by DW Gillespie
“It’s okay,” I said, parroting what he had said moments before. “He’s home, so it’s okay.”
“That’s right.”
So much had happened, so much that would make a parent half-mad with concern, and yet Dad didn’t know one-tenth of the truth. I could hear the doubt in his voice when he told me it would be okay, and I think he heard the same in mine. We loved each other. We loved Andy. And both of us, in different ways, knew it would have to get worse before it ever got better.
When Andy was finally out of the shower, Dad went to the kitchen to make some calls: to friends, cops, whoever else needed to know. I found my brother in his bed, curled up as far back into the corner as he could be, and draped with a heavy comforter. I sat on the edge of the bed, slow and careful, as if my brother were as fragile as an egg.
“You okay?”
He opened his eyes and stared back at me. “I…I don’t know.” It was the truth. I could see it all over him. “Do you think…he’s dead?”
I surely wanted to believe it, but I wasn’t any more certain than he was. Even so, I nodded. “He has to be. He was burned all over,” I said. “And even if that didn’t kill him, he probably drowned.”
He was staring at me, deep into my eyes, past them, through them, into something else entirely. “You saw him. You know what he can do. And you don’t believe that any more than I do.”
There were questions, things to talk about, but I didn’t think either of us could do it, not that night. We were spent, the pair of us. The sun was setting in the stormy sky, and soon I wouldn’t be able to hold my eyes open if I had to. In the other room, I could hear Dad on the phone while banging some pots together with one hand. He was cooking – what, I couldn’t guess, but it was more than he had done in years. Such was the plight of my family at that moment. I looked back at Andy, whose wild eyes were darting around the room, checking every corner. There was no point in lying.
“You’re right. It might not be dead,” I said directly. “But we hurt it. You hurt it. That means it’s weak. That means we can kill it.”
I wanted to say more, but at that moment, Dad burst in with a pair of plates loaded with slightly too-done grilled cheese sandwiches and Doritos. I was still wet, still soaked actually, but I slipped down onto the floor and tore into mine then and there, without another word. Despite how different Andy might have been, his hunger was unaffected, and in less than five minutes, we had cleared the plates, along with a glass of milk each. Dad flipped on the TV and we sat there on the floor, the three of us in Andy’s room, like we hadn’t done in years.
“You want more?” Dad asked when we were finished, and we did, both of us. Minutes later, we had fresh ones, these a bit more golden than the first round.
“You know,” Dad said as we ate, “the police will probably come by tomorrow. They’ll want to talk to you. Both of you, I imagine.”
I glanced over at Andy, who, after eating, had begun to look a bit more like himself. “Okay,” he said in his usual quiet tone.
“That’s fine,” I answered.
He patted Andy on one knee and patted my damp shoulder. “Look,” he said, “I don’t care what happened. I really don’t. And I know that I ain’t been the best dad ever.”
I opened my mouth to correct him, but he raised a hand.
“No,” he said. “Just hush and listen. I didn’t know how to be a dad. Not by myself anyway. And if I had anything to do with this, I mean anything, I want you both to know I’m sorry for it.”
He wrapped his arms around our shoulders and started squeezing us, his voice growing a bit shaky. “I hope you know how much I love you. And whatever…this was all about, I don’t ever want it to happen again. Do you both understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yeah,” Andy said.
“Good,” he answered. “Now get some rest.”
He left us alone, and I considered shutting the door and hashing everything out with Andy. It had to be done, we both knew it, but one look told me all I needed to know. Now that his belly was full of the first food he’d eaten in a day and a half, his eyelids were turning into lead. I knew he was on his way out, so I stood up, leaving a damp spot on his bed and the floor.
“Wait,” he said quietly. “Don’t leave.”
I went back over and knelt down so we were eye to eye. “We’re safe,” I told him once more.
“Please,” he said again. “Just until I fall asleep.”
I couldn’t argue with him. I was tired myself, and ready to get out of the wet clothes, but there was no use in fighting. He was shivering, even under the comforter, and I realized it wasn’t because he was cold. He was back there, back in the cave again, and there was nothing more frightening to him than the idea of being alone. So I leaned against the side of the low bed and watched him, waiting for his eyes to close. My hand was resting across the bedrail, and I laid my head against it, refusing to let my own eyes close until I got out of those damn stinking clothes. A minute later, I felt his hand sneak out of the covers, across the sheet, coming to rest under my own. I gave it a gentle squeeze, and I waited. A few minutes later, I heard his breathing slow, and I raised my head up. He was out, and for the first time in several days, he looked at ease. I crept out of the room, carefully shutting the door behind me as I left.
I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet with the lid down. I listened to the familiar drip of the leaky faucet – one of Dad’s to-dos that never quite got done. The sound was almost reassuring somehow. It had been dripping for years, and it was as much a part of this place as the rattling air vent in my room or the chorus of cracks and pops when you walked down the hallway. With a slow hand, I stripped out of the wet clothes and dropped them in a pile on the floor. It was, quite possibly, the most wonderful shower I had ever taken, even if I kept glancing at the frosted window in the center of the wall, certain that I heard something just outside.
