by Nico Augusto
He approached it with caution…his heart was hammering in his chest. He somehow knew he should turn back the way he’d come, but he was inexplicably drawn to the end of the long hallway. He approached the rattling door and placed his hand on the knob…Another bright flash of light transported him once again to another place and time.
James was a child now, suddenly back in his family home and in his childhood bed. It was comforting at first as his eyes adjusted to the dark and he looked around at all of his old things, things that he hadn’t seen in over thirty-years. He suddenly wondered what the reality was, lying in bed as a boy or growing up to become a surgeon. Was he really not a doctor, but still only a little boy? He glanced down at himself once more and his head was still pointed downwards when he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He sat frozen for a few seconds, hoping it was only a shadow cast off of one of the trees in the back yard. He couldn’t hear a sound other than his own breathing, but he could feel something watching him. Cautiously he raised his head and his wide eyes drank in the horror that stood in front of him. At the end of his bed was a…creature. If James had to describe it later, the first word that came to mind was “dark.” It was dark in his room, with nothing but a small sliver of silver moonlight through the closed blinds, but the shape that loomed malevolently near him was so dark that it seemed to be melting into the night around it. It was standing in one spot, but seemed to be in motion at the same time. Its own darkness left a trail of something even blacker in its wake. It had huge eyes. Sometimes they appeared like obscure sockets that disappeared into the murkiness of itself and other times, they would glow. First James thought they were red, and then white it was almost like it was purposely changing to confuse him. Its head was misshapen like a rotting potato and its arms were long and spindly with appendages that seemed to be able to reach out in every direction all at once. James could feel its evil intentions as it swung and grasped at the air, as if it had an urgent need to devour all within its path. The air in the room was heavy like the loutish thing had sucked out all of the oxygen and replaced it with its bad intentions. The thing wasn’t very tall, but what it lacked in height it made up for in simple vulgarity.
What was this thing and what did it want from him? He didn’t know for sure. What he did know was that he could feel his tiny heart pounding through his chest and the thick flannel of the pajamas his mother had put him in before tucking him into bed. His mouth was dry as he had a staring contest with the beast, waiting for it to make its move. The bloated miscreant continued to just stand there with its slithery, black tentacles reaching out, swiping at nothing in the air of the scared little boy’s room. Maybe it was trying to catch his fear, James thought. Maybe that was what it fed off of. It seemed to be taunting him, wanting him to react and although the thing didn’t speak it gave the distinct impression that it was annoyed at James for not screaming and crying and running away. James wanted to, there was nothing he wanted more right then but to be away from the creature, but in addition to not wanting to feed it his fear he had a feeling that this thing was like a snake…if you moved too quickly, it would strike.
He sat as still as a stone statue in his bed. He kept his eyes on the creature but he didn’t move at all except to take in the occasional breath. He tried to hold it for as long as he could, partially due to his fright, but also because every time he took a breath in he could smell the foul odor of the thing at his side. The smells it was emitting smelled to James like the decaying body of a rat he’d found in the barn one day. Even to a child, it smelled like death. James didn’t know how long their standoff lasted until at last and to his great relief the unholy creature disappeared.
James knew he should stay in bed, but he had a feeling the thing wasn’t gone and although he was more frightened than he’d ever been, the simple curiosity of a child’s imagination got the better of him. He slipped quietly out of his bed and walking softly in his bare feet, he moved towards the corridor. He peeked out the bedroom door and at first all he saw were the family photos that had hung on the papered walls for as long as he could remember and the shiny wood floor that led down the hall to the other bedrooms and the bathroom at the end. He had almost allowed himself to relax when he saw the thing reappear at the very end of the corridor. It gave him another intimidating glance and then it vanished.
