by Brian Bowyer
INFINITE DOOM
by
Brian Bowyer
Nocturnal Press Publishing
Copyright © Brian Bowyer 2019
Copyright © 2019 Brian Bowyer
All rights reserved.
Other than brief quotes used in reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author.
Also by Brian Bowyer
SHELF LIFE
NOCTURNAL BLOOD
GRAVEYARD BLUES
MATTERS OF SHADE
NIGHTHOUSE
GRAVE NEW WORLD
THE LIGHT OF MEMORY
TIME'S ACCELERATION
DAYLIGHT FADES
WRITING AND RISING FROM ADDICTION
DARKER THAN NIGHT
To three of my all-time favorites and friends:
Jamie (musician), Steve (comedian), and D. C. (magician).
RIP.
Contents
HEAD WOMB
FOREVER SEVENTEEN
BROTHER’S KEEPER
FEAR OF INFINITY
BLACK-CAT BONES
FIRST YEAR OF SPRING
THE BOX
HOME INVASION
THE MYTH OF COINCIDENCE
SUICIDAL LOVE
BATH-SALT ZOMBIE
ORCHIDS IN BLOOM
TATTOO MAGIC
GIFT AND A CURSE
COUNTDOWN TO OBLIVION
SCARLETT
About the Author
HEAD WOMB
“Your best work yet,” Cassandra told her husband.
Brad smiled. His wife always read his novels before they were published. He sipped his whiskey. “You think so?”
Cassandra sipped her wine. “Absolutely. Your fans are going to love it.”
Both of them were writers. Cassandra wrote romance novels. Brad was a horror novelist. Both of them were successful in their genres.
Brad, at forty-four, was one year older than Cassandra, and yet—despite years of whiskey (for him), wine (for her), and cigarettes (for both)—they somehow still looked young. Both of them considered themselves neurotic, hard-drinking basket cases, and they were still as madly in love with each other as they had been when they first met four years ago.
Each of them had been married once before. Brad was from West Virginia, but they lived in Ohio where Cassandra was from—and where most of her family still lived. Their children from the other marriages were all grown up and on their own, so Brad and Cassandra lived alone with their dog (Sophie, a white Pomeranian) in Columbus.
Brad sipped his whiskey. “Of course I’m already panicking, because I still have no idea what the next book is going to be about.”
Cassandra sipped her wine. “Write about a haunted coal mine in West Virginia. We can go see your parents, and you can do some research while we’re there.”
Brad shrugged. “Okay.”
They paid a neighbor to keep Sophie and left the following day.
• • •
It was a five-hour drive to Brad’s hometown in West Virginia. They spent the night at his parents’ house. The next day, they rode to the outskirts of town where the abandoned remnants of the Marfork Coal Mining Corporation loomed high up on a mountain.
To their surprise, they met an old man sitting on a rock at the bottom of the mountain. He was bare-chested, probably about seventy years old, and sweating in the hot morning sunlight. He was holding a Mason jar about three-quarters full of clear liquid. “Want a drink of this moonshine?” he said.
“No thanks,” Cassandra said. “I’m driving.”
“And I’m drinking whiskey,” Brad said. He pulled out his flask and took a sip of George Dickel.
“This place is demonic,” the old man said. “Did you two come here looking for some demons?”
“No,” Brad said. “Just doing some writing research. I’m getting ready to write a novel about a haunted coal mine, and I wanted to walk around the mountain a little bit, just to get some pictures in my head before I start the book.”
The old man took a drink of moonshine. “Best be careful up there on that mountain, or you’ll get a whole lot more than just pictures in your goddamn head.”
Brad said, “What are you talking about?”
“Like I said: this place is demonic. And you shouldn’t go poking around up there by the old mines.”
Cassandra said, “Why not?”
“Dangerous ground. Fire underneath it. Been burning for years. You’ll see smoke and steam coming out of the holes. You might see demons coming out of the holes, too. And those fuckers will eat you. Or worse.”
Brad took a sip of whiskey.
“Thanks for the warning,” Cassandra said. “We’ll be careful.”
They started heading up the mountain. The trail was rocky. The slope was littered with the husks of dead trees leaning above an ocean of wild brush. They reached a plateau and found themselves surrounded by decaying wooden buildings. They stopped to rest in the shadows of a rotting shed. Then they took off walking again. They walked along some old rail tracks that led down into a coal mine. Old railroad ties and rotted lumber—covered by twisting growths of vines and weeds—lay in clumps along the tracks.
They saw steam rising from dozens of fissures along the ground. Pillars of smoke rose toward the sky. There was an odor of sulfur in the air.
“It feels like we’re standing,” Cassandra said, “in the lair of some fire-breathing dragon.”
Brad took a sip from his flask. “This place is awesome.”
Cassandra walked over to a mound by one of the smoking fissures and stood on it. Brad could only see about half her body; rising steam from the fire beneath the ground concealed the rest.
And then the ground opened a mouth and swallowed her. A burst of smoke shot up out of the earth as the hole opened beneath her. She fell into it with her hands reaching for support before they vanished.
“Cassandra!”
