by Mark Lukens
“Maybe I should see if the guy needs some cash,” Lee muttered.
Wyatt almost expected Lee to reach for his wallet, but he knew Lee was too cheap for that. And this wasn’t what Wyatt wanted; he didn’t want Lee to help Daniel out or feel sorry for him, he wanted Lee to get rid of this guy.
As if Lee had read Wyatt’s mind, he spoke: “Look, this new guy . . .” He paused, trying to remember the guy’s name.
“Daniel.”
“Yeah. Daniel. He’s a good worker, right?”
“Yeah.” Wyatt had to admit that. Even though Daniel looked like he didn’t get enough sleep—his red-rimmed eyes and ever-present vacant stare were evidence of that—he always hustled when it came to work.
“He gets along with the crew?” Lee asked. “Hector likes him?”
Wyatt nodded. Again, he couldn’t argue with that, and he knew Lee would ask Hector about it later. But it was true, Daniel got along with all the guys. He was quiet, but everyone else seemed to like him.
“So what’s your problem with him? Because he might be sleeping in the basement? I’m sure as soon as he gets some money he’ll get a place.”
Wyatt only nodded. Why argue? Lee seemed to have his mind made up.
“Look,” Lee said. “Just give this guy a few weeks. See how he does. What’s he been here? Four days? Five? Once he gets some money, then check the basement in the next house and see if there’s a . . .”
Nest, Wyatt thought.
“. . . a bundle of clothes and blankets and cans down there,” Lee finished. “But let’s give the guy a chance. You know how hard it is to find good workers.”
Wyatt knew.
“Okay. I gotta run. How much longer on this house?”
“Should be done by tomorrow,” Wyatt told him.
“Good. I’ve got another two houses lined up and waiting on you guys.”
And there it was—Lee’s mind had already moved on to other things. Problem solved.
But to Wyatt the problem wasn’t solved. He knew that Daniel had been sleeping in the last house that they’d hung the drywall in, and he knew he was sleeping in this house at night. He was going to prove it. He only had tonight, but he’d already planned on coming back later, sometime after midnight, and catch Daniel in the act. Take photos with his phone. Somehow he had to get this creepy guy fired.
Wyatt told himself that he wasn’t scared of Daniel. Wyatt was six foot two and two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle . . . well, mostly muscle. He wasn’t scared of anybody. But he was bothered by Daniel. And he was wary of him for some reason, plagued by an eerie feeling that he couldn’t articulate. There was just something wrong with Daniel—that was the only way he could describe it.
*
Daniel knew Wyatt was on to him.
But he didn’t really care. He knew this was coming, and he wanted it to happen. He had prayed it would happen. He was sure tonight would be the night. Oh God, he prayed it would happen tonight.
At the end of the day, after rolling up the tools and packing them into Wyatt’s work truck, Daniel asked Hector for a ride into town.
But Hector was going in the other direction.
“I can give you a lift,” Wyatt said, eyeballing him, daring him to turn down the offer.
“Okay,” Daniel told him. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Daniel knew where this was going.
Twenty minutes later they were driving down the road, a blanket of tension smothering them.
“Where you headed to?” Wyatt asked, gripping the steering wheel hard as he drove, his forearm muscles bunching up.
“Just into town. You can drop me off at Robinson and Third Street.”
“That’s where you live?”
Daniel had to think quickly; it was something he had learned to do over the last few years of carrying this burden, this thing that had cost him everything, turning him into a drifter, into a vagabond, into a pariah. And now he had a chance . . . Wyatt had no idea what he was fucking with.
“I’m meeting a friend,” Daniel finally said.
“Going to a bar?” Wyatt asked, accusation in his tone.
“I don’t drink.”
They pulled up to the intersection, and Wyatt pulled over into a parking lot to let Daniel out.
Daniel knew Wyatt wanted to fire him. But he also knew that Wyatt didn’t have the authority to do that, or he would’ve already done it. None of that really mattered now. Daniel just needed to hang around long enough to get Wyatt to come to the house at night. He’d chosen Wyatt, making sure Wyatt didn’t have any kids—that was the one condition that he’d given himself when looking for the next person, the next recipient of this burden that he carried.
Of course there was always the danger that Wyatt wouldn’t show up tonight, that these plans would fall through, that things wouldn’t line up like they were supposed to—he’d been through that so many times before. It wasn’t easy ridding himself of this burden. He couldn’t just run up to someone and thrust it upon them. No, that person, that future recipient, had to come looking for it, just like Daniel had done so long ago. It was hard to find a good recipient, but Daniel believed that he’d found one in Wyatt. But if not, if Wyatt finally talked Lee into firing him, then Daniel would just move on until he found another possible recipient, someone else like Wyatt.
Daniel was almost too nervous as he got out of Wyatt’s truck, too nervous that he might say the wrong thing and tip his hand. “Thanks for the ride,” he said.
“You gonna be at work tomorrow?” Wyatt asked.
“Yes,” Daniel said as he stood outside the truck with the door still open. “I’ll be there.”
