by Bryan Smith
So that at last his hands came away from his face.
The bat fell out of Emily’s hand. Her mouth opened wide and she forgot to breathe for a long moment while her reeling mind attempted to process this fresh horror. A whimper died in her throat and a constricted rush of breath came rolling out of her open mouth instead.
“No,” she managed to say at last. What she was seeing was not only horrible but inexplicable. She didn’t speak out of pity for Aaron. She still had none. That one word was born of her mind’s inability to accept this hideous and bizarre reality.
It came again. “No.”
His eyes were gone. Something hot, some burning tool, had been applied to the empty sockets. Where once there had been eyes there now were only twin patches of cauterized flesh. The head twitched and rolled upward, instinct causing him to search for something he couldn’t see. How strange his face looked without eyes. Without empty sockets. Like a mask, a bland, featureless thing one might buy at a drugstore for Halloween.
Emily’s face twisted into a grimace and her stomach did a slow roll. She was grateful she hadn’t eaten yet today. As it was, her gag reflex caused her throat to spasm dryly. She heard a sound behind her, the creak of a floorboard, and jumped, a scream bursting from her lungs. Sure she was about to face the person or thing responsible for Aaron’s horrific condition, she scooped up the bat and whirled to face the intruder.
And tears sprang to her eyes when she saw that it was only Jake. “Oh, Jake…”
The blanched pallor of his cheekbones told her the trip through the hallway had been no less harrowing for him. Her eyes beseeched him with a silent desperation that penetrated any lingering hurt he may have been feeling from her earlier treatment of him.
He moved farther into the room and peered past her at Aaron.
An expression of disgust creased his features. “Oh my God. What happened to him?”
Emily tried to say something, but the words emerged as an unintelligible croak. She cleared her throat and drew in a calming breath. “I don’t know. I…I was about to…” Tears filled her eyes again and she wiped them away with growing impatience. “I was about to kill him. He had his hands over his eyes. I wanted him to see me. So I kicked him. And…and…”
Jake came to her then. He laid a hand on one softly shaking shoulder. “It’s okay.” He sighed. “Have you had a chance to ask him about Abby?”
Emily shook her head and sniffled. “No…I…I just…”
He made a shushing sound. “All right. Okay.” He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. The simple affectionate gesture was enough to dispel the last traces of the dark urges that had infected her. She felt suddenly human again. She recalled the arousal (there was just no other word for it) she’d felt moments ago and a sudden sob rolled out of her. Followed by another. And another.
Jake pulled her into his arms and she buried her face in his chest. He stroked her hair and made more shushing noises while she cried it out. After several moments of this, she forced herself to snap out of it. This was neither the time nor the place for a breakdown. She broke the embrace and tilted her head up to look Jake in the eye.
Her voice was small and frightened. “There’s something wrong here.”
“No kidding.”
She shook her head. “No, I mean really wrong. Really, really fucking wrong. There’s something…not natural at work here. Some kind of dark magic. I feel like Alice after stepping through the looking glass. Or whatever the Satanic equivalent of such a thing would be.”
Jake frowned. “Come on. Be serious. You don’t think…what, the devil, or Satan, whatever…is responsible for this.”
Emily shook her head again. “No. Not exactly. But something just as bad, Jake.” Her voice teetered for a moment on the brink of breaking again. She swallowed hard, and pressed on. “Something from that other world, maybe. Something worse than those demon things. You came through that hallway. I know you felt that wrongness.” Her gaze flicked upward a moment before settling again on Jake’s skeptical expression. “And look at that light. We have to get out of here.”
Jake sighed. “Yeah. But let’s have a word with Mr. Child-snatcher first.”
He clasped hands with Emily and they moved closer to the trembling figure still huddled against the wall.
