by Sara Clancy
Her voice cracked over the last of the recording, containing every trace of terror raging within her. Vaguely, she heard an answering cry, but she couldn’t quite believe that it was real and not just a comforting figment of her imagination. Planting her feet against the wall she pushed up again. Every fiber of her body was pushed to its limit, and all it earned her was a single inch. Blood began to ooze from her splintered nails, turning the smooth floor slick.
Her hair created a curtain between her and the world as she lifted her head from where it was pressed desperately against the floor. The recording was reaching its end and the lights began to flicker. Each time the room turned dark, a silhouette was cast onto the air before her. For the first time, she saw it. The horseman. Benton’s hurried descriptions hadn’t come close to explaining the sheer size of the man. His shadow alone was enough to turn her skin to ice and her racing heart into a lump of stone within her chest. It drew closer, forcing the floor to vibrate under her. Her grip loosened. She slid again and desperately struggled to get back what she had lost.
The recording shut off, leaving only the backdrop lights and the faint glow of the gift shop to see by. The outline of the man remained darker than the rest of the world, like something gouged out of existence rather than living within it. The whispering began once again, rising up within her skull until it seemed like a thousand voices speaking at once. They piled on top of each other until she couldn’t drown it out with her own thoughts or screams. A hand, cold and solid as steel, wrapped around her right wrist. It yanked her up, taking all of her weight and lifting her clear from the ledge. She dangled in mid-air, held hostage by something unseen. She thrashed wildly, but despite the grip on her arm, she was completely unable to strike anything solid.
She could barely see past her tears, but the shape of her mother was unmistakable as she emerged from the top of the staircase and sprinted towards her. Nicole shrieked for her to run, but her mother only yelled her name, voice sharp with fear and desperation. Still, the horseman spoke louder, its voice slipping in-between the syllables of every word the women spoke. It had just begun to speak her surname when its grip on her arm jolted, its hold loosening, threatening to drop her. The shadow of the horseman jerked and thrashed, its free hand clawing at the back of his severed neck. It was a moment later that Nicole heard it.
It started so gently, steadily growing like a rising tide rushing towards them from some distant place. The first time she had heard Benton wail, his human voice had been layered upon the screech of an owl and something reminiscent of a microphone feedback. This was different, but inherently Benton. His banshee wail steadily increased like an air raid siren, shrieked like metal streaking against metal and mingled with the shrill cry of an enraged bat. The tidal force of a sound accelerated into an impossible pitch and the horseman was shaken, lashing out wildly, clawing at himself and then the air, as if trying to rip the very sound from within the core of its own being.
When the pitch grew to an ear-splitting volume, the horseman released his grip and began to claw at the shadowed body with both hands. The solid rim of the ledge drove into her stomach as she dropped onto it, forcing out the air from her lungs in a painful whoosh. She scrambled across the surface as she slipped back. The horseman ripped off hunks of his shadowy self, creating gaping holes that allowed her to see right through it. The tiles slipped out from under her, but she only felt an inch before another hand grabbed her tight.
Blinking the fire out of her eyes, Nicole looked up to find her mother lying flat against the rim, reaching over the edge to latch onto her forearm with astonishing strength.
“Mom!" she gasped.
“Just hold on!” Dorothy shouted back as she struggled under the weight she was carrying.
The scream cut off sharply, leaving Nicole’s ears echoing at the loss. Benton wasn’t in the horseman’s head anymore. He had been ripped out, just like the last time he had dreamed, and could no longer serve as a distraction.
“Mom, you have to get out of here. You can’t stop it!" she cried in a rush. “Find Benton. It will go after him next.”
Dorothy ground her teeth, her arm trembling as she tried to pull herself up. The horseman’s shadow loomed over her mother’s shoulder.
“Mom! Go! It’s right behind you!”
The horseman reached down, the black mass of its hand still intact and solid. The fingers inched closer to Dorothy’s own.
“Mom!” Nicole shrieked.
Dorothy glanced over her shoulder but still refused to release her grip. Her eyes widened as she saw the monster creeping over her shoulder; seeing the hand that approached her own. Dorothy’s free right hand fumbled with her gun belt, trying to yank it free from its holster as the phantom enclosed her fingers with his own.
Steam fogged the air at the contact. The shadowy hand began to crack like dry clay, clumps toppling down past Nicole before disappearing into smoke. It reared back, evaporating before Nicole could lose sight of it over the rim of the ledge.
“What’s going on?!” Nicole was bewildered.
“It’s gone,” Dorothy said, her chest heaving as she abandoned the search for her gun and instead wrapped her right arm around Nicole’s forearm.
“We can’t see it. Not if it doesn’t want us to,” Nicole said. “You have to go.”
Dorothy’s fingers only tightened around Nicole’s forearm. Her teeth gnashed as she fought to pull her back up. “Find your feet, baby.”
“But …”
“I’m not letting go,” Dorothy growled. “So find your footing right now!”
Nicole’s body shifted instantly and she plastered her feet against the smooth wall. With their combined, relentless efforts they managed to pull her, inch by agonizing inch, back over the rim. Nicole’s shoulder joint screamed and her ribs ached, but all of the lingering pain meant nothing compared to the relief she felt being on the flat, solid surface she was now laying on. Both women took only a moment to enjoy their victory before scrambling to their feet.
“Where is it?”
“I told you, it’s gone,” Dorothy said. “The question is, what was it?”
“I told you!” Nicole snapped despite herself. “At least I tried to. You didn’t want to hear about it. But none of that matters now. What does is finding out why it left.”
“How would I know that?” As she said that, her thumb aimlessly rubbed over her wedding ring.
The simple gold band shone with a weak glow, the surface looking newly polished and robbed of all the scratches earned by more than a decade of constant wear. Nicole snatched up her mother’s hand and yanked it closer. She rubbed her thumb over the band, but the shine remained.
“Gold,” she whispered. “It couldn’t touch the gold.”
Dorothy yanked her hand back and glared at her daughter. “What is wrong with you?”
Nicole ignored the question and sprinted back to the gift shop. Not willing to waste her time to go and retrieve the keys from her bag, she picked up the closest heavy object she could find and hurled it through the glass cabinet. She ignored her mother’s screaming as she continued to collect the dozens of golden necklaces that filled the shop.
“We need to hurry,” Nicole said in a rush. “We have to get to Benton before it does.”
“Stop and talk to me.”
With the last chain wrapped tightly around her fingers, Nicole turned, pushed past her mother, and ran down the stairs.
“I tried doing that, you didn’t want to listen. And now we don’t have time.”
Dorothy followed close behind her daughter, grappling for some sense of normalcy. In the end, there was only one thing her chaotic mind was able to grab onto.
“This is theft,” she snapped as she jogged down the stairs alongside her daughter.
“It’s borrowing,” Nicole shot back as her feet hit the bottom floor and she broke into a run. “I’ll give them all back. Right after we save Benton’s life.”
Chapter 7
Be
nton bolted upright with an aching cry. The monitors around him buzzed and sparked, the lights overhead flashed wildly as they threatened to shatter. His scream hallowed him out, leaving him to flop back, empty and boneless. The mattress bounced once as it accommodated his weight before his brain began to work again. Get out, his mind snapped. He yanked at the tubes that were embedded into his arm. Go!
The world lurched and rolled around him like a rushing tide. It made the floor swim under his feet, and he slumped back against the bed until he was able to regain his footing. The sound of horseshoes clashing against the tiles, trotted down the hallway. It was a slow, steady pace, but still enough to have his chest hammering against his ribs, narcotics or not. His knees threatened to buckle with every step. He pressed on, hurrying towards the window in broken, crumbling lurches. The cold night air poured into the room as he slid the window open, assaulting the bare skin of his arm and prickling through the thin material of his shirt.
