“How do you know my name? How am I here?” Hank asked.
“We are between life and death, caught up in a place where those worlds collide. Time here is meaningless Hank. Space is meaningless. We are always and forever trapped in this here place, in this torment, over and over ’til time itself stops. Some of us recognize it, like me. Others are clueless to their fate every damn time…” Sheridan trailed off. Hank knew that Sheridan understood he was dead and long so.
Still as they talked the small fires had turned into a conflagration. The house was going up quick. Two rebels came to the back door, found it locked and as they tried to kick it open met a bloody end as Sheridan shot the first one through the window, through the eye. As he fell to the ground Sheridan reached through the shattered glass pane of the back door and stuck a knife through the second man’s neck. He left the blade in as the soldier fell back gurgling and spurting out blood. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, Sheridan had easily dispatched two Confederate soldiers.
Then Sheridan took Hank’s hand and led him around the front of the house.
He said, “This is my favorite part,” just as the front door flew open and three soldiers poured out of the house, staggering and coughing from smoke inhalation. The first one came running across the yard, right toward where Hank had fallen into what should have been a fire pit but turned out instead to be a walking nightmare in the nineteenth century. As the first soldier ran Hank saw those red eyes come charging out from the barn, making a direct line of interception for the soldier. The thing was upon him in just a few bounds; howling its terrible, spine piercing howl. The soldier trembled, barely able to raise his weapon, which immediately backfired. He stumbled back as the beast sniffed him deeply, seeming to feed on his fear of it. Then with a lightning quick flash it swiped its clawed front paw across the belly of the soldier, opening the boy up five times. Each claw a scimitar cutting in from the side, then a gaff hook drawing intestines out and flinging them casually on the ground. The boy lay there suffering and whimpering, dying quickly as the last thing he heard was that hellish howl and the screams of his friends burning to death.
The other two soldiers that made it out of the house had only two choices; charge the damned thing and try to win a futile fight or burn to death like their other comrades. Choosing to fight was agreed upon by the two men with a nonverbal nod. After all they were soldiers. Win or lose. Live or die. Their lot in life was to fight.
With a pathetic Rebel Yell that was as good as the two boys could muster they charged the field with all the strength and adrenalin that comes with facing certain death. The beast just stood there. It almost seemed to not even notice them. Then as they got within melee range with their bayonets they both fired, right into its face. One musket ball seemed to simply disappear but the other struck home in the best possible way and put out the right eye, of the accursed thing. It reared back on its haunches and came down hard, crashing its whole weight into the first of the two young southern boys, who splattered like a tomato under its strength. The other boy stabbed the thing in the chest with his bayonet. It laughed at him in a guttural, sinister voice. Then its head reared back, its jaws distended and it snapped the head clean off the boy. In a flash it struck, like a viper, its large square teeth tearing the head off as easily as a knife through butter. Hank was shocked at the brutality. The body remained standing as a crimson gout sprayed out of the neck, shooting the man’s life force several feet into the air as the beast bathed in blood, still standing in the puddle that was all that remained of the soldier who was splattered.
Hank had never seen such gore in his life. He had never smelled death up close and personal before. Had never smelled the bile, the blood, the excrement. He was sickened beyond belief, but more than a physical sickness he was sick with himself for enjoying what he saw. After what those men did to poor Matilda…he had no sympathy for anything that happened to them.
He then noticed that Sheridan was staring at the beast and it was staring at him.
They seemed to be communicating in some way that Hank could not understand. Then it bounded off back toward the barn. When it got there it turned and stared back at Hank and Sheridan, this time with one glowing red eye and not two.
Everything went black. Hank lost his balance and collapsed. He lost consciousness. He awoke in a hospital bed, a heart monitor the only thing to keep him company. As he tried to get his bearings a nurse entered the room.
“Oh, good, you’re awake now. We had to sedate you heavily. You had one of the worst seizures I’ve ever seen. Your wife’s been worried sick about you. She just went to the cafeteria for coffee…hasn’t left your side ’til a few minutes ago. I’ll let her know you are awake now,” the nurse seemed to talk faster than Hank could comprehend.
