Personal Effects

by J. C. Hutchins

  Anti-Zach had enough sense not to follow.

  The kitchen reeked of bacon grease, rotten food, cigarettes ashes and beer. My hand found a light switch by the door and toggled it up, then down, then up again. No dice. Daniel Drake’s electric bill was still unpaid.

  The room felt like a walk-in freezer. I shivered now, marveling at the vapor puffing from my lips. The walls were alive, crawling with shadows, creaking, tktktking. I wondered which ones were the Dark Man, and which were my fright-trip imagination.

  “Night On Bald Mountain” played on and on from the living room ahead, presumably from a CD.

  The fear-needles poked at my skin, a thousand cold fingernails nicking and scratching. I told myself to breathe, to stay calm, that there was light in here, there really was, look, see, light.

  My eyes adjusted to a keyhole’s worth of moonlight streaming through the window. It wasn’t nearly enough. I pressed my body along the wall, determined to traverse the room along its perimeter, inching against its walls and counters and

  BONG.

  I flinched, swearing. My hand flailed in the darkness, searching for the thing against which my hip had struck. Metal, smooth, pebbled with grime, grease-slick. My fingers found the wrought-iron cooking grates, and I nodded. Stove.

  The walls tittered.

  I stepped around the appliance, hand now sliding across its surface, now feeling the steel give way to pocked countertop. My fingertips parted a sea of crumbs, then pressed into something half-eaten, mushy. For a heartbeat, I was more revolted by this room than I was afraid of it.

  The meager moonlight began to wane, victim of another cloud. I held my breath, desperate and sick again. No. Not now. Please, Lord. Not now.

  My hand brushed against a small cardboard box, and I picked it up, praying for a box of matches. I shook it. The ex-smoker in me heard the ubiquitous rattle of cigarettes inside. I pitched it.

  The kitchen was darker now. From the living room, the music began to stutter, fade in and out.

  My hand groped again, and my panic rose again, blazing red-hot, blowing hypothermic in this icy room. Come, damn it. Come on.

  “Come on,” I whispered.

  The music roared louder, surging with static.

  My sweating palm grasped the hilt of something plastic and I fumbled with it in the dark, hungry to understand it, see it by touch alone. Plastic handle, metal nozzle. A grill lighter—the thing with which Daniel Drake lit his gas stove, his cigarettes.

  I sighed, index finger sliding past the trigger guard. I pressed its switch. The room flared to life.

  Daniel Drake stood before me, his eyes bloodshot and murderous.

  A whiskey bottle hung from one hand. In his other, a hatchet.

  “You again,” he muttered, swaying.

  I was stupefied, scared stiff.

  “Never here. He was never here. And when he finally came home, Mom and Jenny died.”

  His breath was putrid from the booze. My mouth tried to find words, but my brain was stuck, vapor locked. I suddenly needed to pee.

  The living room thunderstorm raged on, even louder now.

  “Obsessed, he was insane, obsessed,” Daniel said. He shrugged his broad shoulders. “He ruined everything. He ruined our brand-new life out here. My life. Her life. And. And then …”

  He dropped the whiskey bottle. It shattered on the floor.

  “ … he …”

  Daniel snarled, hefting the hatchet in both hands now.

  “ … left.”

  The radio trumpeted a final crescendo, then fell silent.

  “It’s you,” I said, backing away, the lighter’s flame still flickering between us. “You tracked them, all of them, all of his friends. You killed them.

  “You’re the Dark Man.”

  25

  Daniel clomped forward, closing the gap. The countertop dug into my ass, immovable. I glanced about in the shadowdance, frantically doing an inventory of the cramped kitchen. Stove beside me. Refrigerator across the room. Between them: counters, sink. In the kitchen’s center, a weathered thrift-store table and two rickety, mismatched chairs.

  An open jar of peanut butter on the counter. Empty booze bottles in the sink. Skillet on the table, writhing with roaches. Unwashed plates there. Crumpled cans of Coors.

  GOD BLESS THIS MESS.

  I resisted a suicidal urge to laugh.

