The Eaton

by John K. Addis

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “Well,” Matt said, “there’s a lot of frozen blood and goo here, and two kittens. I think one’s dead, but the other is…”

  As if recognizing her cue, the tiny kitten mewed. The sound was harsh, and a little pathetic, cut short as if ending in a cough.

  Pete was unimpressed. “Give me the dead one,” he said without emotion. Matt passed him what looked like a small stuffed animal. Pete gave it a perfunctory glance, scowled, and then hurled the thing into a cluster of nearby trees. The animal flew in a grand arc, twisting end over end, and Sam braced himself for the sickening thud. Mercifully, the fuzzy flying ball missed the tree trunks and plopped soundless into the snow. Pete looked unsatisfied. “Now the other,” he barked.

  Matt hesitated, locking eyes with Sam for a beat. He must have seen the terror in Sam's face, for he looked down, ashamed. They both knew Matt wasn't going to deny his older brother's request, and if anything, Matt would be angry with himself for sharing even a glimmer of doubt with his young punk cousin. Sam stared at Matt, desperate for their connection to be restored, but he could see Matt's thoughts evolving in his furrowed brow and darting eyes. It's just a dumb kitten. No more than a rat, really. It would probably die out here in the cold in a few hours anyway. Who cares what Pete wants to do with it. It's not worth the fight. After a moment, Matt nodded to himself, turned back to the rear of the tent, and called it.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” he coaxed. “Come on, girl.”

  The kitten allowed herself to be picked up and held by Matt's hands. It mewed weakly, a shallow, high-pitched sound, more a mouse squeak than a meow. Matt brought it out to Pete, who had one hand held out to take the creature, and the other curled in a fist.

  Pete snatched the kitten from his brother, then looked at it for several long seconds. For a moment, Sam thought the boy's cruel heart might have been softened by the adorable, big-eyed tabby staring back at him, and dared to hope that Pete would abandon his original plan and set the kitten down gently on the ice.

  Instead, Pete laughed. “They say cats always land on their feet, right?” Then he raised his arm and spiked the kitten on the ice a few feet away. The little fur ball bounced, and in the upward arc she seemed to extend all four legs into a darkly comic jumping jack.

  Matt, who had been Sam's only hope of saving the kitten's life, was now guffawing along with his brother. “Do it again,” Matt urged. “She's got eight more lives left!”

  Pete walked over to where the kitten was squirming on the snow-dusted ice before him. She seemed to have broken at least one of her legs, and was unable to stand on her own. “Here, kitty, kitty,” he said, not with the same faux sweetness his brother had affected minutes earlier, but with a pungent malice in his tone that chilled Sam more than the snow. He grabbed the kitten and tossed her to Matt. Matt hadn't been expecting it, and so missed the catch, the kitten hitting the ice behind him instead. Again, the little creature bounced, but not as high this time, and again she was unable to stand, though this time she began dragging her body along the ice, away from the boys.

  “I think she's trying to get away from you, butterfingers,” Pete taunted.

  Matt walked up to the kitten, chuckling at her futile attempt to flee. “Don't be scared,” he assured the cat. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

  But he did hurt her.

  Sam felt invisible and helpless. He lacked the courage to stop either cousin. He lacked the speed to whisk the kitten to safety. Pathetically, he even lacked the will. The backlash from interfering with his cousins would be unspeakable, and likely painful. He couldn't fight them. He couldn't even tattle on them, because they would back up each other's stories and say Sam had it wrong, or that he was jealous of something. And he sure as hell couldn't participate in the abuse. He could do nothing. Any move would be the wrong move. Any choice he could imagine seemed the worst possible choice.

  Sam turned away when the animal was in flight once more. He heard the soft thud, and thought he might be sick.

  Pete picked up the nearly-lifeless kitten by her feet. He smiled as he observed one of her back legs had broken with such savagery it had twisted upward, as if growing from her back. By deforming this creature, Pete was feeling powerful, and very much alive. Sure, he had pulled wings off of flies, and burned ants with a magnifying glass without a second thought. But this was so different. And delicious.