“I don’t want you there. You know that, don’t you?”
Daniel just stared at Wyatt in that way that he knew Wyatt hated. He knew he might be pushing his luck right now, provoking a fight with this bigger man. In that case, he knew he couldn’t fight back if Wyatt attacked him—he didn’t have the energy for that. The beating from Wyatt might be painful, but it would be nothing compared to what he went through all the time now.
“I know you don’t like me,” Daniel told Wyatt. He almost added that he didn’t really care, but he bit his tongue and kept up his deadpan stare.
Wyatt smiled, a lopsided and mean smear of a smile. He nodded slightly as he spoke. “You’re right about that. Why don’t you just quit?”
“I need the money,” Daniel answered softly. But he really needed something else even more. He didn’t want to carry on this conversation any further. He was pretty sure he had antagonized Wyatt enough to get him to the house tonight. He shut the door and walked away. He heard the truck pulling away behind him, the back tires barking on the pavement as Wyatt gunned the gas.
Daniel didn’t look back.
*
Two hours later, after a meal that Daniel knew would be sucked out of him soon, he hitched a ride as far as he could get, and then walked the rest of the way back to the house.
He approached the house carefully, looking for Wyatt’s truck. But he didn’t see it anywhere. That didn’t mean that Wyatt wasn’t already inside that dark house waiting for him. It had happened one time before. Daniel had succeeded in getting a possible recipient to a location, but the recipient had showed up earlier than expected. He’d been waiting for Daniel with three of his friends. The four men had beaten Daniel up pretty badly—he probably should’ve gone to a hospital, but he couldn’t let the doctors and nurses see the wounds all over his body that his clothing hid.
Daniel went around to the back of the house, to a window he’d left open just a crack. Even if someone would’ve double-checked the windows and locked them, Daniel had become an expert at picking locks these last two and a half years. The window was still unlocked and opened just a crack. He slid the window all the way open and crawled through it into the house. Inside, he walked from room to room. All of the ceilings were hung with drywall, and about half of the walls were finished. There was no place for a person
to hide in here, and after a quick search Daniel knew the house was empty.
He went down to the basement. He didn’t have a flashlight, but he didn’t need one; he knew the basement well enough after only two nights down there. He went to the corner underneath the stairs where his wadding of extra clothes and an old blanket were. He took off all of his clothes and folded them up neatly; he stacked them up in a pile away from his nest. He sat down on the blanket and his other clothing, waiting for the thing to come from the darkness.
He might have dozed off for an hour, but the thing never let him sleep too long. He heard it in the darkness, moving around, its sharp claws clicking along the concrete as it hurried towards him. It latched on to him. It sucked at his blood, Daniel was sure of that. Was it a vampire? Daniel couldn’t say. It looked like some kind of spidery creature, like what an octopus might look like if it could skitter across the land. But it sucked out more than just blood when it fed on him—it sucked at his energy, his will, his soul.
Daniel thought back to that night two and a half years ago, when he’d come across that old man in the alleyway. He’d come back that night to find the old man, bringing him some takeout food and the little extra cash that he could afford to part with. But when he saw the old man lying on the filthy asphalt amid a nest of trash and boxes, he froze. The old man’s naked body was so pale in the lights from the far-off streetlamps. There were strange wounds all over the man’s flesh.
He should’ve run right at that moment. He should’ve known then that there was something wrong with this old man. He wasn’t a kindly old man suffering through a bout of bad luck; he was something . . . something different.
But instead of running, Daniel had walked closer to the naked man that night, concerned about his wounds. “Are you okay?” he’d asked the man.
The old man had laughed at him. “Finally,” he’d said with tears in his eyes. But even though he’d begun crying, he was still cackling like a madman.
And that’s when Daniel saw the creature on the man’s back, a tentacle stretching around his body, the creature dislodging itself from the old man’s flesh.
Daniel ran then. He dropped the takeout box and bolted blindly down the alley as fast as he could towards the street.
“You can run, but it will find you!” the old man shouted. “It’s seen you now and it will always find you!”
Daniel made it out to the street, and he ran two more blocks before chancing a look behind him. He didn’t see some creature chasing him; he saw nothing but the empty sidewalk.
A few blocks later, when he was closer to home, Daniel began to convince himself that he hadn’t seen some kind of spidery creature on that old man. It hadn’t been real. He got home to his girlfriend and gave her a kiss after locking the door to their apartment.
She could tell something was wrong with him, but he told her everything was fine. He just needed a drink, then a shower, and then some sleep. He was just exhausted, he told her, that’s all.
That night he woke from a nightmare. The sound of the barbs at the ends of the creature’s tentacles clicking along the asphalt as the thing chased him down the alley echoed in his mind. He jumped awake, and he swore he could hear those same sounds coming from somewhere inside the apartment.
The creature had found him.
They needed to run. He turned to wake up his girlfriend, but he found a shredded mess of gore where her abdomen used to be. Her eyes were wide open in the darkness, staring blindly up at the ceiling.
