by Bryan Smith
And maybe it only meant he was becoming afraid of her.
Emily waited for the expected surge of self-loathing to come again. This time, however, it did not. Later, she would likely be repulsed when she replayed this whole incident in her mind, but right now she didn’t care. Right now Jake Dunham needed a dramatic shock to his system, something to shake him out of this obnoxious role of the protective, chivalrous male.
“Get this straight, Jake. This argument is over.” She waved the bat again and Jake took yet another step backward. “We’ve done it your way for days, and if we keep doing it your way, we’ll never find Abby. So now we’re gonna do it my way. You shut your fucking mouth for a while and do what I tell you.” She nodded at the door behind Jake. “You look there—” Her head jerked in the direction of the adjacent apartment. “And I’ll look in there. Now.”
Jake’s expression had changed, hurt replacing concern. Seeing it made Emily’s heart ache, but she couldn’t back down now. Hurt feelings could be sorted out later, after they found Abby. And if not—if they never found Abby, and if the hurt ran too deep—then so be it.
She turned away from Jake, planted one foot and drove the other hard against the apartment’s closed door. The rotting wood splintered. The decay of all things manmade was the one thing that had worked in their favor thus far. Gaining access to locked rooms and buildings was never difficult. One more kick and the door flew open, the locking mechanism remaining in place as it separated from the rest of the wood. Refusing to even acknowledge Jake’s hurt feelings with a parting glance, Emily rushed immediately into the apartment.
It was dark inside. The power had been off for days, so she was accustomed to entering rooms cloaked in shadow. For safety’s sake, they’d confined their searches to daylight hours. And right now the sun was high in the sky and darkness was many long hours away. Still, there was something about this darkness that sent a shiver through her. It was a deeper darkness. And she knew with sudden certainty that she’d happened upon a Bad Place. The source of her anxiety wasn’t just the deeper shade of black overlaying everything. This darkness felt…sticky. Like something that could draw her in and swallow her.
A line of poetry floated into her consciousness—strangely, she heard it as the whisper of a little girl: “Will you step into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly.
She shuddered.
She suddenly wanted nothing more than to flee this place. To grab Jake and get far, far away. Or leave his sorry, obstinate ass behind if he decided to play Mr. Stubborn again. In that moment—fleeting though it was—she wavered on the brink of abandoning the search for Abby and placing her own safety above everything else.
Then the moment was gone.
She drew in a deep breath, counted slowly to ten, and listened to the heavy THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of her heart. She was still afraid. Hell, yes. But she wasn’t going to surrender to fear. She tightened her grip on the bat and lifted it a little higher, anticipating an imminent battle with…something.
She still couldn’t precisely identify what was wrong here. There was no visual evidence of any reality rips. The place looked as whole as it had been prior to doomsday (albeit a good deal more decrepit). The wrongness was based on nothing more than feeling. Something alien was here, some dark essence not visible to human eyes, and she felt it more strongly with each step she took deeper into the apartment.
She swallowed hard as a film of sweat formed on her forehead. A bead of moisture gathered at the spot between her eyebrows, then began to roll down her face. A salty taste filled her mouth. By the time she realized her legs were shaking she was already several feet into the living room.
A coffee table was covered with mounds of glittering things. Diamonds and rubies. Gold watches and rings. Pieces of shimmering Waterford crystal. These jewels seemed unaffected by the rot laying waste to everything else, and so only amplified the shabbiness of this crumbling abode. She let the glitter hypnotize her for an indefinable period of moments. Then she bit her lip hard, piercing soft flesh and drawing a drop of blood into her mouth. She gritted her teeth and tried to bring back the tight focus of her rage. She had to be very careful here. There was something very like dark magic at work in this tainted place. She felt as if she’d nearly succumbed to a spell, a supernatural trap meant to stupefy her long enough to leave her vulnerable.
The little girl’s lilting voice came again: Will you walk into my parlour?
Emily blew air through her nostrils. “Shut. Up.”
She moved to the center of the living room and turned slowly around, keeping the bat cocked at her shoulder. She saw an entertainment center filled with an array of electronic equipment that might have impressed her a week ago. Now it was just a pile of useless junk. She saw a sofa and a recliner. The leather upholstery looked cracked and faded. More junkyard debris. She saw a bookshelf and realized one of the underlying smells she’d detected upon entering was mildew combined with the odor of rotting paper.
A nervous breath shuddered out of her as she completed her survey of the living room. There was nothing alive here. But the piles of useless jewels intrigued her. She had no doubt it was all genuine stuff. God knew how many thousands of dollars it had been worth a week ago. She doubted the apartment’s original tenant had left this strange and empty treasure here. Not unless he or she had been a jewel thief. But she doubted that. Something about all this soulless glitter made her think of Aaron.
Prior to snatching Abby he’d had days during which he might have been engaged in any number of oddball activities. A man as superficial as Aaron Harris wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to avail himself of a fortune that was there for the taking.
