Jessica started sobbing. "I want to leave here, please, Daddy! Please, Daddy!"
"See that, Chris? Your daughter wants to leave, and that's just what we're gonna do. Leave."
"We should go home," she said despondently. "It's what they want us to do."
I swallowed a lump in my throat, then said, "You're out of your fucking mind if you expect me to go back to that house. I'm not going there, and I'm not gonna let you or Jessica go back there either."
"We killed the fucking woman!" she screamed, silencing the car. The immediate tension inside felt like humidity on a hot summer day, heavy and oppressive. She added, "Isn't it bad enough that we're simply talking again? We should just go back to the house and lock ourselves in."
I looked into the rearview mirror. Christine's expression was set in a very peculiar way, expressionless yet riddled with fear. It was as if she'd seen Medusa and had turned to stone. And then her eyes narrowed, as if to confirm her revelation: that all along we'd feared speaking to one another because it would've resulted in severe injury or death. That the Isolates had owned us all along.
Now...with all that's happened today? I had no choice but to agree with her, which reconfirmed my initial thoughts: that we'd killed their spiritual leader, and now they were going to kill us.
For months they'd been threatening us with death. Those threats were now going to be carried out. The way I looked at it, it didn't make much of a difference what we decided to do. It made much more sense to, at the very least, attempt an escape. Right?
Ignoring Christine's wishes, I floored the accelerator. The minivan took off down the road. It wasn't a bull when it came to pick-up, but it kept us moving, pushing fifty and climbing faster.
Christine screamed for me to stop. But all I could wonder was how could they possibly halt us now. Would they really start hurling themselves under the wheels?
Our house was a quarter mile ahead. We passed Phillip Deighton's house on the right, and I quickly wondered how long it'd be before the local real-estate agent ushered in the next young unsuspecting couple with a deal too good to be true.
"Look out, Daddy!" Jessica screamed.
I'd looked away for the briefest moment to peek at Phillip Deighton's house. When I set my sights back to the road, stunned terror hit me like a knockout punch. I slammed down on the brakes. The minivan skidded and three-sixtied, much too late to avoid the ash tree lying end-to-end in the road about twenty feet ahead. We slammed right into it, jolted, went up on two tires and nearly flipped over. Two loud explosions sounded, that of tires blowing. The tree splintered into a million pieces and rained down all over us. The minivan lurched back down, then tilted forward as the front tires fell away from the axle. The stench of gas immediately invaded my nostrils.
A moment of stunned silence passed between us. I could hear everyone breathing heavily. Jessica then started crying, and so did Christine. I wanted to cry also, but held the looming hysterics back. Someone needed to be strong, and it wasn't going to be my naked pregnant wife or my five year-old daughter. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw blood on Christine's face, uncertain if it was hers or the dead Isolate's.
"Is everyone okay?" I'd slammed the top of my head nice and hard against the roof of the car. The pain of doing so had shown up fashionably late, and was just now making itself known. Thankfully, despite the fact that none of us had seatbelts on, we all seemed to come out of this okay.
"I smell gas, Michael."
I exited the minivan. There were pieces of the tree everywhere, many chunks lodged into the grill. One thick shard jutted from the bumper like a stake. The front axle of the car had shattered, causing the two front tires to lay flat on the road. Gas bled out onto the blacktop. Our car had no life left in it...just like the witch.
Jessica had gotten out and was standing on the side of the road.
Near the woods.
"Jessica! Get away from the woods!" I had sudden visions of an Isolate leaping out from its camouflage, grabbing her and pulling her away.
"The car might explode," she said, racing out into the center of the road, far ahead of the car.
Right she was, too. I quickly opened the back seat and eased Christine out. She had the blanket wrapped around her like a shawl, belly and breasts protruding, blood and mud now spotting the dried layer of green slime on her skin. She started laughing, a high chortling sound that was probably the onset of hysteria.
I pulled her away from the car and we all walked as quickly as possible down the center of the road. When Christine's giggling died down, I said despondently, "I guess we have no choice now but to go back home now."
"It's what they want us to do," she exclaimed, suddenly and rather spookily composed.
"You mentioned that earlier..."
Revealing nothing new, Christine answered, "If they'd wanted us dead, then they would have done it already." Shivering, she wiped her nose with the end of the blanket, then promptly three-sixtied on her tune. "I just don't understand it though...I mean, why don't they just kill us?" She started looking around in a paranoid fashion, over her shoulders and into the woods. Clearly the likelihood of hysteria still loomed. Jessica huddled close to me, something she hadn't done in months.
Then, I answered, "They're not killing us because...because they need me. That's why."
There was a moment's hesitation, then Christine said, "Michael..."
"Yes?"
"We need to talk."
"I..." Instantly, my past fears came back to me. I couldn't speak...I was afraid to talk to her—it was as though the sudden reminder had retriggered the negative-memory engrained in my subconscious. Now I was looking over my shoulder, thinking that they were watching us now, listening to us...
"I don't care about their threats anymore," Christine revealed, not so much out of bravery as much as denial. Again, she repeated, "If they'd wanted us dead, then they would have done it already. Right?" It appeared as if she was trying to convince herself of this deduction.