I got out, slipped into an old, too-small robe Dad had bought a few years before, and sat down on the toilet once again. I turned the hair dryer on the lowest setting, letting it warm up the room as I brushed the tangles from my hair. My mind was swirling with everything that had happened that day, but my sleepiness was beginning to overtake me minute by minute. Thunder rolled somewhere in the distance, and the familiar sound of rain on the roof was too soothing, too wonderful to even consider staying awake. I barely had the forethought to flip the hair dryer off before it slid from my hands, and I let my head drift back onto the wall, so very comfortable in that moment.
I knew the instant the dream began, but I could never be sure of when it ended. I opened my eyes and stared into the gleaming bathroom mirror, confused and surprised that the normally beige wall behind me had gone slick, inky black. The wall pulsed, moved, shivered as I stared at it, and I realized with utter horror that my head was touching it, resting against that awful, slimy surface. It wasn’t blackness; it was something deeper, something that ate the light itself, and though I tried to move, my body was locked up, each joint refusing to bend.
I’m in here, he said, the surface of the wall shimmering as he spoke. I’m in you.
The smell of smoke filled my nostrils, a pungent odor of burned flesh that entered into every pore on my body.
I was weak. That body was nearly spent. I thought your brother would be a fine fit, but then… He paused, and I could hear the anticipation in his voice. But then…you.
I tried to move, tried to wake myself, tried to scream. But I became more and more aware that this wasn’t a dream. It was the same as before, only that time I had been lying in my bed, staring at the shadow that shambled toward me.
I’m coming for you now. You can’t stop me. Your brother can’t stop me either. I’ll hurt him before it’s over. He’s half mine already.
My ankle was burning once more, and I had to glance down to be sure there wasn’t a hand g
ripping my leg.
Oh, you think I’m mistaken. I can see it all over you. You think he’ll come to save you. That you’ll be able to change him back.
A mouth rose in the liquid layer of darkness, a pair of lips close enough to kiss my ear, and a simmering, hateful laugh split the lips.
What is it? Love? You think that’s enough to save you? I was called into this world by children just as foolish as you. I knew the rules, knew what would happen when that body died. I come from a place where there is no love, no light, no hope, and I’m never going back. I broke the rules. I’ve been doing it for longer than you can possibly imagine, and I’ll do it until the sun dies and all of you cattle are nothing more than dust.
I tried to speak, tried to wake myself, but I no longer held any illusions that I was the one in control.
Struggle, little one. It will only make the end that much more delicious.
I awoke with a choked breath in my throat, something that might have been a scream at the end of any other dream. My hair was dry now, matted and tangled on my forehead. I couldn’t stand, not yet anyway. My ankle was still burning where the Thief had touched me, and I wondered what that touch had done, what it truly meant for both me and Andy. I had only a glancing sense of it, but I could feel something inside of me. The black thing, that darkness that whispered in my dreams – it wasn’t just talking to me, and I was more convinced than ever that it wasn’t my overburdened imagination. It was inside me. It had been injected there, shot into my skin by those deformed hands. I could only imagine what Andy was feeling at that very second.
I leaned forward, resting my face in my hands, breathing deep, realizing that parts of the dream hadn’t left me just yet. I could still smell the scent of burned flesh in the air, still imagine that something was breathing just over my shoulder. I opened my eyes, stared into the mirror, and watched the boring, beige wall behind me. I reached back without ever turning around, felt the drywall under my skin, tapped it, made certain it was real. All of it was real. This wasn’t a dream, not any longer. This was my house.
The toilet seat still creaked underneath me.
The fan still droned overhead.
And the familiar drip of the leaky faucet…
I sat up a bit, tilting my head to one side. I listened. Second after second, moment after agonizing moment, I heard nothing but my own heart pounding, my own breath coming in and out in sharp, wheezing spurts.
No.
Not my breath.
I closed my mouth to be sure, wanting to scream when the ragged sound continued from somewhere close. Behind the curtain. Something was there. Something that kept the water from dripping into the drain. I stood up, quietly reached for the handle of the door when it spoke.
“P-please…”
Every muscle in my body froze, and my stomach rolled over itself, tumbling like a gymnast. The days of pissing myself felt like sweet, lovely memories, and I was quite certain that shit would run down my leg any second. The voice was weak, ragged, and pathetic, and I instantly felt an unexpected pang of sympathy when I heard it. I began to turn the knob slowly, and again he spoke.
“I-I know you’re there. P-please…”
I turned back, staring at the shower curtain, my bowels like fire in my belly. Then I saw it. A hand, red and black, with specks of bone poking through the skin here and there. The curtain drew back slowly, and I saw him, curled into the corner of the tub, the leaking faucet dripping onto his shoulder. I wanted to scream, wanted to run away, but I felt almost instantly that there was no need to. He was nearly dead. I could see it in his eyes, the pink edges curled with black-singed fur. His mouth was open, his lips dark and dead. His body was a ruin, and the simple act of living seemed like an almost unbearable trial. I tried to imagine the horrible fury that had driven him this far, only to fall limp just as he reached his goal.