  “No. No, fucker,” Daniel Drake said. His massive form swayed in place. He grinned knowingly. “No-fucking-comprendo. Dad’s the killer, was always the killer. He brought something back with him from the See-See-See-Pee. A curse. An Inkstain. He could see the future, see the blood a-comin’, and he ran. God, all the blood …”

  His hollow, hopeless face twisted into a sneer.

  “ … and oh, the blood that’d come and gone, Jesus, the things he did. I know. I saw. Extra-shittin’-extra, read all a-fuckin’-bout it. Them people he killed in Russia. All the letters that came here after he left, all them government letters, letters from fucking lawyers—oh, he knew, he knew I’d see ’em, knew they were comin’, I know he knew. I read ’em all. I burned ’em all.”

  He glanced down, at the stained throw rug beneath his feet. His mouth curved into a toothy, meat cleaver smile.

  “Well. Almost all of ’em.”

  “Daniel, put the hatchet down,” I said, still holding the grill lighter between us. “I’m here because your dad sent me. He wants me to find something here, in this house, something that can help him. Maybe it’s you, the things you’ve read. You’ve gotta come back with me, come back to The Brink. Your father needs you. Your … your family needs you.”

  The walls seemed to rattle as the man laughed. The hatchet’s thick blade shimmered in his hands. He leaned in. The fire’s reflection burned bright in his eyes, turning them coal-red.

  “ME” he cried. “Sounds like he needs you more than he ever needed me. You, the stranger, the meddler, the gravedigger, diggin’ it all out, bringin’ it all back, filled with worms and bugs …”

  Tktktk.

  “ … and you wanna fix ’im, cure ’im, so he can see. And then what, gravedigger? I’ll tell you what. More. More killin’, more dyin’. No. That can’t happen. He’s earned this. He deserves this. He’s the walking dead. And you … . You.”

  He puckered his lips and blew. The lighter’s flame vanished.

  “You’re just dead.”

  I heaved my body to the right, away from the stove, as the darkness spiraled upon us. An instant later, the room filled with the splinter-blast of axe blade meeting Formica. The lighter slipped from my hand, clattering into the ink.

  “No, Daniel!” I screamed, but the man’s raspy breath devolved into another grunt, and I scuttled further, nearing the sink and window above it.

  The hatchet was a thunderclap, shredding the dish cabinet where my head had been. The blade gave a shrill, throaty squeak as Daniel yanked it from the wood. I stumbled on, hands smacking against the booze bottles in the sink. I stole a half second to look down, using the moonlight from the window as a spotlight. I grabbed a bottle, held it like a club.

  The man chuckled in the darkness. A hand fired from the black, clapping hard against my chest. I snatched at something—anything—to keep from falling. Miraculously, my fingers gripped the sink’s faucet. I used it for leverage, staying upright, gasping in dread as the metal began to bend. Bottles clinked cheerfully as my forearm clashed against them.

  “Gotcha,” Daniel hissed.

  The hatchet roared downward again, destroying the bottles in the sink, missing my hand by an inch. I felt the bee sting of glass slicing my skin. Daniel wrenched the axe wildly upward. Its blade blew through the kitchen window, scattering thick shards across the countertop. They tinkled like knives nested together in a drawer.

  I found my footing, madly swinging the bottle in my hand. It detonated against the axe handle, spraying razor-edged jewels that sparkled in the dim light from the window. Daniel roared. He dropped the weapon, hands
pressed against his face.

  I lunged toward the floor, intent on grabbing the axe. A steeltoed work boot bashed into my stomach, blowing the air from my lungs in a surprised scream. I slid, nearly fell … but Daniel’s hands snatched my shirt, yanking me skyward.

  I felt my feet leave the ground. Zero-G.

  He slammed my back into another cabinet, leaning close, his grinning, blood-soaked face glowing bright in the moonlight. Glass shards glittered in his cheeks, his chin. One flashed from his gums, bathing his teeth in a gushing stream of blood.

  He shoved again, sending my back into the cabinet. The dishes inside clattered, cheering for more destruction.

  “KILL YOU,” Daniel roared.

  And then I was airborne, heaved in a one-eighty, a boneless scarecrow in free fall … and now, my body collided with the kitchen table, smashing through it, finally impacting on the floor. Plates and beer cans shattered and clanked around my face. The skillet bonged, bouncing across the linoleum, landing near my arm.