"Unless they're waiting for the right moment."
"If that's the case, then we better get home and formulate some sort of plan. Pool our experiences. Maybe we can learn something about them. Maybe they have a weakness, something we can exploit. Something that can help us escape. It doesn't appear as if we have any other choice."
Holy shit...
I stopped walking, started thinking. Christine's words, suddenly logical, stirred an amazing revelation in me. A weakness. Something that can help us escape. Christine and Jessica stopped walking, turned to look at me. I stood silently in the center of the road for about thirty seconds, rubbing my face, thinking...thinking...thinking that there might actually be a way to get out of this after all. Jesus, all I needed was...
"Michael? What's wrong?"
I looked back at them. "Farris...he was on to something."
"Who? What are you talking about?"
"I don't want to talk about it now. They're probably in the woods, listening to us." Heart pounding, blood racing, I ran back to the minivan, opened the rear passenger door and scooped out the dead Isolate. It felt like a heavy bag of potatoes, thick and misshapen. It tried to slip through my arms but I clutched it tighter, then walked back to my family, looking over my shoulder the entire time.
"What the hell are you doing, Michael?"
"Let's go home. Then we'll talk."
38
The walk back home went as quickly and uneventfully as we could've hoped for; most of the short journey had been spent in silence, sniffing the cold damp air and peering at the lifeless patches of woodland peeking out from beneath the thin layer of snow. A mere thirty minutes after the mini-van had slam-tackled the ash tree, we found ourselves safely sequestered behind the locked doors of 17 Harlan Road, seated around the kitchen table and drinking cold water. Christine still had the blanket wrapped around her like a shroud, I still had my injuries about me, and Jessica looked much dirtier under the fresh light than she did an hour ago at the witch's
house. After our bellies had some food in them, we decided it best to wash up now and attempt to clear our bodies and minds of the toils of the morning. Two of us stood guard with kitchen knives in the upstairs hallway while the other one showered, and in thirty minutes we were all clean and seated back at the kitchen table, ready to discuss the past, present, and future of the Cayle family.
The living room clock tolled twelve noon. I found it hard to believe that everything this morning took place in a span of less than three hours, from the moment I hid in the car to this very minute. Talk about time standing still; it'd felt like a week passed by.
"Does Jessica need to hear all this?" I asked Christine.
Jessica remained silent in her seat, eyes wounded with dark circles and tears. Christine said, "Jess, honey, you can stay and listen, and if there's something you think Daddy and I should know, then tell us, okay?"
She nodded weakly, sipping her water, seeming not to care one way or the other. Yep, that's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder settling itself into her brain, nice and comfortable.
I went first. I took a deep breath, then told them everything. From the encounter with Rosy Deighton in her bedroom on the first day we moved in (I'd told Christine about this before, but felt the need to begin with that again, for Jessica's sake, I suppose), to the confrontation with the deer in the shed. Then, I detailed the incidents with Lauren Hunter, my dream with Page, and all the circumstances surrounding Phillip Deighton, of how he'd tried to set me up, of his details of Rosy's death, and how he ultimately died at my hand. I spoke of my meeting with Old Lady Zellis and Sam Huxtable and how my conversation with him was the catalyst for me to determine how the rest of my family might be involved in what I dubbed as The Grand Scheme. I detailed all my experiences within the den of the Isolates, how I'd been coined their 'Savior', and described in as much detail as I could the adversities I'd been forced to endure. When I told Christine about how I slipped into the car, determined to find out exactly what she was up to, I looked at the clock and saw that an hour had passed since I'd begun divulging the whole extraordinary tale.
"As it turned out, I was right. You were as much a prisoner as I was."
Christine frowned, then said, "The only difference is that I really didn't know I was being manipulated. Up until the moment you came into the basement, I was undeniably convinced that I'd been visiting the doctor all along. It just appeared that way to me, everything, the house we were in...to me it looked just like a doctor's office. Never once had I seen past the delusion."
"I too fell into her delusion once she discovered me in her house. She appeared to me as a beautiful siren. An otherworldly angel. I was instantly captivated. I couldn't move, speak, nothing. It was as though I'd died and gone to heaven and my angel was there to usher me in through the pearly gates. If you hadn't stabbed her with the broomstick, I probably wouldn't be sitting here with you right now."
"You never felt any sort of entrancement with the creatures?" Christine asked.
"No...well, except maybe in the dream."
"So...is it possible that only the witch possessed this kind of ability?"
I nodded in agreement. Then, a sudden realization crept up on me, and I asked, "How often did you go there?"
"To the witch's house?"
I nodded.
Tears filled her eyes. "Every day, since Jessica started school."
The truth made me wince. "God, Christine, didn't you bring Jessica to school at all?"
Christine gazed at Jessica remorsefully, then nodded and said, "Every day up until last month. But the doctor—well, the witch, I mean—she insisted that I bring her to our sessions. I felt no choice in the matter but to do so. It was as though something terrible would happen if I didn't."
