by David Beers
“Sir...” she whispered. The man's head shook, or maybe only twitched. He didn't look up and his grip didn't loosen.
Never, in her short life, had Alisha been so frightened of death and so sure that she wanted no part of the afterlife.
Alex held the pen and even though his eyes stared at it, his mind paid no attention. Thoughts swirled and swelled, his life in the balance. The voice that spoke, both his and another's, made this sound so easy. So right. He had no reason being here, just as his parents hadn't. His life was inconsequential, and when he recognized that, it left only one option.
Except his parents never believed any of that. They struggled for years without the pills that Alex took daily. They fought until their minds broke. Now, he was here, confronting this place for thirty seconds, and ready to put a pen through his neck.
Even so, what did they matter? They had been wrong and were dead now. Gone, the same way he would be, should be, because what right did he have to stand in front of the wishes of the eternal?
Alex's pupils were near pinpoints, blocking out the majority of the light in the room, concentrating only on what he held in his hand.
It snapped, like a wire pulled too tight. The connection, the voice, the will inside his head broke and Alex fell back to reality. Sweat covered his face and dripped down his bald head. His hand shook, beginning to ache from his grip on the pen. He didn't drop it though, but looked at it for the first time—realizing what he had been about to do.
I almost killed myself.
He looked up, his hand still shaking but his pupils relenting some. A woman nearly as beautiful as Brittany stood in front of him. Her mouth was open slightly and fear as deep as the ocean lived in her eyes. She knew as well as he what would have happened had he not looked up.
The woman smiled, weak and a bit sickly, but doing her best to look welcoming. “Would you mind if I borrowed that pen?”
Alex looked down at his trembling hand again. He laughed, a chuckle—nothing you would expect from a man who had been seconds from opening arteries in his neck—and dropped the pen to the counter. “Sure,” he said. “Can I get a room?”
Alisha handed the man his room key, little more than a magnetic strip on plastic. Her smile grew, just as she had trained it to, but she held onto her fear. Something had changed when the man looked at her. Something snapping that had been too tense, but would have killed otherwise. She didn't want to give this man a key—didn't want him in the hotel at all. Something was wrong and it hadn't been fixed.
Sweat clung to his face and his hand hadn't stopped shaking. Those weren't the signs of a man on business or touring. They were the signs of a breakdown.
She gave him the key. Watched him walk away without a bag in his hand, heading across the large atrium towards the room that he had paid for. Someone needed to know, needed to be aware of this man.
She left her post, heading through the doors behind the check-in area. No one else was in the lounge and she took a seat—her hands shaking, certain she had been seconds from death and no one else knew.
Alisha put her head in her palms and stared at the table for a long time. She left the hotel that night still thinking about Alex Valdez and her brief encounter with him. When she woke up the next morning, she called in and quit.
Later, she considered it the best decision of her life.
Alex opened the door to his room—sure it was the same room—stepping in as he did. He let the door close behind him, hearing the click of solitude.
His eyes wandered across the area—clean, kept, appearing untouched. He walked farther in, passing the bathroom and moving to the window. His father had looked out this window before, stared and became one with the God that Alex had come to kill. The bed showed no sign of the ritualistic cutting that had occurred above it. The room showed no signs of any...possession? Haunting? None of it.
Alex pulled back the curtains. If he thought this was just a hotel room, even for a second, the view from the window let him know the truth. The storm, the one that bathed the entirety of the sky and land, had grown. He saw it at the edge of the city now; seeming to wrap around the city, if that was possible. Not just moving down from the north, but spreading and circling—moving with a purpose.
He had almost killed himself in the lobby, and now a storm with no end was wrapping itself around the city of Mexico.
“That thing isn't for you. Remember?” He didn't think it was. It spread across the horizon, seeming to wait, moving this far but no closer. Alex watched the clouds, or blackness—or whatever the fuck it was—move, but not forward—only to the sides.
Alex stepped back and sat on the bed. None of this was moving at his pace anymore; somehow things had changed even though he didn't fully understand it. He was now scared of those clouds, devouring everything before them—he knew death lived in this place. The slowing of what he had started concerned him; like the power, if he ever held it, had changed now—and why? That was the important part. What was he missing?
He went to the bed and closed his eyes.
The storm gathered outside, circling him.
Brittany pulled the car into the parking lot. The clouds spread behind her rapidly. The storm had circled the city, and now was pressing in—the clouds rolling towards her, blackness reigning over everything it touched.
She got out of the car, not even considering locking it. The wind hit her with the force of an ocean wave—she grabbed onto the car, steadying herself. She stood fifty feet away from the hotel doors. People were walking in and out without a care; their clothes not moving in the slightest from the wind that bombarded her. Their eyes did not move to the clouds that blocked out everything, perhaps even the sun soon.
Brittany had no time to consider everything these people could or couldn't see. The storm would overtake her soon.
