Destroyer of Worlds

by Daniel G. Keohane

  The house began to shake again, sounds of ruin returning to the world, louder and more violent as the seconds passed. Something behind him cracked! Corey turned around as the fireplace bricks fell against him. Above the mantle, the drywall broke apart from the force and weight of the collapsing chimney. He tripped over his own feet and fell backwards onto the rug, onto the broken glass and an empty box of Sterno fire logs. The final remnants of the chimney collapsed under the hammering of a hundred explosions outside. The house undid itself. The outside wall fell inward, opening the room to the burning hellscape outside.

  XV

  The nest had swollen to twice its original size, reaching towards the shed’s broken doorway and further into the corner. Even in her panic, Sam understood that it hadn’t actually grown. It had emptied. Hundreds and hundreds of black and white wasps crawled with a building excitement across its paper surface, tiny cancerous growths impatient to fly, to swarm. Samantha knew this, had stopped trying to wriggle her wrists free of the ropes. It wasn’t doing any good, anyway. Her right arm was completely numb and her vision was fading, either from loss of blood or the growing storm outside. She stared at the throbbing mass in the corner then flinched at a new crash of thunder roaring overhead like a train crashing into the station, shaking the earth, rattling the old, dried boards of the shed. Each time she waited for the bees to rise up and blame her. They only squirmed and crawled over each other, a massive, black heart, beating with expectation, waiting to burst.

  It was getting so dark outside! The next crashing train finally collided with the forest, sending towers of flame skyward. Sam lay on her side and watched through the door as it framed the burning woods. One wasp zig-zagged outside the door, hesitating. When it finally entered the shed, it did not join the swelling mass in the corner but circled over Sam’s head. Each orbit brought it lower, and closer. She could see every detail with her one clear eye, the two sections of its bulbous body pressed together as if bound by the triple bands of white circling its abdomen, like an evil bumblebee. Long legs curled beneath it, and Sam could hear the whine of its wings.

  Somehow, she understood this small creature was to be her executioner. When it landed on her forehead, touching its tiny legs to her skin a pinprick of heat spread from the poisoned barb it injected into her flesh. Then the world inside the shed exploded in a buzz saw whine. Sam cried out and wondered, even as the thousands of others swarmed over her, crawling into her nostrils and open, screaming mouth, if these types of bees died when they stung. Would her death mean theirs, as well? Would she be found with a thousand corpses littering the ground like a dark halo?

  Then all rational thought was lost. One sting burned into a dozen, a hundred then a thousand across every part of her body, until there was only a single explosion of fire inside her, burning her down to ash.

  XVI

  Heat like he’d never before experienced slammed into his face from the hole left in the wake of the fallen wall and chimney. Corey raised his hands, crawled backwards, hot glass pressing into his palms. Someone was laughing. He turned over, got to his hands and knees and tried to brush away the glass. The heat at his back threatened to ignite him.

  Nurse Charles was a small white dog again, pacing back and forth with a terrified, uncertain whine. The strips and torn flesh and organs that once were Vanessa flipped and curled, rebuilding themselves into a whole, but still unrecognizable as human. The face was torn past recognition with two teeth dangling from the upper jaw, the bottom hanging from shredded muscle. Nevertheless, the sound, the laugh, came from her. More like wet gasps, but in Corey’s mind still laughter.

  He looked over at Hank Cowles. The old man stared back at him, defeated. “You stupid, little man.”

  The body across the room continued to twitch and laugh. The whining little dog spat out its sour victory with a series of yips.

  The shaking of the planet continued, building; time had not stopped after all. The longer he stood in the middle of the house, the worse it cracked and shattered around him. He could do nothing. Nothing.

  He whispered, “Sam,” and stood, wavering on the unsteady floor, the back of his head seared by the heat outside. All he could do was try to save his wife one more time.