“Seizure…seizure…I had a seizure,” he said to himself repeatedly, trying to come to terms with all he had experienced. Trying to form words despite the medication that was numbing his brain.
6
Old Friends
After Yuri hurt himself jumping over the fire a doctor that Amy had invited to the party had attended to his injury. He had suggested that Yuri go get his knee checked out, that it could be sprained pretty bad but was probably just hyper extended. He gave Yuri a shot of Demerol for the pain, as well as just plain giving him a bottle of hydrocodone with at least two hundred and fifty pills in it. They were the thirty milligram ones too, not the cheap ones. Ana Sophia knew he had just handed her thousands of dollars worth of pills when he gave her the bottle for Yuri. He suggested she eat as many as she needed too, in case her nerves were shot.
As they had gotten Yuri settled in the living room, laid out on the sectional couch with his leg propped up with an ice pack on it, Hank had been going through a seizure the likes of which they had never seen. He had even fallen right into the fire and doctor Jared came to the rescue. He had to be rushed to the hospital due to a severe reaction to some drug he had taken before his epileptic fit and also to be treated for burns. Where he fell into the fire he managed to burn much of his hair off.
Ana Sophia was thankful that word came from the hospital and Hank was doing okay. With both Hank and Yuri out of the woods, so to speak, Ana Sophia finally began to relax. Amy suggested she take a shower, slip into something comfortable and zonk out in their master bedroom. Amy was planning on staying the night at the hospital as she knew Hank was going to be there a while, undergoing various tests and brain scans. CAT and MRI among them, but they usually did other tests as well. All in all he was never just in and out of the hospital and this was by far the worst seizure Hank ever had. She didn’t tell the staff at the hospital that Hank was high on acid when he had his seizure, but had let Ana Sophia know so that she and Yuri could know what was really happening with Hank.
Ana Sophia took a shower in the only working bathroom in the massive house. The pipes squeaked loudly and groaned as if they didn’t want to produce any water but eventually they poured forth a grimey smelling, sticky fluid that vaguely resembled the tap water she was used to in Lexington. Having grown up in Brazil she had wondered how America had such shitty water. Still the shower was calming and relaxed her a great deal. She hoped Yuri was okay and felt reassured that Jared seemed to think he was fine. But there was such a loud noise when he landed. It sounded like a tree branch snapping. She remembered him flying through the air, right over the fire, as he’d done several times that night. He was always doing silly physical things and joking around, he was very athletic, but something seemed to happen. She knew when she saw the hand of evil work upon the earth. Especially when it targeted someone she loved. And this situation reeked of exactly that. She felt a cold rush up her spine right as he jumped and then she saw him hit an invisible wall while mid air. He hit an immovable nothingness and all of his forward motion simply stopped and he was slammed directly to the ground as if grabbed by some invisible hand and thrown forcefully at the earth. Nobody else that she knew of seemed to notice the details of what
happened. Everyone else was high on at least one drug or another, but Ana Sophia was paying close attention to her husband and she had never been high in her entire life. What she saw made her question whether or not someone had slipped something into her drink.
She climbed out of the shower only after all the hot water had run out, which was only about ten minutes, which was disappointing to her as she had really wanted to relax. She put on a pair of Amy’s pajamas and proceeded to the bedroom where Amy had set Yuri up on the bed with his ice pack and pillows under his leg. Yuri was so doped up he could barely keep his eyes open, yet he was still awake and greeted his wife with an indecipherable slur as she entered the room.
Ana Sophia smiled at him and crawled into bed next to him after toweling her hair dry and turning the light off. She kissed her husband and they both found sleep quickly and easily. She hadn’t slept that deeply in months. This was the first night that she and Yuri had been away from their kids in as long.
