The acids, though, they ate at Dmitry’s back and he screamed and stood up at once, backpedaling as Spencer came at him until he slammed into the kitchen table. Spencer screamed as he leapt atop the Russian, pinning him to the table and stabbing downwards. The thrusts only went an inch or two deep, but one of them finally hit a key spot. Right in the eye socket.
Dmitry screamed. To Spencer, it was the most exquisite scream he’d ever heard. This was why he lived and breathed. This was his Rapture.
And it only got better. Dmitry’s hands went to his ruined face as he spun away from Spencer and fell to the floor. He backed away to the wall. But he’d forgotten about the hands, ever lustful, ever wanting, ever needing. The hands reached out and snagged him, and this time they did it with such sharpness that even Spencer leapt back. They meant business this time.
Dmitry reached out and clawed at the burning ground. The hands peeled and pulled him closer, closer, inexorably closer to the wall. “Net! Net! Help me! Help meeeeeeeeeee!”
Spencer knelt to one knee, and waved bye-bye with the hand holding the Ginsu. “Look at me!” he said with an intensity he had never felt, and feared he’d never feel again. “I did this to you! Got that? I did! Don’t you ever look at me cross-eyed again, motherfucker!”
“Hellllllllllllllllppppp!”
“How do you say fuck you in Russian?” he laughed.
“HELP ME!” Dmitry’s legs were now sucked into that churning meat. From inside, there came crunching sounds, like bone snapping and then being ground. “PLEASE! I HAVE DAUGHTERS! I HAVE FAMILY!”
“What’re their names?” he asked calmly. “Where do they live?”
“HELP!” His hips were now consumed. His ruined eye leaked blood and a yellow ooze as one of the hands had slipped its finger inside. Dmitry’s other eye was wide, and looked out at him with genuine need.
“Where—do—they—live?”
“DERBENT! THEY LIVE IN DERBENT!” he shrieked desperately.
Spencer winked at him. “Good to know.”
“PLEASE! HEL—” A hand now reached out to his mouth and pressed against his lips. His head was jerked back and licking serpents squeezed his throat. His arms were reaching for Spencer, quivering and beseeching as the gastric acids burned them. Spencer tilted his head to one side, spit out the pool of blood that had been spilling out from his mouth. The blood landed on Dmitry’s head, just before he was finally and utterly swallowed. The last Spencer saw of Dmitry, his hand was still reaching, still hoping that Spencer would have a change of heart and grab him and pull him back. The Russian died in vain hope, the same as most other people, Spencer figured.
It’s done, the Voice said to him.
“Yep,” he said. It felt anticlimactic. Just like the tiredness a man feels after orgasm, Spencer felt quite like a nap.
I need you.
“But I don’t need you,” he said. “Not anymore.”
You do if you ever want to get outta this hell. It’ll eventually consume you, too.
“My own little corner o’ hell? Sounds like fun. You know what they say? Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” But those were just words, and he knew it. Spencer no more wanted to stay here than he wanted a lobotomy. Still, it was a fascinating place. He sat there a moment, feeling the blood trickle down his neck and throat, swallowing some of it and listening to the screams of others he’d killed coming up and down the halls. A small part of him figured that he might as well stay here in this land of both shadow and substance. God knows there wasn’t any other place for him in the realm of Earth.
But you want to stay alive to see the next part, don’t you? the Voice coaxed.
And she was right. There was no denying it. Spencer Adam Pelletier wasn’t necessarily fearless, he just experienced emotions differently than most other humans, and that experience had him caring very little about anything besides experiencing more. He wanted to see and do more things, he wanted to challenge and be challenged. It was what got him out of bed in the morning, whether he was in a prison cell or in a luxury suite or in a ditch.
“I’ll be right down, sweetheart,” he said. “Just don’t be afraid when you see me. I ain’t too pretty anymore.”
He felt a hint of her powerful empathy. How bad is it?