This had been his hiding place. These jewels his spoils of the apocalypse. The certainty of it struck Emily hard. Her breath exploded out of her, as if she’d been struck in the gut with a medicine ball. A helpless whimper issued through her lips. A terror beyond even what she’d felt upon entering this awful place consumed her. Because if Aaron had been here, that meant—
“Abby was here,” she said in a voice as brittle as an old man’s hip.
Her gaze snapped to the left. She took in the tiny dining room—with its table piled high with packets of rotting cash—and the small adjacent kitchen area, and saw at once no one was there. Then her eyes flicked right, to the dark hallway beyond the living room, and she experienced a moment of precognition so intense it nearly robbed her of all strength. She braced the end of the bat against the floor to keep from falling to her knees.
Then, when she was certain she could proceed without tumbling face-first over the glittering coffee table, she raised the bat again and began to move toward the hallway.
And the darkness there really was deeper. She felt the air growing thicker around her as she neared it. It occurred to her that it might be a really good idea to call out to Jake now. To hell with their petty war of wills. She did not want to face this alone. She opened her mouth, but no sound came forth. Her jaw trembled as the words she hoped to summon fizzled and died before reaching her tongue.
She simply could not speak here. Not now. She was close to the heart of some dark secret. Something that radiated a malign sickness of the soul. She didn’t wish to alert it to her presence. Even her breathing—and even the beating of her heart—seemed too loud. A more rational part of her mind spoke up, reminding her that if anything was here (whether it was Aaron or some unfathomable supernatural entity), it had likely been aware of her intrusion into its lair from the moment she’d kicked the front door open.
The thought stopped her in her tracks.
She came as close to surrendering to cowardice as she had at any point since entering the apartment. But she just stood there, quietly shaking, allowing several seconds to pass while her resolve reasserted itself. She moved into the hallway and felt an unnatural cold envelop her, a deep chill that raised goosebumps and penetrated her flesh to the bones.
The darkness swallowed her.
Yes, that was precisely how it felt. Because now she could see nothing. There was only black. Her heart lurched and panic burst in her brain like a struck match. She whirled about and prayed she’d see a dimly visible living room. But there was only more blackness. It was as if she’d been sucked into some horrible, lightless void, a realm entirely removed from her own world. The spark of panic grew into a fire and she began to hyperventilate.
Christ! How could she have been so dumb? Her desperate need to recover Abby had obliterated her common sense, as well as her ability to reason objectively. Of course the hallway had seemed unnaturally black. It just wasn’t there anymore. She’d walked straight into one of the black openings through which those hideous creatures had come surging into her world. The invaders were all dead, but many more of their winged and screeching red-eyed brethren would be lurking here, just waiting for idiotic humans to wander into their realm. She might well have surrendered utterly to panic and terror then…
But then she heard something.
A sound very like one that had escaped her own lips moments earlier. A human sound. A pathetic, mewling sound.
A whimper.
She forgot her own fear for a moment and focused on the sound. The sound came again. And again. She swallowed thickly and willed herself to focus only on concrete reality, rather than on the absence of visual proof of her location. She tested the ground beneath her feet, rocking her Doc Martens slowly up and down. There was a yielding softness there, with hardness beneath it. She laughed in the echoing darkness.
Carpet.
She let out a big breath. Then she reached out with the bat and felt it connect with something solid to her left. She moved the bat in the opposite direction and detected another solid construct to her right.
Hallway walls.
She laughed again.
And how strange that sound was here in this sticky darkness, with this chill sliding over her flesh like a madman’s cold caress. Yet she couldn’t help it. The relief she felt at still being in her own world—even as tainted as it had become—was overwhelming. She laughed some more, stopping only when she heard the whimper yet again.
She tried to discern whether it was a sound made by a human or a child. Because if that was Abby making that sound, she would have to force herself to push deeper into this awful, perfect blackness. If it was just Aaron, he could rot here as far as she was concerned.
Again the sound came.
It was weak. A frail, brittle thing dancing on the fine edge of death. It was the sound of someone who wanted to cry, but hadn’t the strength. The sound was so pitiful it stirred sympathy within her. Even though she was certain it was not Abby making that sound. She was certain she detected a faint masculinity in that trembling timbre. Which meant that it could only be Aaron. Some of the darkness that had been filling her heart for days began to recede. Her hate for the man didn’t die. Regardless of how much he was suffering now, he was a monster. But her basic humanity began to reassert itself, because this was the sound of someone who had endured unspeakable torture. She had no firsthand experience with such things, but she felt the truth of it as clearly as she’d ever felt anything.
She cleared her throat, swallowed hard, and managed a single word: “Aaron?”
The whimper again, louder than before, followed by a rasping moan. Then a sound that might have been a single, cracked word. But that dim voice was too distant to be intelligible.
Keeping the bat poised in front of her, she began to move forward again. “Keep talking, Aaron. Or moaning. Whatever sound you can make. I’m coming.”
He managed another brief moan, a sound that turned into a weak sob.
I’m coming, she thought. I am, really. But not to help you, you miserable bastard. I’m coming to find Abby. If she’s dead in there, you haven’t even begun to suffer. And if she’s gone, I’m putting you out of your misery, you son of a bitch.