“Aaron, I want you to listen to me.” Jake’s voice rang out with an authority Emily hadn’t expected, but she was glad to hear it. It helped her get in touch with her own inner strength again. “I can see that something bad happened to you. You’ve suffered. Maybe you feel like dying, or like you’ve got nothing left to lose anymore. But I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. You’re still alive, buddy. And that means you can still hurt some more. Whoever did this to you may have taken your eyes, but I know your mind’s still intact in there. Unless you want me to go to work on some other sensitive areas of your body, you’ll tell me some things I want to know.” He paused a moment to let the words sink in. “You hear me, Aaron? I’d like an answer right now.”
A strange, dark thrill slithered through Emily as she listened to these words. They were the same words—or close enough—that she’d wanted to say to Aaron herself before the killing fever gripped her. Thinking that scared her. Made her think that the soul sickness was getting a grip on her again. And maybe on Jake, too.
Aaron rolled onto his side and coughed hard. A wad of pink-and-yellow phlegm flew from his mouth and stained the carpeted floor. Then he sighed. And said, “I hear you.”
Jake nodded, a gesture that had the startling effect of nearly causing Emily to laugh. Why nod for a man who can’t see? A corner of her mouth twitched, nearly lifted in a smile. She bit down on her lip and tried to remain focused long enough for Jake to conduct this interrogation.
Jake said, “Who did this to you? Where’s Abby?”
And now there was laughter in the room.
But it issued from a surprising source—the disfigured man on the floor.
Jake’s expression sharpened and he took an abrupt step closer to Aaron’s prone form. “Nothing’s funny here, asshole. Stop laughing, or start hurting. Give us some answers. NOW!”
Aaron seemed to sense the very real threat in Jake’s voice, because the laughter dried up and gave way to another moan. “I’m sorry. Please…it’s just that there’s something you don’t know…something you won’t believe…”
Jake grunted. “Try us.”
And now Aaron turned his head toward them. If he still had eyes, his gaze would be locked with Jake’s. Seeing this creeped Emily out.
Aaron said, “Abby…did this.”
There was a long moment of stunned silence. Emily
Jake was seething. “You’re fucking with us. We’re about done with your shit.”
A sound that might have been a giggle trilled out of Aaron’s mouth. “Do what you want. Sooner or later I’ll be dead, and that’s all I want now. But I’m telling you the truth. Abby did this. She’s…not human.”
Jake and Emily exchanged perplexed glances. Emily’s immediate instinct was to say this was all a lie. That this was just a madman taunting them with sick untruths in his last moments. But something analytical within her was at work, examining everything she’d known of Kelly and Laura prior to doomsday, lingering for a long time on how she’d never—not once—seen Abby with the women. And on how they’d never once so much as mentioned the little girl.
She could see that Jake was thinking the same thing.
But this was just crazy.
Right?
There were all kinds of legitimate reasons why neither of them had previously been aware of the girl’s existence.
And yet…
Emily slipped her hand from Jake’s and knelt next to Aaron. “Aaron, this is Emily. What do you mean when you say Abby isn’t human?”
“I mean she’s not human. There’s a real little girl there, but it’s just a shell. A host. There’s something…evil living inside it. Some monster.” Aaron swallow
ed hard, coughed again. “I brought her here. Taped her to that chair. But she broke free. She…reached into my mind. She paralyzed me. And she…used my knife on me.”
Emily still wasn’t sure she believed any of this. Believing it would shatter a number of very important illusions she’d constructed for herself in the last several days. But she didn’t scoff at what Aaron was saying. She could hear the belief in his voice.
“Where is Abby now?”
Aaron opened his mouth to answer—
—and a lilting, bell-clear feminine voice spoke behind them: “Why, I’m right here.” A giggle. “Said the spider to the fly.”
Emily surged to her feet and wheeled around. And there was Abby, standing in the doorway. Emily felt none of the relief she’d expected to feel in the moment of reunion. Because when she looked into that insane, blazing gaze, she knew what Aaron had been saying was the truth. Every last bitter word of it.
Aaron wailed and rolled up against the wall again.