“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m a monster. Monsters don’t feel anything, remember?” He made for the hallway, and then into the kitchen, searching for the door that would lead to the basement steps. He sang, “Come on, baby…don’t fear the Reaper…baby take my hand…don’t fear the Reaper…we’ll be able to fly…don’t fear the Reaper…baby I’m your mannnnnnnn…”
The rain suddenly came in great sheets, but the strange thing was that it did not come down, it came sideways. David paused at the front of the house. Gunfire had almost completely ceased on Avery Street, and he’d made it to the house at the far end. He had a moment of strange calm as he watched the rainfall phenomenon, and noted that there was no wind to make it act as such.
David was transfixed for only a moment, and then continued on his way. The front door was a few steps away. He peeked in through the nearest window, but couldn’t see much for the black curtains. Just like Tidov’s house. He thought he caught a glimpse of a flickering flame, but that was about it. With his back pressed against the wall, he thought he felt a deep thrumming, one at regular intervals like a heartbeat. Then, the ground below him quaked. It was definitely a minor earthquake, no denying that. What a strange time for that to occur, but not so freakish because Georgia did have its own fault line that occasionally brought on tremors and quakes.
Now the sideways rain arched. It arched inwards, towards the front door and some of the windows. Something was breathing it in. In fact, David felt the oxygen all around him become somehow…unavailable. Like the air was being sucked out of a room. It became hard to breathe.
But he was so close. He was almost at the front door.
Another spat of gunfire erupted at the house on the other side of the cul-de-sac. David hunkered down and made for the door. Something was drawing him there. Cop instincts? Perhaps. Or maybe it was just that this was the only house that had no lights on.
Whatever the case, he made it to the door and touched the knob. It was scalding hot. His hand jerked away from it, and then he willed himself try again.
David opened the door partway but then it flew inwards and he heard something that sounded like someone taking a luxurious intake of breath, like someone coming up for air after nearly drowning. And he was sucked in with it.
Kaley waited at the foot of the stairs, terrified and yet hopeful. When the door at the top of the stairs opened, she wanted to run to the man up there. If she hadn’t had her charm, and if she hadn’t seen what this creature was, she would have. She wouldn’t have hesitated to run to anyone come to rescue her and her sister.
He ambled slowly down the stairs, a creature as disgustingly confident as Dmitry had been, although this one…was somehow different. Cut from the same cloth, perhaps, yes, just as Nan had said, but those pieces of cloth had been woven in with other, different fabrics.
The monster was covered in blood leaking down the right side of his face. He stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking about curiously, and Kaley saw his bloody half grin, saw his teeth through the gaping hole in his cheek, and winced. He shifted his weight to one foot and crossed his arms. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Tiny Terror.”
Whimpering. Kaley and the monster both looked over at Bonetta, lying down in a fetal position in the corner. She’d fought admirably, but she’d also seen something that she could never unsee, and it was still up on the ceiling. Olga dangled by her entrails, flayed and splayed open, yet somehow still alive. Her eyes looked around, begging the world for both sanity and a release from her pain. To her continuing surprise, the monster had words for Olga. He walked out to the middle of the basement, stood directly under her where he blood could drip on his face, and said, “You’re gonna know a lot of pain now.
Savvy? A whole, whole, whole, whole, whole, whole, whole, whole, whole, whole lotta pain. It’s gonna be with ya so much from now on, it’ll define you. You won’t know who ya are without it.” He smiled. “Sucks to be you, sister!” Then, as if remembering the Tiny Terror, he turned and faced Kaley. “Where’s yer sister? We need to blow this popsicle stand, an’ fast.”
All at once, Bonetta stood to her feet, and ran screaming up the steps. The monster just watched her go, a slightly bemused look on his face.
Kaley swallowed. She felt like she’d been standing there for a century, her knees stiff and her spine made of stone. She turned back to the door behind her and pointed. “I…I can’t open it.”
“Do ya still have the hairpins ya used before?”
“The…?” She did. They were on the floor, in an area that hadn’t been transformed into the veiny throat of a monster.
