Even here, cold silence continued to rule. There was no bustle of activity, only the flickering scatter of diminished wall-torches.
I moved closer to the entrance.
Then, suddenly, I heard them. Moans rife with pain and suffering. I stopped to listen, and stayed there for a few minutes before I could brave the courage to move on. When I finally entered the lair of the Isolates, I beheld them. They were all here. The Isolates.
They were gathered in a seemingly unending collection of withered bodies, knotted together in a great mass of ruin. Many of them were dead, many were still dying and squirming. But not a single golden eye was aglow.
I smiled victoriously as I walked through them, contemplating the results of the pains of my labor: a mass execution, the genocide of an entire race of beings now collected in a vast playground perfectly suited for the infestation of maggots. I never felt more in powerful in my life. I won. I fucking beat them.
I turned away, my whole body a solid ache of torment. Sweat blanketed me, adding to the discomfort. Mosquitoes poked my skin. I paced back through the carnage, making sure not to trip over any of the bodies in my path.
Suddenly, in a quickened thrust, something grabbed my ankle. The claws punctured my skin and I yelped out in pain. I looked down. A sick Isolate had me in its grasp, blood and mucous pouring from its nose, foam from its mouth. And then suddenly I recognized this one from the jagged scar racing across its face. Fenal. The glow in his eyes grew sharply bright, then faded down to gray right before my eyes. And then, it died. The hand released its grip. I kicked it away disgustedly. He wanted you to help him, Michael.
I turned around one last time to admire my work.
In the distance, in one of the multitude of burrows, I saw a single pair of eyes ignite, their glow intense, pinning me. In their illumination I saw a single bony hand raise up and point an accusatory finger at me.
And as I considered the unexpected possibility that one or more of the beasts might be immune, a single howl like the one I'd heard in the woods ripped the silence to tatters, condemning me back to the life of hell I had momentarily escaped.
43
I waited at the edge of the woods, staring up at my house. The wind had muscled away two more boards from the upstairs windows. The darkness within peered down at me watchfully, daring me to move on.
It had taken me a long time to return back home, my body riddled with stiffness and monumental aches. My muscles felt atrophied, my breathing labored, and I wondered if this is what felt like being on the receiving side of a heart-attack. Once I'd escaped the underground den, which had taken the better part of an hour, I took a few moments to rest before journeying back home. Now, darkness was approaching, and the setting sun cast an elongated shadow of myself across the side of the house that seemed to mock me as I finally made my way across the lawn. I wondered if I had the fortitude to actually leave here, and laughed madly at the possibility that after all this time I wouldn't be able to flee because my legs had no strength left in them to take me.
I went into the house via the side door. It was cool and dark and damp inside. I staggered down the hall into the kitchen. My muddy footfalls echoed spookily on the tiles, reminding me of the noise a sickened stomach makes.
"Christine?"
The eerie silence swallowed up my voice like water into a sponge. The wind rattled the boards over the living room windows. Alongside the front door were two duffle bags, presumably the supplies Christine and Jessica packed for the journey out of Ashborough. The sight of them gave me a ray of hope, and I found the strength in me to continue on.
"Christine?" I called upstairs.
No answer.
Again I was scared. My heart pounded ferociously. This is really getting old. Where were they? What were they doing? Sleeping, perhaps, I thought with doubt. I took the steps one at a time, the pessimistic silence making the skin on my back and arms ripple with gooseflesh. The walk up was short and terrifying, and I felt like a man walking the plank into shark-infested waters.
I reached the landing and immediately saw a spot-trail of blood leading down the hall past the closed door of the master bedroom. I stared at it for a long time, feeling fear and madness weighing down on me, and I imagined myself as a small house caught in the beginnings of an unstoppable mudslide, wondering how much pressure I could tolerate before caving in.
Soon I stood before the master bedroom. The blood on the floor was thicker here and it was smeared around as if someone had stepped in it. I grabbed the doorknob with a sweaty palm and put an ear against the door.
From beyond, I heard a gentle cry. A whimper.
I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
I saw Jessica first. My little girl was sitting silently in a chair against the right wall of the bedroom alongside the boarded window frame. She was staring blankly towards the bed, head cocked, eyes cold and hypnotic, and it became immediately apparent that her intense inaction was the handiwork of the Isolates—she looked no different now than she did the in the basement of Old Lady Zellis.
