…but will instantly be transformed to stone.
“Please don’t do this,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. “Whatever I’ve done, whatever you think I’ve done, I—I’m sorry, I…I just want to live my life as best I can, like everyone else.”
“But you’re not like everyone else. And neither am I.”
“You’re a deeply wounded person, Dignon. What your father did to you, what he’s still doing to you even now, it breaks my heart, but I—please don’t hurt me.”
“Hurt you?” Dignon holds tight to the hammer but leaves it in his pocket. “I won’t hurt you. You’ll hurt yourself. You have no choice.”
“We always have a choice, Dignon. All of us.”
“I reject you. You can’t make me fall under your spell like the others, and that means your number is up, Bree. It’s over. In a very short while, we’ll both be free. Forever.”
She yanks open the apartment door and runs into the hallway, screaming for help. Calling for neighbors to phone the police, she bangs on several doors then dashes for the stairs.
Calmly, Dignon follows. There is no reason to chase after her.
He knows exactly where she’s going.
* * *
The cold no longer bothers him. Like his demons, it’s still there but no match for his newfound strength. He moves with a purposeful stride out the front door of the apartment building. Surely the ruckus Bree caused has resulted in several tenants phoning the police, so there’s not much time. She’s nowhere in sight, but has left behind tracks in the snow. He follows her exact route, slipping around the side of the building then up and over a large snowdrift that leads to an incline and the beach below.
Out of breath, Dignon staggers down across the snowy beach, nearly losing his footing. The sea is choppy and ominous, the wind stronger here.
But for the motion of waves, everything is still and frozen.
He stops a moment, scans the area.
The black sweater gives her away. At a full run, she has a good fifty yards on him, and with a quick glance back over her shoulder, she stumbles up onto a long but narrow stone jetty that juts out into the sea. Though the large stones are mostly dark in color, the snow and ice covers great portions of them, allowing for only occasional pieces of stone to show through. At a distance it looks like a shelf of ice and snow has frozen atop the ocean itself.
“A siren will throw itself into the sea as a means of escape,” he mumbles, breaking into a run himself. Of all the places Bree Harper could’ve gone, why here? Why run to water unless she has no choice? Dignon pulls the hammer from his coat pocket as he runs. If she tries to take him with her he’ll be ready, but he has to be there to see her demise, he has to be sure.
By the time he reaches the jetty his eyes are watering from the cold, he can barely breathe and is experiencing the beginnings of chest pains. Forty or so yards ahead of him, Bree has run out of jetty.
Dignon steps up onto the first stone and once he has good footing, moves carefully along the jetty. The wind whips ocean water up into his face in a spray of little icy needles, but he presses on until he’s within thirty feet of her.
“Wait!” she says, frantically looking around from a crouched position, her hands raised.
She no longer looks quite so beautiful, Dignon thinks. More like a cornered animal, a predator not used to being the prey and unprepared for the fight.
“Dignon, wait!” she screams, pushing her hands out farther in front of her for emphasis. “Stop—please, I—I’ll do anything you want! Anything, Dignon, anything you say! Just stop!”
He feels a smile crease his face. “Don’t try to tempt me. It won’t work.”
Her cheeks, flushed bright red from the cold, are stained with tears. “Please,” she says again, eyes attempting a seductive stare. “Anything, OK? Just tell me what you want.”
“I want it to stop.” His smile fades. “I want the pain to stop, the…the nightmares.”
“I haven’t caused your pain, Dignon, and I’m not a part of your nightmares, it’s not me, you’ve made me a part of them but I—I want to help you, will you—will you let me help you?”
Somewhere in the distance comes an odd sound. He thinks it might be the wind but can’t be sure. It almost sounds human, like someone calling or shouting from far off. A trick, he decides, an attempt to distract him. She is a crafty and calculating creature and he must not allow her to fool him.
He takes another step toward her and something slams into his back. The impact is similar to someone punching him from behind and hits him with such force it causes him to stumble forward. As he turns to see what’s happened, a second impact slams into him, and this time as he staggers, the hammer drops from his grasp, bounces off the rocks and is swallowed by waves crashing the jetty. Instinctually, Dignon arches his back and reaches behind him to the areas hit. Bree screams and a third blow lands.