He continued to tiptoe softly down the long hall, passing the bathroom. Just as he passed that door he heard a loud crack. He abruptly turned back with his heart pounding like a drum in a barrel against the inside of his chest. He was in the hospital, and the horrible thing was right behind him, close enough to reach out and touch if James had been daft enough to want to. He wasn’t and he didn’t, so he began to run. He ran as fast as he could to the other end of the corridor towards the stairs, The hospital looked like it had been the center of some sort of disaster. The windows were shattered, gurneys were overturned and lying in the corridors and the wooden counters were splintered and rotting. He couldn’t see the thing behind him but he could feel it closing in on him. It was almost as if its evil…its bad intentions were reaching out and brushing the fine hairs on the back of his neck, causing them to rise. He could feel its darkness, and it was a cold, empty feeling.
Turning the corner, he continued to run down the second corridor. He was panting and sweating now and he couldn’t block out the sound of the incessant pounding of his pulse inside his head. There were two dummies in the hallway, the kind they used for teaching in medical schools. As James ran past them they lifted their arms at the same time, pointing at something, urging him to look……James didn’t stop, they didn’t look trustworthy. He didn’t want to see whatever they were pointing at but he was compelled to look. What he saw, for a few seconds stopped him in his tracks. It was a place suspended in air where the sky was at first a brilliant blue and the clouds looked like wisps that had been dashed across the sky by some kind of divine paintbrush. The sun was radiant…almost blindingly so. Then the blue sky morphed into night and the sun was replaced by the luminescent light of a silver moon and thousands of twinkling stars that seemed to only dangle there…like one could reach out and pluck them from the sky….
The vision…or whatever it was faded and James got a glimpse of something beautiful. It was more of a feeling than a vision and just for a moment it consumed him and filled him with a weightlessness and light…and then it was gone and he was once again running for his life. Before he’d gotten ten more feet the floor abruptly fell out from underneath him. He fell downward, spiraling towards nothingness at such a rapid speed that his throat constricted and he could hardly breathe. It was like falling off of a cliff into a pit that had no bottom…..
There was another blinding flash of light and he was lying alone in the hall, the dreadful things had vanished once more. A suddenly adult James looked around, simultaneously hoping to see another soul that might be able to help him and glad no one else was around to find him on the floor and ask questions. He quickly pulled himself back up and began to once again walk down the empty trashed hall like a ghost. He didn’t know he was in a nightmare but he was confused and his head hurt from trying to understand what was happening. He tried convincing himself it was just the stress of it all. The toll of his job and his life weighed heavily on his stooped shoulders and in the lines across his face. His hands held his aching head as he walked, hardly looking where he was going. He’d had the worst kind of day a doctor can have. It was no wonder that his head and his eyes were playing tricks on him now.
As he walked down the hall towards his unknown destination he abruptly stopped. He could smell it again, the rotting flesh. Besides that, he could feel them again. It was like the air was laden with their malevolent desires. He looked over his shoulder and saw that another one of the frightful things had begun to slink along behind him. It was soon joined by another of its kind and then another. James began to walk faster, thinking he was too tired to run again. He wasn’t a kid any longer; he
was a tired old man again now. His heart felt like it was ready to explode as it were, he wasn’t sure that he could run if he had to.
He finally made it to the end of the corridor and allowed himself a backwards glance. The things were still there, still coming towards him. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry, they just steadily followed the path he was taking. It was almost more frightening than if they just ran after him. It made them seem…confident, almost as if they knew he had no escape.
James wanted far away from them. He found out then that the human body…his body to be precise was more resilient than he’d given it credit for….He once again began to run through the empty corridors of the hospital, looking for a place to hide. He ducked into one of the patient rooms. It was empty, of course. The whole place was empty except for James and the appalling creatures that stalked him.
He ran between the two empty beds and once he was in between them and the wall, he pulled them together, making himself a barricade. James knew that creatures that could come and go from nowhere wouldn’t be stopped by such a puny obstacle, but his body was so heavy from the fear and fatigue that he just couldn’t go on any further. It almost felt as if the evil in the room was suffocating all of his energy. His hands were shaking and he could feel the sweat beading along his upper lip. His breaths were coming in ragged gasps as the things advanced on him, waving their slimy looking tentacles in the air.