Behind him, the frosted window was still cracked open a bit, and I could see that the night had fallen quietly, the rain no longer pouring. He could have killed me by now, could have choked me while I slept. But he seemed to know what was coming, seemed to know what the near future held, and I could only imagine that realization had drained the fight out of him. Revenge didn’t mean much when you would be dead yourself before the deed was even done. I looked back into the pitiful pink eyes, and against my better judgment, I sat back down on the toilet.
“What can I do?” I asked, instantly becoming a caretaker.
He shook his head, not quite sure how to answer. “Nothing,” he said finally.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Again he barely shook his head. “Not sure. Used to have a name. Can’t remember. So long ago.”
I remembered the picture I had stolen, the one of the boy and his mother, and I fished it from the pile of my damp jeans, careful to keep the frayed picture from ripping into pieces forever.
“This,” I said, holding it gingerly out in front of my face. “Is this you?”
I couldn’t be sure, but I think I saw his pink, ruined eyes water a bit, and a grim little smile appeared. It was almost enough to make him momentarily less gruesome.
“Me,” he said wistfully. “I was gone. Long time, gone.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Not sure.”
“Do you remember this? When you took this picture? You were probably my age then.”
He closed his eyes, cringing as the singed flesh cracked and wept. “Yes,” he said finally. “I remember. She gave me that…my own toy. A globe. Snow. Never had seen snow. She said we would go somewhere white. One day.”
I leaned closer on the edge of the toilet seat, close enough for him to rip out my throat if he chose to. “What happened to you?”
The pink eyes opened once more. “Him,” he replied, confirming what I already believed to be true. There was something darker, some evil force that had been controlling him, and for the first time in countless years, the human being inside was peering out.
“He came to me. In dreams at first.”
“Dreams!” I blurted. “Yes, in dreams. A shadow with bleeding eyes.”
“You see him?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
There was a look of pain across his face, and I felt horribly humbled and frightened by the fact that this dying creature was pitying me.
“Bad.”
“What do you mean?”
He took a deep breath, but not nearly as deep as he had before. “He’s not from…here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone…brought him here. Gave him a body. He shouldn’t be here…shouldn’t be alive.”
“Like, a ghost or something?” I asked, confused.
His answer was short, but clear.
“Demon.”
There it was. This thing, whatever it was, had no business even existing in our world, and it was being passed from person to person, a disease intent on keeping itself alive by finding another host. Andy was supposed to be next on the list, but now there was little doubt that I was the one caught in the crosshairs. How many missing children were turned into these things, pawns in some game they didn’t understand?
“How did he…do this to you?” I asked.
He swallowed and I could see that speaking was growing harder by the second. “I woke up in a dark place. The cave,” he added with a slightly bitter look at me.
“What did he…do?” I asked.
He swallowed like an old man swallowing a dry pill. Then he held up his impossibly thin hand, showing me the red sores that were now charred and black. “He touched me. Each day. Over and over again.”
I pointed at the gruesome hand and asked, “Why? What does it do?”
He smiled, the idea of it still, even at the end, slightly alluring. “I never eat. My last meal was with her,” he said, pointing at the picture. “No
food for me. Only this.”
He held both hands up, and I could picture Andy writhing underneath him, could feel my own ankle burning and itching.
“You feed off people?” I asked, and he nodded. “Feed on what?”
“Goodness. Innocence. The best parts of them.”
Again he smiled.
“When I was done with them, there was nothing good left. It took weeks. Months. Years sometimes. I visit in the night. Touch them. They dream. When the sun rises, I’m gone.”
Any pity I had known had faded, and my hands were little balls of white knuckles. I wanted to kill it, wanted to go into the kitchen and slide the biggest knife I could from the block and bury it in that grotesque neck. It wouldn’t change anything. Even then I knew it. But it would make me feel better.
“Why?”
He looked confused.
“I want to know why,” I said, leaning even closer.
“Because that is what he wants.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw that shimmering black reflection, felt the pursed lips at my ear.
I’m coming.
“What does he want?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “To plant seeds, I think. Something inside of us, all of us. Something waiting to be awoken. Killers. Abusers. Men and women that ruin themselves, and in turn, ruin others.”
“Is that what he did to Andy?”
He shook his head, but barely moved as he did. His words were slowing to a crawl.
“No. Andy. Was the next. The replacement. He wasn’t taking out. He was putting himself in. Soon, Andy would be pushed aside. He would take control.”
“That’s why you’re dying, isn’t it?” I asked. “Whatever it was that kept you alive is half gone. It’s just you now.”
“Yes,” he said. “He makes them…makes us…more like him. Changes us so we can do our new job.” He held up his hand. “I didn’t always look like this,” he added as he brushed his fingers across his ruined face.