Almost there! Lamb head-butted through the door His buzz-sawed head peered through splinters in the door. Half of his body continued moving forward. He exposed sharp teeth.
What an amazing rush! Cray thought. He was halfway into the house. A metal tong cracked Cray’s dome, its sharp bronze prong impaling itself inside his skull. He lost sight in his right eye due to the orbital lobe and cornea getting crushed. Cray swept out with his free left arm catching the fiireplace tool. Blindly, he tore it away from Joan’s grasp, propelling it across the room.
Out of his one good eye, he saw a fiierce Joan back away from his flailing limb. What had he become? Joan looked determined. Her face was focused on Cray. Then a memory surfaced. She recalled who he was.
“You’re Doug’s friend. What happened to you? Why …?” Cray smiled at her, his lips exposing fangs dripping with blood. His one uninjured retina glowed crimson. Doug’s friend resembled anything but human.
Joan’s eyes widened. She got smart. She ran.
Chapter 22
St. Viator’s nudged up a notch on his creepy meter, judged Douglas. He’d wiped ice from burning eyes. Mavis had disappeared. There came a rising sense of panic propelling him to grok where exactly Mavis had gone. The gap between the elementary school and the nunnery adjacent allowed a vicious cascade of snow whipped up by 70 mph gusts to attack him. The flesh on his face felt like it was being sandblasted away. How much more could he stand without yelling?
Looking around hurt. Keeping his head lowered for thirty seconds or so, before his neck and shoulder muscles clenched up. The doors to the school looked closed up tight, handles chained and probably frozen shut by now. Where in hell had Mavis gotten to?
Doug bent over again trying to give his face respite from nature’s onslaught. Covering his head felt better. He formed a shield with his torso. He decided to walk backwards into the wind, pausing before taking quick peeks. He was able to breathe deep with his back to the wind. Also, the strategy allowed him time to collect his thoughts.
The old woman had to be nearby. Just being on the old Catholic school grounds brought back many uncomfortable memories for Doug. He’d been out of the sisters’ graces for years. Not so much for the alcoholic antics of his parents but for he fact that his parents had briefly separated for almost a year, and the break-up of a marriage, any form it took, was frowned upon by the harsh doctrine of the diocese. Doug and his brother were both pariahs for a while, heavy pressure being brought to bear on his mother and father to undergo therapy or counseling to save their marriage. The entire ordeal had been tense for all involved.
A schism had formed which cost Doug his family. Doug spat. Saliva froze instantly, its solid mass flying over the iron prongs of the fence. His eyes spied something to his left. It was a diagonal pole next to a hole in the ground.
He walked towards the forbidden bannister leading down into the basement of the rectory. He’d been taught never to descend or play near the descending staircase since a young age. Any child caught holding onto the framework or using it as home when they played tag during recess, was immediately grounded for a week by the sisters. And the student got a good smack with a yardstick on their bottoms for good measure. It became second nature to any child to form a blind spot in their mind. These were places you should never explore. Verboten!
There’d always been a thin chain hasped to a hook in the concrete wall blocking clear passage to the stairs themselves. Doug saw that the chain had been released. It had fallen away from the bannister post. He could see the rectangle of black from where the stairs descended into darkness.
Mavis must have gone below. He’d found himself irritated over the fact that everyone expected him to just follow and do whatever they asked without question. It grated on him. Doug wondered once again if he were just being used as a tool. He’d gotten used to it when he fought in the armed forces. Forward Command would use your skills as they saw fiit. Have a problem with it? Too bad for you, pal.
But now, stateside, in the middle of some truly bloody weird shit, it occurred to him that non-coms treated him the same way. He wasn’t sure he liked it.
Doug spat again. He felt guilty, like a disobedient child descending the staircase apprehensive for any sister to catch him, screaming, “Where do you think you’re going, young mister?”
Every step down, he grew warmer as concrete walls rose up to shield him from the elements. The smell of church incense caressed his nose bringing back even more memories about the rituals of Mass. He remembered the Stations of the Cross. An Archbishop had once come to say Mass and anointed everyone during it. Doug was still a child then. He remembered being terrifiied to take Eucharist. The Archbishop had anointed everyone with a big wooden orb. Doug had gotten wet with Jesus’ faux blood.