  XVII

  Vanessa

  Vanessa couldn’t move her legs or head. An invisible, unrelenting weight pressed her down, a monstrous hand she could not see. She stared at Corey, watched him resolve some unspoken conflict, then run into the kitchen. Rough squeak of the back door opening, never closing. Vanessa spit, tasted blood dripping down her cheek. She assumed it was blood, probably filling her lungs. Harder to breathe, the irresistible weight her own body imploding into itself. She tried again to move her head. It rolled, eyes lowering towards the rug. Her left arm was smeared with blood pumping from the thin valleys cut along the skin. Further past this, the knife lay discarded on the rug in the center of the room. The white handle glistened red. She focused on it as the room got cold, winter cold, her skin freezing over like the surface of a lake. She looked nowhere else but at the stained handle of the knife. Shock, my body's just going into shock. There was no little dog pacing the room beside her, whining. It was only her imagination. There had been no monster dog, either, no Cerberus’ angry snarling heads. She let these thoughts roll around, convincing herself of their truth. The room was silent and cold. Something buzzed somewhere out of her line of sight. A lone bee, perhaps lost after it had fallen out of Corey’s madness. Like the dog.

  There is no dog.

  The buzzing stopped, returned again. Was the bee cold, too? Was it falling asleep in this sudden winter like its kind always did? The third time it came she recognized the sound. Her vibrating cell phone, discarded on the couch. May as well be a thousand miles away…

  XVIII

  Corey

  When Corey burst through the back door, the world he’d seen through his car window less than an hour ago was gone. This was the world of his nightmares, darkness and fire, air like an oven, burning. His lungs seized and curled when he tried to suck it in. Pain, like broken glass filling his lungs. He grabbed the porch railing and bent over, but the porch was burning around him. Corey stumbled down twisting, wooden steps, breathing out slowly, trying to find clean air. The structure collapsed behind him, tossing him forward onto the ground, pushed and buffeted by a wind which could not decide in which direction to blow. He grabbed a handful of dying grass, took in another breath. Hurt less this time, and he tried to ignore the image of the inside of his lungs burnt and bleeding. Corey looked behind him. Something massive and bright rose in the distance beyond the house and trees, a head made of fire and clouds, rising higher…

  He ran hard, leaping forward to keep his momentum towards the edge of the woods. The tops of the trees snapped and split under crowns of flame. He passed beneath them, falling now and then against a prone trunk but as quickly rising back up, and he continued deeper into the woods. Around him, branches snapped and fell, hundreds of burning tines impaled into the ground, searching him out. One would find their mark eventually, pin him to the earth where he would curl and twist like an ant under a magnifying glass. If that happened, he was done. Until then, he pushed on and tried to stay on the path. It was dark; so much smoke, hard to see any details. Corey screamed against the world’s dying groans, shouting Samantha’s name, calling out for Abby—

  – who spun in a slow circle in the oversized family room, hands over her ears to block out the noise around her. The tall windows bent inward, then breathed out, pushing away from flames the girl felt but never saw but which danced around the house like a monstrous snake. The air in the room was sharp, tingling and burning her skin. She imagined herself tossed into an oven by a witch who had sneaked behind the three of them when they weren’t looking. Honey was like a leaf on the floor, curled and brown. The line where her charred body ended and her mother’s began was hard to discern. They’d fallen together from the chair, eyes squeezed closed, skin blackening and peeling
as the oven cooked them alive. Abby lowered one arm from her head and saw the tender flesh redden, darken, flake away. As if waiting for her attention, pain seared up her arms, invisible fire burrowing deep inside her. She screamed for her mother, turned around for a place to escape. The old man who had picked up Miss Charles the other day stood at the entrance to the foyer. He was grinning, his face pinched, as in pain. Abby held out her bleeding and peeling arms but lowered them when she saw the dirty old pitchfork in his hands. The stained wooden handle dripped red over his fingers—

  “Leave her alone!” Corey screamed, lashing out at a branch that had whipped across his face. It swung back, insistent as a reporter’s microphone, everyone screaming for answers, devouring his pain with an insatiable appetite like a dog to its food. Through squinted eyes, he saw the woods, bending down and splitting as it burned, but also Abby stepping backwards, tripping over the body of her new friend and the girl’s mother. Hank ran across the room now, the painful smile stretching wider and wider and hands rising and pointing the—