Daniel had run then. He had no choice. The cops would never believe that he hadn’t killed his girlfriend. He would have to keep running.
The next day Daniel went back to the alley to find the old man, but he was gone. Maybe the old man was dead. Maybe that thing had gone back and killed him after Daniel had run last night. He didn’t see any blood anywhere among the cardboard boxes and trash.
Daniel left town that day, on the run from that moment, moving from place to place. But no matter where he ran to, no matter where he hid, that thing always found him. It found him every night, and every night it came to feed.
Night after night it fed. Daniel wanted to die, but he was too cowardly to kill himself. He just wished the thing would leave him alone. He realized that he needed to find someone to pass this thing off on like the old man had done to him. He needed to find a recipient for his burden. And maybe tonight that recipient would come.
*
Wyatt told his wife that he needed to go back to the house they were working on, afraid that he’d left some tools behind. Audrey wasn’t buying it, probably thinking that he was going out to hook up with some girl. He’d cheated on her in the past, but tonight was different—he wished he could tell her that, tell her the truth.
He left before the argument started. It was almost midnight, and he was going to be tired tomorrow morning. But it was going to be worth it to get rid of Daniel. He probably would’ve stayed awake all night anyway, just tossing and turning in bed.
As he drove, he wondered why the hell he was doing this, why this was so important to him. He could just dog Daniel day after day on the jobsite, pick at him until he got fed up enough to quit. It might take a while, but he was sure Daniel would eventually quit. But then again, maybe he wouldn’t. Daniel wasn’t a normal person. Wyatt didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.
He had his cell phone with him, and if he caught Daniel there tonight (and he knew Daniel was going to be there tonight as much as he’d ever known anything in his life) then he would snap a photo. Then what? Show Lee? Why? So Lee could feel even sorrier for this guy?
Then what?
Some darker thoughts came to mind, floating up from his subconscious. It almost felt like something was controlling him, like deep down he knew what he really wanted to do when he got to the house but couldn’t admit it to himself.
Wyatt stopped the truck half a mile down the road from the house, around the bend in the narrow road that cut through these woods. He got out and grabbed his drywall hammer from his tool belt on the passenger floorboard; it had a hatchet on the other end like all drywall hammers did. He stuffed his cell phone down into the pocket of his jeans, and then he grabbed a heavy Maglite flashlight.
He was ready.
He was just going to see if Daniel was there. That’s all.
So why are you bringing your hammer?
Because Daniel might be dangerous.
But that was silly. Wyatt was a lot bigger and stronger than Daniel was.
What if Daniel had people with him? Some of his homeless friends.
No, there was another reason Wyatt was bringing his hammer with him, a reason he didn’t want to look square in the eye.
“. . . gonna make sure this shit ends tonight,” he heard himself whispering in the darkness as he walked towards the house at the end of the road; the house was just a dark bulky shape in the clearing.
The half-moon and the stars of the cloudless night sky provided enough light for him to see his way to the house, and his eyes had adjusted well to the darkness. He didn’t want to use the flashlight until he absolutely needed to.
He had the key to the house with him, and he slipped it into the front door. He worked slowly, being as quiet as he could. He entered the home and carefully shut the door and locked it.
His footsteps sounded loud, and they echoed off the completed walls and ceilings even though he tried to be quiet. The plywood subfloor creaked a little as he walked.
Daniel would hear him coming.
Who cares?
Daniel didn’t have anywhere to run—he was trapped down in the basement now.
Wyatt shuffled down the basement steps, not bothering to be so quiet now that he knew Daniel was trapped down here. Halfway down the steps he heard the noises from the basement, some kind of slurping noises. And then a moan. A moan of pleasure? Of pain?
What was that freak doing down here? Did he have a girl down here with him? A guy? Wyatt pictured an orgy of homeless men.
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At the bottom of the steps Wyatt turned his flashlight on. The slurping sounds were louder now, and the moaning had changed to laughter—an eerie laughter floating out of the darkness towards him.
“Daniel!” Wyatt yelled. “What are you doing down here? You need to leave this property.”
More laughter.
Wyatt was starting to get a little freaked out; he could admit that to himself. But he was also becoming angry; those dark thoughts he’d had earlier began taking over his mind. He gripped the hammer and his heavy flashlight even harder, like they were weapons.
And they were weapons, weren’t they?
“Daniel.”
No answer, just that deep and throaty cackling.
“You hear me, Daniel? You need to leave. I’ll call the cops.”
“No you won’t,” Daniel finally answered through his laughter.
The anger in Wyatt took over. He marched around the steps towards the area underneath it where he’d seen the
(nest)
bundle of clothes and blankets earlier today.
Daniel’s voice was suddenly deep and menacing. “You’re here for a different reason, aren’t you?”
That strange slurping noise had continued the whole time.
Wyatt aimed his flashlight beam at the corner beyond the space underneath the basement stairs and saw Daniel on his bedding of blankets and old clothes. Daniel was completely naked, his pale body covered with wounds . . . old wounds and fresh wounds, blood smeared across his skin. His hair was messy, his eyes wild and bulging.