Hey Michael!
The call was propelled from the smidgen of sanity my conscious held on to. It told me that there was much more to take in and that I ought to try and tame the fires of madness in my head because there weren't any calm waters ahead to put them out.
I let the door swing all the way open, and was greeted by the sight of my wife, the woman whom I walked down the aisle with and traded vows, for richer and for poorer, sickness and in health. She was lying naked on the bed, head tilted uncomfortably against the headboard, legs spread apart amidst a massive wash of blood. Her arms fidgeted at her sides, fists gripping the stained sheets in bunches. Her belly—her pregnant belly—was no longer swollen with child. Somewhere here was our baby. Our baby.
I walked toward her. Christine, what's happened to you? I saw blood on the footboard of the bed, on the floor, on the walls. It was everywhere.
And suddenly, I screamed.
It came from me ungoverned, reverberating around the room and through the halls of 17 Harlan Drive, the house that had now become haunted with the living ghosts of the present. I realized at this moment that nothing could stop the evil brewing here. It would simply go on and on forever despite any roadblocks; there was nothing more certain than that except for my undying screams. Insanity...yeah, it had finally taken over, I could feel it finally. It had come out with all its guns blazing, and all I could think about was the great golden-eyed demon-beast in the woods whose presence brought out the very best in its progeny, and the most abominable conducts in its enemies: the simple folk of Ashborough who had come here seeking charmed lives and left with blood-soaked consequences for their inactions.
Christine had heard me scream, of course. I looked at her, dazed. Our eyes locked, mine filled with tears, hers with blood. Christine was gone now. Not dead per se, but gone in mind, in soul, and the thing that had replaced her couldn't have been happier at the moment to let me know all about it. This possessed thing that became of my wife pulled its split lips back into a wicked grin and licked the blood on its teeth, then arched its hips up from the mattress and pressed down on its belly. What had once been Christine's placenta came bursting out from her vagina, ruptured and purple and pumping blood and birth matter in a horrible flatulent spew. I cried for Jessica who remained in a catatonic state. Then I turned and vomited, the gristly odor of blood and feces taking full control of my stomach. Gagging, I turned back to face the scene, and that was when the bathroom door opened.
Here came my child. Walking. Half human, half Isolate, it staggered out with a full coat of sticky-wet body hair, its face untouched by Isolate genes excepting the hideous glow of its golden eyes. It careened toward me, this thing only eighteen inches high, reptilian feet leaving congealed prints on the hardwood floor. It held up both its hands, not for me to accept it, but to strike. Blood and amniotic fluid dripped from its yellow claws. I staggered back but the thing latched onto my leg, swaying an
d clawing and then biting into my shin with its powerful little teeth. I kicked at it, swatted at it. My screams and the wails of the demon-child erupted from the room, and that was when Jessica suddenly sprang into action. This brought a brief flickering light to the end of my long dark tunnel, but it was quickly extinguished when I realized that my daughter was still caught in the throes of her catatonia and had no intentions to assist me. Instead, she came at me, arms outstretched, hissing like an angry cat. She lanced into my legs, tripping me up as I frantically attempted to shake the baby-beast away. I fell back on my seat, and felt the wind bullet out from my lungs in a sharp unintentional exhale. The baby-beast fell away and careened against the bathroom door, then immediately righted itself and scowled as it looked back at me, gaze glowing and resentful. I scrambled to the wall, staring dumbfounded up at the three bodies in the room with me.
The new and not necessarily improved Cayle family.
Christine crawled forward on the bed like a serpent. She was doused in blood, her face twisting and writhing, mouth panting and full of foam. Jessica staggered up, adjusted her cotton nightie which had bunched up around her chest, then leaped up on the bed, joining her mother. She giggled in her little girl voice and licked the blood from her fingers, as did the baby beast, which also climbed the bed to be with its family.
"Jessica..." I managed. "No, honey..."
She giggled and playfully tossed herself down on the blood-soaked bed.
Christine looked back at Jessica and ran a gentle hand through her blond locks. When she pulled away, a stark bloody streak marred the previously untainted curls.
