“Help me keep her safe.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the wadded-up cloth.
“Hey!” he shouted through the door to the small room, and for a moment he almost succumbed to hysterical laughter, for what was he attempting to do? To get the attention of a specter, a wraith? As if it were a thing someone actually did in the world of the sane. Still, he persisted. “Hey, you shitbag!” A child’s taunt, but perhaps that’s what such a thing understood. At least, that’s what he hoped.
The swirling blackness didn’t react but continued its screaming laps around the booth, its movement causing the large box to sway. Peter feared the booth would soon topple, spilling his Hannah into the open mouth of the demon.
Peter quickly unwrapped the clothbound item, the dull white object within revealing itself—a short length of bleached bone. A fingertip.
Willa’s fingertip.
Something tangible.
He had no charm, no incantation as his mother had, and so—as he dug the bone into his wound, coating it in blood—he let forth the first words that came into his head.
“Hush little baby don't say a word. Papa's gonna buy you a mocking bird.”
One of Michael’s favorites.
The commotion in the other room ceased at once. The darkness hung suspended in the air. Waiting.
Peter raised the bone before him, presenting it to the thing, red and wet.
“And if that mocking bird don't sing, Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
He set the tip against his temple.
The black cloud dropped from the ceiling, filling in the doorframe, blocking the path between Peter and the booth.
“If that diamond ring don't shine, Papa's gonna buy you a five and dime.”
Slowly, deliberately, Peter drew the bone across his forehead, painting a line in blood as Willa had so many years ago.
The darkness shrunk and solidified—no longer intangible. Its substance thickened. Peter could hear it crackle as it condensed, drawing itself into the crude shape of a man. And within its misshapen head, two eyes—dull and flat—opened wide and stared.
Peter completed the ritual and held out the bone once more.
“This is Willa’s. You know I tell the truth. Her words bound us together. I rescind them. Do you hear?” His mind flashed to Ellen and her insistence that he would find the words, find the way to stand up and demand his release. And, by God, if he wasn’t doing just that. “I fucking rescind them, do you hear me?”
The figure before him stood like a charcoal statue, fixed and unmoving. A man of ash and ice.
And then, its gash of a mouth opened as it let loose a crackling fire laugh.
I am Whisper!
It lurched forward, smoke rising with every step.
I am Mr. Tell.
Peter backed up. This wasn’t right. No, not right at all.
I tell. Not you.
It reached its charred arms out toward him, its hands breaking into fingers, and then it was clutching him. He screamed as his skin burned and froze in its grip.
I tell. NOT YOU.
Before the thing placed its horrid mouth over his ear—its hollow breath cooling and warming his cheek—Peter whispered the final words of the song.
“And if that horse and cart fall down…”
The darkness finished it for him.
You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town.
Peter felt his mind go black, felt every cell in his brain crystallize and crack, melting in a cold rush. Washing him clean of himself.
Hold on. Hold on or there’ll be nothing left.
He reached out his mind, grasping at any shred of himself, his life that passed—a name, a date, the color of dawn on the horizon.
Hold…on!
The books of Narnia he’d read. His first kiss.
Hold…
Camping under the stars. The last time he’d let Myrna hit him.
On!
But none stuck. He was slipping away, and on all sides of him the frozen watchfulness of the thing—Mr. Tell, Whisper, whatever the hell it called itself—was everywhere. And it was laughing.
“Daddy.”
The voice was distant but clear.
Michael. Dear God, yes! Michael!
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
I’m coming.
“Why are you crying?”
I’m coming.
“Daddy?”
Peter grabbed hold of the memory, and as he did so, he grabbed hold of his son.
The boy’s bedroom solidified around him. He was back in their Manhattan apartment. Gone was the basement and its dark inhabitant. The memory of his son had drawn him to the boy’s side.
“Ow. Too tight.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Story, story,” the boy whispered as he wriggled out of the hug.
Peter looked down at his son, pillows all around him, the head of his hospital bed raised. Just as he had seen before. But unlike before, he knew that this time he was getting it right. This was an unclouded memory. And its sudden familiarity sent a chill through his soul.
“No.”
“Please,” Michael moaned.
Peter glanced up at the IV stand. It stood empty. Not so the morphine injection in his hand.
“No.”
You listen. I tell.
“No!”
The boy’s bruised eyelids fluttered. “A story.”
Listen.
Michael’s breathing came and went with torturous rapidity, attempting to outdistance the pain.
Peter had no choice. For the memory was alive now—no longer hidden in shadow. The truth the darkness had hidden from him. His truth. A demon’s kindness.
Like an actor destined to play his part, Peter uncapped the syringe.
“All right, little guy. A story.”
He heard the words and tried to disown them, but he was trapped within them. Locked in.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Michael.”
He placed the needle against his son’s broomstick thin arm and pressed. The boy didn’t so much as whimper.
“He was a brave young lad—the bravest in the land. And one day, the King sent him off on a great quest.”
His thumb hit the plunger, emptying the syringe of its contents.