One step forward became two. Then three and four. Then ten. And still there was only blackness. But then the moaning became more distinct. There was a flash of light to her left and she took an involuntary step sideways, raising one hand to shield her eyes against the glare. She blinked hard and carefully peered beneath her hand.
What she saw was a doorway that had swung suddenly open. Beyond the doorway was what had formerly been someone’s office. There was a desk with a computer. And a folding, cafeteria-style table against the far wall, upon which sat a fax machine and copier. Huddled in a ball on the floor beneath the table was Aaron Harris.
That thirst for vengeance, there all along but lately consigned to the background as she dealt with more pressing concerns, became paramount again. This consuming rage pushed her forward and through the doorway before she was even conscious of being in motion. She stopped abruptly just inside the doorway, the cold hand of fear seizing her heart again. She could see the whole room now. Abby wasn’t here. But there was a chair in the middle of the room, which had strands of shredded duct tape clinging to it. There were dark stains on the chair and the floor beneath it.
He tortured her there, a sinister voice seemed to whisper in her ear. That’s her blood. And when he was through making her suffer, he killed her.
“Shut up,” she said, hoping that leering, reptilian corner of her subconscious would fall quiet once and for all…
She looked at Aaron, curled there in a fetal ball, hands over his face, a low moan issuing through fingers that looked white as bone. She tested her grip on the bat, swinging it in a practiced way, like a baseball player warming up in the on-deck circle. In her mind she saw the fat end of the bat connecting with his skull. The image was so vivid she could almost hear the CLACK! of metal striking bone. She was at once repulsed by and sickly satisfied with the grisly visualization. She imagined raising the bat again, bringing it down and reveling in the sound of this monster’s skull shattering. A warm, almost sexual tingle ignited somewhere inside her and spread like wildfire through her body.
What’s happening to me? she wondered.
Had she actually become so debased in the course of just a week that she might actually get off via the act of killing another human being? That couldn’t be. Only very sick people could derive that level of pleasure from murder. This was more evidence that something was fundamentally wrong in this place. Something evil and insidious had seeped into her and was poisoning her spirit.
She felt the undeniable truth of this, but it didn’t change anything.
That sick warmth was still there—was in fact intensifying.
And it was not to be denied.
She imagined the bat coming down again and again, reducing the monster’s head to a pulpy crimson mess. She couldn’t see her face of course, but had there been a mirror in the room, the sight of her wide-eyed, smiling visage would have horrified her. The desire to kill became such that her reasons for committing the act hardly mattered. She was only dimly aware of droplets of saliva leaking from the corners of her mouth as she moved deeper into the room, raising the bat as she advanced on her helpless quarry. The thing that stopped her was an upward glance as she neared the table.
Her gaze locked on the light fixture and the blazing electric bulb on the other side of an opaque square. She stared at the light a long time, her fuzzy mind laboriously trying to discern what was wrong with this sight. And when it came to her, the fog swirling in her mind dispersed at once.
She frowned and gave her head a hard shake. “What…the…fuck?”
How could the power be on in here? Everywhere else in the city, things that ran on electricity were as dead as the dinosaurs. But, somehow, in this one room in this horrorshow apartment, current still coursed through hidden wires. It made no sense. In order for current to flow, a power grid would still have to be functioning somewhere. And she’d seen enough in the world outside this place to be pretty sure that wasn’t the case. So what she was seeing just wasn’t possible.
Unless…well, unless something other than the machinery of man had restored the
power to this grim corner of the world. Some…force that wanted her to see something. For the first time since entering the room, she wanted something other than vengeance.
She wanted to flee.
But she could not. She had come all this way. Turning back now would render all she had endured a waste. So her gaze went to Aaron. Her quarry. Her prey. And he did look like a cornered animal, a wounded, whimpering beast with his leg caught in the steel teeth of a trap. Though she wasn’t aware of it, the corners of her lips rose upward and she made a low sound of pleasure.
When she reached the table, she swept the fax machine and copier to the floor, where they landed amid a sound of shattering plastic. Then, with a sound halfway between a grunt and a rising roar, she gripped the edge of the table with one hand and flipped it over. Aaron’s legs flailed weakly as he pushed himself up against the wall, seeking shelter that was no longer available.
Smiling broadly, Emily gripped the bat with both hands again and raised it over her head. “Look at me, Aaron.”
But the broken man’s hands did not come away from his face. He wailed and shook his head. Emily snarled and drove the tip of a heel hard into his stomach, causing him to wail again and raise his knees to his chest. Emily screamed and kicked repeatedly at his legs, driving them back and exposing his stomach again. This was followed by a series of brutal kicks to his abdomen. Still, maddeningly, the condemned man’s hands remained over his face.
Emily screamed again. “I WANT YOU LOOKING AT ME WHEN I KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER! I WANT YOU TO SEE MY GODDAMNED FACE WHEN YOU DIE!”
Despite enduring what must have been overwhelming agony, he refused to acquiesce to her wishes. And Emily’s patience, what tiny shred of it still existed that is, evaporated. She kicked hard at his hands, mashing and snapping the bones in his fingers with the heel of her boot.