  Stars filled the room. Blood filled my mouth.

  Daniel was relentless. He crouched low. His fist smashed against my face. I cried out, asking him to stop, no, I didn’t want to die in the dark. The world rocked as he punched me again.

  My hand groped in the darkness, searching for the skillet. Daniel saw this and kicked it away. It clanged against a wall, out of reach.

  My fingers still crawled forward, grasping nothing …

  The wet crunch of knuckle blasted through my skull.

  … grasping air …

  Daniel was wheezing. The shadows on the ceiling were laughing in the dimness. Tktktk.

  … grasping the hatchet’s handle.

  I let loose a war cry and swung the thing. It was unbalanced and heavy in my hand. The blade whooshed in the darkness for a breathless eternity, and then sank home in Daniel Drake’s shin. The room filled with a nasty thock sound.

  He staggered, his back striking the sink cabinet. I heard him tug the axe from his leg—the sound of tearing wet lettuce—and he was screaming now, screaming loud and long, like a child.

  “You want … want t0 … KNOW MY FATHER” he shrieked.

  His hands were tugging at something beside me—the frayed, filthy throw rug.

  “HUH, gravedigger?! HUH? You want to KNOW him?! Go JOIN him!”

  I stared dumbly as his finger snaked around a metal ring in the floor. I tried not to choke on my own blood, not to hear the skitter-scratches screaming in my ears.

  Daniel opened the trapdoor.

  “Be BURIED with him!” he screamed.

  His boot crushed my side. He swung his fist. Another lightning bolt blasted across my eyes.

  I felt my body being dragged slowly toward the hole in the floor. I struggled. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  I fell. The door slammed shut.

  And the dark … began to speak.

  26

  The lizard part of my brain—the part hardwired for instinct and survival—ran the numbers and grunted a deduction. Cold ground beneath me. The overpowering, stale aroma of earth, dust, rat shit. Boards creaking less than two feet above my prone, bleeding body. Crawl space.

  And that was my last rational thought for a while.

  Blind. Blind like Richard Drake. Eyes open now, staring into the abyss, and yes, yes, it stared back at me, an ancient thing, a thing from before before, and I was sinking into its planet-sized onyx pupil, drowning in its inky aqueous humor, feeling my body pull into itself, crushed by the absence of light, warmth, sound, everything.

  Everything … but the fear.

  Fingers like rail spikes ripped at me, impossibly cold, burning my skin. Shrieks fell short in my throat; there was no air in which they could be heard. But my mind was alive with sounds: the marching of spider’s legs, the rising drone of locusts, the swirling scattering of autumn leaves—tktktkt—the roar of rockslides stones rattling in a clothes dryer, she tumbles and tumbles and now the soul-rending sound of a chuckle, the noise thunderclouds make as they collide and devour one another, growing fat and black for the storm to end all storms.

  The Dark Man breathed. Panted, like a hungry dog. I imagined its forked tongue slick with crude-oil drool. It was omniscient. Omnipresent.

  “Not … real,” I muttered.

  But the shadow-chill slid over me, wrapped tight like a wetsuit, and I could feel the black, January lake water seeping through the membrane of my skin, full-body inoculation, a cure for life—life, the disease, the virus, the thing that must not be. It spoke back to me in its non-voice, a liquid language, sloshing affirmation in my inner ear: oh-so-real, tktktk, oh-so-mine … .

  Certainty. This was where I would die. This was my grave. The grave for the meddler, the gravedigger, dead, dead’s dead, what’s dead’s buried, you’d be right to leave it alone.

  Buried.

  I rocked, weightless in the void, my mind seizing upon this. Join him, Daniel had said. Be buried with him. What did that mean?

  Was Richard Drake’s body buried down—

  I howled. The black stuff streamed into my eyes now, tears in reverse, piercing my ducts, turning my eyeballs into cold marbles.

  —no no, focus, think of something else, Drake, yes, buried here? Then who’s the blind man in The Brink? Body in the crawl space … I need light, I need to see.

