by Tim Waggoner
He tried not to think about Kristen and the kids, but it was impossible, like when someone tells you to do your best not to think of a polar bear. The act of trying not to think about a specific thing only focuses your mind on that thing even more. He wondered how Kristen, Colin, and Lindsay were doing right now. Were they scared or injured? Were they even still alive? Aaron closed his eyes and tried reaching out to them mentally. He’d never experienced any kind of psychic communication before, didn’t know if such a thing was even possible. But when people have strong, deep connections, it seemed only logical that those connections would remain no matter how far apart the people should be. But though Aaron groped about in the darkness of his own mind, he felt not the slightest psychic trace of his family.
“Please, God, I have to know if they’re okay,” he whispered.
But God — assuming there were any gods besides the dark thing in the back room of Penumbra — must not have been listening because Aaron still sensed nothing. He knew that didn’t mean his family had been killed, but it gave him no reason to suspect they still lived, either. Caroline and the other Insiders could be damned cold-blooded when the occasion demanded it. His family might already be dead, and he might be joining them soon.
The VW rolled past the Now Entering Ptolemy sign, and as the car continued shortening the distance between the city limits and the shopping center, it began to rain. Not very hard, but steady, the kind of soaking rain that comes as a blessing to dry, browning lawns during summer months in southwest Ohio. Gerald activated the Beetle’s windshield wipers. Only the one of the driver’s side worked; the other flopped uselessly, merely smearing water around on Aaron’s side of the windshield. As Aaron viewed the world through a rippling distortion of water, he reached up and — without realizing it — rubbed the top of his itchy head, sending strands of dead hair drifting down around him.
Several moments later, they approached the Valley View Shopping Center from the north. Penumbra’s front door faced south, and there was a high wooden fence around the back of the strip mall, blocking the view from the rear door. As further insurance that they wouldn’t be seen, Gerald killed the VW’s headlights before pulling into the parking lot. Behind them, Caroline’s father did the same as he followed the Beetle into the lot. The drivers pulled over to the side of the strip mall, which happened to be the east-facing outer wall of Deja Brew. They parked side by side and cut their engines. Aaron released a nervous breath of air. If everything had gone well, the Insiders were unaware of their arrival.
“If is a mighty small word that can cause mighty big problems,” Martin said from the VW’s back seat.
I’m well aware that our attempts at stealth might prove useless — after all, this is a trap and the Insiders know I’m coming — but we need any advantage we can get, even if all we achieve is momentary surprise.
Martin was silent, and Aaron smiled. It seemed like he’d managed to shut up the old man for a change.
Aaron and his lunatic allies climbed out of their vehicles and gathered on the sidewalk beneath the building’s overhang to get out of the rain. Not that a shower would hurt his aromatic new friends, Aaron thought. Each of them was armed. Aaron gripped the butcher knife he’d found in the ruined farmhouse; Caroline’s father held the sledgehammer he’d used to break into the farmhouse’s kitchen; Toothless carried a double-barreled shotgun; and Bone-Braids had a rusty, blood-encrusted hand scythe. Gerald won the award for nastiest weapon, though: a baseball bat with razor blades embedded in its wooden surface. Aaron assumed Gerald had made it himself; it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing one could buy simply by logging onto Psychos-R-us.com. The razor blades were stained with dried blood, attesting to the weapon’s long use. Normally Aaron would’ve been sickened by seeing the blood, but now the sight made him smile grimly. He hoped Gerald would get the opportunity to add many fresh stains to his nasty little toy tonight.
“Everyone remember the plan?” Aaron asked.
All four dements nodded, and Aaron said, “All right, let’s get to it then.”
Toothless and Bone-Braids headed toward the back of the strip mall, while Aaron, Gerald, and Hayden walked around to the front of Deja Brew. The bar was dark inside, and the parking spaces in front were empty, its patrons long departed. Empty, that is, except for one space where a red Chevy pickup truck with a dented left front quarter panel was parked. Aaron realized that the truck most likely belonged to the not-so-dearly-departed Bryan. Evidently Wyatt hadn’t had time to dispose of the dead man’s vehicle yet.