The Fort Wayward hospital had one very helpful feature when one wanted to escape. Most, if not all, of the rooms were on the bottom floor. He twisted and stumbled, but managed to work his long, drugged, and heavy legs to open space. The hooves echoed from just beyond his door. He flung himself out into the night, his haste making him trip and end up sprawled across the rough concrete alleyway. The sudden movement scrambled his brains and, for a moment, he couldn’t tell which direction he was looking at, the ground or the sky. It all came back to him the second he heard the horse now galloping across the room with renewed speed.
The harsh ridges of the concrete scraped against the palms of his hands and the battered skin of his face as he forced himself to move. The thin material of his medical scrubs didn’t offer much protection for his knees as he positioned himself on all fours. From there it was easier to get his feet back under him. He pushed off, not sparing a glance behind as he raced to the mouth of the alleyway.
His legs refused to work. Each step felt like he was battling his way through tar, refusing to perform the quick sprints that he knew he was capable of. He rounded the corner and emerged onto the street, the sudden shift in light blinding his sensitive eyes. Swiftly, he glanced, searching for some kind of sign to tell him which way to turn next. Streetlights carved sharp circles of light from the shadows, illuminating patches of the deserted street, and empty parked cars. Benton hurried along the side of the hospital, his helpless stumbles slowing him down. His shoulder crashed against the wall. It bewildered him how he felt no pain from the solid impact even as the burn on his hand begun to swelter.
Benton’s lungs struggled to meet his demands on them. His already abused heart kicked up to a faster pace while the air was filled with a metallic clicking noise. Trembling, he pressed against the wall of the hospital, the brick scratching at his scrubs while the chill of one of the basement windows seeped the heel of his left foot. The sound from all around him echoed out like a rolling rumble of thunder. Then the world became silent and he held his breath.
A sharp creak cracked in the night as the sheet of glass lifted from his heel. Within the same instant, something whooshed above his head. Benton ducked and whirled, his knees almost giving out as his mind was flooded with images of the horseman’s huge hand reaching for him. But there was no hand. He watched as every window within the hospital wall slid open at once.
The cars that lined the street shook violently as their doors flung open. Alarms blared as car lights flashed, their beams exposing more of the world around him. Benton slumped and swayed to the side. His instincts surging him on even as his brain struggled to understand what he was seeing. Every door and window, from homes to businesses, was opening.
Benton ran, urged on by the chaos around him. The clash of galloping hooves rose over the vehicles' screeching sounds, becoming louder with each passing second. He glanced over his shoulder, the horseman visible, but only as a bottomless black smear, a dark shadow that existed within the light. But it was all too easy to see its whip. The long trail of connecting bones glistened in the ever shifting light, as slick as if it had freshly been pulled from someone’s skin. The ground shook under the titanic horse, the thunderous quake growing stronger as the horseman ran him down. Benton swung his head back, catching the glint of the windows that gave natural light to the hospital basement. In a split second decision, he threw himself towards them.
The drugs that still pulsed within him weren’t enough to compete with the muscles from the many years of baseball practice. He dropped, hurling himself into a slide, ignoring the pits of his skin that the uneven concrete roughly scraped at, as he slipped through the nearest open window. But his aim was off, his motions sloppy, and he smacked against the sides of the window as he fell through. He was still reeling from the blows as he dropped a short distance and crashed onto a metal surface. The impact sent a snap of pain through him, followed quickly by another as he toppled off and smacked against the unforgiving concrete slab of the floor.
Every molecule of air rushed out of his lungs in a single pained grunt. His limbs flopped uselessly over the floor, as if his primal instinct was physically searching for the air that had left him. Lights danced and swirled before his eyes, burning and blurring his vision. His back arched as his lungs forced themselves to work once again, and he used the momentum to roll onto his side. He clawed at the floor, focusing all of his efforts into getting back on his feet. It was only after that task was accomplished that he bothered to start looking for an exit.
An icy feeling filled him as he took in the stainless steel that made up the room. The walls on either side of him were lined with small, square, freezer-like doors, their polished surface reflecting the light that crept in through the windows behind him, and a silver colored table sat in the middle of the room that made his stomach plummet. He was in the town morgue.
