by Joe Hart
Lance felt the wall press against his back and stop his rearward progress. He looked at the spot where the dead thing had stood, and watched as the last traces of the dark gas dissipated from view. A clicking noise pulled him out of his awe at what had just transpired, and he raised his attention to Erwin as the apparition snapped the last buckle home around its narrow waist. The ghost’s hands lowered to the handles at its hips, and caressing them with a fondness that nearly made Lance recoil.
“You were right,” Erwin said, as he took a step toward Lance and drew a blade out of its sheath. It was cleaver-like in shape, but thinner and threatening in a way that he couldn’t describe. “He was always afraid of these.” Erwin looked lovingly at the shine that issued from the edge of the knife. Lance pictured the ghost’s tongue extending from its dead lips to lick the knife’s curve, and shivered. “His mother too,” Erwin continued. “Their beauty was lost on them. They couldn’t appreciate their shapes or the blood they could bring forth.” The ghost convulsed in what Lance could only call ecstasy, and he saw the stub of a penis below the belt begin to stiffen.
Lance’s fingers clenched and released as his gaze dropped toward the floor where the knife stood stock-still, its point buried within the grains of the wood. The naked abomination across the room followed his sight to the weapon. Erwin twirled the blade in his hand around a finger in a quick flicking motion. A dare. Lance braced his hands against the wall, and then pushed off as he dove toward the knife in the floor.
Elation filled his chest as he realized he would reach the knife in time. His knees skidded on the bloody floor and his fingers closed around the handle. He began to pull up on the weapon, already seeing the path the blade would take as his hand drove it straight into Erwin’s thin chest, but then there was a burning in his fingers that were pulling on the knife. He yanked again, but there was something wrong with his hand.
He saw his fingers falling away from the handle as the pain ignited at the end of his arm. All four digits dropped to the floor, cut cleanly through just behind the second knuckles. Blood flew from the stumps that still tried to grip the knife. Lance pulled his hand back to his chest and stifled a scream of agony as he scooted toward the door, crab-walking with his good hand and legs beneath him. His eyes found his missing fingers on the floor, and he watched in awe as they curled reflexively like dying worms. The flat places that were left in his fingers’ steads pumped blood in streams like four small garden hoses. The pain was immense, a throbbing drumbeat of misery.
Erwin stood holding the cleaver-like blade close to his face. A red line traced the cutting edge, and Lance watched as the ghost’s tongue slithered out from behind its exposed teeth to lick the blood from the steel. Its eyes closed, and then flashed open again.
“Just how I remember it.”
Erwin bolted toward him, his arm swung back. Lance jumped to his feet and turned toward the door. His shoes slipped and he cursed his legs. Every cell in his body reached for the opening, knowing what followed only feet behind him.
A burn of acid traced across the back of his neck. Lance stumbled through the doorway, his good hand covering his neck as he checked the damage there. He could feel only a shallow cut, and when he brought his palm to his face, a slight smear of blood coated the skin. His dream. This was his dream. He would fall soon and watch the vile thing stoop over him, and then he would die because now he knew that was why he always woke just before the light came on in the dream—it was death waiting for him in the darkness.
Erwin came into view in the doorway, his pallid skin a steep contrast to the black of the room behind him. Lance backed away toward the bay windows of the living room, but stopped when another sound rose above the noise of the storm outside. It was a soft thumping sound that emanated from the entryway. A pause, and then a muffled voice began to speak from the other side of the door.
“Lance? Are you okay?”
Mary, he thought, and looked at Erwin, whose mouth had opened again in a wide grin.
“Let her in, my boy. Let her join us in our dance.”
Lance turned his head toward the door and prayed to God that he had locked it behind him when he’d entered earlier, although he knew he hadn’t. Movement off to Lance’s right drew his attention. He risked a glance out the window, then looked back to Erwin, but in that moment he had seen something that burned itself into his brain like a branding iron.
The lake was definitely closer.