"That was definitely another part of her induced delusion. Which makes me believe that the Isolates also utilized some form of mind-control against me. I'd been utterly convinced that any conversation I initiated with you or Jessica would result in your deaths. That's why I maintained such a strong silence over the last few months." Frustrated, I ran a hand through my hair. "Jesus, for all we can assume, there's a great deal more than just blatant threat keeping this town at bay."
"The people I saw carrying the dead body into the house. They looked like zombies. They didn't appear to be acting on their own accord."
I nodded in thought, trying to imagine the eerie scene playing out as Christine described it that afternoon. I looked at Jessica. She was focused hypnotically on the grain of the kitchen table, perhaps closing herself out to the unpleasant conversation taking place. I asked her, "Did the old lady do anything to you, honey?"
"No."
"Nothing?"
"No," she said, then added, "The whole time I thought I was in a waiting room. I never saw anything."
"Did the old lady ever threaten you?"
"No," she answered.
I turned back to Christine. "What the hell did the witch want with Jessica?" Of course there was no inherent answer to this question, at least one that we could come up with. At this point, Christine didn't even know what she herself was doing there.
It's all insane logic. Some kind of self-fulfilling hocus-pocus. Think about it: the Isolates act and react based solely on self-preserving motivations.
Christine said, "I don't remember much of anything, yet I can recall some conversations I had with what I presumed at the time to be the doctor. I remember her telling me that she was a long-time local, and that her mother used to live in the house with her but was now buried in the backyard. For some reason, this piece of information sticks in my mind."
"Because it's true, I saw the grave."
"So then what the hell was she? A human? Or one of those things from the woods?"
"Some kind of half-breed, I guess. Half-Isolate, half human. With some extraordinary prescient abilities above and beyond those of the Isolates themselves."
Are you certain about that, Michael? Well, then how do you explain the dream? Or their hold on you? Was it all some kind of fluke experience? Or were you indeed subjectively influenced by the Isolates?
"The only explanation I can come up with was that the witch had placed both of you under some form of hypnosis, one that'd effectively enabled her to cloak her real intentions, whatever the hell they were."
"Did you see anything Michael?" Christine asked, her voice thinning out. "In the basement. Did you see her doing anything to me?"
For a moment I actually considered divulging everything I saw, but quickly decided against it. Some things were better left untold (like when you cheat on your girlfriend, or park boogers under the sofa). Telling your wife that she had a witch-claw in her vagina would be one too.
You sure about that, Michael? The witch had to have been doing something purposefully intentional at that moment. Insane. It might be best if you told her. It's her body, after all. And your baby.
Dear sweet Jesus, she was doing something to the baby, wasn't she?
"No, all I saw was the old lady bathing you in that stuff."
"The leaves."
"Leaves?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "She made jelly out of these weird leaves, I remember her grinding them in the barrel with a wooden pestle."
"When I went down into the basement, I'd smelled a pungent odor...it'd struck me as being very familiar. Then I realized what it was. The tea. Those weird leaves, you grew them in the garden and brewed them to make that tea you were drinking, right?"
Tears filled her eyes. She placed her head against my chest, suppressing her sobs. "How could I have been so stupid!"
"You didn't know. You didn't know."
"I trusted Rosy."
"And I trusted Phillip. But at the time there was no way we could've known what was going on." I rubbed a gentle hand against her back and peered over her shoulder at the kitchen counter, to the few things we removed from the freezer when we first got home.
I then looked over at the freezer, and realized with dread and
uncertainty that the dead Isolate crammed inside would be our only hope and prayer for escape.
39
The frigid afternoon moved forward with a dusting of snow. One of the three wooden boards had fallen (or had been torn) from the upstairs window and was now lying on the grass ten feet away near Christine's dying herb-garden.
I sifted through the trash on my office floor, realizing that this might very well be the last day I'd ever set foot in here, which was just fine with me. A million thoughts raced through my head, and if all went as planned, we'd be out of here in a day or two. I hoped.
I'd explained my discovery to Christine, along with my intentions. She appeared enthusiastic, yet skeptical. I told her that I saw no other alternative, that we could either attempt to finish what Neil Farris had started, or wait for the Isolates to come after us, which in my estimation would be tonight. She nodded an agreement, realizing that there'd be no other option but to carry out my immediate plans to fight the evil breed known as the Isolates.
I told Christine and Jessica to prepare for an immediate departure, and they both went upstairs to pack up some things, only necessities I told them, such as clothes and food. The minivan had never exploded, but was totally undriveable, so my campaign against the Isolates would have to be 100% successful if we were to walk part of the way out of Ashborough. I remained convinced that along the way we could probably take someone's car without much resistance.
The dead Isolate I took from the backseat of the minivan was still sufficiently wedged inside the freezer—I'd had to break its thigh bones to get it in, having no choice in the matter since we chose not to weather the horrid stench of the thing, which in turn would send up a giant red flag to its relatives.
I went to the freezer, opened it up. The creature's skin had adhered to the icy walls and made a velcro-like tearing sound as I pulled it out. It left flagrant patches of dirt and blood against the snowy interior, like abstract paint smears.
Deep in the Darkness Page 24