  “God, please help her!” Corey screamed and tripped again, right ankle twisting under a root. He thrashed free, ignored the pain in his leg, began to fear being turned around when he saw the old shed. On this he focused, nothing else, letting the images in his head, the lies broadcast to his mind fade to a smoldering pain, knowing they were there if he gave them attention. He could not handle the impotent shame which would paralyze him if he did. The shed, only the shed. It was intact but sagging amid the backdrop of the burning forest. Less than a hundred yards from the open door, a tree exploded over the roof. Embers ignited the dry wood, wild hairs of flame spreading towards the peak. Everything would be over soon. All he wanted was to be inside to die with his wife. Die with her, not alone like this. Never alone. Never again. Corey crawled over a trunk, managed a limping stumble into the shed.

  Samantha’s body lay inside. She was black, as if burned away like Abby’s friend. When he reached out to touch her, however, the wasps lifted free, swarmed around his flailing arms for a second before blowing out the door and rising on heated currents away from the shed into the red sky.

  Corey lowered his arms.

  Above him, the ceiling boards burned in a frenzy, the single overhead beam the only thing keeping the structure together. The fire on the roof cast the room in an underwater glitter. Embers fell like red snow around Samantha’s body. A section of burning plywood, curling black, fell loose and draped over her swollen legs. Her pants began to burn. Corey knocked the wood away, patted wildly at her legs until the flames died out. She did not react.

  “Sam?” Even in the firelight from above, her face was featureless. Cheeks, nose, eyes, everything red and swollen, covered with tiny bruises. She looked like a badly made scarecrow. He called her name again but couldn’t hear his own voice over the screaming of the dying world. Embers dropped onto his head. He ignored them. The air smelled like a campfire, like burning hair. He worked loose the knots of the rope, not bothering to be gentle because his wife was dead. His wife was dead and somewhere in the carnage behind him his little daughter was screaming. He heard it even though it couldn’t be her, couldn’t be true. None of this was real.

  His hands got tangled in the rope as he pulled it free. Sam’s terrible face never looked at him, never acknowledged his presence. He was alone at the end of the world. The walls buckled, then collapsed. Corey screamed and tossed the rope aside but it coiled around his head and neck. The beam above groaned and splintered. Corey looked up in time to see its massive, flaming presence draw down onto him. It looked like he was being lifted towards it, higher, higher, the rope tightening around his throat until he could no longer look down at his dead wife, only stare up at the beam suspended in this last moment of time.

  The world died away, slowly, fading with the light.

  The interior of the shed was hot and stagnant, though an occasional wisp of air circulated through cracks and fissures in the roof and walls, bringing with it traces of cool evening breeze. Late birdsong, the gradual emergence of crickets and peepers the only sounds in the this forgotten corner of the property. These, and the creak of the overhead beam, the straining gasp of the dry rope. It was a slight sound, whispering in time with the body swaying back and forth over the empty room. Corey’s final, reflexive twitches subsided. Then he was calm, unconcerned with events of the world around him.

  SATURDAY

  I

  Vanessa

  “Vanessa? Van, can you open your eyes for me?”

  Vanessa tried, but even that small action felt like it would open every slash and cut in her body. She swallowed. Her throat ached, that same cotton-dry pain as when she was five years old and her tonsils were removed. Ice Cream, Bill Cosby had whispered to her in those days from the stereo. She would have smiled if her face didn’t feel like it was bound with tape.

  “Ice Cream,” she whispered, or tried to, unsure if her voice made it through the arid desert of her throat. Andrew didn’t respond. That was Andrew speaking, wasn’t it?

  “Vanessa, I know you’re awake. Open your eyes.”

  She tried again, managed only a slit at first; expected to see Corey’s living room, crumbled walls, angry little dog—no, that hadn’t been real. None of it. Too caught up… What she saw, framed within the slow rising veil of her lashes, was Andrew Booth’s dark and worried face. Behind him a bright room, dull white walls, nonetheless brilliant compared to the faded house in Hillcrest. A single row of fluorescents along the ceiling. Too bright. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she focused only on Andrew. His cheeks were peppered with a day’s stubble. Not like him to come to work unshaven.