He hadn’t imagined it earlier. Waves rolled constantly against the shoreline as the wind hurled the water into the air in seething plumes. But something else was in the waves. Lance saw it before he looked away, unsure that it had been real or if the trauma he was enduring had pushed his mind beyond its boundaries of sanity.
The waves had looked like hands. Great black hands that clawed at the rocky shoreline with wide diaphanous fingers. There had been hundreds of them in the surf, made of water. All of them reaching past one another to pull at the shore. He had seen one clutch a boulder the size of a car tire and drag it backward beneath the crest of another that did the same to a smaller pile of rocks. The ground seemed to erode like a landslide within the pressure of the grasping breakers.
The pounding from the front door returned, and Lance’s eyes flicked there as Erwin moved toward him, covering the floor between them in jerky strides.
“Mary! Run! Run away!” Lance screamed, as he braced himself for the attack that Erwin was preparing.
The ghost’s tawny muscles flexed beneath thin skin, and its eyes flashed hatred as it waved the thick blade back and forth in front of its face. The ghost lunged and the front door opened.
Mary screamed.
Lance caught Erwin’s wrist with his left hand, the gleaming edge of the knife held above him. He fell backward and felt his writing desk connect with his lower back. His keyboard crunched audibly beneath him and he braced his arm as best he could, as Erwin struggled to plunge the knife into his throat. Lance’s mangled right hand pushed against the ghost’s chest as he tried to hold its murderous bulk away. Erwin’s flesh felt clammy and disgustingly pliable, like chicken skin ready to slip free of the meat. The ghost leaned closer, its eyes black and reminiscent of Anthony’s only minutes before. It was so strong. Lance felt the knife drawing closer to his throat, and he reached away with his bleeding hand and scrambled at the belt of knives that hung around Erwin’s bony hips.
An impact shuddered through the ghost’s body, and Lance saw shards of wood fly at the edges of his vision. Mary stood off to his left, holding the remnants of a wooden stool from the kitchen. Only two of the legs were still in her hands, the rest had obliterated on Erwin’s back in a shower of debris.
Erwin’s head snapped toward her and glared. Mary’s mouth hung open; a scream caught in her throat as she backed away and clutched the stool’s legs to her chest. Lance felt a handle slip into his palm and his thumb clamp down around it. Digging into the last reserves of his strength, Lance pushed with his left arm and pulled a knife free of its sheath.
“Go to hell,” Lance grunted from between his clenched teeth.
Erwin’s eyes flashed and then faded again to black. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s nice.”
Lance raised the knife in his mutilated right hand, clenching the handle as best he could between his thumb and shortened fingers. He brought it down hard, driving the pointed tip into the soft area just above Erwin’s clavicle.
The knife’s length disappeared into the pale skin and Lance felt it stop, hindered only by the hilt. He let go and gathered his legs between him and the ghost, and kicked out, sending Erwin across the room. Erwin stepped back awkwardly, but kept his balance without falling. He turned his head to gaze upon the jutting handle that protruded from the base of his neck. Gradually, the ghost’s head drooped until its sharp chin rested on its breastbone.
Lance held his breath, waiting for black fluid to erupt from the wound, but nothing happened. He looked over at Mary, who didn’t re
turn his gaze. She was dumbstruck by the scene before her. Lance heard a sharp creaking sound, like a rusted screen door being drawn open, and looked back to see Erwin raising his head, a new smile strung across his face.
“I forged these knives myself, boy. Did you really believe that they could harm me? I don’t fear them; they’re one with my flesh and bone. They are part of me.” Erwin reached up and drew the knife from the wound. Nothing issued from the small gash, and as Lance watched, the wound vanished, the skin knitting together seamlessly.
The house shivered. Vibrations ran beneath their feet and all around them, as the entire structure shifted in the direction of the lake. It was only an inch or so, but Lance noticed it and risked another look out of the curved glass of the alcove.