"Christine...what in God's name are you doing? You're hypnotized! Shake it off! Shake it off!" I sat there, stupefied, surveying the evil scene before me, convinced for these futile moments that all I had to do was convince them that it was all some form of mind control at play here, and that once they realized this—as they did in Old Lady Zellis's basement—we could get the fuck out of here while the Isolates were still out of commission.
But there would be no Cayle family exodus—that much made itself very clear in the following seconds; in my mind heinous images played out, Lauren Hunter's forewarning in the moments of her death, Phillip Deighton's head exploding beneath the swinging arch of the baseball bat, and then the great horned beast in the woods who'd sent me a message in my swoon, telling me that the fight was unwinnable, and that no matter what I did to knock his children down, he'd be there stronger than ever to pick them up again.
I pictured the thing with its spectacular erection, mounting my wife.
And then, I thought back to a brief moment in time five months ago when Christine and I were talking in the kitchen, she revelating about the pregnancy, me saying, Damn it, Christine, I wore a condom, and I realized now that the great beast had already been upon her at that time, and that the grinning, walking, scowling Isolate baby on the bed with my family had no genes of mine in it, but those of its father in the woods. It would grow up a mix breed like Old Lady Zellis, and perhaps assume her position as Ashborough's spiritualist leader.
I went to stand, and in this moment became terribly aware that it wasn't just hypnosis or some form of mind control that'd had my family stricken. It was much, much more than that.
I looked at Christine and Jessica, bloodied and on the bed, now gleefully cradling the newborn beast in their hands. I collapsed back down to the floor, disbelieving at what had become of my wife and daughter.
They both looked up and smiled at me.
Their eyes were glowing gold.
I could do nothing but stay there defeated, staring at the utter evil before me. There was absolutely nothing I could do. Nothing except give in. I crumpled to the floor and pulled myself into a ball, trying to make myself as small as possible. I cried hysterically, hoping I'd disappear from this world forever and ever.
Quite soon, I did.
Epilogue
"When I awoke, many hours later, Christine, Jessica, and the baby-beast were gone. I never looked for them. I knew they weren't in the house...gut feeling, I suppose. Perhaps I didn't care. I went downstairs. The bags were still by the front door. I'd considered taking one and walking out the front door to see how far I'd get before they pulled a Neil Farris on me. Trying to leave meant certain death, you know that already, and to be frank, I didn't really care at the moment if I died, I just didn't want to give them the benefit of doing so. So I washed up and went back to sleep for many hours.
"When I awoke, I went into my office, grabbed the things I needed, along with whatever food was left in the house, and locked myself down here in the basement, where I remain to this day, perhaps two weeks after my family disappeared.
"It has been my intention to chronicle the events taking place here at 17 Harlan Road. I feel that with these tapes, I have adequately done so. I do hope that the recordings on these tapes find the ears of an impartial listener, although it is highly doubtful that once you find your way into Ashborough, that you will find your way out.
"My work, for now, is complete, dear listener. I have only one decision left to make. If I am nowhere to be found, then I have decided to look for Christine and Jessica and I have perhaps fallen victim to the great demon's plague, although he perhaps won't allow me such an escape, since I'd murdered a great many of his progeny. It is my assumption that he wishes me to suffer for as long as possible, and by leaving me alone, he is doing just that. Either that, or I have indeed escaped the bonds of Ashborough, although that is highly improbable.
"My only other alternative is to take my own life, which I have planned for should that decision become conclusive. On the table, before me, sits a needle. In it, hantavirus tainted blood. If you find my body alongside these tapes, then you know the decision I have made and I wish you more successful results in your quest to escape the guard of the Isolates.
"At this point, I bid you farewell dear listener. Thank you for your time and your ears. For that, I am truly grateful.
"Good night."
Dark basement.
Heavy breathing.
The grainy shuffle of feet on a cement floor. Edgy fingers tapping a table's rough surface. The reek of things moist and damp.
Somewhere upstairs a clock chimes. A useless breeze sweeps a single candle's flame.
A hand moves to a small tape-recorder, sitting on the table top.
One hesitant finger seeks out the stop button. Presses it.
Ten seconds of deep, labored breaths. Then, a hand moves to grab the needle...
Deep in the Darkness Page 27