by Dan Padavona
“We have to go,” he said, clutching her arm and dragging her toward the doorway.
She moved willingly into the shadows of the long hallway, but her feet dragged as though she were sleepwalking, sneakers swishing and squeaking against the wooden floor slats.
“Come on, Tori. It’s right below the window.”
Whatever it was, she knew not, for the roaring animal could have been Jacob Mann, Mickey Keller, the men who had stalked them through Grogan’s Wonder World, or something risen out of the pits of hell. Another danger had come for her. Nowhere was safe, even here amid the gathering survivors, hidden inside pristine Victorian constructions in the shadow of one of the nation’s most famous family destinations, Florida Coasters.
They turned the corner at the end of the hallway and descended the stairs, the white glow of kitchen lighting spilling across the living room toward the bottom of the staircase. Through the walls she heard the muffled squeals of a dying woman, and as Blake pulled her toward the front door, Tori wondered what difference fleeing could possibly make. No matter where they went, murder would follow.
Throwing open the front door, Blake stepped onto the porch first, his eyes scanning for signs of danger. Dozens of people came running down the sidewalk now—Mitch, Hank, Darren and Carina, several others Tori had met earlier but whose names escaped her—angling between their house and its neighbor, rushing toward the backyard. The dying woman ceased screaming, but now behind the house something tore through her remains, bones snapping like pencils. The black Camaro slept in the driveway, fully-gassed, ready to usher them from the neighborhood at blinding speeds. The keys jingled in Blake’s pocket as he descended the steps. He cocked his head toward the corner of the house where the others had disappeared, their terrified cries pouring back at him.
“We have to go, Tori.”
The thick humidity of the Florida night felt suffocating. She emerged from the air-conditioned interior of the house, descended the first two steps, and stopped, her lower lip quivering as tears welled out from her eyes.
“Let’s go. While we still have a chance to get out of here.”
She saw him watching her, a mixture of incredulity and building anxiety painted across his face as he begged her to act, pleaded with her to run before the horror of the backyard materialized around the corner of the house.
“Tori, that thing—”
“No.”
Her reply froze him in place, and she was surprised to hear her own response. She straightened, standing taller on the lower step while the madness escalated behind the house.
“I’m not leaving them to die, Blake.”
“What are you talking about? That thing, whatever it is, will kill everyone.” Another gunshot exploded like thunder, and Tori heard someone shouting, Mitch perhaps, as the ghastly sound of a body being dragged into the brush followed.
“I have to try to help.”
His face contorted as he stepped toward the stairs, and for a moment she was sure he meant to grab her by the arm and drag her to the car. But he just glared up at her, whatever anger he felt blanketed beneath the hysteria of a frightened child.
“I can’t let anything happen to you, Tori. I won’t.”
“Let her help.”
Tori nearly leaped out of her skin when she heard the voice. Blake spun around, fists raised defensively. Lance Benin stood at the base of the driveway, leaning against his cane as he stared blindly up at her.
He’s blind, yet he can see me. How is that possible?
Lance started walking forward, the cane clicking on the blacktop, his blank eyes centered on her. If she moved to the lawn, Tori knew Lance’s glare would follow. A creeping dread ran through her bones as she watched the blind man approach, and then his lips curled into a disarming smile.
“Long time ago, I had a sergeant who told me it was a crime to die in battle without firing every bullet in your chamber. I haven’t thought about what he said in a long time, but as I stand here tonight, it sure seems to apply.”
Blake moved along a diagonal to block Lance’s forward progress, his shoulders squared to the man with the cane.
“What are you talking about?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure.” Lance edged closer, standing straight to face Blake. “Just tell me there isn’t something about the girl that you are hiding.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Am I?”
“We don’t know you. I’m taking Tori as far from here as possible. If you want to ride with us, if you want to save yourself, I’ll be happy to take you, too. But don’t try to stop us from leaving.”
The battle resounded from the backyards, people screaming, dying, the beast roaring like a demon risen.
“I won’t go with you.”
Blake whirled back at her, hurt across his face.
“Tori, I’m trying to keep you from getting killed.”
Tori nodded in understanding, but as she did so, she descended the steps and crossed the front yard. She was tired of running, sick of feeling like an autumn leaf whipped about by fate’s wind. She knew Blake didn’t understand, but she had decided. She might die before the night was finished, but she would not flee again. He trailed after her, shouting and pleading for her to listen to reason.
Though she had yet to see the monster with her own eyes, Tori understood what lurked in the backyards. It was death. Every inch of her skin crawled with goosebumps, and it felt as though a slowly melting ice cube was stuck in her chest as the corner to the Victorian drew nearer. But she never faltered. Something had come alive inside of her, something that tasted of burnt maple syrup and painted white sheets of lightning across her vision. Her fingers tingled as though encrusted with static electricity, and with each step forward, Blake’s protests drifted toward the periphery of her consciousness. Walls of darkness seemed to grow at the edges of her vision, the neighborhood narrowing into a tunnel beyond which lay only void.
