“I would never hurt her,” Harry mumbles. “I couldn’t, I—I’m not capable of hurting her. I love her more than life itself.”
He remembers her raising a hand, holding it up like a crossing guard signaling incoming traffic to stop, or perhaps it’s instinctual, a reflexive attempt to deflect what she knows is coming. Her diamond and wedding band catch the sparse light through the nearby window. It is the last thing Harry remembers before he swings the bat and connects with her head, the last thing he remembers before she falls to the floor where he hits her again.
From a faraway corner of his crippled mind, he sees Garret as a little boy watching him, a crumpled juice box and a baseball mitt at his feet.
Sometimes love runs so deep it hurts, but when it turns to anger or even violence it becomes something else entirely.
Doesn’t it?
“We’re all dead,” Gloria tells him.
The memories fade. “Is Kelly alive?” he asks through a blur of tears.
Gloria slowly traces the floor with bloody fingers.
“Is she alive?” he says, screaming it this time, his voice booming in open space.
Finally, she looks at him. “Are you?”
* * *
Night…it was still night. The first thing he saw was a blurry vision of his car and Kelly’s SUV beyond it. Pain surged through his body, coming from somewhere very deep inside him, and he tasted blood. Lots of blood. He’d hit the driveway with tremendous force, and even before he attempted to move he knew he’d been severely injured. His head hurt horribly, like it had shattered and was now held together by loose flaps of bloody wet skin that had once been his face.
Something moved into his limited frame of vision.
My God, the coyote…
It stood next to him, nervously sniffing the air, eyes panning the area for potential threats.
He’s protecting me, watching over me.
As if it sensed something, it turned its head and looked closer at Harry, so close its nose nearly touched him.
Suddenly Harry sensed it too. He was sure of it. He knew those eyes, the soul behind them and the look of recognition. His old friend.
“Marlon?” he asked weakly. Was that even his voice?
I’m sorry. I’ve done all I can.
Slowly, the coyote backed away.
Harry tried to move his arms. One shifted, the other refused to budge but throbbed with pain. With a grunt he struggled as best he could to pull himself up, to raise his head and attempt to at least get to his hands and knees.
The coyote was gone, returned to the dark forest from which it came.
Get up, I—they’re coming, I have to get up.
His entire body began to shudder as he tried to push himself up, the pain agonizing, his vision still blurred but getting better, enough to make out a reflection in the moonlight. Along the side of his car, a face. His face but…
I can’t. I can’t make it. I want to sleep. I need to sleep.
A shattered face, broken and torn, slowly morphing.
There is no rest from torment, Kelly…
Now a once beautiful face.
…from pain…pain inflicted by actions that must be answered for…
Blonde hair caked with blood.
…from feeling what he felt, to live what he lived…
Blue eyes barely alive yet strangely aware…
…on that last night…to know…to understand…to truly understand…
Finally aware…
Dropping from the roof, the shadow people fell about her broken body like spiders descending on webs, closing on her until there was nothing left but night and the horrific wails of the damned.
12
But still, the dreams persist.
“Mr. Fremont?”
When I think of you now—really think of you—I see you for what you are. A disease, an infection that slowly killed us both, a plague that changed the woman I loved more than anything in this world into someone I no longer knew, an illness that took hold in me and turned me into someone capable of unimaginable violence. For what? Tell me, for what? Why her? Why me?
“Mr. Fremont, can you hear me?”
There is a version of our lives before you, and a version after. One includes someone I knew and fell in love with. The other leaves mere scraps, a near-stranger in her place. For so many years I slept, waited and listened, and eventually came to understand these things. I came to drown in them.
But I never planned to drown alone.
“My name is Doctor Bonnet.”
I learned to put my pain, anger and suspicion aside, to pretend they weren’t there, to trick myself into believing all was well. It was easier that way, I suppose, to simply pretend I didn’t see what was right in front of my eyes. It was safer to play along, to look the other way, to think happy thoughts and focus on something else. But there’s always something below the surface. Always.
You should’ve thought about what was beneath mine.
“Can you hear me? Mr. Fremont?”
Be it a wall, a floor, earth, flesh, darkness…peel any of them back and beneath their exteriors and outer layers a network beyond what can readily be seen and touched is revealed, there all along but existing unseen, hidden. And what resides beneath rarely resembles that which conceals it. Maybe the key to happiness is to never look deeper than those surfaces.
To never know the difference between what is real and what are lies.
“Mr. Fremont? Can you hear me?”