  For the first time in several minutes, Pete seemed to notice Sam's eyes on him. Sam had tried to convey a hard expression of disapproval and horror, but his sadness must have softened the glare, and Pete interpreted Sam's look as disappointment of being left out.

  “Aw, sorry, kid,” Pete said. “You want a turn?”

  He chucked the kitten at Sam. Sam panicked, desperate to catch the animal before it endured another harsh landing on the ice. Unlike Matt, Sam actually did catch her, though barely, one of her legs catching in his fingers and seeming to pop out of its socket in the recoil.

  Sam brought the kitten close to his face, examining her. Her eyes were closed, her face covered in frozen blood. She was no longer mewing, but her twisted body was convulsing, random spasms shooting through her as if attached to a current.

  “Throw it!” shouted Pete. “Don't be a pussy!”

  Again, there was no way to win. No option before him would allow Sam to be victorious. He couldn't save the dying kitten. He couldn't earn his cousins' respect. He couldn't fight. He couldn't flee.

  Sam closed his eyes, took a breath, and threw the kitten against the ice as hard as he could.

  Even now, twenty years later, Sam would tell himself that it was the only way of stopping the kitten's suffering. He believed, or at least tried to believe, that he got no pleasure in his cousins' impressed cries of “ooh” and “damn” as the cat cracked open on the ground before them.

  Sam had never seen his cousins after that final holiday. Pete had been killed in a car accident his senior year of high school, and although Matt went on to graduate, no one in the family seemed to have any idea where he had ended up. But here they were in a hotel hallway, towering over him once again, hateful mischief in their eyes, daring him to act, knowing as he did that any choice would be the wrong one.

  “You're not real,” Sam said, trying to sound tough. Yet if Al’s grandfather had been right, Sam knew one of them must be more “real” than the other. Could he figure out which was truly The Eaton, and which was the projection? Would it make a difference if he could?

  The Pete creature was down the hallway toward the exit to the stairwell. The Matt creature was on the other side, toward the elevator shaft and Vaughn's body. One of them should be nothing more than vapor, as the piranha had been, and he could run right through the illusion without harm. The other would be as solid as he was. If the projection was Pete, he reasoned, he might be able to make it to the stairwell door in time, perhaps run up the flight to the transit level and escape, or down to the baths level and the safety of the mineral water, and Al's gun. If the projection was Matt, running through him helped less, as jumping down the elevator shaft was certain death, and the pharmacy provided no protection at all.

  Sam's stomach churned. He was still affected by the alcohol, but was it enough to help here? He tried concentrating on Pete, then Matt, then Pete again, looking for some clue, some imperfection, some sort of flickering that would give the game away.

  Then, he saw it. Pete's face, for just an instant, became semi-transparent, shimmering into nothing and then reforming itself.

  There was no time to think, and no time to second guess his instincts. Sam charged the Pete character, expecting to run right through him toward the stairwell door. But Pete was not made of mist. He was as solid as a wall, and Sam was knocked backward on the ground, dazed and aching.

  The Pete creature smiled, bending down to show Sam the transparent flickering again, proving its intentionality. “Fooled you,” it said.

  Sam g
lanced behind him, but the Matt apparition was gone. It was just the two of them now.

  Before Sam could stumble to his feet, the Pete creature had him by the neck, lifting him into the air. His hands were impossibly large, and they too had begun to shudder and flicker in the light, only not into transparency, but into the black tar beneath. Even Pete's smiling mouth began to lose its large crooked white teeth to reveal the dark gummy smile of The Eaton.

  Sam tried to speak, but could not. He clutched at the large hands, trying to pry the fingers from his neck.

  The creature laughed, then threw Sam through the door into the Gameroom. Sam's body tumbled in the air and crashed with damaging force onto a wooden chair, which shattered and splintered with the force of his landing. He cried aloud in agony, then found the wind had been knocked out of him, and he couldn’t catch his breath.

  The distorted Pete figure strode into the room, its eyes fixed on Sam.

