by A. I. Nasser
"The time has come," the beast repeated, "and it all comes down to you."
Kyle could feel the heat around him intensify with every word, and smoky tendrils wrapped themselves around his legs and arms, snaking across his body and curling around his neck. He could feel the smoke tighten, choking him, and he coughed violently.
"This is what they promised?" the beast began to laugh. "This is what we wait for?"
Kyle fell to his knees. He could feel his insides boiling, and the more violently he coughed, the more he felt he would eventually start heaving his intestines. His stomach curled, his lungs burned. And in the back of his mind, the beast laughed again.
"We will see which of us comes out of this alive," the beast screeched, and Kyle's arms flew to his ears to silence the ringing that erupted there.
Suddenly, a rough hand grabbed him by the jaw and lifted his head up so that he was staring at the street and crucifixes. The beast was holding him from behind, miraculously appearing in the blink of an eye. Kyle could smell the mix of ash and rot that escaped from its mouth.
"Watch." it whispered.
The street before him began to stretch into the distance, and two new crucifixes erupted up from the ground. They rose quickly and steadily, and it took Kyle's eyes a few seconds to adjust on the figures nailed to each one. When he realized who they were, his heart stopped in his chest, and the world around him shattered.
Jennifer and Michael stared down at him from their crucifixes.
"No," Kyle stammered. "No, please, no!"
Kyle could see the tears streaming down his son's face, the boy's lips moving in silent screams, but Kyle could make out the words perfectly. Michael was calling for Kyle to save him, and all Kyle could do was watch. His eyes flickered to Jennifer, her brown hair covering her face, her head falling so that her chin rested against her chest. Whatever will to fight he had expected to see in her was absent, and she looked like a woman who had given in to defeat and was waiting for the end.
"The time has come," the beast repeated, its talons scratching small cuts into the skin under Kyle's jaw. "Everything you know will burn."
The crucifixes burst into flames. Kyle's screams matched those of his wife and son, and he watched helplessly as they burned.
***
Helen Lint pulled into the driveway of the two-story Victorian with a wide smile on her face.
She felt great. Better than great, actually. She had waited patiently in her car while the offices of her former place of employment had burned, and only drove away when the faint sounds of sirens echoed through the night. She had driven home on instinct alone, her mind still racing with beautiful images of Jack's body burning, her ears still ringing with the sounds of fire eating its way through the cubicles. She was saturated with joy, fulfilled for the moment with the fresh smell of burning flesh and the orange glow of fire.
She felt stronger. She felt at peace.
Helen stepped out of the car and almost skipped towards the front door, unlocking it and walking into the abhorrent smell of the home's interior. Her nostrils flared and she cringed as her senses were bombarded by the mix of emotions that hung in the air. Love, care, faith, hope, ambition; the disgusting gamut of domestic sentiment. It immediately made her sick.
The house was dark except for a dim light coming from the living room, and Helen felt a different emotion seep through the air towards her. She smiled, recognizing it immediately, closed her eyes and breathed it in deeply.
Anger.
She loved anger.
"Where the hell have you been?" Steven asked when she made her way into the living room. Helen dropped her purse on the couch opposite where he sat, his arms crossed and his scowl so deep, his eyebrows seemed to meet in the center of his face. The anger coming from him was like a heavy wave of darkness crashing against the very walls of the house, and Helen reveled in it.
"I didn't expect you to be up," Helen replied, still smiling.
Steven scoffed. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" he asked scornfully.
Helen only shrugged, kicked off her heels and walked towards the open kitchen behind him. Steven stood up and followed her, his anger seeping out and filling every crevice of the house.
"I'm talking to you," he hissed.
"And I can hear you just fine," Helen replied, opening a cabinet and pulling out a wine glass.
"Then answer my goddamn question!"
She opened the refrigerator and rummaged through it until she found the bottle of Merlot he had bought for their anniversary a few months ago. Taking it back to her glass, she winked at her husband and uncorked the bottle, then began to pour. She smiled to herself when she felt the anger coming from Steven only intensify at her deliberate attempt to ignore him.
Steven reached out and snatched the bottle from her hands, so overwhelmed with anger that it slipped from his grip and shattered against the kitchen floor. The wine rushed out in large pools and splattered like blood across the kitchen cabinets.
"Now look what you've done," Helen smiled at him.
Steven balled his fists, his face turning a bright shade of red as he tried to restrain himself from lashing out at her. "Where were you?" he pressed.
"Work," Helen replied, leaning against the kitchen counter and sipping what remained of the Merlot. She met his gaze calmly, challengingly even, and she could clearly see it in his eyes that he was contemplating what to do next. Whatever speech he had prepared, whatever shouting fest he had been working himself up to, it had all depended on her throwing in a few punches of her own. Her laid-back demeanor was throwing him off, and it was clear that he hated it.
Which only made him angrier.
And Helen's smile widened.
She raised the glass to her lips, her eyes never leaving his, and he reached out and grabbed her. He pulled her to him forcefully, wine spilling from the glass and onto his shirt.
"You were with him, weren't you?" Steven snapped. "Is that why you were late? Is that why you have that ridiculous smile on your face? What did you do, you whore?"
Helen pouted and gave him her best puppy eyes, shaking her head with a gentle tsk-tsk. "That's not nice, Steven," she said. "Is that a way to speak to your loving wife?"
Steven reacted before he could stop himself, his hand flying out hard and fast. The sound of the slap echoed across the kitchen. Helen's head snapped to one side and she dropped her wine glass, the cup shattering beside the remnants of the Merlot. Heat began to build up in her cheek, the stinging pain diffusing throughout the side of her face.
But when she turned around, she was still smiling.
Steven took a step back. There was something different about his wife's eyes. The color had changed from their regular blue to a dark shade of brown, bordering on obsidian. At first he thought it had been a trick of the light, but now that he was gazing right at them, there was no mistaking the change.
And there was something colder there. He had expected tears, anger even, but what he saw sent chills up and down his spine.
A red tinge began to build up around her irises and slowly spread across the whites of her eyes. She began to chuckle, as if amused by the fact that her husband had laid a hand on her, and that only made Steven's heart race faster. The veins in her face and neck turned a deeper shade of blue, and her lips cracked. Blood trickled from the open wounds down her chin and dripped onto the floor, mixing with the wine pooling around her.
Helen took a step towards him, her bare feet crunching on the broken glass. Steven winced at the pain that she must be feeling, but the smile on her face never faltered, and she took another step forward.
"You really shouldn't have done that," Helen said. Her voice changed, as if more than one person were speaking at the same time.
Steven turned and began to run out of the kitchen when a hand grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, lifted him up off his feet, and hurled him into the kitchen wall. His face slammed against the cold surface, his nose shattering as pain seared
through his head and down his neck. He fell into a heap on the ground.
Helen walked a few feet away from him, her feet leaving bloody prints on the tiles, her eyes bloodshot as she glared down at her husband. Steven rolled into a sitting position, his back to the wall, and gazed up at the thing that was supposed to be his wife.
"Now, let's try this again," Helen said. "I say, 'I was at work', and you say?"
Steven shook his head lazily from side to side. He looked like he was drunk, blood oozing down from his broken nose onto his lips and beard.
Helen raised an arm and clasped her hand into a fist. Steven began to choke, clawing at his neck, his eyes wide in surprise. He began to kick out, trying to push away from the wall, but it was like an invisible hand was holding him down. Helen lifted her arm up, and Steven began sliding in the same direction against the wall until his feet dangled and he was hanging three feet above the ground. He shook against the choking force around his neck, but to no avail.
"What do you say, Steven?" Helen asked, cocking her head to one side and scowling at him like a mother scolding her son.
Steven wrestled, his anger quickly replaced by fear, and Helen smiled when she saw the stain around his crotch where his bladder had given up. His face was turning blue, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
"You're really testing my patience, honey," Helen said. "One last chance, okay? I was at work. What do you say?"
Steven only croaked.
Helen smiled. "You say, 'Welcome home, baby!'"
She twisted her hand in the air with one quick movement, and Steven's head was brought forcefully to one side, his neck snapping.
He fell to the ground in the same sitting position, eyes wide, and mouth open in an eternal expression of surprise.
Helen took a deep breath, turned around and walked back to the kitchen counter. She grabbed another wine glass from the cabinet.
"Mommy?"
She smiled.
She opened a small drawer to her right, and from inside, pulled out a steak knife.
Helen turned to face her son. Brian was standing at the kitchen threshold in his Toy Story pajamas, staring wide-eyed at his dead father, visibly shaking. He turned to Helen, confused and begging to be comforted.
Helen smiled, hiding the knife behind her back as she made her way towards him.
"Mommy?" Brian's voice shook in fear.
"Don't worry, sweetheart," Helen cooed. "Mommy's here."
***
Aley couldn't stop thinking of Kyle.
From the minute she walked into her apartment, to the seconds before she turned off her bedside lamp and rolled under the covers. Even after, with her eyes closed and her body begging for sleep, her mind raced. She was enthralled. Enchanted.
Can I actually call it enchanted?
It didn't matter what she called it. All that mattered was that for the past few hours she had been drinking beer and talking books with one of her favorite authors. Her past self, the one who would have still been locked up in a dead end job back in New York, would have given half an arm and an entire leg just to be in that same position.
Kyle Ashfeld. Horror author extraordinaire. Hiding away in Kent, Connecticut.
If she had still been back in the Big Apple, she probably would have been promoted just for finding him. Let alone talking to him. Maybe even convince him to write again. After all, it had been almost five years since his last book, and there were no signs that another would be finding its way into the hands of his readers any time soon.
Then again, who could blame him? The man was fighting his own demons, and no one who had gone through what he did could be expected to just jump back into the saddle and ride. Aley couldn't imagine the half of it. The sentiments were beyond her. She had no idea what it felt like to be married and have a child, let alone lose both. She could only guess that never loving at all was definitely better than to have loved and lost.
His eyes.