He gulped as the stairs ended and the rectory door loomed. All the years of Catholic school stormed through his mind, so many tense aromatic memories. The last brightest one fiilled his brain cheering him a bit. The image of Joan Luckert sitting on her front porch in her uniform, her white socks pulled up, beautiful face smiling at him as he walked up the street.
Doug tried to hold onto her smile as his turned to a grimace. He entered the dark doorway of the rectory.
Chapter 23
Abernathy heard the woman scream high and clear in the frigid air. It was like a bell tingling loudly in the cold shrill night. He stopped in his tracks. His head hung down. Last thing he needed or wanted to do was run towards peril. He was beyond fiinished. Fatigue had passed him on the steps down to hell weeks ago. Betrayal, murder, cowardice, how many more rungs down would he be willing to trudge before fiinally acquiescing his soul?
Whatever decent remained in him was in tatters. He’d been hiding under the Methodist Church’s copse of fiir trees. He and Charles had noticed the cluster years ago. There was a small ornate window offf the steps, depicting the raising of Lazarus. Now the glass lay as shattered as his life.
Abernathy hated breaking the piece of art. But it was a matter of existence. He had to escape from Gray. It had always been their plan: break in and seize food, water and acquire shelter before getting out of Chicago. ‘Their’ plan?, rued Abernathy. No, Charles had planned it out. He’d even become friends with the pastor here. Charles had even taken tea with him once a month for the past year.
Wiping his eyes, it took all the control he had to keep from weeping. His true love was dead. Abernathy had left him. He was a coward. Less than a quisling really, deserving of death for the loathsome acts he’d committed. His fiingers rubbed the rough exterior of the plastic vial in his pocket. It was the VX nerve drops they had synthesized to be taken only when compromised. Abernathy decided the copse between the fiirs was perfect enough for his peaceful passing. Hopefully the pastor or groundskeeper would fiind his body in the Spring. His small frame would be wasted away from the cold. A fiitting end, he thought. At least it would be painless.
All his life, his body’s size had de fiined the parameters with which to battle against. No one thought he would accomplish half the goals he endeavored for. He had achieved high status, great wealth, and intellectual renown. Then his family’s sordid past and his weak personal choices all ripped those fiine sensibilities away from him. He was revealed to be a man quite diffferent from the image he had of himself. The loss of self provoked him into this sad spiral. Depths he had never wanted to consider were now where he dwelled.
Death was easy to grasp. Defeat and self-destruction took more efffort to accept. Those truths were more bitter pills to swallow. His ears burned in the wind. A minus 47 wind chill slit any exposed flesh offf like piranhas in the air. Your appendages were there one second, then razored away the next. One could feel nothing in the Chicago cold. Only after you got home and began to thaw would agony begin on the molecular level. Congealed blood patiently would bubble in your body like a rusty radiator. The throbbing of nerves would begin in your numb fiingers, senseless ears, or pointy nose. A slow thumping in your skull would convince your brain you were
still alive, even though your limbs would long for the parting from this hostile physical world.
Those symptoms would only be the start of a long road of hurt towards recovery. Abernathy was numb. It was a prefect time to swallow the VX with an Oxycodin chaser. He’d already taken a few strange blue pain pills. Morphine, he thought. Who cared anymore?
The woman’s scream pierced his skull again. Whoever needed help was close by. They sounded to be in dire peril. Abernathy grimaced. Even now, he couldn’t help looking at the world in Quixotian terms. A gentleman of manners marooned on a planet of low born peasants. Being genteel meant being a plump target, compromisable due to his naive fiixations. No one cared in the country any more. If Kitty Genovese were alive today, she would be ignored on every street corner, in every apartment building in America.
Abernathy kept his head down, ears burning. He kept his eyes closed. His lips bled from biting them.
It was no good. The image of Charles smiling at him burned through the cold.