Dignon tries to stay upright, but now feels pain burning through him.
He tumbles face-first onto the jetty, just inches from Bree’s feet.
* * *
It is the wind he hears first. But as the darkness lifts enough for his vision to clear, he hears other sounds as well. The slap of ocean against rocks…the crackle of nearby fires…the cries and screams of trapped and dying souls.
Bree appears before him, standing at the very edge of the jetty in all her glory. Her nude body draped in a sheer white flowing gown, her hair high and full, eyes fiery and arms extended out on either side of her like an enormous bird. Her face is a mask of death and pain, and yet, hers is the most alluring and magnificently beautiful face and body he has ever seen, even more intoxicating than before.
Behind her, flames burn atop the surface of the ocean and the voices of those drowning and dying cry out through the darkness amidst debris and the skeletal remains of ships and floating carcasses. Before this panorama of destruction, she is alive as he’s never before seen her, feeding off the mayhem and torture to reveal her true nature. Her incredible beauty juxtaposed with such violence and horror, such ugliness, somehow makes her more powerful, as if her beauty itself is born of it, drawn from it, strengthened by it. Her lips part, and a screech explodes from her as she throws back her head and pushes out her chest, breasts wet and slick, nipples taut in the cold.
Once at her feet, the siren’s song is no longer captivating or mysterious. It is instead the wail of a wounded animal, the lurid sobs of an addict in need of a fix, the hysterical cries of a child in the throes of a hellish nightmare. It is death.
* * *
Up through darkness, sounds of earth and water emerge: the crash of ocean surf and howling winds. And then he feels them too, the spray of saltwater on his face and neck, the cold current of air slicing through him, burrowing to the bone and icing him over like a corpse, some lifeless thing with blood no longer flowing but rather clotted and congealed in the vein. Something once alive yet not quite wholly dead, a frozen embryo still capable of life, of being alive, but suspended somewhere just shy of it.
The subtle tingle of pain pulses through his torso as Dignon, still lying on his stomach along the jetty, struggles to look back over his shoulder. In the distance lies the beach, what appear to be several official-looking vehicles and the apartment building beyond. Several figures he cannot quite make out with any specificity move quickly across the sand, and in the distance, gliding up over faraway rooftops, he sees the smokestacks exhaling over the city like dragon breath. An attentive god, omnipresent and omnipotent, it oversees everything in its detached way, an observer of the lost souls wandering about its empire, forever shrouded in mystery and cloaked in questions, the answers riddles and mazes for those who believe, those who notice, those who need to look deeper and see further into what lies behind and beyond the smoke, the sky, the dark and the light.
Something distracts him.
A figure runs toward them, moves along the beginnings of the jetty with impressive balance. Dignon cannot make out much, as
his vision is blurred and for some reason unknown to him, continues to come in and out of focus, but he is almost certain even at this distance that he’s seen this man before. A man in uniform, running, something in his hand—a gun?—and…is he calling out to them?
Or is it Willie he hears just then, saying something in his ear?
Laughing, she’s…she’s laughing.
So long ago, when they’d still laughed, on those nights when their father was away and it was just the two of them, free to do as they pleased. Willie would make Jiffy Pop popcorn and they’d read their comic books. Dignon would tell stories, or if there was enough time, they’d watch television. Movies and TV shows, events, anything at all. Dr. J playing basketball, bleached-blonde women wrestlers jumping around a ring and screaming at delighted fans, cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Speed Racer, and shows like The Banana Splits.
But it is movies Dignon remembers most of all, all sorts of wonderful movies that could take them away, transport them to different places and times, different lives, different realities. He remembers classics like James Dean in East of Eden, Jane Fonda in Klute, as well as all the great exploitations flicks Willie and he would watch together. He remembers comedies like Mother, Jugs and Speed, a movie about ambulance drivers starring Bill Cosby and Raquel Welch, and how he and Willie had laughed and laughed until the scene toward the end when Bill Cosby’s partner is shot and killed by a drug addict. It all comes rushing back, all the memories and flashes, pieces of film cut and spliced together and running through his head.
