Williams turned to Reggie on the threshold, and waved at the man.
“Come on,” he said. His voice was strange, drawn out.
Reggie looked at him, brow furrowed, lips pulled down so far that they nearly reached his navel, but he didn’t protest.
He moved forward and Williams passed through the doorway.
The room beyond the great door extended outward in a sea of white tiles, a sterile desert that reminded Williams of the hospital his mother had lay before she died.
The contrast of lighting from the dim sewer tunnel illuminated by only their flashlights to the fluorescent glow of this strange room made him momentarily dizzy.
“Reggie? Tell me this isn’t some sort of fucked up hallucination?”
“I see it, I see it,” Reggie replied in a hushed tone.
“Should we—”
“Marrow 2,” Reggie muttered, interrupting his train of thought.
Williams glanced over at the big man, and watched as his large fingers traced the engraving on the back of the door. It was the same words they had seen before when the tunnel had first transitioned from metal to dirt.
Marrow 2? What the hell does that mean?
Before he could even pose the question that clung to his tongue, Reggie pushed by him and strode briskly into the room.
“Hey! Hey, Reggie, stop!” Williams yelled after him.
But Reggie didn’t stop. The man kept walking and Williams followed.
Curiosity, compulsion, duty. Whatever it was that drove Williams onward, it was a powerful urge.
His eyes were starting to adjust now, and Williams realized that the expanse before him wasn’t empty, not at all.
The large space was flanked by huge metal walls that matched the door and its frame behind him. But as odd as this structure was—why wasn’t this on the map? For fuck’s sake, why is nothing on the goddamn map?—it wasn’t the most interesting aspect, not by a long shot.
That honor was bestowed on the tanks.
Williams counted at least a dozen of them, all ten maybe twelve feet tall, the diameter of an oversized water heater. The tanks themselves were dark, as if lined by one-way glass, but Williams just knew that they were filled with some sort of liquid.
As he observed the tanks from a distance, Reggie took a more direct approach: he walked directly toward the closest tank and stared up at it in a mixture of awe and disbelief.
Williams watched for a moment, but when Reggie reached out and knocked on the tank, his breath caught in his throat.
“Reg! Reg! Stop that.”
But Reg didn’t stop. He kept on rapping on the tank with his giant knuckles.
“Sounds like there’s water or somethin’ in there…” he said, ignoring Williams. He knocked again, and this time Williams confirmed what he had known when he came in: the tanks were filled with liquid.
“You probably shouldn’t do that,” Williams said quietly. He breathed deeply, again feeling the tightness in his chest and lungs, then added, “I think we should go back. The Sheriff might need our help.”
Reggie still refused to acknowledge either Williams or his questions. Instead, he continued to not just knock on the glass, but rubbed at it too, as if trying to clear Vaseline from a computer monitor.
“Don’t—”
But it was too late.
There was a high-pitched magnetic hiss, and then the dark covering dissipated like smoke clearing from a well ventilated room.
“Fuck,” Reggie muttered as he stumbled backward.
Williams had been right: there was water in the tank. Only, there was something else inside the tank as well.
A body.
There was a man floating in the vat of aquamarine fluid, a mask of some sort covering his nose and mouth. There were tubes coming from his arms like aquatic catheters that ascended toward the top of the tank and out of sight. His suspended body was completely nude, his pale flesh soft and wrinkled like someone who had overstayed their time in a bath for about a year or so.
Williams strode up to beside his partner. Both men were breathing heavily, their eyes bulging from their sockets.
“I think we should go,” Reggie whispered, suddenly having a change of heart.
Williams whole-heartedly agreed. And yet he was mesmerized by the sight of the man in the tank.
Was he alive? Could he be alive?
Williams figured he must be, otherwise what would be the point of the mask and the tube?
His eyes darted to the tank standing three feet to the left of the one containing the suspended man. It was still dark, but the more he stared, the more it seemed to become transparent.
This vat also contained a man, only this man was shorter than the first, and his skin was darker, tanned.
Williams squinted.
He also looked odd, disproportioned, somehow. His arms, slightly too long, his hands and feet heavily calloused, and his brow was thickened with a slight slope to his forehead.
He nudged Reggie and pointed.