The gunshots, screams of terror, the growl of a beast come to destroy them all—everything dissipated until all she heard was the thrum of her heartbeat. She turned the corner to the backyard. Tori came for the beast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Real Monster
A pool of black.
Fireworks.
People sleeping in the grass.
Pinpricks of red light in the trees.
Her rationality scattered to the wind, Tori stepped into the confusion, sliding ever deeper into the tunnel which segregated her consciousness from the hysteria of the backyards. She didn’t hear the voices screaming at her, warning her of the danger, or perhaps she heard them but could not comprehend. At the edge of thought, some part of her remained cogent enough to recognize the pool of black as blood in the moonlight. The fireworks were gunfire, the sleeping figures the massacred.
Mouths of the fallen hung agape, their eyes reflections of the haunted moon, and all about her people darted through the darkness in panic. The victims’ throats were torn out, bodies disemboweled, life fluids draining onto the grass like a scene from a garden production of the Grand Guignol. Tori grasped none of this, nor did she hear Blake pleading with her to turn back. Surrounding her was heat—not the tropical atmosphere, but an undefinable inferno, as though she walked past walls of molten lava. The red pinprick eyes in the trees kept moving, bobbing up and down while the beast snorted.
Shadows came alive. The beast appeared to suddenly grow, standing up on its hind legs, towering over the trees’ lower boughs. The burning fires of the monster’s eyes followed over all who would foolishly challenge it.
The monster pawed at the ground, dislodging clumps of soil and stone as it tore divots into the earth. Seeing how huge the beast was—at least twice the size of the largest wolf, grotesque, twisted fangs dripping with red—Tori felt her limbs go cold. Even before the beast prowled into the open, she sensed it was not of this earth. The thing in the trees, the monster with eyes of blood, was an abomination, its sole purpose to kill the
community survivors. The hair stood on the back of her neck. This was not a man with whom she might reason. The beast was a murderous force against which nothing of this world could stand against.
More gunshots fired. As Tori stepped past a group of silhouetted figures, Mitch Bloom grabbed her by the wrist. She saw him yank his hand back, as though he had touched an electric fence. A lack of understanding was in his eyes, and though his voice was lost to the void, she read his lips, telling her she would be killed if she faced the beast.
Another person, a burly, bearded man, the man shooting the gun, rushed past her. He fired pointblank at the beast. The first two shots struck the beast’s hide with no effect. Out of ammunition, the man threw down the gun and produced a hunting blade from a sheath. As he tentatively shifted the knife from hand-to-hand, the monster leaped out of the shadow, its vile maw open just long enough for the moonlight to reveal rows and rows of needle-like fangs. In that moment, the man saw the beast for what it was—not a wild animal crouched among the shadows, but a monster escaped from a nightmare.
Jaws clamped down on the man’s hand, and he squealed. The monster jumped back into the shadows, taking with it the knife, the hand, and most of his forearm. All that remained was a mangled stump spouting blood toward the sky, a grisly fountain. The man fell to his knees, his eyes moving between the bloody stump and the red eyes past the tree line, eyes promising the deaths of everyone in the community. Before anyone pulled him away from further harm, the beast bounded back into the yard, snout snapping, howling to the moon. Jaws opened wide. The upper half of the man’s body disappeared inside the beast’s mouth. Fangs tore through flesh and bone, a sickening crunch audible as the man’s ribs were shattered. A geyser of blood erupted out of the man’s lower torso, his legs twitching in the grass. The monster threw back its head as its jaw snapped, working the man’s remains down its throat as though he were bait thrown to an alligator.
Her legs responding to her survival instinct, Tori involuntarily stepped backward. The thing, the monster, the devil, whatever it was, would surely kill her. The defenders panicked and receded. Tori was left in the open to stand alone with the monster. She took a cautious step toward the trees.
The beast’s head swerved when Tori walked into the open, and its snout opened and snapped shut, gore dripping off fangs. She froze at the monster’s gaze, the void wavering, her uncertain grasp on the magic slipping through her fingers.
What am I doing? I’m going to be killed.
Heart pounding like kettle drums as the cries for her to flee swelled, she faltered, her resolve slipping away. The tingling diminished in her fingers, the black tunnel wavered, slowly dissolving to reveal the backyard. For the first time since entering the magic’s tunnel, she felt the gusting sea breeze in her hair, tasted its salinity. The magic’s burning heat became a fleeting warmth, nearly lost to the night.
The beast raised up onto its hind legs and stalked out of the trees, its huge head swinging from side-to-side, bones snapping as it crawled over lifeless cadavers. Snarling, the monster curled back its lips to unveil twisted fangs. It seemed to be smiling, hungering to take another life.
The monster was ten yards away now, near enough for Tori to catch the scent of death on its breath. Repulsed by the smell, she felt the magic retreat deeper inside of her, abandoning her when she needed it most.
It’s too big to fight, she thought as the beast padded forward. In that moment she welcomed death. Just let it all be over.
The beast reared back, opened its snout wide, and roared. She flinched. Blake’s hand was on her shoulder, gripping her shirt, pulling her backward. She stumbled over her feet, falling into Blake and knocking him backward. The beast rushed at them.