  I screamed. Razor blades tearing beneath my fingernails now. I screamed again. Echoless.

  no. no-tktktk-no-light-so-dark-no-light-now

  No. No matches, no lighter, no flashlight in my satchel, nothing in the bag to beat away the

  BZZZT.

  What the f—

  BZZZT.

  This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t hearing that.

  BZZZT.

  I’d gone mad.

  The black poured on in earnest now, slithering into my nose, tugging up my lips, squirting though my clenched teeth. I felt it surge through my pierced earlobes (Christ, I haven’t worn hoops in five yeaaaowww), the ink squirming through them like tapeworms.

  My frozen hands fumbled to my satchel, to the buzzing thing inside—the impossible thing, no signal, no sender—my stupid fingers finally wrapping around Richard Drake’s cell phone. The cracked thing vibrated in my palm as I pulled out into the black, its LCD screen an impromptu flashlight, a beacon.

  I read its screen, not daring to press it to my face, too frightened to listen. INCOMING CALL: SOPHRONIA POOLE. I held it high. The crawlspace came alive in its pale light—floorboards above, rotten earth beneath, limestone foundations. Three feet away, to my left: a crumpled, mold-soaked shoebox.

  And there, looming near the box. Him.

  It.

  The Dark Man.

  Picosecond glimpse

  obsidian fire, shape of a man, crouching, depthless

  Nothing made sense

  shifting, intelligent, soundless black flames

  anymore

  torn paper, burned paper

  Madness standing

  electrified contortionist, jointless sea-snake limbs jigging, kicking wild

  by the box

  arms conducting palsied, unholy Butoh dance

  It’s guarding

  ice-pick fingers twitch-blur-tugging invisible upright bass strings

  the box

  head rocking side-to-side, gleeful mania, seesaw-seesaw, cheeks clapping against obsidian shoulders

  So what’s

  head of horns, head of vipers, head of smooth, polished stone

  inside

  faceless, but inside the nothing: beyond-black eyes … beyond- black teeth

  the box?

  Tktktk.

  I gritted my teeth, trembling. I pointed my makeshift lantern at its face.

  “Would you be mine, motherfucker?” I whispered. “Could you be mine?”

  The Beast roared.

  I clawed my way toward the crumpled shoebox, toward my boogeyman. I tasted dirt on my lips, felt it turn to bitter sludge against my teeth. This box was t
he “X,” the thing Drake knew/didn’t know, the thing his subconscious prayed was here. Endgame secrets, covered in decay.

  The shade-shape splashed onto the crawl space ceiling, screeching, talons swiping the earth, raising no dust, leaving no marks. I edged closer.

  “Unfinished business?” I growled, holding the glowing phone ahead of me. “Someone holding on, on the other line?” I gripped it tight, groaning as I inched forward—my body was beaten, nearly broken. “On the other side, maybe?”

  Or maybe coincidence, bad timing, Rachael’s voice said from a lifetime ago, as we’d chased Lucas. Bad battery, battery going dead …

  The phone’s plastic case squealed and snapped in my hand. A hunk of plastic dug into my palm (the battery cover, I thought, panicked) then tumbled away. The cell’s screen flickered. The device gave a malcontent chime. Fuck.

  “Not stopping,” I said, shivering. Vapor surged from my mouth as I gasped. “Not done. Can’t let it go.”

  My torn, bleeding fingers pressed against the shoebox. The phone chimed another warning. The Dark Man wailed a laugh, and descended.

  Earth became tar and we sank together into this new murk, his shark’s teeth gnashing my legs, my ribs, and I still clutched the sputtering lantern, still tugged at the box bobbing on the slick, viscous surface. It tipped, and the contents of the box were swirling in the ether now, barely visible in the phone-glow.

  My capillaries seized, freezing. My eyes fluttered, lungs burned.

  I snatched a swirling sheet of paper—

  Dear Danny, I have to leave, and I want you to know why …

  —and then I gripped the document beside it, the copperplate letterhead already familiar to my mind—

  CENTRAL INTELLI …

  —and then my fingers found the photograph.

  The phone peeped a feeble chime. Battery nearly gone. Its splintered screen light dipped from white to gray.

  Do not humanize the Inkstain, Mr. Taylor, Drake cooed, far away. The only human thing about it is the souls it shreds.