“Looks like a pre-historic man, or some shit,” he whispered. “Homo erectus.”
Williams’s eyes darted to all of the massive tanks, his eyes widening.
There were bodies in each and every one of them.
He staggered, his mind working a mile a minute trying to figure out what kind of fucked up lab was located deep under Pekinish and Askergan Counties.
Willaims’ blood ran cold when his eyes fell on one of the tanks toward the back of the room, tucked away behind several others. Suspended in it was a young woman with brown hair that swirled about her head. She, like the others, was nude, but while the others seemed adequately fed, this one seemed thin on the verge of emaciated. And her skin was particularly pale, even considering the liquid obstruction.
“Reggie? Is that… is that Alice?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm and even.
It can’t be. It can’t be Alice.
Reggie didn’t answer and at first Williams thought that he hadn’t heard.
But then the man took a step forward, even as Williams took a step backward.
“Look,” he said at last in a strangled voice, “it’s Seth.”
Williams followed Reggie’s gaze to the tank beside the one he suspected housed Alice. The man in this tank was also thin, but one side of his face was horribly disfigured, his eye pushed back in his head.
The rest of his body was covered in dozens of dark blue and purple bruises.
“Fuck, it is him—how… how is this possible? Reg, what in the royal fuck is going on here?”
Reggie was already reaching for his walkie talkie. He was about to bring it to his mouth, when Williams reached over and grabbed his hand.
“Radio silence. Two clicks, remember?”
Reggie nodded and pressed the talk button twice in rapid succession. Then they waited.
Nothing; not even dead air.
“Try again,” Williams suggested.
The big man did.
Still nothing.
“Again.”
The only sound they heard was the electrical thrum that pervaded every cell in his body, causing the lipid bilayers to wave and dance.
“Let’s get out of here, Reggie. Let’s go back.”
Reggie nodded.
Williams was about to turn, when his eye caught something on the wrist of the man in the tank that Reggie had so callously knocked on moments ago.
It appeared to be a bracelet of some sort, similar to the kind that inpatients received upon admitting.
Williams stepped forward and pressed his nose against the tank.
“Williams? We should get the fuck out of here,” Reggie said, echoing his own words from a few moments ago.
“Just a sec.”
He squinted hard. There was writing on the bracelet, black text on the white band. It was small type, maybe 10-point font, but he thought he could make it out.
There was a number, a series of eight or nine digits that held no meaning to him. Bu
t beneath it was a familiar format: a date.
27.12.2015
It was a date that Williams knew well.
It was right after the storm.
What in the fuck is going on here?
But what he saw next made his heart skip a beat.
Beneath the date was a name: C. Lawrence.
“No, no fucking way,” he stammered.
“What?” Reggie said, his voice distant as if he were speaking from across the prairies. “What is it?”
Williams swallowed hard.
“It’s—it’s… I think it’s Cody Lawrence.”
“Who?”
The man in the tank’s eyes suddenly snapped open and he slammed his palms against the inside of the tank sending dull thuds echoing throughout the sterile room.
Williams’s mouth went wide, but no sound came out. He stepped backward, or at least tried to, but his legs refused to work. Instead, he fell hard on his ass.
Then Cody Lawrence started to scream, and a heavy stream of bubbles squeezed out from the corners of the mask.
“Let’s go! Williams, let’s fucking go!” Reggie yelled, and Williams picked himself off the floor.
Together they turned, but before they had taken two steps, the massive metal door suddenly swung closed, revealing the large block letters on the other side that read MARROW 2.
Reggie made a sound somewhere between a moan and a croak and made a run for the door.
From the inside, there appeared to be no handle of any sort; no knob, no slot, no push bar.
Nothing, just those two strange words.
Reggie ran his hands over the surface, trying desperately to find a way out.
But there was no way out.
With every one of Reggie’s desperate movements, the electrical buzz seemed to increase in intensity. When he put his hands against the smooth surface and started to push, the buzz became a roar, one that built inside Williams’s head like the onset of a terrible migraine.
“Open it!” he tried to shout, but the words came out like a dead whisper. He stretched his jaw to try and pop his ears, but nothing he did seemed to alleviate the pressure.
Reggie turned back to face him, fear etched on his face. His lips were moving, but Williams couldn’t hear any words.