She broke, rushing for the doors. Her purse, her cell phone—she left everything in the car, bringing only what covered her body. The wind caught her, nearly lifting her from her feet as she ran forward. Death lived here, and as she ran toward Alex, it made itself known.
Insurmountable, aggressive death.
Brittany pulled on the door; the giant glass swung with ease and she darted through the opening, coming to a stop in the lobby. All eyes went to the woman who had ran across the parking lot and nearly hurled herself through the doors. Brittany only turned to watch the world move outside.
The storm came forward with the speed of a tornado. Running over cars, flipping them as it rushed forward. Having circled the entire city, cornering what it chased, it moved in. Brittany watched, awestruck, as the storm raced across the parking lot—snapping trees like toothpicks.
The clouds slowed at the same speed they had advanced, halting inches from the glass doors. Brittany watched someone step outside, unaware of the black clouds that stretched from heaven to earth; the person was snatched up like dirt in a vacuum, sucked from his feet and lost as sure as a grain of salt into the ocean.
More people walked out as Brittany stood staring. The results were the same for each one. Not a single person returned.
“Mr. Valdez, your wife is downstairs.”
Alex said nothing.
“Mr. Valdez?”
He held the phone against his ear, having picked it up on the second ring.
He had watched the clouds rush the hotel, certain they would break through his window and end this entire episode—covering him as easily as they had the rest of the landscape. They stopped moments before the glass shattered and he was swarmed. He looked out the window, eyes wide, mind mostly blank; another shift had occurred, a change of where things stood. Alex's heart beat too hard for him to understand much; his survival instinct taking over as logical thought left.
No, all he could do was look on and be thankful he still breathed.
When the telephone rang, Alex moved out of habit rather than conscious choice.
“Mr. Valdez? Hello?” Someone asked. Black clouds danced in front of his wind
ow, wind shaping the substance in swirls, dips, and dives at a pace too fast for Alex to keep up with. Was this real? Was Brittany downstairs? Or was this only the beginning of what he had started? The first lie of many?
“Ask her...where we had sex the first time. Tell her to tell you.” The words came from a place he never tried to access, from the same place that took over when those winds surged toward him—the place that was trying to keep him alive.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“ASK HER.”
Silence came back for quite a few seconds, enough to make Alex think he had entered the reality of this God completely. Finally he heard mumbled words, a hushed whisper.
When the woman spoke, her voice was almost as stern as Alex's had been. “In her dorm room. At college.”
Fear, down from the marrow of his bones, erupted in Alex's body. Seeping from his skeleton into his veins and pulsing through his body. Everything he had tried to avoid, every horror he tried to prevent in coming here—all of it realized. There had never been a dorm room fuck for them, only what her father had thought they were doing in college. They made love for the first time in a hotel room following a date that Alex had tried to make perfect. Until their marriage though, until Brittany's father observed how Alex intended to treat his daughter, the man had been certain they fucked like rabbits every chance they got. So the joke had been Alex took her virginity on her dorm room floor with a roommate watching.
His wife waited downstairs and the death storming outside had followed her here. Not Alex, not to keep him inside—he had come to fight this fucking Thing—but to make sure Brittany stayed with him. To make sure their fates were tied together.
“Send her up.”
19
A God
Maux
It knew itself with a word older than this world. A word given to It in Its youth. The word, Maux, predated everything that Earth had seen or ever cared about.
Maux was awake, almost fully for the first time in centuries. Maux's time was coming—Its reign returning. Maux had not believed It would need to stretch so far to reach this human. Somehow he, this Alex, had walled himself away from Maux and looked to escape completely.
Maux had never known fear, could not comprehend the meaning of such a feeling. It had lived, in one state or another, for nearly ever without a thought of death, without ever meeting another that rivaled Its supremacy—what could It fear? So when Maux was blocked from this man, It did not become frantic about losing the chance to awaken from this slumber. Maux did not understand how this man could have hid himself; the thought alone was preposterous—but still, he had. So Maux stretched. Found another person of the old blood and used her. Did what was necessary to make this man see Maux.
The human believed now, but the result was unexpected. This man was slightly different than the others Maux had known on this world. Other beings, in other universes, could be expected to fight before subjugation, but the human race had been a simple thing. Here this man was though, intent on destroying Maux. The intention was both strange and humorous, but would turn out well. This man had led others to Maux, two, both which would offer their sacrifice for Its feeding. They would all pay heed. They would all become one with Maux. Then It would stretch again, find others to glorify It. Then. Return fully.
Maux would end this when there were no other sacrifices to be had. When this world was void of life, It would leave.
These three would be the first, sacrificing themselves and granting Maux a step closer to freedom.
20
Days Past
Roberta
Roberta Munoz was near death. Not physically, in her mid-twenties, her body still ran perfectly; only her eyes appeared different; her mother noticed the bags beneath them—other than that, physically at least, life went on everyday as it had before. She worked at the hotel: changing sheets and vacuuming floors. No, her body could have continued for another sixty years.
