by David Beers
Abella saw then, saw what Roberta heard.
The head hadn’t changed; it was the same thing Abella saw in her bedroom before. The head that had whispered in her ear. The body was different from earlier—naked and grotesque. The skin tone much different—the face pale, waxy, but the body containing the dark tan of Abella and Roberta: the Aztec skin. The skin she could see anyway, which wasn’t much. The body was near shreds; the torso looking like it might bleed out. Blood dripped down his legs, over his bare feet and to the carpet.
“You see what you did, Roberta?” Clickity-clank, the teeth hitting off one another. “Wait, wait. I’m forgetting about the problem with your eyes. I’m sorry.” His face turned to Abella, blood squeezing from his neck like water from a dishrag. “Tell her what she did to the man at the door. Tell her what he looks like.”
“What is it, Momma?” Her voice trembled.
“You didn’t do this. It’s lying.” Abella’s words were hard, fierce. A lie from the Devil’s mouth.
“No, no, no—she knows what I’m talking about. Ask her.” He sounded like they were asking Roberta about homework rather than the desecrated body in front of them.
“What’s he look like?” Roberta asked again.
“He’s cut up, baby. His chest is bleeding,” she whispered the words, not wanting the thing in front to hear, to get what it wanted.
Roberta released her grip on her mother’s back, moving her hands in front of them both. She couldn’t see her fingers, but Abella could. They were stained red. Her shirt, the long sleeved maid’s uniform, was red too—stained with the same blood from her hands. Roberta turned her palms up, and dear God, there was skin under her long nails.
“You see, don’t you, Abella? Roberta hasn’t been stirring Kool-Aid with her arms. All that is from this body—that’s someone else’s life staining her.”
“Don’t listen, Roberta. He’s the Devil—“
The thing started laughing, doubling over; his hands hitting his knees, blood smearing up and down his bare legs. Wind heaved in and out of his mouth, his teeth clacking together as he laughed. “The Devil, Lord, that’s a good one.” He squatted down, trying to regain his composure. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard it, but it never loses its luster. Know what I mean?” He looked up from his lowered position. “Enough. Time is passing, and while it normally doesn’t mean a whole lot to me—right now I’m in kind of a hurry.”
His eyes left Abella and focused on Roberta. He folded his hands over his knees.
“You wanted release, right? You can have it. Just come to me, follow my voice, and the horrible thing you’ve done—this blind life you have now, it’s all over.”
“No, don’t listen, Roberta. Don’t you listen to It.”
He continued speaking as if only he and Roberta were in the room. “I’m not the Devil, Roberta. I don’t even know if such a thing exists, but if so, it’s not me. I’m your home now and you know it. You’ve known it since I came to you, that you belong to me. So come to me now; let’s end this.”
Abella felt her daughter move away, out of her arm’s reach.
“Roberta, what are you doing?” A frantic sense of protection, a need to get her daughter away from this, took over. She reached for Roberta, to wrap her arms around and squeeze. She would start running then, just as soon as she held her daughter against her.
Abella’s arms only dropped to her side. Roberta took another step away, her face no longer turned to her mother—now looking in the direction of Him. Abella wanted to speak but her words failed just like her arms.
“That’s right,” he said from across the room, his body bleeding—some of the fluid beginning to dry and crust—but his face beckoning. Even his teeth seemed welcoming, colliding against each other outside his mouth, white as the underside of a sting ray. “Let’s put this to rest.”
Roberta walked, her hands at her sides—unafraid of tripping in her dark world. Abella watched Roberta move, her own body still, her vocal chords silent. She watched her daughter move toward the Devil, certain that if Abella didn’t do something, Roberta was lost. She tried, Abella would tell herself that for the rest of her short life, to move—to get her daughter. If she did try, it couldn’t be proven because her body never stirred.