Abby laughed. “Pathetic, don’t you think? He was fun to play with for a while. Just as it was fun manipulating the emotions of two simpletons.”
Emily’s eyes welled with helpless tears. Part of her knew it was stupid to lament the loss of something that had never been real—especially in light of the danger they were facing—but she did so anyway. How could she have been so blind? How could she have been so foolish?
Abby threw her head back and laughed heartily. It was a big, expansive sound, bigger than anything a little girl’s lungs should have been able to produce. Then, grinning broadly, she locked gazes with Emily. “How? I’ll tell you how. Because you are a primitive, stupid thing. Like the rest of your race. I let that man take me because I thought it might make things more interesting for me. And it has. Oh, it has.”
Emily’s hand sought Jake’s, found it, and pulled him close. She savored this bit of simple human intimacy, knowing she might never experience it again. She tried to keep the quaver out of her voice when she said, “What are you going to do to us?”
Abby sucked moisture from the corners of her mouth and rolled her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Well, let’s see. Hmm, you know, I think I’m going to let you go.”
She laughed.
Just taunting us, Emily thought bitterly.
But Abby gave her head an emphatic shake. “It’s true. I”m letting you go.” She laughed again. “Are you listening. I’m letting you go.” Heavily emphasizing the word “you” this time. “Your boyfriend, though…”
Before Emily had time to consider the implications of this, Abby’s head snapped forward and her nostrils flared. Her mouth opened wide and something black emerged. An indistinct black mist. It coalesced in the air, became a dark bolt, and shot toward Jake. The bolt punched through the middle of his face and exited through the back of his head before he could so much as flinch.
The body toppled to the floor and Emily screamed.
And screamed.
“Enough.”
The next scream died in her throat at the sound of Abby’s voice. “There aren’t many of you humans left to play with. So I’m leaving you alive for another day. But make no mistake, sweet Emily. I’ll be back for you.”
Abby turned and walked out of the room, whistling a cheerful tune as she went. By the time the sound receded the unnatural blackness gripping the hallway was gone. And the light in the ceiling fixture snapped out.
Emily stood in the natural gloom of the room, alone now except for Aaron. Her mind went blank, a defensive move on her psyche’s part.
She dropped to her knees. And a moment later toppled over.
Unconscious.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
October 5
3:30 p.m.
One of the special joys of Warren’s younger days had been the too infrequent occasions when his dad, Earl Hatcher, would take him to the local minor league baseball team’s home games. Earl was a truck driver and so wasn’t home enough to make it a regular thing, but every summer the father and son would go to three or four games at Greer Stadium in Nashville. Greer was a typical minor league ballpark, small and utterly lacking the pizzazz and glamour of a major league park. This distinction was not so evident to the average little kid, however, and to Warren a visit to Greer was every bit as momentous an occasion as a pilgrimage to the House That Ruth Built was for a Yankees fanatic.
He and his dad always sat in the outfield bleachers beyond the right field wall. What his dad called the “cheap seats”. His dad’s idea of a joke. At Greer, all the seats were “cheap seats”. Earl Hatcher was not a social man (a trait inherited by his son) and he preferred this sparsely populated section of the stadium to the more densely packed bleachers along the first and third base lines. Some nights they had the entire section to themselves. Earl was a big baseball fan and he often became so immersed in the games he appeared to forget his son was there with him.
But Warren didn’t mind. Just being at the ballpark in the company of his dad was enough to keep him happy. He would fall into fantasy at times, sometimes so deeply he lost track of what was happening in the game for more than an inning at a time. A favorite fantasy involved having the ballpark all to himself, utterly devoid of other fans, players, and concessions workers. He imagined being able to walk unfettered across the bright green outfield grass, saw himself running around the bases and sliding into home plate head-first like Pete Rose. The fantasy was tantalizing, and more than a little frustrating, mostly because he knew he’d never have the opportunity to do those things. Not like those lucky kids who—through some complicated process he couldn’t fathom—got invited onto the field to participate in some special pregame ceremony or activity. It was firmly in the realm of the Not Possible.