Like all else, it comes down to destiny. I know that now. There is what we want, what we do not, and what must be. And no one—nothing—can stop what must be. Once cornered I knew you’d understand the torment you’d caused, and how little it takes for an unassuming person to turn rogue and ravenous with violence. You’d see it alive and thriving in me, an unclean spirit possessing the soul of a wounded man for whom the bleeding never stops.
And never is a very long time.
“My name is Doctor Bonnet. I’m caring for you now.”
Once, a long time ago, things were special, sacred. The love we shared, our union, and then the birth of our child—such an amazing gift—so pure and perfect, he made us whole, or at least it seemed that way. All of it held intrinsic meaning. And still, it was lost. Taken. Given away.
We had to answer for that.
So did you.
“Mr. Fremont, do you understand?”
I’m awake.
“You’ve been badly injured, Mr. Fremont.”
God help you.
“Very badly injured.”
God help us all.
* * *
Dreams no more, and yet he could not yet see, not quite. Swirling blurs of light and shadowy shapes drifted about as if submerged and floating in murky liquid. A steady beeping sound called to him from very far away as all else began fading into view, focus finally arriving to reveal a windowless hospital room, two of the four walls consisting of large windows beyond which he could just barely make out a large desk or counter area of some kind. His eyes blinked, cleared a bit more, looked to the drab walls, what little of the glossy floor he could see, the low lights everywhere providing just enough illumination to see the outlines of various machines all around the bed on which he’d been placed. And quiet, it—why was it so quiet? Only the incessant beeping continued, a bit louder than before but steady. In the next few seconds he came to realize it was beeping in time with his heart. He should’ve found this comforting, why then did it frighten him so?
He attempted to lift his head for a better look at himself, but he couldn’t seem to budge. He drew a slow breath, let it out, then tried again. He could not lift his head from the pillow, and something was irritating his nose, a tube or some sort of plastic contraption had been stuffed up there and attached to one of the bedside machines. He wanted it out, it—he tried desperately to bring his hand up from his side and tear the tube away but he couldn’t get his arm to respond. He looked down. His arms were right
there at his sides, but both were concealed in casts.
They’re broken. I’ve broken both my arms.
The beeping increased…louder…faster.
The fall from the roof—or had he jumped—he remembered now how he’d watched the paved driveway race toward him as he plummeted through the moonlit night.
He tried again.
I can’t…I can’t move, I—Jesus Christ—I can’t move.
Struggling to control his panic, he squeezed shut his eyes a moment, took another deep breath, then reopened them.
He decided to start with something simple, like wiggling his toes. He tried and though it felt as if he were doing it, when he strained to see his feet, he could make out only a thin brown blanket pulled taut across his torso.
I’m hurt. I’m hurt bad.
He looked beyond the curve of blanket where he knew his thighs to be. Where the blanket should’ve been tented it remained flat all the way to the foot of the bed.
The beeping grew rapid as a prickly pain reverberated through his legs and down into his feet…
God no, no, I—
…lower legs and feet that were no longer there.
He was screaming. He could feel himself screaming. But all that came from him was a hideous squealing grunt, as his face was wrapped in bandages, the bones beneath shattered; his jaw broken and immobile.
The fall had shattered his entire body, but—had he broken his legs so severely they’d had to be amputated? Could that be?
How long had he lain there in the driveway, bloody and broken, before someone found him?
Garret, my—my boy—where are you? I’m so sorry, son, I—
Something moved in the far corner of the room. In the dim light he could not make out any specifics, but when he frantically looked to the door he was able to see a long, empty and relatively dark hallway that led to his room. The nurse’s station through the window was also unmanned and quiet.
But he was no longer alone. Perhaps he never had been.
The shadows peeled back as if from unseen hands, and the strange dark contours of something unnatural emerged. Odd symmetrical angles, dripping with moisture, an entire network pieced together, there in the darkest corner of the room.
That’s how they take you down there.
Eyes bulging with horror, he looked to the ceiling.
First they make you fit.
Something black scurried overhead like an enormous crab.
Then they take you down.
Harry felt tepid breath against his face, as if someone were panting right next to him, their face pressed to the side of his. He couldn’t turn his head but he frantically slid his eyes to the side. Someone…something was there…
“That’s the power of love, Harry.”
Kelly, I—help me, I—
“It makes you believe things even when they’re not true.”
Something dropped from the ceiling.
“And you don’t care.”