  “Here, kitty,” it said. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

  Sam tried to crawl away, but it was like trying to stand up on a sheet of ice. He got only a few inches before he was picked up again by the monster and thrown, with more force this time, onto the second billiards table, the one that wasn't blocking the door to the bathroom. Unlike the wooden chair, the pool table held, but the felt top provided no comfort to the hard blow. Sam heard, and then felt, his right arm shatter. He cried aloud, then again as he rolled and fell from the table onto the floor. The pool table separated Sam from his attacker, but the haven was temporary, as with minimal effort, the creature lifted and toppled the table out of the way, then turned to face his prey.

  Sam's mind was on the kitten, which he now had become. And then, the mouse. And then Janet's unborn baby. And then Kedzie, and her unborn baby. And then another wave of fire surged through his body, and he could barely focus.

  “Why?” Sam wailed, the pain unbearable. “Why make us relive these memories? Why are you so obsessed with our pasts? Why not just kill us, you sadistic fuck! What reason can you have for making us suffer like this?”

  The Pete creature laughed. Then it lunged forward, right arm outstretched, grabbed Sam by the neck, and yanked his body straight up into the air, feet dangling, until the two were eye level.

  “I don't want to see your memories,” it spat. “I hate your rotting memories. I hate everything about you weak, selfish, evil creatures. I know you deserve to die. There is no question in my mind about that. The only enjoyment I get is when I get to show you how and why you're worthless. Because then I can feel vindicated, happy even, for doing shit like this.”

  The creature hurled Sam neck-first against the far wall, his back cracking the wood paneling with the impact. In an instant, Sam felt a wave of electricity flood through his entire body, as if every muscle was falling asleep at once, and he soon felt his arms and legs spasming in some sort of seizure. The sound of a snapping twig overwhelmed his senses, seeming to come from somewhere deep within him, and Sam's body slumped to the right, all feeling in his legs severed, his upper body overtaken by a sort of icy fire.

  Sam saw and smelled, but did not feel, the urine and blood saturating the crotch of his jeans. He was momentarily fascinated by this, as if his body had already moved on, and he was just a spirit observing his mortal end. But soon, the towering shadow of the flickering Pete creature brought him back to reality.

  Sam was not dead. He was paralyzed. And the creature knew it.

  “You’re all so weak,” the creature hissed, a thick gurgling sound audible underneath the English. “Weak in mind, and spirit, and especially in body.”

  Sam coughed, and spat blood onto the front of his shirt. “Says the all-powerful being who can't get wet,” he said.

  The Pete monster smiled, gesturing toward the barricaded door to his left. “I'm going to tear your whore apart, piece by juicy piece, right in front of you, right here, and you can't even stand up and defend her honor. So I'd show a little more respect if I were you.” Then it walked over to where the overturned pool table was covering the restroom door, pushed it aside, and forced its way in.

  For a moment, Sam was panicked for Sarah. He had almost forgotten himself that Sarah was seven floors away. When he remembered, he tried to block it from his mind, to think of anything other than where Sarah was and what she was doing, to delay as long as possible The Eaton's ability to pluck that information from his brain.

  It only took seconds for the creature to determine the emptiness of the room, and to realize it had been deceived. It stormed out and towered over Sam's broken body, demanding answers.

  “Where is she, Sam,” the Pete creature hissed, but it hardly looked like Pete anymore. The blackness of The Eaton's natural form was bleeding through almost everywhere, and for the first time, Sam could see that Al had indeed shot the thing. There was thick, inky fluid seeping from at least two unnatural holes in the creature's chest and lower abdomen. Sam was certain they were bullet wounds, and couldn't suppress a smile. When The Eaton saw this, it became infuriated, and dropped to its knees, lunging yet again for Sam's throat. The Pete mask had melted away entirely now, and the creature’s eyes—its real eyes, black and uncompromising—seemed to be boring deep into Sam's skull.

  “Go to hell,” Sam whispered, all his mental efforts devoted to blanking his mind, denying The Eaton any more knowledge for as long as he could.

  “Where is she,” the thing demanded once more, a mere foot from Sam's face now, its mushroomy breath wafting over him, its right claw now wrapped tight around his neck. But Sam stayed resolute, finding a hidden courage he himself had been unaware of until just this moment. There was a strange sort of freedom in knowing he could no longer save himself, and that his only remaining mission in life was buying Sarah a few more minutes of time.

