by Hunter Shea
After pulling the bath mat from the floor, she threw it in the tub and ran cold water over it. While it was soaking, she kicked one of the burning towels near the bottom of the door. It took seconds for the dry tinder of the door to ignite.
As the fire grew, she dropped the soaked bath mat over her head and waited, her lungs spasming from both the smoke and the flies that had descended within her and died.
She cloaked herself in the soaked bath mat. Once the door was engulfed in flames, the stench of burning paint and varnish riding hard, she grabbed the metal waste pail by the sink, held it in front of her and charged at the door. The fire-stressed wood gave way and she crashed through it and into the opposite wall in the hallway.
This made the laughter stop. Smoke poured out of the bathroom and into the room with the corpse. The flies feared the smoke more than the commands of the EB and fled to other parts of the house. Jessica dropped the wet bath mat onto the floor.
“Nice try,” she said. Every inch of her skin itched and the room began to spin. She shook her head and retrieved her penlight.
“Time to find out who you are and send you to the hell I know will be happy to have you.”
The dresser was bare. A single folded piece of paper rested on it. She opened it, scanned the first few sentences, then stuffed it in her back pocket.
She needed his wallet. If it wasn’t on the dresser, it was most likely in one other place.
His back pocket.
Her revulsion pushed away for the moment, she stood before the corpse. He had used a handgun to end his life, placing it in his mouth and blowing a small hole into the top of his head, shattering his left eye in the process. Part of his skull and brain matter was encrusted on the wall behind him. The gun lay on the floor. What was left of his skin was nothing more than a gelatinous ruin. Maggots squirmed in the cavities of his mouth, nose and eyes, spilled out of his ears.
Not allowing herself time to consider what she had to do, she grabbed the corpse by the collar and threw it off the chair, onto the floor. It hit with a dull, wet smack.
A small framed picture flew from the wall, just missing her head. It was a feeble attempt at best, and only gave her strength.
She reached into his back pocket, felt the flesh beneath the fabric burst, and wrapped her fingers around his wallet.
“You’re toast.”
Loose change, a tie tack, pencils and random papers flew through the air, converging on her.
Jessica flipped the wallet open, ignoring the objects that pelted her like rice on a wedding day. She lifted her light and found his license.
After taking a glance at the fire that had now crept into the hallway, she read his name to herself at first, then smiled.
“Guess what, Christopher P. Harlan? It’s time for you to go! Do you hear me, Christopher Harlan? Leave this house, leave this world and never return!”
The EB howled with rage. Jessica could feel it within her bones as much as she could hear it punishing her eardrums.
“You’re no longer wanted here, Christopher Harlan. The world is a better place without you. I hope you have to face the souls of all those you tortured, and I hope they have no mercy!”
The EB’s wailing began to diminish, like turning the volume knob down on a stereo. It grew fainter and fainter, until it dissipated into silence.
And that was it. The cold in the room was replaced by the heat from the fire. Things stopped flying around the room.
Most of all, she sensed the emptiness that told her he was no more. A part of her wished for more dramatic exits, possibly even a glimpse of their world to come, but did it really matter?
He was gone. Selena was safe.
Eddie felt a battering ram of rage pummel the circle. His stomach tightened and the bones in his spine cracked from the sudden rush of energy.
It had fled from Jessica. She must have its name, he thought. The wretched coward took off before she could work her hoodoo and send it to whatever waited for it on the other side.
Rita screamed as the back of her shirt was pulled from her neck. As she raised her hands to pull the collar away from her throat, her body was snatched backward and she tumbled out of the protective ring.
“Rita!” Greg shouted.
He scrabbled to her side and was lifted a foot into the air, as if he’d been kicked in the midsection. His body tipped the coffee table over.
“Mom! Dad!” Selena screamed.
Eddie was quick to secure hers and Ricky’s hands.
“You can’t let go,” he said.
The EB was playing to her weakness. It wanted her out of the safe zone he’d created.
Rita scooted across the carpet, brushing something from her pants. Eddie saw phantom finger depressions move up her thigh.
I have to help her.
No! Concentrate. It wants Selena. Protect the kids.
It felt as if every cell in his body was going into shutdown mode. His heart danced an unsteady beat. He was pretty sure his bladder had just let itself go. The muscles in his legs and arms tightened into a painful cramp, then loosened, too weak to hold on. Worse was the pain in his head. It was as if little bombs had been placed throughout his brain and were being detonated one after the other.
He had to get the EB out of here, back to Jessica. He could feel that she was still alive, still strong, or at least stronger than he was at the moment.
There was only one way to expel it.
He had to let it all the way in again.
Focusing the light around the kids, he conjured his barn totem. The doors were wide open, inviting. As much as it sickened him, he filled the barn walls with the images of Selena that the EB had forced upon him earlier. Her nude, helpless, broken body was everywhere.
It was too much for the EB to resist.
Eddie watched the dark mass slink into the barn, huffing like an incensed bull.
The light around Selena and Ricky dissipated as he brought all of his power to the center of his mind.
The last moments of the EB’s life pulsed within the barn walls. Eddie knew its impotence, its rage against God and the devil and anything else that had a hand in its creation.