Hands, I—I don’t want them touching me, get—please, I—get their hands off me, get them off!
“Because it’s such a powerful feeling you can’t let go.”
The room shifted, the ceiling slid past and suddenly he was falling, dropping to the hard tiled floor in a tangle of tubes and wires and bandages. He could hear the labored breath of those moving in the shadows, those pulling him, dragging him toward the pipes.
“You don’t ever want to be without it again.”
One large opening, dripping wet like the mouth of a giant eel, coming closer, so close he could smell the foulness within.
Don’t, just—let me go, I—don’t—please don’t, I—
His screams went unheard as inhuman hands lifted him, offering his mangled body to the gods below, pushing him into the opening, forcing him as he writhed and groaned in protest, sliding deeper into slime and darkness as glimpses of the room blinked in the distance, his wife watching next to the bed in a slip sprayed with blood, her head a mask of gore but for the loving smile pursing her split lips.
13
Like life, place and time, it had all been reduced to a blur, a memory. It came from that place deep down inside where pretense cannot survive, where there are no rules or judgments, restraint or second-guessing, where one is only alive and aware without shackles, a place at once defined, realized, mysterious and intricate, horrifying and beautiful, a labyrinth of dreams and shadow wrapped in veils of emotion so raw and true none of it could be deciphered or experienced beyond the visceral.
Perhaps, in the end, that’s all anyone needed.
Stay with me…
Had he heard the hypnotic grumblings of thunder just then?
Kelly, as he liked to remember her. So young, an All-American girl-next-door with a bright smile and gorgeous blue eyes, the most innocent and trusting eyes he’d ever seen. Eyes filled with such happiness and love it seemed she’d never be able to contain it, and yet…
My God, how I loved her.
Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail that day, like she so often wore it then. Not yet married, he’d stopped by her house to see her. It was a Saturday and she was in the yard playing with some neighborhood kids, all of them younger than she was. Just as he remembered, they were throwing a Frisbee back and forth, and Kelly was laughing, having more fun than anyone. She ran over to him and kissed him quickly on the lips, saying something about the kids tiring her out, but she didn’t seem tired at all. She seemed at peace. And now that he had joined her there, even from the sidelines, she seemed whole. He watched her leap for the Frisbee, running and laughing and throwing it back with such abandon, a girl on the verge of womanhood so sure of herself and so happy and yet there was something else too, something more just beyond that naïve and childlike surface.
Stay with me…Kelly, stay with me…
If only Garret could’ve been there too, the dream would’ve been perfect. But he was years from being born.
So were they.
It wasn’t until the scene faded away, swallowed by the darkness, that Harry realized Kelly was still next to him and that she’d been watching it too.
Kelly, come on now…stay with me…I need you to stay with me.
A red light whirled, slashing the darkness and illuminating their faces with each pass. She looked ghoulish now. They both did. But when she reached for his hand Harry let her take it, her flesh soft, wet, sticky.
“You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die?” she asked, her voice strained and struggling for breath. “Maybe it’s not your life at all, but a tiny bit of someone else’s. Someone you loved; someone who loved you. That way you know. You understand—truly understand—because the last thing you feel is what they felt, what that love did to them, good and bad, the joy and the pain. And maybe in the end it cleanses you both.”
“Stay with me,” Harry said, and though he meant it, he realized it was not his voice but someone else’s, someone neither of them knew and yet someone with whom Kelly would share the most intimate moment of all. “Please, I need you to stay with me.”
I’m losing her—we—we’re losing her!
Her hand slipped free of his, dropped away, and as the darkness took her the red light began to fade, its circular sweeps coming slower and slower until it blinked off and all was quiet.
And finally, long after dark, in desolate silence, Harry Fremont slept.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Called “One of the best writers of his generation” by both the Roswell Literary Review and author Brian Keene, Greg F. Gifune is the author of numerous short stories, several novels and two short story collections (Heretics and Down To Sleep). His work has been published all over the world, consistently praised by readers and critics alike, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and The Midwest Book Review (among others) and has recently garnered interest from Hollywood. His novels include Children Of Chaos, Dominion, The Bleeding Season, Deep Night, Blood In Electric Blue, Sa
ying Uncle, A View From The Lake, Night Work, Drago Descending, Catching Hell, and Judas Goat. Greg resides in Massachusetts with his wife Carol and a bevy of cats. Greg can be reached online at: [email protected] or through his official web site at: www.gregfgifune.com.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
Table of Contents
LONG AFTER DARK
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About The Author
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