The magic flooded back with blinding suddenness. Every limb trembled as though electrified. The night disappeared behind a curtain of white light until all she perceived was the shape of the monster amid the brightness. Images filled her mind—Tyler and James holding Blake and her at gunpoint, Mickey running a knife blade across her flesh, Jacob stalking out from behind the curtains. The memories might have consumed her thoughts for a split second, but they seemed to elongate into a lifetime of pain. The strange heat exploded around her, fueled by her rage.
The beast’s jaws snapped at her face. The magic exploded with blinding light. The light caught hold of the monster and hurled it backward. Crashing against the earth, the beast scrambled back to its feet. Howling, the monster leaped back at them. Bloody eyes blazed through the darkness, jaws opened to reveal rows of twisted needles for fangs.
The magic burst out from her, the light of a thousand suns engulfing the devil. The monster flew backward into the air, held in the air by Tori’s power, rising until it stood suspended above the tree line. Several people gasped at the sight. Shock turned to terror as the squealing monster split apart, its flesh peeling away until all that was left was its insides. Entrails rained down. Several people turned away and wretched. The ghastly vision held steady for a few seconds, and then flames enveloped the beast’s remains, as though the monster had imploded. The burning monster tried to howl, and in the night wind it sounded like the scream of witches.
The fire became too hot for anyone to look upon, not that anyone really wanted to see. Most people had their heads turned when the flames extinguished themselves, the beast’s charred remnants falling to the earth in smoking pieces. All that remained in the air were thinning tendrils of gray smoke.
The magic abandoned her. She was left gasping, a feeling of nakedness as she sucked the night air into her lungs with desperate gulps. Blake knelt by Tori’s side, holding her in his arms. Her eyes were rolled back inside her head, her arms and legs convulsing through waves of tremors as her breaths came in short wheezes.
“Tori. Tori, can you hear me?”
His voice seemed to come from faraway, the clamor of people muffled. She felt as though she were clawing her way up through quicksand, her mouth and nose suffocated with mud.
Am I dying?
“Come on, Tori. You’ve got to be okay. Please open your eyes.”
Her surroundings hurtled back to her. She opened her eyes. Her mental acuity slowed, and she felt as though she emerged from the bottom of a deep, dark pool.
“What happened?” She blinked rapidly, bringing the backyard into focus. She saw plumes of smoke rising off what remained of the devil monster. Her eyes moved across the faces looking down upon her, and she recognized terror on those faces. Now they know me for the demon I truly am. She lowered her head onto Blake’s shoulder and began to cry.
At the periphery of the carnage, whereupon groomed lawns and garden plots lay the dead and the dying, two ferns parted to reveal a shadowed face. The girl stood a few yards deep in the leaves, concealed by the foliage, the community survivors wandering shell-shocked behind the houses too consumed by madness to notice her presence.
Melody’s head felt filled with cotton, her limbs unusually heavy, as though wet sand coursed through her veins. She felt good, at peace, the pleasant effects of the heroin still drifting through her like a cloud. She was high; however, she was cognizant, and as she looked upon the grisly scene, she wondered what the smoking remains had once been. A huge bear? Did bears even exist in Florida? Whatever it was, it had maimed and killed several of the community’s pretentious snobs. And bully for the beast, for Florida Bliss was filling alarmingly fast, and a few less snoops staring through her window and knocking at her door meant more privacy for Melody.
Palm fronds rustled, and she swiveled her head in their direction, searching the dark. Her pulse quickened, punching coldly through the cloudiness of the high, bringing her brief clarity.
“Someone there?”
The wind moaned, and in that somber song, she thought she heard a voice calling to her, directing her attention to the backyards. What am I missing? She studied anew the milling community members and recognized the tiny form of Beth Tranor, clutching Mitch Bloom’s arm, leaning against him and sobbin
g. Why couldn’t the beast have killed both of them? The freak blind man stumbled dumbly through the yard. She never ceased to be amazed by sheep like Mitch who were enamored with the crippled, the weak. Lance wasn’t a hero; he was a failure, a veteran who had fought and lost.
A flashlight flared across the yard. She heard moans of despair as the light swept across the fallen. Then the light centered on a girl lying in a boy’s arms. They appeared to be teenagers, and when Melody caught sight of the girl’s flaming red locks, her breath caught in her throat. There could be no doubt this was the girl and boy Mickey had warned her to watch for. But how would she contact Mickey to let him know? She remembered the promise, remembered the power and riches that would be hers if she delivered the girl. To hell with Mickey. I’ll deliver her to Victor Lupan, myself. She licked the taste of sweat off her lips.
I think you and I are going to be very good friends, Melody thought, staring at the girl with the fiery hair. Very, very good friends. She grinned, her teeth reflecting in the starlight like tombstones.
Slipping back into the trees, she crept home.
Dark Vanishings: Book 2 ends here.
The story continues in the next episode with the
publication of Dan Padavona’s novel,
Dark Vanishings: Book 3.
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