Eddie felt no pity.
“You like what you see?” he said to the shapeless form.
It chortled. “I knew once you experienced my lust, you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“Yes, she is one sweet piece of meat.” It pained Eddie to even think it. “Come over here. I’ve improved upon your fantasy. I think you’ll like it.”
He motioned for the EB to join him in the center of the barn.
It crept forward, too riled up by the vivid display of its hunger to resist.
That’s a good pedophile, Eddie thought.
The moment it stopped, Eddie threw open the barn’s roof with a wood-rending eruption.
A cyclone of white energy whirled beneath the EB’s pulsating form.
“What is this?” it roared.
“Your ride home.”
“Noooooooo!”
With an ear-shattering whoosh, the light exploded, sending the EB through the open roof and into the darkness. Eddie felt Jessica’s energy, and with everything he had left, pushed the EB straight to her.
When the EB broke away, everything went black. He felt his stomach heave, and thought he heard frantic voices around him.
He opened his eyes and saw Selena leaning over him. Her arms shook and tears streamed down her cheeks.
He wanted to tell her it would be all right. The bad EB was about to have its ass handed to it by the brave, self-destructive girl.
Speech was beyond his abilities.
The lancing pain in his skull made him wish he were dead.
He wouldn’t be so lucky.
The adrenaline drained from Selena’s body as quickly as it came, and her legs threatened to give way. She compelled them to run through the fire, feeling its hot tendrils lick her bitten, defiled flesh. The floor and walls crackled as the flames ate away.
Her insides were singed when she breathed, and black spots formed at the corners of her eyes.
A section of the floor gave way, and her leg fell through up to her ankle. She pitched forward, held by the sharp, smoking planks like a bear trap.
She glanced up to see the fire dance across the ceiling. It looked and sounded as if the entire hallway was about to collapse.
Jessica tugged at her leg to free her foot.
“No, no, no, not like this!”
A heavy, flaming two-by-four came crashing down, landing inches from her face. She smelled the sharp tang of burning hair and swatted the blue flame from her head.
The heat was overwhelming. Sweat stung her eyes. The more she moved her leg, the more the wood pinched shut on her ankle. It was like quicksand.
A tingling sensation prickled along her lower back.
Her stomach clenched and her body froze.
She wasn’t alone.
Harlan’s EB was still here. She felt it watching her, waiting for the flames to engulf her.
Crying out with exertion, she grabbed her leg and pulled, but it accomplished nothing. The fire roared throughout the hallway. It was as if it, too, was alive.
Looking up, she saw what was left of the ceiling was close to total collapse. When it did, it would crush as well as set fire to her.
Her strength sapped, she lay flat on the hot floor. The hair on the back of her neck vibrated as the EB came closer, savoring its victory.
I’m sorry, Selena, she thought. She shut her eyes against the roiling smoke. Then, I love you, Daddy. I’ll be with you, finally, soon.
Jessica’s exposed skin started to blister. It didn’t matter. She knew this wasn’t the end. There was so much more to see.
“Squeakpip! Get up!”
The sound of her father’s voice startled her. Her eyes flew open and she looked around for the source.
Turning around, hoping to see her father, she instead came face to face with Christopher Harlan, deceased and stronger than ever.
The EB was a solid black mass, with a vague hint of shoulder and a head. A pair of violet eyes glared at her from within its stygian depths.
A smoky appendage stretched toward her. It touched her forehead and pushed down, trying to pin her to the floor. Its touch was colder than the depths of the ocean.
Sinister laughter seeped into her skull.
“So pretty. I could have fucked you, too,” it hissed.
No.
She was strangely okay with burning to death.
But not in the company of Harlan’s EB.
Not knowing it would remain free to torture poor Selena and her family.
Screw this!
She wasn’t going to let Harlan win. Her father told her to get up, and that’s what she would do.
But first, she needed to be a little more forward with this EB from hell.
Staring into its hateful eyes, she shouted, “I thought I told you to go away. Christopher Harlan, your evil soul isn’t welcome here anymore!”
It shrieked at her while its edges grew soft, more translucent.
“Nice try, asshole,” she spat. “I’ll say it one more time. Christopher Harlan, go…to…hell!”
The black shape shattered into thousands of fragments, the force fanning the flames.
The pair of violet eyes hovered in the air for a moment, then faded to pink, then white, and closed in on themselves.
Now he was gone.
She pushed her leg forward, hoping to change the position of her foot, and felt the wood crack as she yanked her foot free. With the EB gone, the dying house hadn’t the strength to hold her. After scrambling to her feet, she ran down the stairs, feeling the fire rage at her back. Her shoulder slammed into the kitchen doorway but she barely registered the pain.
Yanking the garage door open, she sucked in a huge lungful of clear, night air. The pain and pleasure almost made her pass out.
A few lights had come on in the surrounding houses.
She stumbled to her Jeep. Her fingers trembled as she fumbled to get the key in the ignition. She looked out the window to see that most of the smoke had remained contained, thanks to Christopher Harlan’s shutting every window tight before he offed himself. If she was lucky, the neighbors wouldn’t have time to register the fire or the strange Jeep with the frantic girl inside before she sped off.
