, never actually bringing it up to him.

  She kept it, he thought to himself. Smiling, he bent over and reached under the bed, producing a photo-album he’d given her for her birthday last year. They’d picked out the pictures to go in it together. He placed the wood safely in the album, then walked back toward the window and climbed out onto the ledge before dropping away into the shadows.

  Cathy squirmed on the couch as she waited, huffing as a rigid piece of lumber dug into her side from somewhere inside the arm of it. She grabbed the pillow from the other side and from the love seat and added it to her own, making it poof out in comedic fashion before she threw herself back onto it.

  She stared at the ceiling for a moment, watching the spot where the reflection from the lamp burned the brightest. Slowly, she reached out and danced her fingers along the light trail, making odd but elegant shadows.

  “Shadow puppets?” came a thick, raspy voice from the hall as Xander came around the corner, rubbing a towel into his hair violently.

  Cathy jumped back up to sit, clutching her pillow close to her chest. “Jesus Christ. Don’t do that,” she said, letting out a long breath.

  “Sorry,” he smirked, rolling his eyes at her. He rubbed the towel one last time until he was convinced that he was clean, then laid it across the opposite arm of the couch before flopping onto it.

  She bounced up a little from his weight, making her pillows shift back into an uncomfortable position. She turned, glaring at him, then drew back and slapped him on the arm.

  “Ow,” he frowned, touching the spot with his hand. “What was that for?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? Sic’ing the Womb on those two idiots like that?”

  “They had it coming. And I do not just mean lately.”

  “You can’t do this. They could have seen you, or--”

  “What would they have seen? Darkness? Shadows? At most, a pair of eyes in the dark? Come on, Cat,” he snorted.

  She reached over and took his face between her thumb and forefinger, forcing him to look at her. “You can’t do this. You can’t use the Womb like this. We’ve seen what happens when you try. Jesus, Xander, you’re acting like you’re high.”

  He wrenched his face away from her, sneering slightly as he leaned back against the stiff wooden arm of the couch. He twitched slightly, then lifted one foot and laid it on the coffee table. He turned and stared at the fabric of the couch, watching her only out of the corner of his eye.

  After a moment she frowned and got up, walking toward the stairs. “I think it’s Mike’s turn,” she said bitterly, slapping his arm again as she walked by. “And it was shadow dancing, by the way.”

  He didn’t turn and watch her go, and winced when he heard the door upstairs slam shut.

  “Why the hell does she stick up for those two?” Xander huffed, stuffing a handful of potato chips into his mouth. At first there were too many for him to even get his lips closed, crunching down on them slowly and swallowing what he could. He turned the page of the folder he was looking at, taking a long sip of his cola as he did. He gasped, spitting it back into the glass along with several waterlogged sour-cream and onion chips. “What in Christ’s name is this?”

  Mike looked up from his own folder. “Cherry Cola,” he said, then turned back toward the document. He frowned and tossed it aside, grabbing for another in a green folder. “When are people going to learn that cherries don’t go in soft drinks?”

  Xander frowned, putting the glass down on the table and then slowly nudging it away from him with one finger, as if afraid to touch it again.

  “And I don’t know why she sticks up for those jerks,” Mike admitted, scanning down through the cover-sheet of his folder and then closing it again, deciding there was nothing of relevance there. He threw it onto an ever-growing stack of papers that they had deemed the ‘nothing useful’ pile. “But to be fair, I don’t know why you torture yourself day and night, I don’t know why you eat and drink when you probably don’t have to, and I really don’t know why you’ve got me going through the most boring literature in the world to help Adam Genblade, of all people.”

  Xander held up a finger, waiting until he was done swallowing. “I do it to keep myself sane. To keep some humanity in all
this mess.”

  “Maybe it’s the same for her,” he shrugged, grabbing three or four chips himself and dropping one into his mouth.

  Xander did not respond right away, his brow coming down thoughtfully.

  “Personally, I think you’re both nuts. But that’s just me,” he sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “Where the hell did you get these, anyway?”

  “Hmm?” Xander hummed, not even looking up from his document. “Mm. That lawyer’s office today. Wanted to see what we were up against.”

  Mike watched Xander read his file, his pupils moving faster and faster in his sockets with every line he read. “What you got there?”

  “The answer to my question. We’re fucking screwed. My law career is over before it even starts. Just listen to this shit:

  “...found traces of steroids, barbiturates and methamphetamine in his system at time of arrest. Side-effects of long term use present, including damage to synapse of brain tissue. There is significant scarring on the surface of the brain both from drug use as well of a volatile strain of syphilis that was present at the time of his capture, but has since recessed. Psyche analysis indicates, though does not confirm, that he is the clinical definition of a true sociopath, whose morals are so skewed from the social norm that his definitions of right and wrong are unclear, perhaps even to himself. At times he is seen referring to himself in the third person, the first person and, on rare occasion, in the second person. He seems to be aware of the passage of time but also experiences shifts where he seems to forget or misplace events chronologically. Physically he is the peak of human stamina and endurance, though there are concerns that major muscles will start to throw clots soon after a long period of inactivity...

  “I mean, really,” Xander huffed, closing the folder. “How do you argue with that? That’s just... I have no case. I don’t even know why I’m trying.”

  “You think that’s bad?” Mike frowned, picking up the green folder again. “Give this a listen: