by Lex Sinclair
The darkness blotted his vision like spilled ink on a sheet of white paper. His eyes rolled back into his head. The world toppled before him. The tiled flooring rushed up to meet him with an impact he heard, not felt. The drug had at least spared him the agony of impact, as he lay supine on the floor, realising as the blackness became absolute that he hadn’t resisted temptation, and was therefore suffering the dire consequences of his ultimate decision.
What Michael would miss most was not that he hadn’t made his dreams come true, but his friends and neighbours, who loved him for who he was... not what accolades he didn’t have in his possessions.
***
Jake’s eyes roamed the words on the page he’d been reading when his mind took flight somewhere else. He’d lost the essence of the story on the current page and the last few he’d taken half hour to read. There was no point reading if he couldn’t concentrate. He closed the book and put it down, sighing with exasperation.
Earlier that morning, he and the other residents (except Michael) had attended Hugh Green’s funeral service and burial. Jake was too emotionally drained to even shed a tear. He wanted to cry to show his departed friend how much he missed him, and that life would never be the same again for any of them now that he was gone.
He wanted to apologise to Hugh for leaving him in the hospital when he’d died. He knew it wasn’t his fault, or anyone else’s for that matter. And had he been there, most likely he wouldn’t have been able to prevent his friend’s untimely passing, anyway.
It might not have hurt so much if Hugh had died peacefully. But there wasn’t even that consolation. He’d suffered something so awful that no one even dare mention the incident aloud, because it made you nauseous just envisioning the circumstances surrounding the gruesome fatality. Furthermore, he was - as well as everyone else - fuming with Michael for not showing his face at either the funeral or burial. They were all grieving, but that didn’t mean you shouldn’t pay your last respects. Later on he and Joe were going to confront Michael about that.
Emma was in the kitchen making them both a snack for a late lunch. The last thing right now Jake wanted was food... although, as Emma had pointed out, he hadn’t eaten all day. (He hadn’t eaten properly for more than a week. He’d lost six pounds. Now you could see prominent cheekbones and dark circles under his eyes, which gave them a hollow, recessed appearance.) He supposed he might as well try and eat something. The light-headedness was informing him that if he didn’t eat something pretty soon he’d lose consciousness and could be rushed into hospital himself. If that thought didn’t make him eat, then nothing would.
Emma ambled into the living room, handed him his plate of sandwiches and a cold can of Diet Coke straight from the refrigerator, lowered herself into her seat beside him and said, ‘That’s what I forgot to tell you.’
‘Oh, what’s that, hon?’
‘Yesterday, I went into town to get the food shopping, when outside WHSmith’s, I saw the front headlines on the newspaper: MILITARY GENERAL FOUND DEAD!’
Jake frowned.
‘According to the rumours, some elderly people were saying that it was the General that had patrolled the special operation here.’
After the second part of the story, Jake’s eyes bulged in their sockets, listening attentively to what Emma was telling him. He had remembered that fierce-looking man standing in the middle of the street, hands on hips, wearing a stone expression, exuding authority. This guy was dead? It was hard to believe, although after the recent events, if someone told him that aliens were landing their spaceship in the vicinity, he’d probably believe them without needing proof of any kind.
But what didn’t freeze his blood in an instant was the knowledge that once again someone who had impeded the Acolytes of Doom and the thing with the goat’s head had died all of a sudden.
‘How did he die?’
‘Supposedly - bare in mind at the moment its all hearsay and gossip - the General dressed himself in his military colours, pinned all his medals to his vest and blew his brain’s out in his study. He was found about half an hour later, when neighbours reported the sound of a gunshot cracking the air, breaking the quiet, frightening them. Not long after that eye-witnesses saw a body being wheeled out on a gurney in a black body bag.’
‘You know why, don’t you?’
Emma didn’t need to say aloud what they both were aware of. ‘We gotta tell the others. Not Michael. He can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned. I’m really surprised he didn’t show or even answer the door or phone today.’
Jake didn’t answer; instead as he bit down on his cheese and ham brown bread sandwich, he stared impassively at the wall, a thought blocking out all sight and sound and tossing him through a vortex of information that was linking, intertwining itself, from mass confusion into something which would make sense, which he could understand.
He shot up from where he was sitting, next to Emma, inadvertently knocking over his plate of sandwiches and crisps. Emma jolted in her seat, alarmed at her husband’s sudden movement. Jake whirled around, not even glimpsing the mess he’d made on the carpet and stared at her.
‘I think something’s happened to Michael!’
***
Joe listened with rapt attention to Jake, resisting the urge to interrupt his friend until he’d finished what he said. It was unequivocal in his mind that something had happened to Michael, just like it had that day they’d waited for Hugh to answer their call, only to find him lying in a heap in his bedroom, unconscious. His anger directed towards Michael ebbed to nothing, rapidly replaced by fright and anxiety.
There was no time to waste. Grabbing a large bread knife from the top drawer beneath the sink in the kitchen, Joe and Jake raced out of his house, still dressed in their black and white funeral suits, having spent the morning saying farewell to their good friend and neighbour, this was stress they could do without. Nevertheless, it also explained why Michael hadn’t answered their calls or shown his face at the door.
