He was on to something; he knew it.
They cut across the quad and passed by the library. Matt was starting to wonder if they were headed for one of the dorms when he saw them veer off toward the tree line.
All at once he knew where they were going.
The old swim center.
As quietly as he could, Matt followed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Matt watched as the duo made their way down the path, slipped through the partially open door, and disappeared inside the building. He gave them a minute or two to get a short distance ahead of him and then followed them inside.
He stopped just inside the door, letting his eyes adjust. It wasn’t completely dark, as there was a strange, blue-green light coming from behind the double-doors at the end of the hall, doors that he could see where just swinging shut in the wake of the students’ passage.
Gripping his axe tightly, Matt proceeded down the hall.
As he drew closer he could see the light growing brighter, flaring against the windows set in the middle of each of the doors ahead of him, the doors that led to the pool room proper. It danced and weaved, flashing brighter then dying down again, like an aurora borealis come down to earth. It was strangely compelling, that light, drawing him onward down the hallway until he could almost reach out and touch the doors in front of him.
The truth is on the other side, he thought to himself as he reached for the door.
Behind him, the door to the outside creaked loudly as it was forced open.
Matt whirled around, his axe at the ready, cursing himself for letting a pretty light show distract him while leaving him vulnerable from behind.
A flashlight clicked on and its beam cut the darkness of the corridor, flashing over him and moving away before cutting back to pin him in its glare.
“Mr. Cahill? Is that you?”
He knew that voice.
Julia Stevens.
He let his right arm fall to his side, hiding the axe behind his partially turned body. With his free hand he first put his finger over his lips to indicate the need for silence and then beckoned her forward.
She frowned, obviously not used to being told what to do, but her curiosity got the better of her and she did as she was asked.
“What are you doing in here?” she said quietly, as she got closer. “I thought I told you that this place was condemned and that…”
Matt grabbed her arm and pulled her closer. He shook her fiercely.
“Where is he? Where is Mr. Dark?”
Stevens stared at him as if he’s suddenly started spouting gibberish. Then her gaze fell on the axe he was holding in his other hand.
“What are you doing! Let go of me right now or I’ll fire your ass, Cahill!”
He shook her again, harder this time, hard enough that he could hear her teeth rattle in her head.
“I know you’re working with him so tell where he is or I’ll make damn sure that you regret you ever laid eyes on him!”
As Julia cowered away from him, Matt became aware that someone was clapping slowly and exaggeratedly from the shadows just behind her. Julia heard it, too, and she reacted in a way he hadn’t expected, scrambling away from the sound as if she were as equally frightened of it as she was of him.
Matt was still trying to fit that one together in his head when Mr. Dark stepped out of the entrance to the girl’s locker room, his hands continuing the mocking applause.
He was dressed like a caricature of a college professor, in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, corduroy pants, and with a pipe clamped securely between his barracuda teeth.
“Matthew, Matthew, Matthew,” he said, shaking his head slightly with each repetition. “You really are quite a simple boy, aren’t you?”
Matt gauged the distance between them, wondering if he could cross it and deliver a blow from the axe before the bastard had time to react.
Mr. Dark seemed to read his mind. “Tsk, tsk,” he said mockingly. “If you do that, you won’t get the chance to see how it all turns out and trust me, you don’t want to miss this.”
“Who is this man, Mr. Cahill?” Julia asked.
He glanced at her, then quickly back at his nemesis, not wanting to give the other an opening to exploit.
“You can drop the act; you know exactly who he is,” Matt said.
Julia opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by Mr. Dark’s laughter. Both she and Matt turned to see him doubled over in laughter, tears streaming down his face.
“Her?” he cried, through the laughter. “You think I’m using her? How utterly delicious!”
Matt barely heard him. His enemy’s sudden laughter had given him the opening he needed and he didn’t hesitate, just leapt across the distance that separated them and brought the axe whistling down.
Right through the empty space where Dark had been standing micro-seconds before.
The axe struck the floor and embedded itself several inches deep.
As Matt struggled to free it, he glanced behind him to see Mr. Dark’s teeth gleaming blue-green in the strange light.
“Take them!” he cried.
From out of the entrance to the boys’ locker room poured a horde of former students corrupted by whatever transformative process Mr. Dark had used on those that had attacked outside the Bateman household.
As they rushed toward him, he wrenched the axe free and turned to meet their charge.
In seconds it was sheer bedlam. Matt stood with his back to the wall, swinging the axe to and fro, doing all he could to keep the horrid things at bay. Blood flew, the creatures hissed, and Julia Stevens screamed.
Screamed?
He glanced to his right just in time to see Stevens seized by several of the creatures and dragged toward the double doors leading into the pool area proper.
What the hell?
He didn’t have time to ponder the implications.
One of the altered students changed tactics and suddenly threw himself upon the axe, burying the blade in his chest and keeping it still for a moment. Immediately several of his companions seized the haft of the axe and ripped it out of Matt’s hands.
He stood there, facing them with only his bare hands.