“This is not who we are.” He would say. “We are here to light the way in the dark, my love.”
Charles’ smile shown through the thick of his beard.
“Get up offf that poetic ass and save whoever needs you!” Abernathy opened eyes, wet with tears. They froze immediately almost leaving him blind in the middle of Grace Street. His body continued the shaking that his hands had begun. His bladder was at the point of tilt. So upset was he.
“Bugger all!.” He whispered.
His small body bounded towards the sound of the woman’s plaintive cries. Cray had recovered from pushing his way through the wooden door. His lithe frame avoided most of the larger splinters. He plucked out the ones stabbing him that caused the most damage. Cray absently plucked a small statue from a small table with knick-knaks on it, throwing it into the kitchen. Half his face was covered in blood.
He meant to scare his prey, wanting to flush her out of hiding. The statue, a third place bowling award for her mother made out of pewter and painted black, bounced heavily offf the cooking island then careened through the kitchen window. Hitting dead center, the entire window along with winter stormer smashed out allowing sheets of ice to enter the kitchen.
Joan screamed, even as she cannily pressed buttons setting offf the house security alarm. She’d lived like a victim long enough with Mark, her husband. No more would she allow herself to be someone’s easy mark. She had taken self defense courses, learning how to empower herself, Krav Maga and how to gouge a man’s soft areas.
Laughing like some mad hyena, Cray bolted for Joan. The woman was ready. Cray Lamb presented himself and she took advantage of his overconfiidence. She got a solid kick into his groin, then used an O Goshi Judo move toppling the idiot as he continued moving forward. Cray flailed with his arms, falling on one of them, snapping his left wrist.
Doug’s friend may be stronger, but there’s no cure for stupid. Cray Lamb’s clumsy grab for Joan sent him flying forward with his knees crashing into a squat glass cofffee table. It had been Joan’s grandmother’s, going back to the 1930s. Thick glass dug into his calves slicing away flesh. He cursed as his jaw landed solidly on the wood floor jamb between rooms. His extended sharpened fangs bit into his cheek. He tasted more of his own blood.
Cray had to admit he was a disaster as a bloodthirsty fiiend. All his instincts were offf. His body seemed to be fiighting the curse Erna bestowed on him. Was he one of those amazing eternal creatures or not? Caught in between somehow? It was damned confusing. One leg was still entwined in the twisted metal of the glass table. Brass connectors turned with his weight and the force of his frustration only entrapped him further. It would take a few more slashing effforts before he could extricate himself.
Joan slipped into the heavy leather jacket she had hanging in the basement stairwell. She moved quickly away from where Cray Lamb was.
Her breathing was labored as she threw open the front door. She had clutched in her hand a long paring knife. Doug had given her a couple things to protect her. She still had those in her pocket, but for some reason the long knife gave her comfort.
The table frame skittered past her. Cray limped into the room wild eyed and snarling. His face was cut open from his fall. He looked a madman.
Joan screamed again, her shrill voice piercing the dull constant roar of the wind. Her screams carried far and wide in the cold air. Her legs kept her balanced as she bounded down the buried steps. Lamb continued his pursuit with sad lack of poise. His torso burst through the heavy glass screendoor getting this time caught in the lower metal panel. Roaring like a trapped animal, Cray Lamb pin-wheeled his limbs embedding the metal further around his arms.
Fleeing around the tall bushes, the sounds of the struggle became quieter. The copse of trees also absorbed sound. Joan gasped as she forced her limbs through crusted white mounds in the front yard. She fought through the bushes which seemed to reach out for her. Looking back, Joan caught glimpses of Cray tossing the entire door frame away from him. Was Doug’s friend on drugs? What kind of PCP or Meth make a man do something like this?
She was looking away from the street, still moving forward, when she stumbled offf the hidden concrete curb. She pitched forward onto her face.
Snow swallowed her up. Joan gagged as ice was forced down her throat. It felt as if she were drowning in a frozen sea. Shaking with the fiirst stages of shock, her mind was slow to react.