  Go on, kill me, thought Sam. Do it. Do it quickly, and then maybe she'll be safe.

  Something happened then, to the atmosphere in the room, and to the walls and the floor of the room itself. All the energy and light appeared to flicker and drain away, replaced with an oozing darkness that seemed to come from everywhere all at once. Sam thought, deliriously, that the room must be on fire, but in a new world where flames were black rather than yellow and orange, and gave off an icy chill rather than heat. And through it all, the creature was staring at him, through him, into him, trying to force its way into Sam's deepest thoughts.

  All at once, the room returned to normal. The creature let go of Sam's throat, and backed away from him. For an instant, Sam thought he registered fear on the face of the monster, but it was soon masked by a confident, toothless grin.

  “Got her,” it said. Then it stood up, turned, and bounded for the hallway.

  thirty

  It had taken genuine effort for Sarah to enter the maintenance room again, her sliced breast aching as if in warning, a Geiger counter for pain. Thankfully, the liquid courage she had consumed earlier had given her just the extra push needed to get done what needed to get done.

  She had started by making a mental catalog of the various gauges and levers, determining which pipes served as steam release valves and safety overflows. One by one, she worked to disable and seal off as many pressure points as possible, endeavoring to create a sort of ticking time bomb of pressure and heat. Sarah had to double-check her readings several times, both because she was more than a little tipsy, and because she couldn't fathom why the hotel needed to generate such high levels of pressure. Although she had no direct experience with steam pressure or pneumatic systems, she knew that oil pressure gauges at her dad's shop tended to max out at around 100 psi, and tire pressure gauges were half that. These dials, however, were measuring pressure in the tens of thousands of pounds per square inch. Sarah guessed that perhaps such capacity was needed not so much for the hotel baths and general power, but for the planned pneumatic transit train to Charlotte. Attempting to rig such a high pressure system to explode was terrifying, as she was not confident in what she was attemp
ting, paranoid that her lack of sobriety would lead to a serious miscalculation that could kill her before she had the chance to escape.

  After several minutes of learning, working, and sabotaging, Sarah believed she heard gunshots in the distance. She froze, waiting for some sort of confirmation, but none came. Sensing she may be out of time, she redoubled her efforts, certain that she was getting closer. With some reluctance, she even restarted the energy generators, with their guillotine-like powers to destroy phones and nipple rings, which allowed her to shut down and reroute power as needed.

  A few minutes later, Sarah realized she was humming “The Book of Love” by The Magnetic Fields. It had been Sam and Sarah's song, but she couldn't imagine why it was in her head at this moment. Sarah was focused on the task at hand, and even if she had been thinking of Sam, it would not have been positively. For an instant, she could have even sworn she heard the melody in the distance, over the whir of the energy generators, but dismissed this thought as impossible. She knew the tune couldn’t be coming from her cell phone either, as she had propped the phone beside her feet in flashlight mode to aid in the reading of schematics printed on the back of an access panel.

  How long have I been working on this, Sarah wondered. It must have been ten minutes. Had the gunshots meant the creature was dead? If so, Sam would have come to get her, wouldn't he? Maybe he escaped out the Mastersuite already, the selfish bastard. Or, she realized, the creature might have killed Al and ran up toward Sam, rather than down to her.

  The song was playing louder in her head now. The book of love is long and boring. No one can lift the damn thing…

  Sarah found herself thinking of her father as she finished the last few adjustments. The specific memory flooding her mind, perhaps because of the pain surrounding her absent nipple, was of her dad comforting her after what she only called “the Tony thing.” She had called him first, even before calling the police, and he must have driven like a maniac to reach her for he arrived before they did. She sobbed and screamed into his chest like an injured toddler as they waited for the sirens, and he had whispered in her ear how proud he was of her, and how strong she was. He swore to her that some men were good, and decent, and she would find someone special. Thinking of Sam and Kedzie, Sarah wondered if her dad had been wrong. Maybe her dad had been the only decent man who ever lived.