“For the King wanted…the King…”
Peter dropped the hypodermic needle to the floor. Michael’s eyes were open. Why were they open?
“Close your eyes, Michael.”
“Daddy?” The word was quiet and slurred.
“Please. Close your eyes.”
He placed his hand over Michael’s face. Still warm. Still so warm.
Tears came, pouring hot down Peter’s cheeks. It was time. No more crying. No more pain. His little boy had fought long enough, endured more than a child should. Time to let go.
Peter struggled against this final act, but he was not in control. Not anymore.
The boy’s lips parted in a morphine smile. “Please, Daddy.”
His hands clasped a pillow, placed it over those beautiful, trusting eyes and pressed down, covering the boy with both pillow and his body. And he held there, Michael barely moving under his weight.
When he lifted the pillow, when the boy was gone, he would rise, open the window and reach out to feel the snow light upon his hands. He would call Hannah at her parents’, but would tell her only that she should come. He would sit at Michael’s side and wait for her to arrive.
Then the old trickster would do its thing. The blackness—his blackness—would envelop him, smother him, erase him. And when he woke, he would be reborn to his son’s death. That was the kindness of the demon. To obfuscate. To obliterate. But that was the past.
For now, hunkered deep inside himself, Peter knew. At long last, he finally knew.
The thing chuckled in Peter’s ear—a hot, gravelly sound that tore at his raw heart.
Be still. Whisper must obey.
&n
bsp; Laughing even as it soothed.
He was nothing now, and he hung weightless in the thrall of the darkness. Peter Larson was gone, replaced by searing pain and sorrow. You could call it a mercy or call it love, but he had smothered his boy. He had killed his only son.
Be quiet. Mr. Tell is here. Time to un-tell. Shhh.
An anesthetic calm swept over him, dulling the ache. He longed to roll in its waves, to absolve himself in its numbing surge. But his thoughts caught on words whispered not by the darkness but by the light.
“Please, Daddy.”
Michael’s final plea. Had the boy been begging for release or to be saved? The lack of an answer ripped Peter in two. It was a father’s duty to protect, and he had failed.
And now once more, the demon wanted to steal his grief.
“This is my pain. You can’t take it from me. You have no right.”
Shhh.
“It’s mine, not yours! Who the hell are you to rob me of my pain?”
S-s-secrets…
“Enough secrets! If you take it from me, you will harm me a hundred times more than if I keep it, you hear? You’re my protector? Ha! Then protect me! Leave me my pain!”
A weight lifted from his chest, and Peter suddenly realized he could sense himself again. Not just his thoughts but his body.
The thing’s laughter turned cold.
Want it? Have it.
With that, it released him—mind, memory, fear, anguish all intact.
Have it all.
Peter tumbled out of its grip to the cold, basement floor.
Peter coughed, dust thick in his throat. He was back. Michael was dead. And he had killed him.
As he rose, he felt something brush past him, almost knocking him off balance. Something—or someone.
Straining his eyes, Peter could make out a small shape rushing past, and he knew he had just been pushed aside by his younger self—the boy trapped in the never-ending loop. His childhood haunting him once more.
The boy pulled the door to the small room shut behind him.
You. Him. My boys.
The demon hummed, self-satisfied, and at first, Peter couldn’t locate the thing. Finally, he spotted it clinging once more to the ceiling, a fetid, pulsating mass.
His cheek burned as did his forehead. Stupid of him to confront it so blindly. Whatever skills his mother may have had, they hadn’t been passed to him.
The darkness pulled itself across the rafters, sounding like a wet tarp being dragged across wood. It slid down the wall next to the door, reached out a black hand and jiggled the doorknob, quivering with laughter.
“Leave the boy alone,” Peter said. He took a step forward. He had nothing to offer the fight, but still, he stepped forward.
The demon turned its dull eyes back at him.
Not him. HER.
Peter froze. He had been thinking only of the boy. But he wasn’t the only one hiding in the small room.
Hannah. Hannah was in there too.
I told you. About the needle. About the pillow.
No.
Told you. Why not her?
Hannah must never know. It would destroy her.
The black cloud loosed great claws and scratched at the closed door.
Maybe I’ll whisper. Maybe I’ll tell!
No!
Coming…
“Please don’t,” Peter begged.
Coming…
“No.”
Coming…
“No!”
In.
It shoved the door open, and for a moment, Peter saw both boy and booth. His whole life in a snapshot, compressed into a single moment.
“Come on in, then!” the boy shouted. “Come in, come in, come in!”
The thing flowed into the room. The sound from the speakers stuttered as the world tried to decide when it was—present or past. The result was a staccato rhythm, the sonic tones and his praying voice phasing in and out. And without their constant pressure, the darkness was free.
It latched onto the side of the booth, arms solidifying, climbing up to the top. Dark nails dug at the seams, prying the panels apart and popping screws.
He heard Hannah scream.
“Get away from her!”
His heart pounded in his chest—one beat in the now, the next in the then. The crack in reality splitting him as well, driving him to his knees.
Mr. Tell! Mr. Tell! Mr. Tell! Mr. Tell!