Yes, it was definitely there. The pain of the memories that obviously still haunted him, the way he spaced out between conversations whenever a topic remotely related to family came up. She had never seen pain like that before. She couldn't even sympathize. All she could do was try to understand, and quickly change the subject.
Aley opened her eyes and sat up. The darkness of her room was broken only by the soft beams of moonlight coming in through the window. She rolled out of bed, ignored the chill of the hardwood floor that welcomed her bare feet, and made her way to the small workstation she had set up to one corner. She opened her laptop and waited for the familiar chimes of her Windows starting up, and quickly typed in her password.
Her empty desktop greeted her. Aley shook her head at the memory of a time not so long ago when every inch of it was filled with folders and files, begging for her attention. They had been a constant reminder of the amount of work she had left to do. There had always been a subtle message there, one that assured her that the prison she had built around herself would always remain. Always.
She double clicked on her internet browser, waited for the page to load, then typed Kyle's name into the search bar. His face popped up seconds later, clean, shaven, less disheveled, with a smile that seemed warm and jovial. His eyes stared at her from the screen, full of life, and even with his arms crossed over his chest, he seemed like a man who would welcome the world into his embrace. The fact that he was a horror author only added to the appeal.
She clicked on the third link from the top, and an image of a charred house surrounded by flashing lights popped up. A video to one side began to play, and she quickly muted the sound of the announcer, her eyes only briefly registering the headlines on the news ticker.
'Horror author Kyle Ashfeld loses family in fire'.
She remembered the first time she had seen the story. Her heart had skipped a beat, and she had gone about the rest of her day in a zombie-like haze. It was a shock to everyone. For days, she had been working solely on cruise control, her mind clogged with disbelief. She had only met him once, but she felt as if she had known him forever. She had, after all, collected every book he had ever written, and could have recited extracts from each if prompted. She had read somewhere that an author always instilled a bit of him or herself into each character, and Aley knew Kyle's characters inside out.
Aley leaned back in her chair, linked her hands behind her head, and sighed. It was hard to believe that anyone could bounce back from a tragedy like that. And even if they could, were they ever truly the same? She remembered her grandmother once telling her that something dark always lingered after the death of a loved one, that there were always demons to remind you of your pain.
Aley wondered what kind of demons haunted Kyle.
Chapter 5
Kyle's eyes flew open, and all he could see was fire.
It took him a moment to realize that he was no longer dreaming. He was in his room, on the cold floor, staring up at the ceiling through a sheet of white. He closed his eyes, clenching them shut, wincing against the blinding light. He could feel his retinas burning, and images of flaming crucifixes flashed across his closed lids. He could still feel the beast's claws against his skin, holding his head so that all he could see were the burning bodies of his wife and son.
Kyle rolled to his side, and only then realized that the heat against his skin was coming from the few rays of sunlight finding their way through the closed drapes. He groaned, his head throbbing, and coughed violently as he rested one cheek against the cool floor.
You're safe. You're awake. You can open your eyes.
Kyle kept them closed, fearing that if he were to do otherwise, he would find himself back in his nightmare, surrounded by flames and the screams of burning bodies. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, trying to control his breathing, shaking his head in an attempt to rid himself of the dream's lingering effects, but it was useless. He could still feel the fire lapping at his clothes, burning his skin, the heat and smoke suffocating him.<
br />
You're safe, dammit!
Kyle wanted to believe it, but his body was telling him otherwise. He tried to push up onto his knees, but a searing pain shot through his legs and to the rest of his body, forcing him back down in a cry of pure agony. His hand automatically went to his thigh, grabbing at it in an attempt to stop the ache that was coming from there. But touching it only made the pain worse, and he quickly pulled his hand back.
It was almost as if his legs were on fire. His skin still sizzled underneath his jeans, and his senses were saturated with the smell of burning flesh. He rolled onto his back, feeling the burn grow in intensity, and quickly wrestled with his belt buckle. He stared at his legs, half expecting them to spontaneously combust, and the longer it took him to free his buckle, the more his panic grew.
As though his life depended on it, Kyle fought with his belt until it loosened enough for him to unbutton his jeans and quickly pushed them down. The fabric scraped against his legs, and Kyle couldn't help but cry out. It felt like his jeans were fitted with hundreds of tiny thorns on the inside that were tearing at his thighs, ripping the skin off of him as he pushed the clothing off and kicked it aside.
In the dim light, he stared down at his legs in shock. Second-degree burns extended from his thighs to his ankles, the skin red and moist, blisters decorating the burned surface. More pain shot through him from the exposed wounds, and he clenched his teeth against the unbearable torment. It was as if someone were holding a torch to his legs.
"Honey, that looks terrible!"
Kyle closed his eyes, ignoring his dead wife's comment. If he didn't get help soon, he was going to die here, sprawled on the floor of his bedroom in the company of his wife and son's ghosts. His eyes fluttered open, and a few feet away, sitting on the edge of his bed, Jennifer watched him. Her skin was charred, and what was left of her hair stuck to the moist bare skin of her cheeks, but the look of worry in her eyes was unmistakable.
"Take it from me," she said, her voice hoarse, "those don't heal."