Still she awoke in the middle of the night when a loud bang upstairs startled her. It sounded like something as large as a person fell from ceiling to floor upstairs and it shook the whole house. When she woke it was with such a start that she sat bolt upright immediately and reflexively. She was sweating profusely and yet she was ice cold. She gained her bearings a bit before she noticed that Yuri was not in bed with her any more. She figured he must be in the kitchen as it looked like the light was on down the hall. After a moment he appeared in the doorway, breathing heavily. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the injury at all. Ana Sophia figured that he must have taken his ice pack into the kitchen and found the swelling had gone down. Now he was walking good, but tomorrow it would likely be bothersome. Still she patted the bed next to her and invited him to come back to sleep. She had forgotten all about the banging sound that woke her up and just wanted Yuri to rejoin her, but he stood in the doorway, just breathing heavily. She found after a minute or two that she was both slightly disturbed and extremely turned on. He finally approached and she was excited with the anticipation of just grabbing him and forcing him inside her. She and her husband had a deep sexual connection and she knew it would be no problem to get him to fuck her. Even injured he was usually horny all the time and ready and willing to make love to her at the drop of a hat. He may have grown up in Kentucky, but Yuri was Brazilian ethnically and who better to pleasure a Brazilian man than a Brazilian woman? She could think of no one.
As he approached the bed she felt his energy was primal and overwhelming. She could feel his presence like a hand on her back, or as he got closer, a slap in the face. Something wasn’t right with him. He just stood there, breathing deeply, like an animal. Then out of nowhere he climbed into the bed and right on top of her. He pulled her hair hard and she purred like a cat. He climbed on top of her tearing away the buttons on the borrowed pajamas forcefully and easily with his mouth as he ravenously searched for her breasts. Spitting the buttons out he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked so hard she thought it would come off. Then he bit. She screamed in horror and ecstasy.
He tore off his pants and hers in just a couple of seconds. Her musk was potent smelling, she was so wet and turned on that she felt like a high school girl. He flipped her over and spit into his hand, forcefully. He was much more rough with her than usual and because of that she found herself coming to orgasm quickly. Then in the midst of ecstasy his demeanor changed and was diametrically different. She hated it immediately. It was violent, brutal and violating. She was scared.
Yuri began to laugh in a voice that Ana Sophia did not recognize as he thrust into her ass, immediately putting in the entirety of his penis and brutally pounding away. She gasped in pain but could not scream out as he had her face buried in a pillow. He punched her hard with his other hand in the back and sides. She tried to roll over, to get a breathe. She couldn’t. She was trying to struggle, but her strength was fading.
In desperation she reached out for the nightstand next to the bed. She knew there was a lamp, an old rotary phone and several other odds and ends on it. She clawed at the table with her left hand, all the while gasping for a breath. Adrenalin coursed through her as she fought to stay alive, helped her to ignore the anal rape and furious, hellbent punches she was enduring. That was secondary, she would deal with that if she could just get a breath. Even as she struggled in her desperate last attempt, even as the adrenalin made her nauseous, she found herself losing consciousness. Then her tiny fingers found what she immediately recognized as scissors. When she knew what she held it gave her the second wind to attack, to save her life and her dignity.
Turning and thrusting in one motion she heard a loud yelp as the scissors in her hand tore through flesh. He let go of her and fell backward, his swollen cock dislodging from her wounded anus. She turned over fully, sitting upright and clutching the covers over her nakedness with one hand while gesturing aggressively with the scissors.
“What the fuck Yuri?!” she screamed as loud as she could at him, tears streaming down her face.
“Ain’t no Yuri here girl,” a vicious growl came from his mouth in an accent that sounded both Asian and country bumpkin hillbilly at once. “Just yo’ daddy girl. Just Quan. An you done stabbed me in the knee. Gonna have’ta go see the doctor in the mo’nin’. We done been through this girl, we done been through this.” He grabbed his belt and began beating her, whooping and hollering at her the whole time. She dropped the scissors quickly, unable to defend against the ferocity of the blows. He beat her for ten minutes straight and she had only the blankets to protect her naked body from his immense strength. She knew this man was not her husband, yet he used Yuri’s body. He tore the blankets off of her and backhanded her hard. Ana Sophia’s tiny skull hit the headboard and knocked her out.