Aaron expected to feel something upon seeing Bryan’s truck — guilt, sorrow, disgust — but he felt nothing. Maybe he was so focused on saving Kristen and the kids that he didn’t have the emotional energy to feel anything else. Maybe he’d experienced so many terrible things tonight that his mind had created an emotional buffer to shield his psyche from further damage.
“Or maybe you’re starting to go bug-fuck just like all the others,” Martin pointed out.
Aaron glanced over his shoulder and saw his father trailing behind them. Martin was unarmed, but then since he wasn’t real, it hardly mattered whether he carried a weapon or not.
Aaron looked forward again. Maybe he was dementing. If so, he hoped he’d be able to hold onto his sanity long enough to save his family.
The three of them (four if you counted Martin’s apparition) walked slowly and silently, watching the door to Penumbra, waiting for it to swing open and the Insiders to come running out to meet their assault. But the door remained closed. Aaron swept his gaze across the mostly deserted parking lot, checking to see if any of the Insiders were hiding inside cars, waiting to ambush them. But he saw nothing.
As they reached Starbrite Movie and Game Rentals, Aaron examined several vehicles parked nearby. He recognized Caroline’s Inifiti and his Lexus — obviously Caroline had driven his car back from the Insiders’ dumping ground. But his breath caught in his throat when he saw the copper-colored Ford Sierra van parked next to his car.
“Don’t get too excited,” his father warned. “They would’ve needed a vehicle big enough to haul Kristen and the kids back here. It doesn’t mean they’re all right, any more than Bryan’s pick-up still being here means he’s at the peak of his health.”
“I know, I know,” Aaron muttered.
“What?” Gerald asked.
“Nevermind. I wasn’t talking to you.”
Gerald and Hayden exchanged glances.
“Congratulations,” Martin said. “Two lunatics now think you’re crazy.”
Aaron stared at the van. The parking lot’s fluorescent lights lit the vehicle well enough, but the tinted windows made it impossible to see if anyone was inside. Aaron doubted his family was in there — why would they be? They were prisoners of Penumbra, not guests permitted to come and go as they pleased. But he knew he couldn’t go on without checking the van.
“Wait here,” Aaron told his two companions and stepped out from underneath the overhang and into the rain. He felt raindrops patter on the newly bald patches on his head, and his borrowed shirt began to get wet. Good. Maybe the water would diminish the stink. He kept his gaze fixed on the van as he drew near it, alert for any sign that it wasn’t empty. Several yards before he reached the vehicle, he imagined gripping the side door handle, sliding the door back, and seeing his family’s mutilated corpses spill out onto the rain-slick asphalt at his feet. He imagined Caroline and the other Insiders standing in Penumbra’s open doorway, laughing at him.
He shot a quick glance back over his shoulder at the fuckle door and saw that it remained closed. He looked back to the van; still no sign of life.
His father called out to him from the sidewalk in front of the video store.
“This doesn’t rank very high on the good-idea scale!”
Maybe not, Aaron thought. But he had to do this, had to know whether his family — alive or dead — was inside the van. He ignored his father and continued walking until he reached the Ford Sierra. He
looked up and saw the tiny silhouettes of falling raindrops hurtling toward the ground like shadow-rain, their paths backlit by one of the parking lot lights. Even raining as it was, insects clustered around the glowing blue-white bulb atop the gray metal parking light pole. Darting, dipping, they continued giving in to their eternal compulsion to flirt with the death-light regardless of the weather.
Aaron hoped the van wasn’t locked. Caroline had taken his keys when she’d driven off in his Lexus. He reached the van and stood before the side door. This was the side where Lindsay usually sat, and though she was a big enough girl to open and close the door herself, she sometimes had trouble closing it all the way. Aaron still opened and closed it for her most of the time. If he opened it now, what would he find? An empty seat with graham cracker crumb residue scattered on the upholstery? Or would he find himself looking into the dead, empty-eyed face of his little girl’s corpse?
There was only one way to find out.
He reached out, gripped the door handle with his right hand and — vision blurring from the rainwater running off his forehead and into his eyes — threw the door open.
“Peekaboo, we see you!”