It was the damn buzzing sound that was clouding everything, as if an epic battle between a hive of bumblebees and live wires was taking place between his ears.
He saw Reggie’s hand move to his walkie again, but the movement was all wrong. It was jagged, as if someone were editing a movie and took out every other frame. His wide finger pressed the talk button once, twice, and then it became a blur.
The buzzing reached a crescendo and Williams moaned. The pain was so intense that he was forced to his knees, and he brought his hands protectively covering his ears.
It was no use; the sound was inside his head.
Williams instinctively curled into the fetal position, his mouth wide in a silent scream.
The final image that flashed in his mind before the sound drove Deputy Williams insane was the sight of Cody Lawrence, his eyes wide, bubbles pouring from his nose and mouth.
I’m not dead, he was screaming. I’m not dead… I’m not dead… I’m not dead.
END
Author’s note
Welcome back to Askergan County, I hope your stay has been comfortable, pleasant and most of all vermin free.
It’s been about ten months since I last visited the eclectic Askergan Police/Sheriff’s Department and their continued battles against the evil harbored within its idyllic borders. But during this time the characters and their plights never left my mind. Sheriff White and Bradley Coggins, along with the Lawrence clan, have been with me from the beginning, and they continue to haunt me to this day.
I’m happy to say that their tale is not over. There is still much to do in Askergan as it continues to reel in the wake of near destruction.
And there is something else coming.
Something that will make Oot’-keban look like a friendly Muppet. Something, or someone, by the name of Leland Black. Readers of my Haunted Series will know who I’m talking about.
I’ll leave you with this: pure evil is on a collision course with Askergan, and the results are going to be bloody and the body count high.
Part of the reason why I love this job so much is because I get interact with you guys, my readers. This is especially helpful in trying times such as these. Drop me a line or hit me up on Facebook if you have any comments about my work or just want to chat. And remember, Amazon reviews are always appreciated.
You keep reading, and I’ll keep writing.
Best,
Patrick
Montreal, 2017
Books by Patrick Logan
The Haunted Series
Book 1: Shallow Graves
Book 2: The Seventh Ward
Book 3: Seaforth Prison
Book 4: Scarsdale Crematorium
Book 5: Sacred Heart Orphanage
Book 6: Shores of the Marrow
Insatiable Series
Book 1: Skin
Book 2: Crackers
Book 3: Flesh
Book 4: Parasite
Book 4.5: Knuckles
Book 5: Stitches
Book 6: Bones
Family Values Trilogy
Witch
Mother
Father
Daughter (Summer 2017)
Detective Damien Drake
Butterfly Kisses
Cause of Death
Download Murder
Short Stories
System Update
Not all houses are made of brick and stone...
Robert Watts is having the worst day of his entire life: first he's laid off, then he finds out that his wife is having an affair... with his boss no less. And that's only the beginning.
Before the month is out, Robert finds himself alone to raise his daughter with no money, no job, and a house that is minutes from being repossessed. Just when he hits rock bottom, a strange visitor arrives at the doorstep of his soon to be foreclosed house with a letter from an Aunt he didn't know existed.
The offer is simple: look after Aunt Ruth during her dying days, and in return Robert will be bequeathed the Harlop Estate in which she currently resides. It's a no brainer and Robert jumps at the opportunity, equally motivated by the prospect of financial security as he is for a fresh start.
Problem is, it only takes a few nights in the Harlop Estate before he begins to question Aunt Ruth's claims that they are the home's only inhabitants...
It's the scratching he hears during the night, the voices that he can barely make out over the constant rain, and then there's the girl with the rat...
With their house foreclosed and their bank accounts liquidated, Robert and his daughter Amy desperately need a place to live. But the question Robert soon finds himself struggling with is whether living in the Harlop Estate is worth it... and if he can survive until Aunt Ruth passes to collect his inheritance.
Grab your copy today!
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are either entirely imaginary or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or of places, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Patrick Logan 2017
Cover design: Ebook Launch (www.ebooklaunch.com)
Interior design: © Patrick Logan 2017
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, cannot be reproduced, scanned, or disseminated in any print or electronic form.
First Edition: June 2017
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Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5) Page 25