Brad rushed forward through the dust and the smoke. Then he got down on his stomach and brought his face to the edge of the hole. The opening was maybe four feet in diameter, and he saw her wedged between the walls of the hole not far beneath him. “Cassandra! I can see you!”
“Brad! Help me! Oh my god! There’s something down here!”
“I’m right here! Give me your hand!”
She reached up and he pulled her out of the hole.
Brad stood up first. Then Cassandra sprang to her feet and screamed: “There’s something in my hair!”
Brad saw it. Whatever it was, the thing was alive and clinging to the side of Cassandra’s head. It was slimy and black with black tentacles that moved through her hair and the air around her head.
Cassandra shrieked: “Get it off me!”
Brad reached out with his right hand, grabbed the wriggling mass, and tore it away from Cassandra’s head. Then he tossed it back down into the pit. The only trace of its existence was a puncture wound on the side of Cassandra’s neck.
They returned to Ohio. Sophie was happy to see them.
Cassandra’s puncture wound healed a few days later. Then her pain and the nightmares began.
• • •
Cassandra’s scream woke him up. Brad turned a lamp on and rolled over on the bed. “Baby?” he said. “Are you okay?”
She was holding both hands over her left eye. “MY HEAD!” she screamed. “OH MY GOD! MY HEAD! MY EYE!”
She rolled off the bed and crashed onto the floor, writhing and screaming. Then she began bashing her head against the floor while she screamed.
Brad had never seen Cassandra in so much pain before. She had migraines from time to time, but on those rare occasions she just stayed on a bed or on a couch in a darkened room and remaine
d silent. This, however, was something else entirely. Thinking she might have an aneurysm or a brain tumor, he called an ambulance. By the time paramedics arrived, Cassandra’s head was bleeding from her bashing it against the hardwood floor.
Brad followed the ambulance to the hospital. Cassandra was given a shot of morphine. A CT scan didn’t reveal anything abnormal. She was given another shot, and then she was discharged.
Brad drove her home.
In the kitchen, Cassandra said, “I need a drink.”
It was after four a.m. Sophie was normally asleep at that hour, but she was sitting on the kitchen floor at Cassandra’s feet.
Brad poured Cassandra a glass of wine and poured himself a glass of whiskey. Then he sat down across from Cassandra at the kitchen table. “Are you okay now?” Brad said.
Cassandra sipped her wine. “Yes. I’m high as hell on that morphine, but I don’t think the morphine did anything for the pain. I’m pretty sure the pain just went away on its own. And, oh my god, that was the worst pain ever. Worse than natural childbirth.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. By far. It felt like someone had shoved a meat-hook in my eyeball and was pulling it out of my head. The pain was all-consuming. There was so much pressure it felt like my eardrums were going to burst. I honestly thought my head was going to explode.”
Brad sipped his whiskey. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes. Ten out of ten on the pain scale. It was actually more like a hot poker in my eye than a meat-hook, and it felt like the pressure was going to make my eyeball shoot straight out of my skull. All that, plus about a million electric shocks all through my brain. That’s why I was banging my head on the floor, just trying anything to get some relief. I don’t remember thinking about much of anything other than the pain, but I do remember wishing that I had a drill to make a hole in my head or my eyeball to release some of the pressure.”
Brad sipped his whiskey. “Do you think that creature from the pit had anything to do with it?”
Cassandra shrugged, and sipped her wine. “I don’t know. Oh, and I didn’t tell you about the nightmare I was having, right before the pain woke me up. In the dream, there was this woman in a black dress. She had long black hair, and a black veil covered her entire face. All you could see were her eyes—blazing blood-red eyes that glowed like two burning coals. I sensed menace immediately when I saw her. She was pure evil. Her evil was so palpable she gave off a coldness that literally chilled my flesh in the dream. And though she didn’t speak, she nevertheless communicated with me. Telepathically. She said that she was now living inside my head while I was alive, and that she would be free to unleash evil on the world as soon as I was dead. She showed me visions of whole cities being laid to waste, and she was urging me to hurry up and die. And that was when—KAPOW!—the pain woke me up. It felt as if I had taken a pool cue to the eye. An eight-ball break, you know? A real sinker. It hurt all the way to my ear and all the way down one whole side of my neck. At that point, though, the pain was still only about a four or maybe a five on the pain scale. It quickly jumped to a ten, however, and that’s when I started screaming. Sorry I woke you up.”
“No need to apologize,” Brad said. “I’m just glad you’re feeling better.” He finished his whiskey. “Think you can sleep now?”
Cassandra finished her wine. “I hope so.”
They went to bed.
• • •
Cassandra woke from a nightmare to excruciating physical pain. The nightmare had been about the woman with the glowing red eyes. The excruciating pain felt like a red-hot poker to the eye. She didn’t know if she had screamed or not, but Brad was still asleep, so she got out of bed as quietly as she could and staggered into the kitchen.
She started washing her hands under hot water, trying in vain to focus on anything but the pain in her head. Both of her eyes were watering and one of her eyelids seemed to be drooping closed on its own. She turned the hot water off and started pacing around, filled with both agony and anxiety.
