Rogue

by Greg F. Gifune

  Her upper lip trembles into a snarl but she makes no sound. Blue eyes suddenly dark, she steps forward, grabs the door and slams it shut.

  The music downstairs continues, pounding in time with the throbbing in my temples. I look to the bedroom. The young woman is still there, only she’s looking right at me now with her black eyes, the dreads hanging on either side of her face like dead snakes and her earrings swaying as she slowly rocks her head back and forth.

  “Where am I?” I ask her.

  “Closer,” she says in a smoky voice.

  My eyes fill with tears of horror and fear. Ashamed, I angrily wipe them away. “Closer to what?”

  “Home.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A warrior,” she tells me, “the same as you.”

  “I’m no warrior.”

  “You think the war stops for you? It never stops.”

  Fear becomes rage. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

  Suddenly something smashes into the window behind her with a hideous thud, startling me. The woman never looks back, but a large black bird has crashed into the window and now lies twitching on the sill, a smear of blood splashed against the pane. After a moment, another bird crashes into the window and falls away into the night, blood spraying and falling through the darkness amidst an ocean of snowflakes.

  A smile slowly creeps across her face. “They’re dying for you, Zeke.”

  Behind me, something unseen scurries down the hallway. Something small.

  My hands ball into fists, and through gritted teeth I tell her my name is Cameron Horne. “I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Maybe you’re not who you think you are.”

  Another noise behind me draws my attention back to the staircase. A middle-aged man I’ve never seen before is huddled a few steps from the top of the stairs, peeking at me through the balusters, his dark eyes wild as if possessed and his face twisted into a hideously demonic grin. He begins to laugh. It is a horrible sound.

  But he’s not looking at me. He’s looking past me.

  I follow his gaze. Crawling along the hallway…on the floor, the walls and impossibly, the ceilings…children…horribly mutilated, deformed and bloody nude children, lost little lambs damned to a Hell they should be nowhere near, that they should have no concept of or—no—no—not children but…something like children, grunting and snorting, pigs at a trough. Their eyes—my God—their eyes, what—what’s happened to their eyes, all white and glistening, no iris, no pupil, what—what have they done to their eyes?

  I step into the bedroom, close the door behind me and lean back against it, watching the woman with dreadlocks throughout. “What’s happening to me?”

  “You’re dying.”

  “Dying? I—what—what do you mean?”

  She raises her hands and opens them, showing me her palms. Tattooed across one is the sigil of Baphomet, and the other bears a satanic cross. “You’re dying,” she says again. “Slowly…gradually…and as before, as always, with death comes life. Who should know that better than you?”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  The woman lowers her hands. “I know.”

  “Who are you?”

  She watches me but doesn’t answer.

  “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” I ask. “Another place, maybe…another time…why can’t I remember?”

  “Do you want to remember?”

  “Yes. How do I know you? Where have I seen you before?”

  “Where the rainbow ends,” she says.

  “I don’t understand. What does that mean?” Something scratches at the door, sending a chill of terror through me. I lean more of my weight against it. “What have I done? What have I done to make this happen?”

  The woman moves around the side of the bed, her gait slinky and sexy now as she makes her way closer to me. Stopping just inches away, she leans in, brushes her lips against my ear and whispers, “You exist.”

  Dropping to her knees before me, she reaches for my belt and undoes my pants.

  “It’s all right,” she tells me, squeezing me and pulling me free. “It’s all right now.”

  “Please don’t,” I tell her, but my voice is weak, the words are slurred and I can already feel her warm, wet mouth suckling me as I grow hard between her lips.

  Fuck her throat until she pukes. Fuck that little slut mouth until—

  “No!”

  I push her away, yank open the door and stagger into the hallway, expecting to see the man from the stairs and the hideous little beings waiting for me. But they’re not there. The music increases in volume as I stumble toward the staircase, and as I reach the top of the stairs I stop and look down through the darkness to the short hallway below. I can see one corner of the living room. Some partygoers are standing and talking, others dance furiously to the thrashing guitars and hammering drums. Remy is nowhere in sight.

  Looking back down the hallway, I see that the bathroom door is still closed, but there is something moving in there, I can see something moving beneath the door, something wet and slithering and alive, a hideous tentaclelike appendage poking out and snaking along the carpet as if for purchase.

  Fumbling with my zipper and belt until they’re back in place, I force myself down the stairs, taking them at a tremendous pace and nearly falling several times before I reach the bottom. Frantic, I want nothing more than to find Remy and get as far away from this house as possible, but I am immediately assaulted by the raucous music and the loud voices of the partygoers. The house is crowded with people, a sea of them surging and dancing as if under the control of something demonic, their faces and bodies twisted and jerking about, writhing like pieces of a greater whole.

  Calling Remy’s name, I push my way through the crowd, but I don’t see her anywhere. In fact, I cannot locate anyone I know or even recognize, yet nearly all of the people in the room stop and tug at me or smile and say things to me as if they know exactly who I am, their voices indecipherable amidst the raging music. I keep on, disoriented and struggling through waves of dancers, but still, Remy is nowhere to be found.