Joan tried to recover quickly pulling herself up along the front of a car. She was almost upright holding onto a submerged automobile hood, when grubby hands grabbed her coat collar from behind, pulling her down again.
Joan began to protest but snow fiilled her mouth preventing it. A small hand helped keep the snow in her mouth as the palm pressed against her face. Joan began to panic then, feeling sufffocated.
“Hush, now. Or we both die.” Warned the man. He released Joan’s jaw. He reached into a leather valise, withdrawing what looked to be a Christmas tree ornament. The glass orb was fiilled with gel or cloudy liquid that swirled with movement. Joan gagged up her breakfast along with a gob of snow.
Cray Lamb came scrabbling from around her parents house, kicking up snow, throwing offf the last piece of metaldoor wrapped around his arm. Joan and her mystery man remained unseen. Her rescuer pitched the ornament perfectly at their pursuer. The fragile ball exploded right in Cray Lamb’s face setting it and his body on fiire.
The small man kept Joan hidden while peeking over the drivers side of the car. Cray screamed, staggering around like a mad drunk. Whatever was inside the ornament held fiirm to her attackers body. It was like napalm burning into flesh and clothing eating its way into its victim. How could dirty dish water do that? Joan wondered.
The small man took Joan’s shoulders wordlessly, lif ting her up, then forcing her to cross the snow covered street. They fled crouched over. He led the way.
They used buried jack knifed cars to block their view of the flaming creature who was too busy trying to extinguish himself. Doug’s friend was totally involved with himself. Kildare Street was a maze of downed power lines, snapped tree limbs and fallen lamp posts. Buried autos were like white domino tiles scattered at diffferent angles.
“We go now. That won’t keep him busy forever.”
Joan wanted to ask him so much, but wound up merely nodding, her throat too raw to use anyway. Doing a half crawl, their bodies hidden from the auto husks, both disappeared into over hanging bushes frozen solid with ice. Behind them, Cray burned and roared in pain.
His agony was lost in clamor of intense waves of ice displaced by a new arctic front. Windows of every home were obscured, ice frosted all glass and sound was swallowed by the roar of the northern wind. Snow snakes were propelled by the angry gusts. It was a world without any sign of human beings. Everyone smart had stayed inside.
Joan kept running thinking of Douglas. What a Christmas so far.
No one else had had a lover’s friend come over trying to eat her. Joan saw her goo
d Samaritan hustle through the snowy wasteland. During any other time of year, the Chicago looked lovely. Every neighborhood had its beautiful spots, but Old Irving Park was the diamond of the Northwest Chicago area.
You wouldn’t know it by the surroundings at present. She tried to keep up with what appeared to be a very tiny man. He moved so fast, it quickly became impossible to keep up. She’d left under-dressed with only leggings and a clean pair of black sweats as layers. Plus the leather jacket over sweatshirts. It had been cold in the house, but she’d only had on two long sleeved pull-overs. And no hat. The leather jacket helped, but not for very much longer. Her hands were growing numb. She could die out here.
Spending any long period of time in this cold would be deadly. Someone exposed to the elements froze solid pretty quick. Joan pushed that thought out of her head.
“Hey, mister.” She whispered as he slipped ahead through overhanging bushes. “Please, stop a minute.” The man did not respond. He had held the branch as he passed, but suddenly released it back at Joan. She was already pent up with anxiety, so her reflexes caught the branch on its rebound, just before striking her in the face. Still, all the snow dislodged, covering her head and spilling down her neck. It took a moment to brush the powder offf.
Pissed, Joan glanced behind her to see no one following them, nothing but swirling snow, then pivoted to confront the little bastard. Saving her or not, there was no reason to treat her like garbage. Joan rounded the edge of the bush.
The little man was gone. Joan started fiive paces in four directions, but there were no signs of anyone. Seeing footsteps in the whiteout was a near impossibility. Panic swept over her then, raising her blood pressure and making it hard for her to breathe. In all directions, the roaring gods of the Northern Wind wanted her.
All that remained was a strange white world. Joan was alone in it.
Chapter 24
Grayland: Chapter Three of the Dark Chicago Series Page 10