Psychologically—mentally—she desperately wanted release from this life.
She wouldn't even call it her life anymore. Her life had ended when this Thing found her. When those teeth appeared behind her eyelids and in mind. Her life had become Its, then. Even though she was allowed to continue on as she wished much of the time, Roberta knew she was a puppet. A shell of what she had been before this Thing came. She couldn't remember parts of her life now—she knew she had done bad things, but that was all. She was part of a plan, one that involved her only in the peripheral. She wasn't the focus: was a means, not the end—and all she wanted was to be let go from it, to let death come for her. She prayed, silently and at night, to a being whose name she did not know, begging that It allow her to forgo this assault.
At night she dreamed and in the morning she woke—still alive and still serving It.
When she closed her eyes, every single time, she saw those huge, white teeth looking back at her.
This morning she looked into the bathroom mirror and brushed her hair. She dreamed last night, seeing the same man as before. That's who this was about, the bald man with glasses. Every time Roberta saw him, she did horrible things to him. She had no control once she closed her eyes, she could only find him and hurt him—every single time. Last night, she had shoved pins into his eyes, pushing them through the gelatin of his eyeball until they reached the brain beneath. Then she pushed further, listening to him scream, tied and blind. Roberta had followed this man over the past week, in her dreams at night, finding him in different places each time. She'd squashed his head under his own car tire on an empty desert road one night, reversed and ran over it until she could not tell the difference between asphalt and skull fragments.
She thought the man must be traveling because she found him in hotels and his car, only once seeing him in what might have been his house. Last night in her dream, his travels brought him somewhere she didn't think possible—Roberta saw him in her hotel, The Hotel Indigo. He had been tied to a bed and she had pushed pins into his face until he quit struggling against the ropes binding him.
Roberta had never seen this man outside of her dreams, but she might have spoken to him. Because the goddamn phone had been off the cradle when she woke a week or two ago. The whole thing moved from its spot, been pulled to the couch she slept on. Because on that afternoon, when she woke, she remembered dreams of talking to someone. Of saying things she would never have said while awake. Vulgar things. Sexual things.
“Is everything okay?” her mother asked from the door to the bathroom.
Roberta's thoughts fled and she realized she had stopped her brush mid-stroke.
“Yes, momma,” Roberta answered, the brush beginning its movement through her hair again.
“Then why aren't you sleeping?” Abella asked, her voice stern. “I've watched you. You have no peace.”
Roberta made a connection she had been missing, something fundamental and yet somehow lost to her. The things happening to Roberta would soon spill out and destroy her mother's life as well—Roberta's death would not be confined to only her existence, just as her life had affected others, so would her death. This was nearing its end, Roberta could not hold on another week—she was not strong enough—and when the release she craved came, her mother would find devastation. Sadness as dark as space filled Roberta and she dropped the brush she held. Her hands shook as she brought them to her face; tears poured from her eyes.
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” she cried. In her readiness to escape this fucking Thing, she lost sight of the fact that she was sentencing her mother to a life of solitude. Yet the tears came even harder when she realized that this understanding did not ease her death wish. Her mother could face this world alone if it meant Roberta no longer lived the life of a surrogate for some Other.
Abella moved into the bathroom, wrapping her arms around her daughter—drawing Roberta in, embracing with all the love she had.
“I'm sorry, momma...” Roberta pleaded into her mother's shoulder. Her hands dug into the back of Abella's
shirt.
“What is it? What are you sorry for?”
“I'm going to die,” Roberta barely managed to get the words out through the tears. “I'm going to die soon.”
Abella pulled back a bit, grabbing Roberta's shoulders and looking into her face. “What, honey?”
Roberta nodded, sobbing and keeping her eyes on the floor. “It'll be here soon and then this is all over.” She looked up, struggling to meet her mother's gaze. “I'm ready for it to be over, momma.”
“Niña, you got to tell me what you mean, what you're talking about.”
Roberta tried. She told of the phone call. And the dreams. The man and how close he felt. She told her mother everything—hoping it might change something.
Abella let her daughter leave for work. She didn't want to but knew she must. Roberta was ill; in all likelihood, she needed a doctor they could not afford. Abella wanted her daughter close but neither one of them could afford to lose their job; so Roberta went, leaving Abella alone in their apartment. They would see each other again when Abella got off her night shift and Roberta was readying for work tomorrow morning. Until then there was only prayer.
Abella believed in The Church and in the power of God to cleanse her soul. She went to God now, kneeling at her bed with her elbows on the mattress. She would pray that He heal her daughter, and if not, provide the means so that man could. Whatever plagued Roberta held enough power over her mind to convince her she saw reality. God or doctors could show her it was not real, and Abella only had God.
So she knelt.
Let this pass from her. Grant her—