Roberta knew It told the truth. Her life was over, had ended when It descended upon her. Staying here trying to wash this blood from her hands for the rest of her life was not an option. Wandering the world blind, her face scarred, a man’s death over her head—she wanted no part of it. She still wanted release, and this thing calling her would give it.
So Roberta pulled away from her mother, aware that they would never see each other again.
A sacrifice, as true as any ever made—she gave herself to the God.
Her daughter went forward and Abella could not even shed a tear. Roberta stood within a foot of the Devil, slightly to his right, her hands out as if she expected him to embrace her as her mother had.
Instead his jaw opened, wider and wider—seeming to have no tendon or bone to stop its continual stretching. He didn’t stand, but remained squatted, his mouth hanging open a foot and his teeth finally not touching. A few seconds passed of this, him sitting and Abella staring, then he bounced up and took Roberta’s left hand in his mouth—the teeth cutting through flesh and bone like a knife through water. Blood spurted out, covering the man’s face as he moved back to his haunches. He swallowed the hand whole, his mouth immediately falling back to wide open; his skin stretched easily, as thin as a membrane.
Roberta screamed, blood falling from her arm, looking for veins that had been there moments before. She didn’t run, didn’t try to get away.
He bounced up again, taking off her other hand, his teeth grating against each other as his jaw closed over her arm. Then back to his crouching position. Abella would hate herself later for the thought, but it reminded her of a frog sticking its tongue out for a meal.
Roberta tried to run, slamming into the wall. She fell on her ass, her gushing arms out before her like a zombie.
“MOMMMMAAAAA!” Her voice held only pain.
The thing popped up again, not as high because of Roberta’s new seated position, and took off the top of her head. Her skull crushing sounded like dry branches snapping, and as he pulled away, blood and gray gobs rolled down the sides of her face. She still screamed, her mouth uneaten yet; her arms twitched fantastically, bouncing up and down as nerves misfired—no longer connected to her brain. The gray matter was too heavy to stick to her face and plopped to the floor while the blood ran over the crevices still left on her head.
It came again, taking the rest of her head into its throat—ending the screams.
Roberta watched this Jack-In-The-Box, bouncing up and down, eat her daughter piece by piece.
When he finished, nothing was left. His stomach remained flat, not swollen as it should have been from devouring an entire human. He had even licked up the intestines that spilled across the floor.
His knees popped as he stood. “That doesn’t feel good,” he commented, reaching down to rub them. He looked up at Abella after a second, as if seeing her for the first time. “Oh, hey! Sorry, I can be so rude sometimes when I’m munching. I would have given you some, why didn’t you ask?”
Still, quiet, she watched.
“Don’t worry, we’ll see each other again.” He walked by her, patting her shoulder as he did, smearing Roberta’s blood on her shirt.
26
Days Past
Alex, Brittany, & Daniel
Daniel found it somewhat difficult to remember these people didn’t exist. The blood influenced this difficulty, the seemingly endless amount pouring from Alex. They removed his shirt as carefully as they could, but surely caused more pain than he needed. Alex was now on the bed, still breathing, still living—which helped reinforce Daniel’s belief that all of this was only inside his own skull. Lacerations ran almost uninterrupted from his neck to his belt line. Over and over the
woman had brought down her nails, until now there wasn’t much to look at.
He should have died already; the damage too much for him to live outside of Daniel’s dream world.
“He’s going to be okay, right?” Brittany asked Daniel for the millionth-fucking-time.
Daniel had managed to clear away a lot of the blood with towels that were now tinged pink and lying in the corner. Blood seeped from Alex’s body, but it was slowing and Daniel hoped it would coagulate soon. If it didn’t; Alex was a goner—which only meant he wouldn’t hang out in this make believe hotel any longer.