  “Remy!”

  My head reels. Fearful I might pass out, I whirl around on shaky legs, my shoulders knocking aside the partygoers that surround me, their faces and bodies flying by in a blur, their laughter and voices steady hums beneath the powerful driving music.

  And then the entire room is spinning out of control, everything distorted and indistinct, dizzying, a carnival ride gone wild.

  “Remy!”

  We’re coming for you…

  “Remy, where are you!”

  I close my eyes, and it feels like I’ve taken flight, or perhaps left my body entirely.

  You can’t stop it…

  My eyes open, the room tilts and I realize I’m falling.

  You can’t save her…

  I land hard, on my back, the air knocked from my lungs in one violent rush.

  You can’t even save yourself…

  And the dancers are coming closer, closing the circle, their feet stomping and moving all around me, stepping on me, kicking at me. I struggle to get up onto all fours, but they surge closer, knocking me back onto my side. The music is so loud, so strong I—I want it to stop. It’s tearing my skull apart.

  “Remy! Remy, help me!”

  Amidst the forest of gyrating legs and feet, a closer look reveals that some do not belong to human beings, but things that more closely resemble hoofs. Goats, there are goats here, their horns long and dark and curled, beady dead eyes staring at me blankly through the throng of dancers.

  A nude man a few feet away crawls along the floor, his body and face slick with blood. He looks at me and laughs; his white teeth startling against the crimson backdrop. He says something but I can’t hear him above the din of music and growling vocals.

  Someone steps on him, the heel of their shoe stomping the small of his back. Blood erupts from the man’s mouth but he laughs, wide-eyed wi
th excitement.

  I am kicked in the ribs—hard—and I try again to get to my feet despite the sharp pain that rockets from my midsection up into my armpit.

  And then someone grabs hold of me and pulls me to my feet.

  “Cam, can you hear me?”

  God help me.

  Remy, is it—is it Remy?

  There is no God here.

  And then it is quiet and I am spinning…turning…falling…tumbling through unimaginable darkness…spiraling away slowly…a dead body drifting through the soundless vacuum of space.

  There is nothing here.

  Never have I been so completely alone.

  A voice, faint but audible, slowly emerges from the darkness. I know that voice.

  It’s my own.

  “Hello?”

  It’s me, I…I’m alive. I’m alive!

  “Hello?”

  Wind…is that wind?

  “Hello!”

  No. Breathing, it’s—it’s breathing, someone breathing in my ear.

  A flash of light, a piercing high-pitched pain stabbing my temple, and then I’m standing before an end table in my great room, the cordless phone in my hand.

  The line goes dead. A dial tone sounds and I drop the phone. It crashes against the floor as I stagger toward the bar.

  I don’t make it.

  Later, Remy finds me cowering in our bedroom closet.

  “You’re having nightmares, sweetheart,” she assures me, leading me back to bed and holding me in her arms, “terrible, terrible nightmares.”

  I suspect most women confronted with such dramatics would react differently, but not Remy, not my beautiful, loving Remy.

  “And that’s all they are, Cam. That’s all they are.”

  I want so very much to believe her.

  She lies down with me and gently strokes my forehead until I finally allow sleep to take me, my face nestled snugly against her breasts.

  I dream of nothing. I dream of Hell.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Come morning, I awaken to the sound of the car alarm. Remy is gone, but the young man is waiting for me out by the fire pit in the backyard, just as I knew he would be. I step outside and cross the yard. I swear it snowed the night before, but there is no trace of it, no signs. Instead, I find a chilly and overcast morning.

  The young man sees me, pulls his cigarettes from his jacket pocket and holds the pack and a lighter out for me. He looks worse than the last time I saw him, paler, thinner, sickly. “Figured since you started again you might want one,” he tells me.

  I’m too exhausted and battered to argue with him, so I take the cigarettes, light one, then hand them back. “How do you know the things you know?”

  He shrugs.

  “You know the future, and things you couldn’t possibly know. How do you do it?”

  “Perspective,” Mac says. “If you stand over an anthill watching the ants go about their daily lives, you know what you know not because you have special powers, but because of your perspective. You’ve got a God’s-eye view—best seat in the house—and one that allows you to see things those ants can’t, things you see and understand long before they do. Doesn’t mean you’re a god; just observant.”

  “But you’re not just an observer. You’re a part of this too, aren’t you?”

  “In a way.”

  “You know what that’s all about?” I ask, motioning to the woods and the whining car alarm.

  He takes a drag on his cigarette and exhales through his nose. As the smoke dissipates, a slow trickle of blood begins to leak from his left nostril. “Yeah,” he replies, “I do.”

  “You’re bleeding,” I tell him.

  He flicks the cigarette away and wipes the blood from his face with his fingers. A second trickle replaces the first but he seems not to care. “She’s not going to call,” he says. “You need to go to her.”

  “Who?”

  “Marianne.” His right nostril begins to bleed. “She wants to call, but she won’t.”

  “Mac, you’re bleeding.”

  “She’s so afraid she doesn’t know what to do,” he says. “She knows the truth.”