The monster knelt and picked them up, and made short work out of picking the lock. He opened the door, and stood to one side. All at once, Kaley broke from her trance and dashed in through the doorway, and went to her sister. “She needs a doctor.”
“No shit.”
“Help me with her!”
“Listen, if the police aren’t here yet, they gotta be close. You can wait here for—”
“You and I both know that this…thing, whatever it is all around us, it’s not just our making. It’ll swallow us all if we stay here. Now, move your fucking ass!” Kaley’s voice dropped an octave or two, or else she’d been speaking with someone else’s voice. His voice, perhaps?
Whatever the case, it got his attention. He smiled and nodded. “All right, Carrie White. Let’s do it. Teamwork, right? Heh! Go, go, Team Psycho!” He moved into the room and grabbed up the girl, who was unconscious. She had her pants on, but there was blood all around the crotch and legs. Shan stirred, and Kaley held one of her hands while the monster carried her from the room. The Connection was made, the Anchor, and this time they both recoiled from one another. It would mark the first of many intimacy changes for them throughout their lives.
Then Shannon’s eyes rolled over to look at the monster carrying her.
“Don’t worry, Sleeping Beauty,” he said. “Your prince has come.” And Kaley thought she saw something on his face, and, more importantly, in his heart. Warmth. Hope. Care. It was there for the briefest of moments, and then gone as quickly as rain from a desert floor.
They made for the stairs. Kaley took one last glance behind her, saw Olga there, her eyes turned hopefully towards them. Kaley turned away, leaving the woman to whatever hell they had all created together.
They made it into the hall, and here Kaley saw the many-chambered throats of the beast that she, Shannon, the Russians and the Monster had all helped open. “Step carefully,” said the Monster. “An’ don’t go near the walls. They have hands.”
Burning saliva dripped down from the ceiling, and Kaley jumped back from it. There was a deep, deep thrumming coming from the walls. Kaley realized it was the creature’s heartbeat, and she imagined this was what it sounded like in the mouth of a blue whale. Only, there was light here, and it came from plumes of flame that jetted out of random flaps of flesh like exhaust ports.
Somewhere, somebody screamed. Lots of somebodies.
They made it through the kitchen where the three men had been playing their game of cards earlier. Down the hallway and towards the back of the house, now at the back door. All at once, something fell from the ceiling. It was a large, pus-filled orb that suddenly shot out like a ruptured hemorrhoid and started bleeding. It split, and blood fell from its wet sack. Inside the deflated sack, there was a body, twisted and turning and writhing in pain. It gagged on a dozen barbed chains forcing their way into its mouth as four little slithering fat imps moved up and down the body, checking and rechecking the chains, as if ensuring their stability. Like maintenance men, she thought dumbly, following the Monster, who barely took a glance at the grotesquery.
They made it to the door, and the Monster’s hand was on the doorknob when they heard someone say, “Shhtop.”
Kaley turned quickly, saw the man first, and screamed. The monster, he turned slowly, still holding Shannon in his arms. “Let’s see,” the Monster said. “I handed Dmitry over to the demons hands, and Olga’s downstairs gettin’ buttfucked by briars on the ceiling, so that must mean that you’re…Mikhael?”
Mikhael, the last survivor of the Oni family, stood with flesh still sloughing off his body, but he was still capable of standing, and with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. Parts of his clothes were still on him, though they had charred and melted and merged with his peeling skin, which dangled from his glistening meat and bones like strips of beef on a coat hanger. “Eeeshh theshh you?” he asked. His lips had almost completely melted away, and Kaley thought he meant to ask Is this you? He wanted to know if all of this around them was her doing.