All they had to do was watch and experience. All they had to do was forget, even if just for a little while.
Just think of a movie. Think of it and go there. Make it your own.
Make it real.
Make them memories, Willie, our memories.
It’ll be all right.
Dignon rolls back onto his stomach, gags and coughs, feels something wet and warm drool out over his bottom lip. He cannot feel his legs for some reason.
Bree is crouched at the very edge of the jetty, her face contorted in horror, her hands clutching either side of her head as if to somehow prevent sanity’s escape.
“Did I have it wrong?” he asks, gagging a second time. The metallic taste of blood fills his mouth. “Did I have it wrong?”
Bree stares at him through tear-filled eyes but says nothing.
Are we mythical beings in a mortal world, he wonders, or mortal beings in a mythical world?
Bree says something but her voice is muffled by the crashing surf.
He watches her stand, legs shaky, her expression suddenly stoic.
And as she takes a tentative step toward him her feet slip out from under her. Mouth open in a silent scream, Bree Harper falls backward into the ocean and is devoured.
The memory of his mother’s photograph slips past his mind’s eye.
Dignon crawls after Bree until he reaches the edge and can look down into the water. Vomiting more blood he pushes farther until he has almost fallen in himself, his face just inches from the sea and reflecting back up at him in the turbulent waves.
The pain in his finger pulses…
Help me, Dig. Help me.
…the raw patch where his skin has scraped off, red and throbbing…
I’m sorry. I’d save you if I could.
The crawlspace…their crypt…he and Willie packed into it so tightly neither can move nor properly breathe. Dead, humid air, spider webs, rough cement—Dignon’s finger moving slowly back and forth across a small section of it just to his left, scraping and in constant motion to remind him that he is still able to move even some small part of whatever remains of him, to remind him he is still alive—or something similar—and that there is still hope.
Sooner or later someone will call the police, won’t they Willie?
The cold water splashes his face, and as he blinks and coughs out another mouthful of blood, Bree vanishes in the dark ocean and the sea again reflects his face. Tormented and scarred.
Sounds of hurried footsteps coming closer from somewhere behind him…
Who’s there?
And in the ocean’s mirror: reflections of rotating patterns, blue lights from the beach behind him spin along the surface. Like the blood in my veins, Dignon thinks.
Are we dead Willie?
Blood in electric blue…
Have we died?
Revolving and growing stronger, gliding ghostlike along the walls of the cellar, through the darkness, brighter with each pass…
We’re just lost.
Closer, like the voices telling them it will be all right, like the footsteps…
Lost in the dark a while.
Like the blood leaking from his open mouth, red now that it’s left him.
Loose. Loose but not free. Never free.
“What is the privilege of the dead?” he hears Nikki ask, quoting her favorite film from some forgotten corner of her apartment. “To die no more.”
Below the choppy water, Bree’s body sinks in freefall. A body of flesh and blood, a body turned to stone, or simply the residue of myth.
Dignon looks closer, to be sure.
And there, just below the waves, is his answer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg F. Gifune is a best-selling, internationally published author of several acclaimed novels, novellas and two short-story collections. Called, “One of the best writers of his generation” by both The Roswell Literary Review and author Brian Keene, and “Among the finest dark suspense writers of our time” by legendary best-selling author Ed Gorman, Greg’s work has been published all over the world, translated into several languages, consistently praised by readers and critics alike, and has garnered attention from Hollywood. His novel The Bleeding Season, originally published in 2003, has been hailed as a classic in the genre and is widely considered to be one of the best horror/thriller novels of the decade. Greg resides in Massachusetts with his wife Carol, a bevy of cats and two dogs, Dozer and Bella. He can be reached online via e-mail ([email protected]) or on Facebook and Twitter.
For more information on Greg and his work visit his official website at: www.gregfgifune.com.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
Table of Contents
BLOOD IN ELECTRIC BLUE
Connect With Us
Other Books by Author
PROLOGUE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
About the Author
About the Publisher
Blood In Electric Blue Page 18