  “About what’s happening to me?”

  “Go to her. You don’t have much time.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “No one’s all right.”

  I watch him bleed. “Tell me who you are.”

  “My name’s McEnroe,” he says. “You know, like the tennis player. Only it’s spelled a little different.”

  The car alarm stops.

  “Am I in Hell?” I ask.

  Mac shakes his head. “Not yet.”

  * * *

  On an unassuming side street in a quiet residential neighborhood in South Boston, I find Marianne’s first-floor apartment. Located in a double-decker, I once picked her up out in front when she was training and we were doing field work, but I’ve not been back since and have never been inside. Now, with a gentle rain falling, I sit in my car and watch her building for several minutes, taking note of the street and surrounding houses and apartments as well. An elderly man moves along the street with an umbrella in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other, but otherwise, the street is empty. Marianne’s car is parked a few spaces away.

  Moving quickly, I take the steps and slip in through the front door. I find myself in a small foyer, a staircase directly in front of me and doors to separate apartments on either side of it. I know hers is the one to the left, so I locate a doorbell alongside the casing and press that. When no one answers, I knock.

  The door swings open.

  Craning my neck, I step through the opening but can’t see much. “Marianne? It’s me, Cam.”

  No answer.

  “Marianne?” I call again. “Are you there? It’s Cam.”

  I move farther inside.

  The apartment is small, cluttered, decorated in a dated manner one might expect from a much older woman, and smells like potpourri. I step directly into a living room, close the door behind me and venture deeper into the apartment.

  I do not have to go far before I find Marianne sitting on the floor alongside a large couch. Dressed in a pair of sweatpants, a T-shirt and white socks, she stares right at me but there is no recognition, no life or light in her at all, and at first I think she’s dead.

  “Marianne?” I say, softly now.

  Her emerald eyes blink once…twice, and she slowly cocks her head, obviously seeing me for the first time. Brows furrowed, she grimaces and shakes her head no. “You can’t…You can’t be here,” she says, her voice raspy and raw, weak.

  “Are you all right?” I ask, crouching down but keeping some distance.

  She looks at me as if I’m crazy.

  I notice a bottle of Jack Daniel’s lying empty and on its side on the floor next to her. Alongside it is a prescription drug bottle for some sort of anti-anxiety pill. In her lap is a 9mm handgun.

  “Marianne, why do you have a gun?”

  “I’m from a family of cops,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “I grew up around them. I know how to handle them.”

  “Why is it in your lap?”

  She smiles but it’s not her typical grin. This is something different, something bleak and hopeless. Slowly, she raises the gun to her temple.

  “Don’t,” I say, holding my hands up like this might help. “Marianne, look at me. Don’t. Put the gun down, okay? Just put it down and we’ll talk.”

  She chuckles joylessly and drops her hand back to her lap. “You really still believe it matters?”

  “Of course it matters. What happened?”

  “You were right. Had one of my brothers do a full run on Copeland, and there’s absolutely nothing on him beyond the dates we had. It’s like he came into existence suddenly and without any prior history.” She leans toward me, eyes wide and still glistening. “And do you know why that is? Because before then he didn’t fucking exist. Only that’s impossible, right? You know, except for the part where ap
parently it isn’t.”

  Never before have I seen her so physically and psychologically devastated. “How long have you been up?”

  “All night. Relatively sure I won’t ever sleep again.”

  “Did you drink that entire bottle of Jack?”

  She glances at it with contempt. “Evidently.”

  “How many of those pills did you take?”

  “Let’s say more than two.”

  “Give me the gun, Marianne.”

  “Yeah, definitely not gonna do that.” She takes it from her lap and holds it down against the side of her leg to illustrate the point. “Just get out. Run while you still can. It’s your only chance.”

  “I can’t leave you alone like this.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  “Let me help you.”

  “You can’t.”

  Something slithers quickly along the floor and into a dark hallway on the far side of the room before I can clearly see what it is. I regain my feet, distracted by more movement through the shadows along the walls, in the corners.

  “I have to get you out of here,” I tell her. “It’s not safe here.”

  “It’s not safe anywhere. I figured this had to be some sort of elaborate mistake, right? So I went to see your boy Copeland and find out for myself.”

  My heart plummets. “No.”

  “Oh yes.” A dark cloud passes across her pale face. “And he showed me things, Cam…things no one should ever fucking see.”

  I can feel my anger rising. “Did he hurt you? What did he do?”

  “It’s all a lie,” she says flatly. “And you know it.”

  “I told you to stay away from him.”

  “Yes, you did.” Marianne’s eyes move and slide about as if she’s lost control of them. They seem to return to her, but when they do, they’re dead. “He knows the truth. He knows all of it.”

  “Copeland’s a bag of shit. A sexual predator that—”

  “He knows the goddamn truth!” she snaps. “And he knows you.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Did you hear me? He knows you.”

  I know you, Horne.

  “He knows nothing.”

  “He knows everything.” Marianne turns away, no longer on the verge of tears but complete collapse. “Go home, Cam. Go home.”