And then, a thought struck Peter. Perhaps the world wasn’t strobing after all. Maybe it was him.
What was it Ellen had said? That the thing lived unconstrained by time—the concepts of past and present having no meaning? Then perhaps when it had brought him back from his memory of Michael, it had deposited him here—in a space where both past and present existed at once, both fighting for dominance.
The X where then and now intersected.
Ellen. Annoying, crackpot Ellen and her soap diagram.
As the demon clawed at the booth—cracking it open, eager to pour his secret into Hannah’s ears—Peter saw a pair of small, bare feet appear before him, and he quickly looked up.
His seven-year-old self stood in front of him, his eyes wild. The boy had escaped the room and was ready to bolt for the stairs.
Peter would escape with the child. Into the then. Into the past.
To undo what had been done.
“Hannah!” he cried. His voice caught her attention, and she stared at him, hands pressed up against the glass. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”
And then, he grabbed hold of the boy’s wrist and closed his eyes, and took a step back.
The quavering tones disappeared. The booth vanished as well. Hannah and the rest of the present gone in an instant.
The demon howled.
“You’re hurting my arm,” his younger self said, echoing his son’s plea.
“Sorry.” Peter loosened his grip but didn’t let go. “It’s Pete, right?”
The child stared at him fearfully. Peter got a whiff of the urine that dampened the boy’s rocket ship PJs and realized that he’d have to gain the kid’s trust quickly before he lost him to hysteria.
“Listen, Pete. I’m here to help. I know you’re scared—I’m scared too. But I’ll let you in on a little secret—that thing in the room? It can’t hurt you.”
“No?”
“It can frighten you. Hell, it will frighten you. But if you stick close to me, you’re going to be A-OK, you hear?”
The boy nodded vigorously, eager to be convinced that he wasn’t about to be chewed up and swallowed by a monster.
“Remember—it can’t hurt you.”
At that moment, the door at the top of the stairs flew open, and Peter’s heart sank as he heard the voice of one that could hurt the boy. Had hurt him.
“I warned you, didn’t I? I need my shuteye. Didn’t I warn you, you little shit?”
The grey man. The Old Man. Albert Carver. Ready to do damage. Ready to flay the kid alive.
Shit.
The Old Man took a step down the stairs. “Be quiet, I told you,” he snarled, snapping his belt. “But you don’t never listen.”
Movement caught Peter’s eye, and he saw the blackness sliding coolly out of the small room. No longer fuming, it had suddenly gone silent as if relishing the situation, savoring in the Old Man’s arrival and eager to watch the scene unfold.
Peter and the boy were trapped.
The child tugged at his arm. “What do we do?” Peter’s hesitation only added fuel to the fire. “What do we do!”
Peter heard the demon’s voice in the back of his head and knew that the boy heard it too.
Man will hit. Man will hurt.
“Shut up!” Peter shouted.
Stop him, boy. Stop him good.
The boy stepped forward—Peter yanked him back.
“Don’t listen to it!”
But the boy was already half gone, already locked in on his course up the stairs. Peter felt t
he darkness encroaching. He sensed the magnetic pull it had over the boy, heard its promises to help him shut the Old Man down before he struck. To strike first. To end him.
The swirling shadow wrapped itself around the boy like a cloak, marching him forward toward the foot of the stairs. The Old Man responded in kind, taking another step down, cracking the belt—figures in a mechanical clock that was about to toll midnight.
As Peter crouched, helpless to stop the boy’s progress, a notion struck him that was so simple and pure that he laughed.
The thing heard him. He knew this because the boy’s steps faltered.
The Old Man continued his descent. “Thinkin’ maybe its time for you to go. Let me sleep. Leave me be.”
Peter laughed again, and this time there were tears in his eyes. For watching the dark thing lure the boy toward his fate, urging him on to the act that would seal his doom and seal their bond, Peter knew that he could finally do what he had failed to do before.
He could save the boy.
Not Michael, not his son. But the boy before him.
Rising, he brushed himself off. “Hey! Old Man!”
The man on the stairs paused and turned toward him. “Who’s there?”
“I’d watch your step if I were you.”
Albert Carver looked down, and Peter knew that he’d caught his meaning. The cracked wood of the third step down—the Old Man was stepping over it.
The darkness screamed. It shoved the boy forward, forcing him up the stairs, lifting him high above the Old Man and bringing him down hard.
The man caught the child, terrified of the furious shadow rising before him and enraged by the boy’s assault. He attempted a dual cure by flinging the boy into the swirling mass while letting loose a ferocious cry.
The child passed through the thing like a stone through water, bouncing off the bottom step with a crack before rolling end over end across the cement floor.
The black demon retreated to the boy’s side, shaking him in its attempt to rouse him. It shrieked as it poured its all into him, feeding him its strength, summoning him to rise and get on with the deed. All must be as it always had been! The act must be completed!
Peter made sure it wasn’t.
“Hey, asshole,” he said, taunting the seething man on the stairs. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
The Nightmare Room (The Messy Man Series Book 1) Page 18