She started the Jeep and backed out of the driveway. Her skin felt as if it were electrified and pulsing, thanks to the innumerable fly bites. On the way back to the Leighs’ house, she tried to call 911 and report the fire, but dropped the phone onto the floor.
Everything after that was black.
Chapter Fifty-Two
“Knock, knock.”
Jessica had been dozing, the television turned down low so it was just background noise. She turned to face the door.
Eddie walked in holding a bouquet of flowers and a full plastic bag.
“How you feeling?” he asked as he grabbed the chair near her bed.
“Like shit, but it’s an improvement from total shit.”
Eddie looked at her standard issue hospital gown and chuckled.
“What?” she said.
“They couldn’t find a Metallica gown for you?”
“Don’t make me laugh. It hurts, too much.”
“Okay, how about this? You hungry?”
“Starving.”
He pulled her tray over and took out two Styrofoam boxes. One had Chinese food, the other a cheeseburger and fries.
“I wasn’t sure which you’d be in the mood for,” he said, putting the flowers on the windowsill.
“I think both,” she said.
She had collapsed when she walked into Rita and Greg’s house, part of an adverse reaction to what the doctor said was the most insect bites he had ever seen. She was also dehydrated and exhausted, with what looked like a bad sunburn on her arms, so she was given a two-night stay at Seabrook General. Her memory after leaving Christopher Harlan’s house was sketchy at best. Eddie had promised to fill her in on all the details when she was up to it. All that mattered was that Selena and her family were safe and would never again be harassed by Harlan’s EB.
Her face and arms looked as if she had a bad case of the chicken pox, with red, raised bumps everywhere. The doctor said they would go away after a few days, though some would leave small, lasting scars.
Jessica piled pork fried rice onto her burger. Eddie looked on with mild revulsion.
“Really?” he said.
“Really,” she answered, and took a huge bite.
“Greg, Rita, Selena and Ricky came by earlier but they said you were out cold. They left this for you.” He pulled a three-foot-tall teddy bear from the side of her table. It held a heart to its chest.
“That was real sweet of them.”
“Yeah, well, they’re real sweet on you. I think Greg might petition the Pope to make you a saint.”
She ate a handful of fries. “It’s funny how things change, isn’t it? Greg hated me when we got here.”
Eddie nodded. “He had every right to be skeptical. That is, until it was impossible to deny the truth.”
“Has the doppel…double walker come back? Is Selena sleeping okay?”
“I think her double walker accomplished what it came for. As for her sleeping, that’ll take some time before she feels comfortable again. Can’t say that I blame her.”
When she had eaten every morsel of food, she lay heavily against her pillows. “Did you find out any more about Christopher Harlan?”
“The news reported a little about him when they covered the fire. By the way, they have no leads on who or what started the fire. One neighbor thought they saw a car drive down the street around the time it started, but didn’t get the make or model. I think you’re in the clear.”
“Was anyone hurt? I don’t think I could live with myself if that happened. I had to do something and at the time, I didn’t think of consequences.”
Eddie t
ouched her hand reassuringly. “They put the fire out pretty quickly. No one, other than you, was hurt.”
Jessica sighed. “Thank God. So, tell me about Harlan.”
“He was bad, Jess, as bad as we thought. The entire neighborhood is shocked that he lived in their midst for so long without so much as an inkling of the monster that he was. He was a pedophile, through and through. The rescue team found boxes of child porn, spy cam pictures, you name it. He had a room full of the stuff. Harlan was an uber-predator who escaped the system. But in the end, he tried to make things right, though it didn’t work out that way.”
“You mean by killing himself?”
“Yep. I read the note that you had in your pocket. It fell out when I went to hang up your jeans. Did you know it was his suicide note?”
“To tell you the truth, I barely remember taking it. I was busy looking for something with his name on it. I must have known at the time. Why else would I have saved it?”
“Sometimes, our actions aren’t necessarily our own.”
“You get that from a fortune cookie when you bought me lunch?”
“Ha-ha. Anyway, Harlan’s obsession with Selena went on for a year. He followed her from school, took pictures of her when she was in stores or the park with her friends. It got so bad that he began to impersonate her, to dress like her, to walk like her, to try to be her. As sick as it sounds, he liked to masturbate as her. And when that wasn’t enough, he knew that he had to take her.
“Now, here’s where it gets even stranger. About two months ago, in the middle of his planning to abduct Selena, he goes to his doctor because he feels a pain in his…”
Eddie paused, uncertain.
“A pain in his what?” Jessica prodded. “I’m a big girl, I can take it.”
He exhaled. “Okay, well, something was wrong with his dick.”
He flushed red, but Jessica needed to know the rest. “Can’t say that I feel sorry for him,” she said.
“It turns out, he had cancer. Within a week, that whole area would have been as useful as a ball of silly putty. So now his plan to kidnap and rape Selena is ruined. He can’t have her the way he craves. His own body rebelled against him, and it throws him into a rage. The last thing he did before putting the gun in his mouth was watch Selena walking home from school one last time. Feeling like the impotent bastard he’d become, he scribbled a quick suicide note and pulled the trigger.”