She went into the living room and forced herself to sit down. She turned the TV on and then quickly turned it off. Sophie was at her feet, looking up at her. Sophie always knew when she didn’t feel well, sometimes as soon as Cassandra did. It was uncanny.
Cassandra stood up, took a deep breath, and walked over to the living-room window. She put a hand over the eyelid that had drooped closed, because it felt as if some menace with a knife were attempting to bore into her skull above that eye. The intense pressure seemed to be coming both from within and without. The bone tissue in her right temple felt like it was oozing toward her forehead. She considered sitting back down and then aggressively pushed the thought away.
She went back into the kitchen and drank a glass of wine. Then she began pacing around again.
The corners of her forehead delivered sensations that felt like bone fragments were cracking down to her cheeks and then back up to the tops of her ears. She lost her balance and fell down. Then she got up and sat down at the kitchen table.
There was a hard and sudden crack somewhere between the backs of her eyes and her temples. Her left heel was wiggling and she noticed that she was bouncing her right knee. She put the skin of an index finger between her teeth and bit down hard enough to draw blood.
There was another forceful crack, and then it felt like channel-locks were clamping down on her orbital ridge. There was a phantom snapping sensation, and Cassandra accidentally let out a shout. She didn’t want to wake Brad, but the noise had been unavoidable.
The pain increased. She began rocking on the chair and bouncing her legs. The activity became so vigorous that she kicked herself in the head with her knees several times. The pain became so consuming that she started observing herself in the abstract. She began grunting to refrain from screaming. She tried talking to herself a couple of times, but she was in too much pain to articulate any coherent language.
The crescendo of agony reached a pitch-black climax. Cassandra fell off her chair and crashed onto the floor. She started screaming and bashing her head against the tiles.
She was still screaming and bleeding when Brad entered the kitchen. He put her in his car and drove her to the hospital.
• • •
From Cassandra’s journal, one year later:
I was diagnosed with chronic cluster headaches. Before my diagnosis, I had never even heard of cluster headaches.
Cluster Headache (or CH) is a neurological disease considered by many to be the worst pain known to medical science. It’s often called “suicide headache” because most headache specialists have had at least one patient who has killed themselves due to the severity of the pain these headaches cause. I can certainly understand that. It’s only the love I have for my husband that has kept me from killing myself at least a thousand times this past year. Brad has told me that he doesn’t want to live without me, and it is only for him that I endure. But I won’t be able to take the pain for very much longer.
I met a neurosurgeon who is going to try to help me. I’m having brain surgery tomorrow, a procedure called microvascular decompression, a very invasive technique involving craniectomy. The goal of the surgery is to remove a vascular loop that’s compressing my trigeminal nerve, which the doctor believes is the cause of my disease.
But I’m still not convinced that my pain isn’t directly related to the creature that attached itself to my head after I fell into that pit in West Virginia.
The woman with the glowing red eyes in my dreams assures me that my surgery will be the death of me. She says that after they crack my skull open she’ll be free at last to unleash her evil on planet Earth. Night after night she comes to me, always dressed in black, and in my dreams she walks endlessly—through cities and towns all over the globe. She grows larger as more people perish in her wake, until she’s taller than skyscrapers, with her head in the clouds and her shoulders blotting out the stars. Her eyes stare down like two blood-red planets into the panic and the
terror she causes below.
I’m afraid she will live without me if I die beneath the surgeon’s blade tomorrow . . .
• • •
Dr. Singh—head neurosurgeon at OSU Hospital—scrubbed his hands over the sink beside the door of OR9, and then he walked into the operating room. He adjusted his scrub pants, and then the circulating nurse put his gown and surgical gloves on for him.
Second-year resident David Meyer was already in the room. Also in the room were three technicians who carefully monitored their vital-signs equipment. The technicians were overseen by Dr. Lawrence Graham—a large, long-haired anesthesiologist who looked more like a biker than a doctor. Dr. Singh’s favorite scrub nurse—Kelly Winslow—stood beside the anesthesiologist, and Singh had no doubt that she had already taken inventory of every instrument and towel that would be used during the operation. In a corner of the room, four students and two young residents were gathered around a video screen to quietly observe the operation firsthand.
Singh looked down at the reason that so many people were gathered in the operating room: a forty-three-year-old wife, mother, and romance novelist named Cassandra Fox. Her eyes were closed. Her scalp had been shaved. Her mouth bulged with a ventilator. Tubes extended from her body, taking urine away and bringing anesthesia in. Soon all of their focus would be on a small red hole in her skull.
“Are we ready to begin, Doctor Singh?” the anesthesiologist said.
“We need music.” Singh turned to the circulating nurse. “I’m in the mood for classical.”
“Is Beethoven okay?”
“Beethoven would be great.”
“Symphony or concerto?”
“Sonata, please.”
Moments later, piano music filtered through the room.
Singh nodded at Meyer, and the two of them approached the body on the table. Singh gave Meyer a thumbs-up sign.
Meyer cut into Cassandra’s scalp with a scalpel, making a thin red slice. Then he peeled the scalp back, revealing the muscle below.
“I thought she had never been operated on before,” Meyer said.