Joe was annoyed with himself for not thinking something awful had befallen Michael. Instead he spent the morning, in the back of his mind cursing the man for his lack of common decency and respect.
When they got to their friend’s - unlike the time they’d arrived at Hugh’s front door - it was locked. Joe called Michael’s name through the letterbox, then turned around to face an anxious looking Jake. ‘Obviously something’s happened to him. I say we break the glass panel and let ourselves in.’
Jake was inhaling and exhaling explosively, struggling to bring his respiration back to normal. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, opened his mouth to allow trapped air out. Joe approached his side, gripped him by the arms, pulling them down so they could see one another, looked at his friend directly in the eyes. ‘Jake, stay out here. I’ll go in.’
‘I’m sorry!’
Joe shook his head. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about, okay? You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. We all have. It’s bound to catch up on you sooner or later... You were the only one out of all of us who didn’t cry at the funeral today. You know why? ‘Cause you kept it pent-up, so you could be strong for Emma and the rest of us... Jake, it’s okay to cry; it’s okay to be afraid. Just stay here while I go and check inside, all right?’
‘I just know something bad has gone on in there. And I don’t understand why these things won’t leave us alone. They’ve got their vengeance on us. They suffered. Now we’re suffering, too. Isn’t that enough?’
Joe gave him a, you-would’ve-thought-so expression. Then said: ‘They’re influenced not by conscience or reason, but by that hideous thing I saw glowering at me in the ground where they took Brian. Something which is pure evil.’ With that said, Joe turned back to the house. Then he saw what both he and Jake had missed since they’d arrived at Michael’s home.
The garage doo
r was open at the bottom of the drive, where it was normally flush with the flat concrete surface. Joe beckoned Jake to follow him, which he duly did. They stood in front of the garage, not speaking, just focusing on the gap that suggested something portentous lay on the other side, lurking in the gloom coaxing them into its trap. They squatted down on their haunches. Joe glanced at Jake.
‘Well, at least now I won’t have to go to all the trouble of breaking a window, huh?’ He hadn’t meant to sound so nervous, yet he couldn’t stop his lip from quivering when he spoke.
‘I’ll come in with you,’ Jake said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘He’s my friend, too.’
Joe admired Jake even more for being brave in spite of his trepidation. It was something he could empathise with, because before a lot of his world title fights, he too, would be nervous, wondering how arduous the fight was going to be.
Unfortunately, this was no world title fight; something he was used to. No, this was going to be something he would remember, even if he lived to be a thousand. He didn’t know what to expect, besides pure horror.
He lifted the bottom of the garage door and pushed it up onto its tracks parallel to the ceiling. They both waited wisely for their eyes to adjust to the gloom before entering.
(The last thing they needed was to walk inside the garage squinting, unable to prepare themselves for a hellish shock.)
The garage wasn’t used for storage. Instead it was used as a spare room. Michael had converted his garage into a bodybuilding domain. Brass hooks had been fixed to the concrete walls for barbells of all lengths and thicknesses; some perfectly straight, others curved. (They were called EZ bars.) Joe only knew their name because he’d used them on occasions for his own training at his local gym. On the walls were posters of legendary bodybuilders and fitness freaks: Arnold Schwarzenegger; Sylvester Stallone; Bruce Lee; Lou Ferrigno, and other bodybuilders with granite slabs of muscles, gleaming under the spotlights where they were posing. A dumbbell rack on the right hand side took up the whole length of the room. The weights started at three kilograms and went all the way up to one hundred and twenty kilograms. The workout bench, squat rack, parallel bars and chin-up bar were free from dust, but the floor was not. If you looked closely you could see where Michael, or someone else wearing trainers, had left their mark. Rubber mats were placed under the squat rack and bench press to prevent one losing their balance and having an excruciating accident. There was no cardiovascular equipment; this was purely a room for pumping iron, the old-fashioned way. (In many experienced bodybuilders opine - the best way to build serious muscles.)
Jake felt intimidated seeing all these men adorning the walls showing off bodies that a Greek God would be proud of. Compared to these guys he looked like a skinny weakling, whom they’d devour for one of their high-protein meals, as though he were just another piece of meat.
Spiders remained motionless in the cobwebs festooned in the upper corners above the shelves, out of reach. Michael’s workout apparatus were immaculately kempt, but he’d indolently abandoned the rest of the area.
A green timber door above a single concrete step gave access to the house. Jake and Joe saw this simultaneously, nodded; then stealthily edged closer.
The door was unlocked. Joe eased it open, cautious initially, but realising that the Acolytes of Doom had probably left Michael’s house a good few hours earlier. Still, though, it was always better to be safe than sorry. You could never be too sure in these types of situations. One wrong move could easily cost you dearly. This could still very well be a trap they were walking into.
The living room area was clear.
The kitchen was not...