  Then she realized, as a dream slowly remembered, this wasn’t a normal day. She wasn’t sure which particular hospital this was. Didn’t look like theirs, but it was a hospital. She was alive. That was something.

  Andrew smiled, though the expression was pulled tight on his scruffy face. “Better. That’s better. Do you know where you are, Vanessa?”

  She looked around, not needing to but wanting to show him she was listening. “Hospital.” Her throat ignited with the word. She flexed her hand, raised her left arm so she could see it better without lifting her head. Bandages wrapped around most of her forearm; another squeezed her bicep.

  “Hurt,” she managed.

  Andrew nodded. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Yes, but you’re going to be OK. Do you understand? You’re going to be fine.” He looked like he was going to cry. She smiled. My sensitive hero…

  The world around her sharpened, nightmare memories of the past few hours rushing back—how long ago had it been? Corey running out of the house. So much blood. Her own blood.

  “Corey…” She tried not to whine but that was how it came out. A sudden, terrible fear.

  Andrew looked down, chin tucked against his chest. He held it long enough to tighten the knot in her stomach. His silence answered the question she couldn’t ask. He finally looked up, fighting to retain a focused, neutral air and failing miserably. He said, “Do you remember, Vanessa?”

  Her head felt as if it was mounted on a pole. With her right arm she reached up, touched the bandage wrapped around her throat. She tried to remember where else she’d been bitten. Cut, I was cut, not bitten, there had been no dog…

  “He’s gone, isn’t he?” Speaking hurt, but she was getting used to the pain. Maybe she just didn’t care anymore. Her mouth was so dry. Ice chips, why wouldn’t they give her some ice chips?

  Andrew stared into her face for a long time. Then nodded.

  No, that wasn’t enough. Corey had run from the house. Gone could mean anything. Gone could mean ran away. She knew it did not, but needed to say it out loud.

  “Corey’s dead.”

  Andrew’s face changed, no longer as tight, less controlled. Relief? That he wouldn’t have to say the words, perhaps, or that she was awake and talking. Maybe that she was still sane enough to say them.

  “Yes.
He is." He laid a large hand over a spot on her arm between two bandages. "I’m sorry.” She savored the contact, let his warmth give whatever comfort she could pull from it.

  Samantha was dead, and Abby. Now Corey. She did not want to ask how it happened, had a glimmer of the shed but wasn’t sure why. Hank had sent him there. No, she thought, Corey had sent himself. She wasn’t sure she wanted the image confirmed. Not yet. The thought wormed into her brain, found a place where it would always refuse to be ignored. She’d let him die. She’d been responsible for him, then let him wander off into the woods to—

  “There was nothing you could do, Van. Do you understand that?”

  “I was hurt,” she said, both to the man sitting on the edge of her bed and maybe to herself. Lying on the floor, bleeding. Her memory of the attack still a mixture of truth and dream, seeing Corey Union running at her from the kitchen, holding the knife, but superimposed over that image the monstrous three-headed dog. Cerberus rising… A hallucination brought on by the stress of the attack. Pulled into his world, as Andrew had warned so often could happen. Seeing herself in the shed, Hank Cowles outside - no, seeing Samantha - not seeing, hearing, Corey's tale. She closed her eyes, clearing the confused jumble written across her brain.

  “The dog. Kept biting me…” Shit, she hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Andrew was worried enough already. Instead of berating her, however, Andrew only nodded.

  “Do you remember the dog?”

  He was being condescending. Worried she was delusional. Robert Schard stepped into view behind him. His lanky form bent over Andrew’s close-cropped head. At least his smile was wide, and very real.

  “Hey, Vanessa. You’re awake! How’re you feeling?”

  She managed a smile, and meant it. Robert’s simple question offered some light into her heart, poured its love like iced lemonade on a hot day, she might have written. Samantha might have written, if she’d been given more time in her life to do such things. She was just a baby. Just a baby.