Walking straight down the middle of this stretch of interstate reminded Warren strongly of those feelings. Until recently, doing this would get you flattened by an oncoming semi within seconds. But now the semis were just rusting hulks. Artifacts of a prematurely ancient culture. The asphalt beneath his feet was cracked and faded. He felt like a time traveling archaeologist traipsing through the ruins of a civilization fallen to dust long ago. But he also felt a bit like a little boy walking across the green grass of a ballpark’s outfield. No longer fantasizing about a waltz through the realm of the Not Possible, but lost in the terrifying land of Things That Should Not Be.
He glanced to his right at Jasmine. Her expression was unreadable, but he thought he detected a glint of faraway things in her unfocused gaze. It was the way she always looked lately. Making love hadn’t brought them closer emotionally. If anything, it’d had the opposite effect. She seemed cooler to him, less responsive to his efforts to engage her. Today, for instance, they’d exchanged hardly more than a half dozen sentences since this morning.
Ah, but she still came to him in the night. With a desperate desire burning in her eyes, pulling off his clothes, and fucking him with a fervor that always excited him in the moment—but always left him puzzled in the awkward ensuing silence. He’d tried talking to her about it that first night, but not since then. She’d listened to his earnest entreaties in stony silence that time, then had quietly dressed and walked away, leaving him to sleep alone. He hardly slept at all, and what little sleep he did get was fitful and plagued by dreams about red-eyed zombies and demons. When the sun came up the next morning, he was surprised to see her standing near him, her bag slung over her shoulder, apparently ready to resume their journey together. He’d half-suspected he’d never see her again. And though he’d been overjoyed to see she was still with him, he’d forced himself not to express this feeling, lest she leave him again.
He knew he had to cut her some slack. She clearly remained uncomfortable about being intimate with someone so young. Also, she was still grieving over the loss of her husband, the love of her life. Probably she imagined she’d betrayed his memory in some way by sleeping with another man so soon after his death. Those things alone likely would have been enough to make her moody an
d distant. Add the end of the world into the mix and…well, he had to count himself lucky to have her around at all. And as long as she was still around, there was hope. She might yet resolve the angst consuming her and then they could be closer.
She became conscious of his gaze. He could tell by the way she closed her eyes and breathed a slow sigh. As if being looked at was a burden. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him, her expression wary. “What?”
Warren’s heart jittered. “Um…nothing.”
“Okay.”
Warren opened his mouth to say something else, to tell her to cease this quiet hostility once and for all. He wanted her to admit that they needed each other. But he said no such thing. He closed his mouth and let his gaze go back to the road ahead.
The Nashville skyline loomed off to the right, beyond a line of dead trees shrouding the 440 parkway. He felt a rising tide of melancholy as he glimpsed the familiar outlines of buildings he hadn’t seen for more than four years. There was the AT&T building, the so-called “Bat Building”, because of the blue glass of the windows and the spires on either side that made it resemble Batman’s cowl. But it was no longer the gleaming monument to commerce it had formerly been. The blue glass had turned a dingy brown and the spires were black. It looked like a vision out of some medieval fantasy, an edifice suffused with dark magic and evil. He felt for a moment like Frodo nearing the end of his quest, about to enter Mordor. The notion was silly, but it sent a shudder rippling through him.
He was gripped by a sense of foreboding so strong it nearly stopped him in his tracks. He slowed and nearly stumbled as Jasmine moved ahead of him. The gap between them lengthened quickly and Warren knew he should call out to her, tell her to wait up. But he said nothing and she got farther and farther away, her back squarely to him, seemingly oblivious or uncaring, or both. He came to a dead stop and she was more than fifty feet away. A voice at the back of his brain, a thing that sound defeated and lost, told him to let her keep going—that the sooner they ended this exercise in misery the better.