The lake had advanced even more since the last time he checked. The water lapped around the sides of the gazebo, which tilted at an odd angle. As Lance watched, a wave reached up and pulled several boards from the side of the small structure. The approaching water looked dark beneath its rolling surface. It had a depth that belied its perceived measure. That’s really deep—how can it be so deep? Lance thought as he looked back toward Erwin, who now held both weapons in his bloodless grip.
“Mary, run!” Lance yelled again, and watched out of the corner of his eye as she backed a few extra steps away but didn’t leave entirely. The dead thing that once had been a man walked forward, both knives held at its sides, ready to deliver the killing blow.
This is what I’ve amounted to, Lance thought. I’ll die here in this house, killed by something not of this world. He saw Mary’s white face floating off to his left, and despair nearly swallowed him entirely. The urge to just sit down came and went. He knew if he chose that path, Mary would be condemned to the same fate. The ghost now blocked her exit, a knife twitching menacingly in her direction. They needed time.
“Run, Mary! Upstairs! Go!”
His words finally registered and she blinked at him, dropping the pieces of stool to the floor. She spun on her heel and bolted up the stairs two at a time. Erwin’s head turned to follow her progress, and that was all the time Lance needed.
Flinging himself away from the desk, he dove toward the kitchen and heard the air split behind him. He waited for the sting of the blade in his back, but felt nothing as he slipped on a rug near the fridge and almost fell. His mind raced to find a way out. Lance stopped midway through the kitchen, looking first to his right and then to his left as he searched for movement. The smell of gasoline permeated the air and he blinked away the stinging in his eyes. For a moment he considered reaching down and plucking the lighter from John’s hand. He could set the place ablaze and burn the evil that lived within its walls. But would it stop when there was nothing but a smoking pile left? Would he awake somewhere else to see Erwin’s face inches from his and the cold smile of a knife-edge at his throat? No, fire wasn’t the answer.
Lance backed up a step while still scanning the two doorways, and felt his heel touch something on the floor behind him. The ax lay in the shadows of the counters, its head obscured beneath the foot space in the cabinets. Without thinking, he reached down and grabbed the weapon, hoisting it over his shoulder. The handle felt slippery with blood and gas, and he tried to dry his hands on his shirt for a better grip.
A dawning realization flooded his stomach with ice water—Erwin had gone upstairs after Mary. Any moment now he would hear her garbled scream and then a terrible heavy silence. The thought nearly made him bolt from the room, but then he saw the point of a blade slide into view above John’s body.
The ax weighed a thousand pounds as he drew it high over his head and sidled toward the doorway. The ghost edged into the opening and stepped onto John’s corpse. More congealed blood flowed from the wound in the caretaker’s neck, and it was this, more than anything, that fueled the rage that brought the ax down in a perfect arc toward Erwin’s grinning face.
The bit of the ax buried itself in the ghost’s forehead with a wet chunking sound that reminded Lance of a melon splitting open. The steel didn’t quit moving until it had cleaved Erwin’s head completely in two. His head hung open like a splayed phone book, an eye blinking rapidly on either side of the yawning canyon between them, shattered teeth scraping against the ax with a high, squeaking sound.
Lance released his hold on the handle and watched the ghost reel backward. The knife in its right hand clattered to the floor, and it grasped the ax handle and began to work it back and forth in a seesaw motion. Lance didn’t wait to see what would happen next. He ran back the way he came, slamming into the doorjamb with his shoulder and continuing on into the living room without breaking his stride.
The floor quaked beneath his feet and he fell against his writing desk. The storm still raged and the lake was even closer, but what he saw as he looked out the atrium window didn’t make sense and it sent a wave of sickening vertigo flowing through him.
An abyss sat just in front of the house. The churning water groped continuously at the few feet of ground that remained before the foundation, but everything beyond that dropped away and made him feel as if he were leaning over the balcony of a high building. The water went down into an utter blackness that looked complete. The sight was better suited to a plunging ocean trench than a freshwater lake, but what he saw was undeniable. The gazebo was completely gone, although Lance spotted a few boards floating in the undulating currents. The rest of the bay was also being consumed, its rocky border crumbling away beneath the insistence of the clawing liquid. There were shapes in the water too. Dark and indistinct, but they were moving incongruently with the throes of the storm.