“No,” said her pet Monster. “This isn’t her. This is you an’ me, Mikhael. All o’ this you see around you, it’s just what happens to a mind like hers when people like you an’ me come into her life. We fuck up everything we touch.” Then, Kaley caught a glimpse of the monster’s eyes. They flitted to the side, as if he’d caught sight of something, and for a moment she saw that he was humored again, though he hid it well. “You can be at peace with that, like I am, an’ as far as I can figure you’ll be left mostly untouched. Or you can fight it, an’ well…” He smiled, as if to say You know the rest. And Mikhael did know the rest. He was living the rest.
“Churn it offff,” he said.
“She can’t,” said the Monster. “She can’t turn it off anymore than you can turn off all o’ yer fucked up thoughts. This is us, man. This is who we are. Welcome to the human race.” Once more, the Monster’s eyes flitted, and he tilted his head to one side. “I’m sure ya think killin’ me an’ these girls would end this.”
Mikhael raised his shotgun, pointing it at the Monster, and Shannon in his arms.
“No!” Kaley screamed.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” said her pet Monster, grinning so broad that his garish new smile split even more and poured new blood down his face. “It ain’t my day to die, an’ neither is it yers or yer sister’s.”
No sooner had he winked at Mikhael than Mikhael’s head exploded. He pitched forward and fell into the oozing earth. Tenebrous hands reached up from the floor and pulled him. Mikhael came apart in pieces, and the hands fought over those bits until he was consumed.
Kaley now stood in front of the Monster. Without knowing it, she had flung herself in front of Little Sister. After watching Mikhael’s grisly end, she looked up, and found the police officer standing at the other end of the room. His uniform was a bit charred and smoking. He’d come down the hallway, she supposed, and now stood staring in wide-eyed terror at everything that was happening around him. His pistol was still locked in his hands, and he was still aiming at the spot where Mikhael had been standing.
Then, all at once, hands shot out from the wall and grabbed hold of the officer, who screamed and fought to tear himself away.
The monster had turned towards the door and opened it. Outside, a torrential downpour was drowning the world, and he was dashing out into it. “Wait!” Kaley shouted. “We have to help him! He saved us!”
“When’re you gonna stop worryin’ about everybody else an’ save yer own fuckin’ skin?” the Monster called over his shoulder as he ran into the night with Shannon clutched tight to his chest.
Kaley turned to see the officer being pulled into the wall. She was torn in many different directions. Hands licked up from the floor around her, touching and groping at her ankles. She made a decision, and turned and bolted from the house, into the purifying rain. Behind her, she heard the bloodcurdling screams of the officer, but they were lost in the rain and gunfire and helicopters swarming all around Avery Street.
The world didn’t make sense. David had been sucked into a universe that made no sense, that defied all
reason and logic. The flames billowing out from the meaty, breathing walls licked at him, and his pants leg caught fire almost instantly. He did the classic stop-drop-and-roll, and during this time his right sleeve also caught fire from another plume of flame. He hacked and coughed against the smell and smoke.
When he finally stood up, he’d staggered back towards the door. But he couldn’t find it now. Where the door had been there was now a wall of trembling muscle, or fat, or…something. An impression in the rough shape of a door was the only sign that there had ever been a way in.
Screams.
David had turned to find a young man, probably under twenty years old, writhing on the floor and being dragged by chains looped through his flesh. Four or five…creatures had hold of those chains. David aimed his pistol and shouted, “S-stop!” It sounded so feeble and so stupid, probably because it was, and was altogether absurd in this world.
Flames covered the young man, and he disappeared around the corner of a hallway, his hands reaching out as soon as he spotted David.
Smoke filled much of the air. He gagged. Through the smoke, shadowy figures shambled this way and that, some of them limned in the orange of flames, others not so clear. More screams. Something nipped at his ear, and then at his mind.
I died, he thought. I died and went to hell.
The feeling came and went within a second, and then Officer David Emerson’s logical mind came back to him, and he rationalized it all. The meat on the walls…it was just that, meat. It didn’t make any sense why someone would wish to line the inside of their house with meat, but fuck it, he had to save his sanity and move on somehow. As for the flames…bad air conditioning. An electrical fire somewhere in the walls. Whatever. Just go with it.
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