Trevor and Shari chanted this together in a child’s singsong voice. They sat in the middle seats usually occupied by Aaron’s kids. The dentist and his wife were both completely naked, giving Aaron another look at Shari’s strange puckered-flesh nipples. Trevor bared his silver teeth in a feral smile and held up a wicked-looking stainless steel instrument that was at least nine inches long and which ended in a sharp curved hook.
“How long has it been since your last check-up, Aaron?” Trevor asked. His cock jutted from between his legs, erect and quivering.
Shari giggled. She held a similarly nasty tool, though hers ended in a three-pronged fork, making it look like a miniature trident with tips sharp as needles. “My guess is way too long, hon,” she said.
Trevor was closest to Aaron, and he lunged out of his seat and swiped his steel-hooked weapon at Aaron’s throat. Aaron jumped backward and nearly slipped on the wet asphalt, but he maintained his balance. Flashing his silver teeth, Trevor climbed out the van, cock bobbling, and advanced on Aaron, slashing his hooked tool through the air in vicious arcs. Aaron imagined the curved needle tip of the weapon puncturing the skin of his neck, sliding beneath the carotid artery, and tearing it loose in a gushing spray of blood.
Screw this, he thought.
Aaron stopped retreating and as Trevor stepped in for the kill, Aaron brought up his butcher knife to block the man’s strike. The dentist howled in pain as his unprotected wrist met the cutting edge of Aaron’s blade. Trevor’s flesh peeled back like paper and blood jetted from the nearly created wound. His fingers sprang open and his hook-tool clattered to the asphalt. He pulled his wrist away from the knife in a trailing arc of blood and cradled the wound against his abdomen in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.
He glared at Aaron with eyes full of blazing hatred. “We never should have let you in,” he snarled.
“I wish you hadn’t.” Aaron stepped forward and with a single swift motion slashed his butcher knife across Trevor’s throat.
The man’s eyes widened in almost comical surprise, and a thick gurgling sound came from his mouth as blood poured out of the throat wound, splashed onto his chest, and ran down to trickle off the tip of his rapidly deflating cock. Trevor took several stagger-steps to his right and then collapsed to the ground. Blood mixed with rainwater pooled around his head, his eyes still wide but now unblinking.
Aaron looked down at Trevor’s body. While he’d contributed to Bryan’s death, perhaps even was ultimately responsible for it, Aaron hadn’t actually killed the man. But Trevor had literally died by Aaron’s hand, and self-defense or not, that made Aaron a killer. He thought he should feel something. Self-loathing, guilt, satisfaction, anything. But he felt nothing.
A scream tore through the night, and Aaron whirled around in time to see Shari running toward him, mini-trident raised to strike, face contorted with rage, breasts bouncing. As she ran, her puckered nipples open and closed like tiny mouths eager to be fed. Aaron knew he should do something to protect himself, but all he did was stand there and watch Shari’s nipple-mouths gawp open and closed as she ran toward him to avenge her husband.
A flash of motion, and a razor-blade-studded baseball bat smashed into Shari’s face. Her body jerked as if an electric current surged through it, and twin high-pitched sounds like the cries of injured birds erupted from her nipple-mouths. Shari then fell to the ground and twitched, her face a shredded, pulped ruin. Her breasts continued keening their song of pain.
Gerald held the bat at his side as he looked down upon Shari’s spasming form. Blood dripped from the razor blades embedded in his bat, and several of the woman’s teeth were stuck in the wood.
“I guess I’ll never get to fuck her again,” Gerald said sadly. Then he turned to Aaron and put on a brave smile. “But you can’t make an egg without breaking a few omelets, right?’
The pain-song of the nipple-mouths continued, high and mournful. Caroline’s father stepped up, raised his sledgehammer, and brought it down on Shari’s forehead. There was a hollow, wet sound like a melon imploding, and the nipples fell silent.
Hayden shuddered. “That noise goes right up and down your spine, doesn’t it?”
Aaron swallowed to keep his gorge from rising and turned to look in Penumbra’s direction. He expected to see that the fuckle door was wide open and the surviving Insiders were running toward them, weapons in their hands and death in their eyes. But the door remained closed.
Aaron frowned. Why lay a trap and not take advantage of it once it was sprung? While Trevor and Shari had failed to kill Aaron, they’d managed to distract him long enough for the other Insiders to attack.