He looked at Brittany, wanting to communicate to her that he didn’t know, that it was impossible to know, but things didn’t look good. He had already tried, but she wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t focus on his words long enough to let them matter. “I need you to pay attention right now. Don’t think about anything else; don’t look at Alex, just listen to me because I’m tired of saying this. I. Don’t. Know. He’s still breathing, still here, and that’s good—but I can’t know anything else. Do you understand that?” It wasn’t lost on Daniel that he was essentially communicating with himself in a round-about way.
Brittany closed her eyes and nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said, bending over from her sitting position and putting her face next to Alex’s. Daniel watched as she started crying.
Alex listened to them talk with his eyes closed. They spoke, not exactly like he wasn’t there—just that whatever thoughts he may have on his life expectancy were irrelevant. He knew he wouldn’t die on this bed, or at least that the chances were very, very small. He understood the essence of this thing, understood why his parents had shed blood for It. If the thing wanted them dead, only dead, then they would be dead—no other arguments necessary. They inhabited Its world now, the one It created for them, and now possession was within Its grasp. It didn’t want death—that wouldn’t work—It needed death dedicated to It.
No, Alex would live. In this world, It decided when people came and went. He would heal or either his wounds wouldn’t affect him as they should. He would live and defeat this thing—or he would live long enough to murder everyone here with him for It.
Alex opened his eyes and grasped Brittany’s face so she had to look at him. “I’m fine. You hear? We’re all fine right now.”
Her eyes were red and tears kept brimming and falling, brimming and falling. “Baby, look at you.”
Alex nodded, his hands still holding her face. “I’m going to be okay—I just need some time. It’s not going to kill us like this. It can’t.”
“What do we do?” Her voice shook like a tight wire with too much slack, the acrobat swaying over the drop.
Nayek stood from the knee he had taken next to the bed and walked to the window. He pulled back the curtains and looked into the same blackness he had seen downstairs. “What do we do?” he whispered to himself.
The answer had seemed so simple to Alex a few days ago: he would come down here and kill this God. Now, his chest burning like a blow torch was melting his skin, he couldn’t find the answer to Brittany’s question.
“You can’t see you’re not real,” Nayek said from the window, slicing through Alex’s thoughts. “Is it possible for me to make you somehow understand it?”
Both Alex and Brittany looked at him, the gray storm in their vision rather than the black stillness in Nayek’s.
“What are you talking about?” Brittany asked. “You were saying shit like that before—what do you mean?”
“You, both of you, aren’t here. I’m not either, in any real sense, but you two have no will outside my mind. I created you here. I wasn’t able to find you in the real world—so this is my mind’s replication of you.”
Brittany looked at Alex. After a few seconds, she began laughing through her tears. Alex only smiled.
“You…You think this is a dream?” She almost couldn’t get the words out through her laughter. “That we’re not here?”
Daniel sighed, still looking out the window. “I guess it can’t be that easy—not going to be able to just explain this rationally and you two go along with it.”
Alex rolled to his side; his body screaming at him to stop. He faced Nayek’s back—his chest a bright beam of pain in his mind, but no longer bleeding. “If you think that, you’re going to die here, Dr. Nayek. Neither of you should have come; this was for me to end. You’re here though, and you’ve seen Him—your mind recognizes It even if your consciousness won’t. You’re not going to make it out of here if you don’t recognize what this is.” His throat lit up as he spoke, like acid running down his esophagus.
“You should be dead right now, Alex. From blood loss alone.” His rebuttal was quiet, offering no argument, only fact.
Alex sighed, not wanting to continue, not wanting to feel the pain in his throat again. He only wanted to lay here for an hour, maybe less, and let himself heal—but Nayek couldn’t go on like this, not once they left the room…he would lose his mind. “This isn’t reality and it isn’t your brain, either. If we exist inside anyone right now, it’s Huit, the same God you’ve been trying to get out of my head for years. He’s not going anywhere and I understand that now. I can’t run and I can’t hide, not forever. He’s real. It’s real. What you’re experiencing, that’s real too—real enough to kill you. You found us, and now that you have, It wants you the same as It wants me. We might not make it out, but if you don’t see this for what it is, you’re already lost.”