A loud thud issued from behind him and broke the trance he had succumbed to. He turned his head just in time to see Erwin stoop down to retrieve the fallen knife. The ghost turned toward him, its features no longer split in half, its skull whole once again.
“Better than that. You’ll have to do better than that,” Erwin said, as he stalked toward the alcove.
Lance sprinted away from the desk, toward the stairs, and looked up. Mary stood on the landing, her hands clenched around the railing. Her eyes were saucers in the faint light.
“My room! Go!” He yelled, pointing as he leapt up the stairs.
She turned and began to run toward the open door when the house shifted violently toward the lake, the eastern edge dropping almost a foot. Mary fell to her side and hit the railing hard enough to crack the log runners loose from their anchors. The entire house groaned like something alive, and Lance felt himself trying to lean forward and fight the gravity that coaxed his body backward. But he lost and toppled down the stairs.
The stairs bit into him as he bounced down their treads, his head cracking off one, and then another, while he rolled toward the bottom. The last riser jammed into his side and he heard the audible snap as a rib sheared off inside him. Lance coughed out a pitiful scream and tried to draw a breath that tasted like pennies. His legs were splayed out on the floor beneath him, and when he tried to move them, they slid only a few inches.
Erwin had maintained his balance and was undisturbed by the now-angled floor that he walked on. His eyes burned into Lance’s as the knives rose once more.
The house rocked again, even more forcefully than before, but the ghost’s footing remained solid. Lance turned and pulled himself up the first step, the pain in his broken rib close to unbearable. He managed to get a leg below him to support his weight, and then the other. With a burst of adrenaline, he hobbled as fast as he could up the stairs, which were becoming even more difficult to climb with the house at its current angle.
“You can’t outrun fate, boy.” The ghost’s voice came from everywhere at once, and Lance feared that any moment he would feel the cold bite of steel from behind.
“Lance! Hurry!” Mary screamed from the doorway to his bedroom.
The pitched landing was only a few steps away and Lance flung himself onto it, and watched Erwin stab the tread where he had been a second before. The
knife splintered the wood with the unnatural strength behind it, and Erwin yanked it back with a short jerk of his arm. Lance stood and remained upright, and staggered into Mary’s arms.
“Look!” she yelled, pointing at the dropping end of the house.
Water had begun creeping into the living room, as the storm pulsed against the bay windows, the lake lapping just outside. There was a resounding crack as they watched the waves burst into the living room in a cascade of glass. Lance had only a moment before Mary hauled him inside the room and slammed the door shut, but in that brief instant he saw the water run against the angle of the floor, toward the stairs, and begin to climb them.
“We have to get out,” Lance moaned through the pain that racked nearly every inch of his body.
Mary fumbled with the lock on the door, then turned and slung Lance’s left arm over her shoulders to help support his sagging form. He looked up at the window, bejeweled with raindrops, that now exposed a swath of black-and-gray sky instead of trees and a view of the drive.
The door shook behind them, as it was struck hard from the other side.
“Out the window,” Lance said.
Everything in his vision had become dull gray and his legs threatened to collapse. He saw his hands grip the window frame and then flip the latches. Mary helped him pull the window open as the house shifted sickeningly again, but this time it failed to stop. The dizzying sense of somersaulting backward consumed Lance, and he cried out as he held on to the window ledge with his mangled hand and held on to Mary’s arm with the other. Mary screamed as the angle became worse. Furniture slid across the room and banged into the far wall, and a picture exploded in a shower of glass near Lance’s feet. The house tipped until it became a surety that it would topple completely over. Lance felt as if they were balanced upon a razor-thin edge and even the slightest movement would send them into the awaiting water.