James was sure this was the end for him. He was trying not to breathe at all now that they were so close. It felt like the air in the room was filled with their wickedness and James was afraid of breathing it in. While he contemplated what they may do to him, he found himself wishing that he’d lived a better life. What if he didn’t get to go and be with Sarah and Thomas? As he pondered his mistakes in life, the creatures disappeared into the night once again as fast as they had appeared earlier. James looked around the room, his thoughts were muddled and he was second-guessing himself. It was as if the things had never been there at all. Had he imagined the whole thing? That was when there was another blinding flash of light and James woke up.
CHAPTER THREE
“BANISHED”
NEW YORK CITY, HOSPITAL
It took James a few seconds to get his bearings back and remember where he was. He’d somehow made it back to his office and he must have fallen asleep at his desk. He’d had the nightmare….again. James stood up quickly, too quickly. The blood rushed from his head to his feet and he nearly fell over. He had to reach out for the desk and steady himself as he walked around it. He wanted to go home.
He began moving things around on the top of his desk, looking for his keys. He all at once felt like he needed to get out of this place, it was driving him crazy and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. His hands shook as he moved things around on his neatly organized desk only to find that it didn’t hold any keys or any other surprises. He was getting more frustrated with each passing minute. He felt an urgency to escape from this place…to be outside in the cool, wet night air where he could finally breathe.
Behind him, the rain was pelting like bullets against the panes of the large window that looked out over the hospital grounds. A bolt of lightning cut across the dark sky and caused it to light up as if someone had thrown on a switch. James didn’t notice any of this. All he was focused on was finding his keys. They had to be here somewhere. He needed to get out of this place.
He went around behind the big desk and sat down in the over-sized leather office chair and began to go through the desk drawers. He’d long ago lost the intense pride that he’d had in the diplomas, certificates and commendations that hung on the wall behind him now. He’d been a doctor for so many years and the certificates hung behind him on the wall for so long, he barely noticed them any longer. They didn’t mean the same thing to him that they used to. He no longer took the same pride in them, or in himself.
James had lived a charmed life for a while. He had studied first in France at the Medicine school of Paris before immigrating to the U.S. to study Cardio-vascular disorders. He had been so young then, and so full of hope. He’d been valedictorian of his class and constantly looking for new ways to nurture his desire to help his fellow man. He wanted to give back some of what he felt like he’d been blessed with right up until the time when he began to lose everything that mattered to him in his own life.
After going through each desk drawer twice and still not finding the keys, he slumped back down into the chair in defeat. His eyes landed on the pictures of his wife Sarah and his son Thomas displayed in wooden frames atop his desk. Sarah smiled out at him with her green eyes twinkling and her light auburn hair shining in the sun of the beach she had been standing on when the picture was taken. She had such an incredible aura, a charm about her that almost everyone who met her found irresistible.
The picture next to it was one of James with their boy Thomas in his arms. Thomas was such a little cherub. He had the biggest smile that James had ever seen, and the light spattering of freckles across his nose coupled with the always disheveled mop of brown hair made him look like a little rascal. He had his moments as all little boys do, but for the most part he was a great kid and there wasn’t a single day that went by when James didn’t miss him.
James suddenly went from defeated to angry. In one swift motion he swept all of the documents off his desk. As they flew across the room, some of them hitting the wall and others crashing to the floor, James once again switched from angry to beaten down. His emotions were all over the place, he was used to it but at a loss for how to control it. He leaned forward on the desk and put his head in his hands. Pulling at his hair with his fingers, his exhausted and tormented mind traveled back to the earlier operation.
It was such a disaster….How could it have gone so wrong?