“Come on, you bastards!” he cried, brandishing his fists as they rushed en masse toward him.
The beating came hard and fast and, mercifully for Matt, so did unconsciousness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Hello, Matt.”
The familiar sound of her voice brought him back to consciousness. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear the haze from them, and discovered that he was kneeling before a large throne made from some kind of resinous stuff that glistened darkly in the crazed lighting. It was a throne fit for a queen; large, ornate, dripping power and authority.
At the moment, it was empty.
He chanced a look behind him and wished immediately that he hadn’t. The pool was less than a dozen feet away, the murky water lapping wetly against the sides of its half-filled enclosure. Lining the pool were the transformed students. Matt guessed there were a good hundred, maybe more. They stood in perfect silence, watching him, their eyes seeming to pulse in time with the light emanating from the depths of the pool. When he glanced in that direction he thought he saw a large, hulking mass moving about down there, but he couldn’t be sure.
But what really made him want to throw up was the sight of Olivia standing naked on the far side of that pool, bathed in that eerie light that showed the patches of rot and oozing sores that covered her form. A trembling Julia Stevens knelt at her feet in abject terror while a grinning Mr. Dark looked on in approval.
“If I’d known you’d wanted to be a part of our little party,” Olivia said, “I’d have invited you myself.”
Matt couldn’t believe what he was seeing. I slept with that woman, he thought with a shudder.
Mr. Dark watched him with glee as Olivia continued.
“Our mutual friend here told me that you
were incorruptible. That I couldn’t tempt you away from your life of righteousness willingly, but I believe that’s no longer necessary. It’s too bad that we didn’t have more time, but, now that you’ve joined us we’ll just have to move on and make the most of it.”
Matt dredged his voice up out of a suddenly bone-dry throat.
“I’ll come after you just as I’ve come from him,” he said.
Olivia smiled at his bravado. “But my dear Matthew, it’s too late for that. You see, we’ve already come for you.”
Matt shook his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” Mr. Dark replied. He turned to Olivia and said, “I’ve told you before, he really is rather simple. Perhaps you’d best explain it to him.”
Olivia smiled and for the first time Matt saw the predator behind the mask.
“I’ll do one better,” she said. “I’ll show him.”
She reached down and dragged Julia Stevens to her feet. The other woman was sobbing, begging for Olivia to leave her alone, promising she wouldn’t tell.
“Shssh,” Olivia said to her gently, laying a finger across Julia lips.
Julia shut up.
“You’ll be just fine,” Olivia told her.
As Julia opened her mouth to reply, Olivia seized her by the chin and the back of her neck and planted her mouth over Julia’s own.
Olivia inhaled and just kept on inhaling, as if she were trying to suck Julia’s insides out through her esophagus, and maybe that’s exactly what she was doing, for Matt could see Julia’s body beginning to whither, like a flower left out in the hot sun too long, collapsing in upon itself like an empty husk until there was nothing left.
With one great horrid sucking sound, Olivia let the other woman’s body drop to the floor, where it broke into a thousand little flakes like ashes in a fireplace.
“Ahhh!” Olivia cried, wiping her mouth as if to catch the excess. “Nothing tastes better than a soul full of fear and loathing.”
As Matt watched, the light coming from the deep end of the pool pulsed brightly, filling the room for the moment, and the sores that covered Olivia’s body healed in the blink of an eye, the patches of rot shrunk away to nothingness. He knelt there, stunned. “What did you do?” he asked, not realizing he’d even spoken aloud until Olivia deigned to answer him.
“Do? I should think that would be obvious. I consumed her, Matthew. At least the parts that matter.”
“Matter?”
Mr. Dark leaned in toward his protégé. “I think you’re going to have to explain it to him.”
She laid a hand on his arm in eerie semblance to the way she’d touched Matt in Jefferson Hall the other day and smiled indulgently at him. “Hush,” she said.
She left him behind and began walking around the pool toward Matt, her mob of silent followers parting to let her pass.
When she reached the other side she ran a finger along Matt’s cheeks where one of his assailants had earlier drawn blood, then popped that finger in her mouth and licked it clean.
“Ummm,” she said, with a lazy smile. “Didn’t I tell you the other night that I loved to eat you up?”
Matt wanted to vomit, but he managed to keep his composure. Keep her talking, he thought. Buy as much time as you can.
“I still don’t understand.”
Olivia climbed the steps and settled into her throne. This close Matt could see that her body had healed completely. In fact, it looked better than ever, her skin flawless, her breasts high and firm.
“I’ve gone by many names through the years, but the one I like best is Eater of Souls. It has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”
She didn’t wait for him to reply, just kept on talking, as if suddenly happy to have someone to whom to unburden herself. “But then our mutual friend came by with a challenge. Could I consume the soul of a man who has already died, he wondered. Would that soul be as refreshing as the rest? Perhaps even more so given its purer nature?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” Mr. Dark said with a gleeful laugh.