Michael, they saw, was sprawled out on the tiled surface, unconscious, foaming at the mouth, a syringe jutting out of his left arm. Behind him on the refrigerator door written in rusty red smears of dried blood was another message: INVOLVE THE AUTHORITIES AGAIN, AND WE’LL BURN THE TOWN AS WELL AS THE STREET!
Jake bent down and was going to pull the syringe out of Michael’s purple-bruised arm, when Joe seized him and yanked him back.
‘He’s dead!’
‘Are you going to call the police?’
Joe shook his head. ‘Not unless you wanna end up like Michael and the others, I don’t.’
‘Then what’re we gonna do?’ Jake glimpsed Michael. ‘He might not even be dead!’
‘He’s dead. Trust me.’
Joe retreated from the kitchen doorway back into the living room area, unable to look at anything else, besides Michael’s bloated, pallid corpse. While he’d been cursing him, poor Michael had been laying there on the cold kitchen floor, as dead as their friend they’d recently buried.
‘Jake, go upstairs, get a blanket,’ Joe said, licking his dry lips.
Jake did as he was told without questions.
The thunder of Joe’s heartbeat overrode the heavy footfalls thudding on the stairs and across the landing overhead. Joe held onto the back of the sofa to steady himself, not trusting his balance any more.
The Acolytes of Doom and the thing with the goat’s head were effortlessly diminishing their number with a hastiness that wouldn’t stop until they were all dead and buried. Then the shape-shifters would cease to be shapes, they would be alive completely in the physical sense... and their burial ground would be theirs again, for them to rest in peace.
Jake sprinted down the staircase, holding onto the banister so that he didn’t fall, hurried into the living room where Joe, who was as white as a sheet, held out his trembling hand for the brown woolly blanket Jake had found at the bottom of the wardrobe in Michael’s bedroom, and moved to where his friend’s lifeless body lay. He unfolded the blanket and covered Michael head-to-toe, squeezing his eyes shut, face flushing a scarlet hue as his emotions broke down his defences.
‘I’m sorry I called you a bastard! I’m so sorry... I didn’t know. Please forgive me... We should’ve known something was wrong... Goodbye, my friend.’
Tears rolled down his cheeks. Joe stood upright, wiped them away with the back of his hand. Then his crying stopped abruptly and was replaced by anger. He was badly hurt - just like he’d been hurt in the many fights he’d had over the years - but he was far from a beaten man. And as a good fighter knows: a man who is hurt is very dangerous, for he has nothing to lose.
Joe had nothing to lose.
He wasn’t going to abandon his neighbours, whose lives were at stake. No! He was going to fight the forces of evil with his heart and soul, the way he fought and defeated some of the greatest boxers to ever step into the ring.
18.
Through a grey, swirling fog, Corrie, dressed in her pink flower-patterned nightgown, walked tentatively forward, unaware of where she was heading, or if she was merely walking in a vast, endless fog.
She couldn’t feel the breeze flapping her nightgown around her, nor could she feel her hair being mussed. Yet she could hear an unnerving, deep, guttural incantation with an electric keyboard in the background. The sound didn’t come from in front of her or behind her; instead it whirled all around her in no particular direction. Maybe the chanting and background music was all in her head. After everything that had happened in such a short space of time anything was possible.
But what kept her moving forward was not the incessant, eerie chanting or the spine-tingling music - it was her father’s voice, beckoning her to come hither. So, she did, wondering how it was possible (in spite of the fact that anything was possible) that he could talk to her, after she’d seen him nailed to a cross, burning to a very slow, agonising death. To Corrie these matters weren’t important. What was important was she heard him, and that he called her forward, through the swirling fog, where his voice grew louder and clearer with each step she took, until she stood before him.
The fog receded around the dark figure, offe
ring Corrie an observable view of her father. Here he was, smiling down at her; his face like it had been the day he’d come back to apologise to both her and Mummy when she thought she’d never see him again. There were no burns or crispy flesh. He stood before her, perfect, unblemished.
‘I thought you’d died, Daddy?’ she said in her angelic voice.
‘No, sweetheart. Daddy will live for ever and ever...’
Even though the figure before her was her father, he sounded strange, saying things he wouldn’t normally say. Nevertheless, he had died - but now he was an angel, comforting her in her time of grief and stress.
Brian kneeled so that he was the same height as his daughter, reached his arms out, inviting her to fall into his embrace, allowing him to hold her one last time before he had to make his journey to a place where the holy dead did not interfere with the living, but were only their spiritual guide from above.
Corrie threw her arms around her father and held him tight, just like they’d done in the living room that memorable day when he had returned out of the blue. Although, somehow - she couldn’t explain her emotions - this hug felt different. Not in the physical sense, as such. Spiders crawled over the little girl’s flesh. She shuddered involuntarily, and when she recoiled, the big, hefty arms wrapped around her pulled her back and squeezed with an incredible strength, trapping Corrie to his chest, suffocating her.
When she arched her head back to see why her daddy was doing this, Corrie screamed. The thing with the goat’s head stared back at her through narrow red slits blazing like two taillights, wearing a malevolent grin across it’s golden features.