With a soft, raspy gasp, the rows of freezer doors began to open. Layers of thick fog trailed out of them, falling like waterfalls to pool across the floor. The more that was released, the more he could get a glimpse of the bodies that lay in the freezers. Benton stepped forward on wobbly legs but was too late. He could hear the horse closing in. Each sharp clack echoed through the only door, the only exit out of the room. He was trapped.
Benton turned and tried to scramble back up onto the table he had banged against. The sharp crack of the whip made him stop. His knees jerked and his feet toppled back to the floor. Gripping the table edge tightly, he glanced back over his shoulder. The once empty threshold was now filled with the horseman. And it no longer gave him the mercy of not being forced to see it.
With black, rotted blood bubbling out of its severed neck, the stench of rancid meat polluted the air and made bile burn at the back of his throat. The slabs squished as it stalked closer. Each footfall shook the building and jolted the table he was holding on to. Benton couldn’t take his eyes off the whip as it curled and twisted. He flinched and its hand snapped out, sending the spinal cord crashing into the freezer doors, leaving deep grooves within the surface. Benton threw himself back but had nowhere to go.
Like a snake striking, the whip snapped towards his head. Benton tossed himself to the side, feeling the breeze the chain of bones created as they streaked past an inch away from his back. The edge of the whip bore down on the table Benton had abandoned, slicing through the space he had just stood in, crumbling the metal. Benton flung himself to the ground and slid across the floor until he slammed into the table in the middle of the room. The horseman whirled, pulling the whip out of the dent it had created, the bones clanking together as it rose, preparing for the next strike.
A scream ripped from Benton’s core. The sound split him in two, carving a wide path from the very depths of his soul and out of his physical form; tangible and incorporeal at the same time. Within the same moment, the scream filled him to his breaking point while emptying him completely. The horseman shuddered under the sound as fractures began to split its body. Light poured through the hairline cracks and the horseman retreated
slightly, thrashing as if it had lost all sense of equilibrium.
But the disorientation didn’t last long. It lunged forward, the skeletal whip cracking as it raced towards him again. Benton rolled. The air stirred as the bones crashed down into the concrete where he once lay. Hunks of stone exploded, the broken shards cutting into the tender skin of his face and neck. Benton struggled onto all fours and desperately evaded the next strike as he tried to force his banshee wail into existence. He had never been able to force it before, never tried to, and his screams remained simply shrieks of fear; human and pitiful.
He sprinted for the door but the whip was swift to cut him off. Shrinking back, his arms raised to protect himself from the hurdling shrapnel, Benton noticed the first traces of the whispering voices. They came from all around, carried through the air itself, accumulating together to gather strength. The sound boiled against his brain like acid. He clamped his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t keep the sound out. It filled him up until it felt like the plates of his skull were beginning to break apart. Benton tried for the door again, but the horseman kept him trapped, its otherworldly voice forming into recognizable sounds, developing into words, slowly merging into the beginnings of his name.
Bending under the sound, he clawed at his ears, his nails raking across the damaged skin around his temples. His fear rushed up to meet the clarifying voice and broke out of his throat in a high-pitched wail. The metal doors violently shook, as fluorescent lights flared and began to strobe. The horsemen took one step back and swung the whip out. Benton snapped his hand up, managing to protect his face. His forearm absorbed the strength of the blow but couldn’t break the momentum. The long string of vertebrae went over his arm and wrapped around his neck. With a sharp yank, Benton was pulled off of his feet. His hip collided with the table, but the force didn’t relent.
Dragged up onto the surface, the cool steel pressing against his back, Benton clawed at the whip as it tightened around his neck. The pieces twisted tighter at his every touch, squeezing his windpipe until it choked off his scream and his breath. He slipped his fingers under the band and pushed up with all of the strength he had. It stopped the advancement, but that didn’t let him regain what he had lost. His feet slipped and smacked against the tabletop, now as useless as his hands, to help him find any escape.