“They’re crazy, remember?” Martin Rittinger stood at his son’s side. Despite the rain coming down, he appeared perfectly dry. That was one of the benefits to being a hallucination, Aaron supposed. You didn’t have to worry about minor inconveniences such as getting wet in the rain. “You can’t expect them to use strategy … at least, not a sane one.”
Point taken, Aaron thought. Out loud, he said, “If the Insiders didn’t know we were coming before, they certainly do now. I guess that means we don’t have to bother trying to be sneaky anymore.”
Gerald raised his gore-smeared bat in the air and let out a whoop.
“All right! Let’s go break that fucking door down!” He started running toward Penumbra’s entrance as fast his bulk allowed.
Caroline’s father grinned, rainwater trickling through the cracks and fissures of his scarred face like tiny rivers. “Sounds like a plan to me!” Hayden gripped the hand of his sledgehammer tight and headed off after Gerald, his thinner frame allowing him to move faster than the much fatter man, despite his advanced age.
Aaron reached up to scratch his head and took a deep breath. “Well, Dad, I guess this is it.”
“Guess so.”
Father and son started across the rain-splashed parking lot toward the fuckle door.
“Is this the right door? I mean, it looks like the right one, but it’s been a long time since either of us has been back here. If we were looking for the front door, no problem, right? But here all the doors look the same.”
Meredith didn’t respond for she knew Ned didn’t really expect her to. He had a tendency to babble whenever he was nervous or excited. It was simply his way of relieving stress. Still, if he kept it up much longer, she just might jam the tip of her hand scythe up his ass and with a few precise cuts, release his intestines to fall to the asphalt in a mound of steaming coils.
The mental image made her smile, and with her free hand she reached up to caress one of the bone shards woven into her braids. She had seventeen shards in all — eight on her left side, nine on her right. Each was taken from a particularly interesting guest they’d brought to the Homestead. This shard — left braid, fourth from the bottom — h
ad once been the tailbone of a child she’d snatched from a grocery store parking lot after the girl’s mother had left her in their unlocked car while she ran inside for a pack of cigarettes. Stupid cow. What Meredith had found so intriguing about the girl was that she hadn’t cried, hadn’t uttered a single sound. Not even when they began to make the first cut. A strong child, a precious one, and Meredith was proud to honor her by wearing a piece of the girl in one of her braids. Sometimes, if she listened closely enough, she thought she could hear the sweetmeat, along with the others whose bones she wore, whispering to her. But try as she might, she’d never been able to make out what they were saying.
Funny. For so many years, she’d thought of little save returning to Penumbra. She wasn’t one of the founders like Hayden was, but she’d joined not long after he and his wife had established their club. But now that she was closer to Penumbra than she’d been since the day she’d been cast out, she found herself thinking about the many dark delights she’d found at the Homestead over the years. Would it really be worth giving all that up just to experience the cold blessing of the Overshadow’s touch once more?
A shudder of pleasure ran through her body, and her vagina quivered in excitement.
Yes, she decided. Yes, it would.
“This is it,” Ned pronounced. “I’m sure of it!”
They’d stopped at a gray metal door that looked exactly the same as the others they’d already passed, lit by a small fluorescent light bolted to the wall above. But though there was nothing to mark it visually as Penumbra’s rear door, Meredith felt a tingling deep within her uterus and her nipples became painfully erect. Ned was right; this was it.
They stood in the rain, weapons held ready, and looked at the door for a number of seconds before Ned the nervous talker broke the brief silence.
“Okay, we’re here. What it is again that we’re supposed to do?”
Meredith started to berate Ned for his abysmal memory, but she stopped herself. Her memory was hardly much better than his. Oh, there were some things she recalled with absolute crystal clarity. Like the little sweetmeat whose tailbone adorned her left braid. But many other things were so difficult to recall, and it seemed that she too couldn’t remember what they were supposed to do now. Still, she felt confident they could puzzle it out. Before being recruited for Penumbra by Hayden and the others who’d been members at the time, Meredith had worked as an elementary-school librarian. She’d prided herself on her sensible, logical mind back then, and while it had been far too long since she’d used these qualities, she felt certain they were still there, somewhere in the chaotic soup that served as her brain.