I’m not dead yet, you bastard, Matt thought, but the truth was he didn’t know how he was going to get himself out of this one. He was outnumbered a hundred to one, never mind facing two creatures of uncertain supernatural provenance, and all he had available to him was his bare…
His gaze landed on his grandfather’s axe. It was leaning against the wall, not far from the base of Olivia’s throne. If he could get to it he might stand a chance.
Not a good one, but a chance nonetheless.
Keep her talking.
“Purer nature?”
“Of course. You’ve been to the gates of Paradise and back. You’ve been closer to the divine than any other living thing on this earth, Matt Cahill.”
He didn’t know about that. In fact, would say he’d gone in the exact opposite direction, given the filth that he dealt with in his restless pursuit of Mr. Dark, but he didn’t argue the point.
With some effort, Matt climbed painfully to his feet. His body hurt from the earlier beating, but he gritted his teeth and bore it, doing what he could to conceal the truth of his condition.
Never let the wolves see you waver.
“All right then,” he said, trying to put some fire in his eye and tone. “I’ll accept your challenge.”
Olivia sat up in surprise. “What’s this?”
“I think consuming the soul of a dead man will kill you rather than me, but if it means wiping abomination like you off the face of the planet, I’m willing to take that risk. Come down here,” he gestured with one hand, “and we’ll see who’s right. You or I?”
Silence filled the room for a moment and then both Olivia and Mr. Dark were laughing uproariously. When they could finally catch their breath, Olivia said over Matt’s shoulders, “He may be slow but he’s got some pretty big balls.”
“You ought to know,” Matt answered smartly and then gestured for her to come on down again.
This time, she took the bait.
“Gladly,” she said and practically ran at him.
Matt waited, his arms outstretched before him, as if waiting to receive her embrace.
Time it right, you fool, he told himself. One, two, now!
As Olivia reached for him, a languid smile on her face, Matt grabbed her wrists with his own and went over backward to the ground, using their combined momentum to pull her over his head.
As they began their flip, Matt planted his booted feet right into her perfectly flat stomach and threw her, judo-style, over his head right into the deep end of the pool.
The splash was still sounding behind him as he scrambled forward, snatched up his grandfather’s axe, and turned to face the horde that was slowly turning in his direction.
“All right, assholes, let’s try this again!”
But before they could do anything Olivia surfaced in the middle of the pool, slimy water dripping out of her long hair.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that, Matt,” she said.
That’s when the tentacles exploded out of the deep end, thrashed wildly about for a second, and then lashed out in his direction. One of them wrapped itself around his waist and began to squeeze him in its grip.
Fuck me, he thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Matt didn’t wait to see what happened next. As the tentacle began to lift him up off the ground, Matt lashed out with his axe, severing it about a foot from his body.
A hideous roar sounded from deep beneath the water.
A roar that was echoed by a pained shriek from Olivia.
Now that’s interesting, Matt thought.
Then he was out of time for thinking as another dozen tentacles lashed out in his direction.
Matt swung, the axe bit deep, and more tentacles joined their brethren on the floor of the pool deck as Matt slashed them into pieces. Each time he did so Olivia screamed in rage, fury, and pain.
I hope that hurts, you bitch! h
e thought with satisfaction and went on swinging.
For a few minutes he held his own, but the earlier beating and the sheer size of the foe he was facing ultimately proved to be too much. No sooner had he chopped one tentacle in half than another one appeared out of nowhere and joined the fray. It was like some strange, hideous hydra; cut off one limb and three others grow back as a result.
Eventually, a couple of them got past his defenses and wrapped about his ankles, yanking him up off the ground to hang suspended in mid-air over the surface of the pool.
From this height he could see something very large slowly rising up from the bottom until it broke the surface of the water, revealing a large, scaled body that sprouted tentacles in all directions surrounding a face that didn’t look that far removed from human.
In fact, the face looked remarkably like Olivia’s.
Matt suspected he was finally seeing the real Olivia, that the human form he’d been interaction with for days now was just a symbiote of one kind or another, an extension of her whole self that allow her to interact with her prey without revealing her true nature. She might have been human at one time or another, but she’d long ago lost that part of herself, perhaps as a result of years of Mr. Dark’s influence.
Time for that to end.
He swung himself upward, like a gymnast reaching for the rings, and held himself up long enough to chop once, savagely, at the tentacles securing his feet, and severing them with a single blow.
He fell to the ground almost at Olivia’s feet.
Before she had time to react he sprang up and drew the axe high over his head, ready to bring it down with a mighty blow.
“Go ahead,” she said, “give it your best shot.”
You asked for it, he thought.
Matt whirled and heaved his grandfather’s axe in a mighty throw, not at Olivia as she had assumed he would strike, but at the disgusting, otherwordly thing in the middle of the pool, the thing with Olivia’s face.
The axe tumbled end over end, cutting the air with whoop, whoop, whoop sounds as it flipped toward its target and then struck with a wet and meaty thunk, burying the blade a good six inches into the middle of the thing’s face.
The Dead Man: Eater of Souls (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 8