He felt the hot burn of tears filling his eyes. He blinked them back and willed himself not to think about it now. There would be inquiries over it and meetings and question after question that he’d probably not be able to answer. He just didn’t know how it had all gone so badly…thinking about it now was pointless. He pulled his head up out of his hands and looked at the phone lying on his desk. His hand trembled as he reached for it. The tears had escaped and were streaming down his cheeks as he put the phone to his ear and said,
“Hello? Honey…it’s me.”
Sarah’s sweet voice floated through the phone. James could hear it, the same as he could his own and just the sound of it sent a warm glow surging through him.
“Hello? James? Why are you crying, what’s the matter? You know you have to be strong, he is listening to us and he’s listening to you! Why are you only calling me now? I was worried sick!”
“I feel lost, Sarah. I don’t know where to turn. Everything has changed since he…” he had to stop for a second; his body was wracked with sobs. He fought through it, drawing on the strength that Sarah gave him and then he said, “Since both of you left. I wanted to call you earlier, but I was with a patient. I lost her, Sarah. It was such a disaster. She died, Sarah. Her lifeless body was just there on the table….” he had to stop again; the sobs were causing him to gulp for breath. He was such a mess.
“Don’t worry, honey, you know that what we lose is never lost forever. I’ll always be here for you, even though I had to go away.”
James reached into the bottom drawer of his desk. Pulling out a dusty glass and a bottle of Bourbon, he poured himself a drink. Downing it like a shot he said,
“I know. I’m trying to remember….It’s hard Sarah.”
“You’re drinking again?” she asked, obviously disappointed.
“Don’t worry, I'm ok...” he lied.
“When is your flight?” she asked him, changing the subject.
“In a few hours, I believe, I’ll be home around eight tonight!”
“Have a safe trip,” she told him before he hung up the phone.
He sat there staring at it, his mind was reeling still. He let it go back to the first time he�
�d gotten really drunk….
He started a fight in a bar. In his defense, it was because someone had said something horrible to him, something that no parent should ever have to hear. It was after Thomas had gone missing and the entire town believed he was responsible for it…they thought he had killed his own son. After Thomas disappeared he’d done what any good, distraught father would have done; he’d gone to the police. The police had done a cursory investigation and then turned their sights on the boy’s parents. The loss of a child was a devastating thing, something that no parent is built to endure, but to be blamed for that loss was indescribable. He had turned to the alcohol to numb his pain and when that idiot had opened his mouth that night, James hadn’t been able to control himself. The guy ended up with a split lip and a bump on the back of his head where he’d fallen back into the bar and James ended up spending a night in jail. He would have spent more nights there, many more if they had convicted him of murdering his own son. That may have happened had it not been for the inspector in charge of the judicial inquiry. The man saved him that fate by refusing to draw any hasty conclusions as the rest of the police force and the town had done.
James was suddenly shaken back to reality by the high pitched wail of the rain. It sounded like a siren, using her beautiful voice to lure a sailor to his doom. He got up from the chair and reached for his jacket just as another jagged bolt of lightning tore through the sky, effectively ripping it in half. He pulled the jacket off the hook it hung on and the car keys fell out of the pocket. He put on the jacket, picked up the keys and at last headed for the exit.
James made his way to the exit door taking note that the hospital seemed to be operating normally, unlike the shambles it had been in his dream. He shivered when he remembered his nightmares and did his best to tuck that memory away in the far recesses of his brain. He hit the door at the end of the hall and began to descend the stairs; his long legs took them four at a time. When he reached the bottom floor and began to head towards the outer doors he caught sight of a small red tricycle slowly inching towards him. He stopped, riveted by the sight. It continued its gentle forward motion until it was a few feet in front of him and then it stopped. James moved towards it as if in a trance. It was Thomas’s tricycle…it had belonged to his son…His chest suddenly felt heavy again and he reached out and put his hand on the handle bars. All at once there was another blinding flash and James was back in his home. The one he had shared with Thomas and Sarah.