Nayek turned from the window, looking at his patient and his patient’s wife. “It’s impossible.” His voice was flat, almost unconcerned.
Alex closed his eyes and laid back on the pillows beneath him. Brittany kept staring at Nayek as if he were a late term abortion, perhaps partial birth, something disgusting yet needing pity—like she would help, as long as she didn’t have to touch it.
“I’m going to leave this room soon. I’m going to go out there and find this God, the real one—not some possessed girl. Then I’m going to do everything I can to kill It. I can’t sit here and argue about this anymore, but if you leave this room thinking like you are now, you’re done. It’ll pick you off. You’ve tried to help me a lot, Dr. Nayek; I don’t want to see that happen.”
Alex was silent then. Daniel turned back around to stare into space. Brittany touched her husband, trying not to ignite the rivets of flame carved into his chest.
She fell asleep shortly after Alex, leaving Daniel to himself.
Daniel could not accurately, or even semi-accurately, measure the passage of time in this place. All the clocks he saw, from his phone to the alarm next to the sleeping couple, showed different times—each minute could take hours or seconds depending on when he looked. Daniel was seated, his eyes mainly peering at the two on the bed. He had thought…but no, that wasn’t true. His eyes weren’t ‘playing tricks’ on him, not like this. You could think there’s a face on the wall when the light shines a certain way, but it’s easy to disprove. What Daniel saw weren’t tricks, couldn’t be shadows.
The cuts—slashes—were closing. During his nap, Alex’s wounds were scabbing over and turning to bright pink scars. Alex had said he would be able to go on, and regardless of whose head the conversation took place in, he would be able to get up and leave this room.
What did that prove? Daniel’s subconscious would do what it said? Certainly not that Daniel actually sat in an asteroid, floating around the outer edges of space. That was the bitch of the whole thing, wasn’t it? No proof, either way. All he had, all he could rely on, was past experience—which said this was a dream, more or less, and anything further lay in the realm of impossibility.
Daniel waited, either for himself to wake up in reality, or Alex and Brittany to wake up here.
“What’s it going to be?” Alex looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He’d stripped down to his boxers, his clothes discarded to the corner with the pink towels. He hurt—moving was soreness he had never experienced—but he wasn’t dying
anymore. He could move, could think past the pain now.
Brittany stood behind him, holding a robe. Alex held his arms out and Brittany put the robe on him, careful not to drop it on the scabs still not scarred over.
“If we survive, I’m not going to be much to look at when we go to the beach.” He turned from the mirror, rubbing his bald head with his hand. He still wore his glasses, unbroken from the attack—a miracle if any had ever occurred. He couldn’t imagine walking around the hotel unable to see more than a few feet in front of him, searching for a God, no less.
“So what’s it going to be?” Alex asked again, his eyes finding Nayek’s. He wrapped the belt around his robe, looking like he might be heading down to the pool. Except for the scars tracing up his neck, barely having missed the veins that would make healing only a wish.
Nayek held Alex’s eyes, standing with his hands in his pockets. “I’m not sure what you want me to say; nothing’s changed.”
Alex nodded. His jaw tensed reflexively. “I’d tell you to sit in here, to try and stay out of it, but I don’t think it will matter. Maybe you’ll change your mind once you see what’s going to happen.” He walked away from the mirror, approaching Daniel. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t want either of you here, but Brittany is my wife, my other half. You though…it’s my fault.”
A slight smile formed on Nayek’s lips. “Nothing to apologize for, not here anyway. When I wake up, I’ll want to get the three of us to a doctor, but none of that matters right now.”
Alex swallowed, looked on for a second, and then turned to Brittany. “Are you ready?”
Brittany’s eyes were still red, even after the nap. She nodded, her arms shaking at her sides.
Alex went to her and hugged her.
“What do you think is going to happen?” she asked.