What she immediately recognized as several minutes later she came to. Stunned still by his actions and the daze she was in, she found herself alone in that bedroom. She got her clothes on, those buttonless pajamas Amy had given her what seemed like a century ago. It caused her immeasurable pain just to move as she was bruised from head to toe. Ana Sophia knew that if she survived the ordeal she would be black and blue for months.
After taking a moment to breathe deeply she ran through the house in a panic, just wanting away. She knew if she could make it to her car that there was a spare key in a magnetic box stuck to the frame under the back left tire. She focused on that, as if keeping straight the minute details of her escape would make or break her chances of living through the situation. To some extent she was not wrong. She heard a scratching noise coming from the back of the house when she first exited the bedroom and entered the massive hallway that led to freedom or death. It sounded to her much like cat’s claws on wood. Giant cat’s claws as the noise was so loud. Feeling like a mouse she ran as fast as she could for the front door, in the dark tripping on a rug in the foyer and falling loudly only feet from the portal to freedom. She got up as fast as she could, grabbed the door knob and threw the front door open. The coast looked clear and she was glad she had chosen to run away from the terrible noises although her car was closer to the back door. She through herself through the doorway onto the front porch with the full intent of sprinting as fast as she could to her car. Her legs went into high gear and propelled her faster than she had ever run before.
Ana Sophia felt a searing, immeasurable pain cut through her torso. Her legs still kicking as she was lifted into the air. Yuri, or rather Quan using his body, had been standing to the right of the front door against the building in the shadows. As she threw the front door open and dashed through it to what she thought was her escape he had spun and shoved a rusty, antique pitchfork through her side, piercing her with three of the four miniature spears that had grown jagged and brown with a century’s worth of age and neglect.
Ana Sophia yelped as her husband, possessed by the madman, flung her body off of the pitchfork and down the front steps, onto the front yard. He bounded down the steps after her. She could only rol
l over onto her back and spit up blood which was coming ever more rapidly up her throat and out of her mouth. She could only guess where he had punctured her, but as he was upon her again it did not matter. He stabbed her dozens of times, all in the chest and stomach. She died in horrible agony, her last words, “Yuri…please…stop,” before she was only coughing up blood.
The last thing that Ana Sophia saw was the reflection of two glowing red eyes next to her car. As darkness overtook her they came closer. She could smell the stench of rot on the hotness of its breath.
“Stay away from my wife!” she heard in her husband’s voice. His true voice. Ana Sophia was comforted to know that the last thing she heard was her husband’s voice. But she didn’t die so quickly. It took her half a minute before her consciousness was gone from the world entirely. What had been words became screams of absolute agony. She felt a weight bearing down on top of her mutilated body, knowing that her husband had suffered terribly as she did. When the darkness overcame her she was quick to embrace it.
7
The Afterparty and the Dream
The next morning Amy returned home, Hank still in the hospital. He had a series of MRI’s and other time consuming appointments that day and Amy wanted to go home and take a nap. She was looking forward to smoking a bowl and chilling with her friends Yuri and Ana Sophia. It had been a long while since she had really spent any quality time with her friends. She had been Ana Sophia’s roommate in college at the University of Kentucky and had been maid of honor at their wedding. Ana Sophia had always been there for her, like nobody else, and Yuri had known Hank since they were boys at Tate’s Creek Junior High School. As much as she felt bad leaving Hank alone at the hospital she knew his mother would be there later that afternoon and his sister would probably stop by. Jared would be on duty at the hospital later that night and had promised to check up on Hank. She realized that “if it weren’t for Jared…well”, she shuddered to think, “Hank might not have made it.”
Gravel Switch: the black goat chronicles book 1: a Weird Tale of Extreme Horror Page 6