Optical Delusion
Page 6
No!
The demonic soul walked steadily toward him. Blackstone’s mouth went dry. He turned away just so he didn’t have to see her hideous soul, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror hanging on the wall next to him. He saw his own skeleton, brain sloshing slightly with the twisting of his head.
“Gah!”
“What is it?” she said, her usual casual Earth Mother voice tight with alarm. “Is it another of those silverfish? They’ve been all over the house lately.”
He tore his gaze away from himself, settling his cursed eyes on the beast within the woman. The terror he felt was unlike any he’d ever experienced before. The darkness within Noel’s mother was deeper than the pitch of deepest space, ten shades darker than hot tar, those hideous blood-red eyes boring into him. It felt as if he were being stabbed in the chest by those eyes!
“I—I.” He couldn’t form a coherent thought, so great was the unhinging of his mind. He wanted to run like hell, but his legs were cast in stone.
“Martin, you don’t look well. Are you all right?”
She reached a hand out to him. He swatted her away, smacking her forearm as hard as he could.
“What the hell’s the matter with you? You just hit me.”
No, he thought, what the hell’s the matter with you? How could someone’s soul turn that putrid? What had she done in her past? Or worse yet, what had she been up to now?
Her hand reared back, prepared to deliver a blow across his face.
He couldn’t let her touch him. Was the vile porridge within her contagious? There was no way to know. All he had to know was that she mustn’t lay a hand on him.
Blackstone was just able to make out the outline of something in her other hand. It looked like a fondue pot. Before she could slap him, he grabbed the fondue pot, wresting it from her grip.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she sputtered.
There was no time to think. Unadulterated panic had taken control. He swung the pot as hard as he could at the side of her head. It hit with a jolting crack. She didn’t even make a sound. One second she was standing, the next she was on the floor. He could see the crack in her skull, the black ooze leaking onto the floor.
He jumped back, terrified of it touching his shoes.
“Mom?” Noel emerged from the living room. Lucy was in the next room talking to Ethel about throwing a surprise party for Ricky.
The small skeleton stepped into the hallway, looked up at Blackstone, then down at his mortally wounded mother.
“Mom!”
Blackstone tried to stop himself, but it was too late. The boy’s cry of alarm set his arm in motion again. The fondue pot crashed into Noel’s face. He heard the boy’s nose snap, saw his cheekbones splinter.
Noel fell back several feet, landing in a heap amid a pile of shoes and boots by the front door.
“Oh sweet Christ! What have I done?”
The fondue pot clanked on the floor.
Blackstone swallowed back a tidal rush of bile. He ran from the house, having to step over Noel and push his body aside with the door. He never looked back.
Chapter Twelve
I just killed a kid.
The five words circled round and round his brain as he sat in the car by the reservoir. There wasn’t another person in sight. Snow had started to fall, enveloping the surrounding hill in complete silence.
It might have been peaceful if his thoughts weren’t as loud as two freight trains colliding. Somewhere during his mad drive away from Noel’s house, he’d shit himself raw. Sitting in his own reeking filth, he tried—unsuccessfully—to settle down. It was no use. Since he’d brained Becky and Noel, the X-ray specs felt as if they had melted partially into the flesh of his face. Touching them with trembling fingers, he didn’t feel as much plastic as he had before. He was absorbing the glasses, slowly but surely.
A lone flying skeleton swooped overhead, most likely seeking shelter before the storm.
I didn’t just kill a kid . . . I killed my son’s best friend. Why?
Oddly, he felt no remorse for taking his mother’s life. Pure evil bubbled within that woman. He didn’t know or care how it got there. It was in her, at least until he gave it an opening to pour out, hopefully back to the hell from whence it came.
But the boy.
He’d simply reacted to seeing his mother bleeding to death on the floor.
And Blackstone, in his uncontrollable fit of fear, had killed him too.
Or maybe he’s still alive.
The flicker of a thought made him sit up straighter, the mess in his pants stinging, fecal acid birthing nasty sores.
Noel hadn’t been bleeding. Yes, his nose and part of his face were broken, but that shouldn’t be fatal.
There was a very good chance he wasn’t dead. His father should be home soon. He’d take care of him.
Blackstone moaned, eyes shut but able to see through the roof of the car.
He was still a murderer. No one would believe what he saw. Hell, he couldn’t even get the glasses off to let the authorities see for themselves.
And even if he could, the blackness was surely gone by now, like spilled ink from a glass bottle.
If Noel was alive, he’d tell everyone who had killed his mother. Odds are, at this very moment, he was a wanted man, the local police putting out an APB for his arrest.
What the hell do I do?
Blackstone snickered.
Hell.
That was an appropriate word.
It was as if the glasses were giving him an insider’s view of hell on earth.
“Maybe I should just claw my eyes out,” he said, exhausted but nerves tingling.
He tried to slip a finger under the glasses to rub his eye. There wasn’t even a sliver of space between the plastic and his skin anymore. Shit, if he stared crying, the tears would just collect until it would be like wearing a pair of full fish bowls.
And Lord knows, he wanted to cry. The last time he’d shed a tear was at his mother’s funeral, right when they lowered her casket into the cold ground. He’d allowed himself a good minute to let the tears flow, Andrea sobbing beside him, rubbing his arm.
If he started now, they’d go on for much more than a minute.
Realistically, he should turn himself in. If he gave himself over to the authorities, told the whole truth no matter how bizarre and left himself to the mercy of professionals, he might be let off with no jail time. They would have to see how the X-ray specs had become a part of him. Maybe they could take them off with surgery. Let the military or scientists study the damn things. There was a good chance they’d raid the Honor & Smith Co. and arrest the owners as accessories to murder.
At this point, Blackstone didn’t care if it left his face permanently disfigured. All that mattered was that they were off and his normal, everyday vision returned.
Another thought flitted briefly through his mind, but it was somehow more horrible than everything else.
Maybe it wasn’t the glasses at all. Maybe, just maybe, he’d lost his fucking mind.
No! It was the damn glasses. He wasn’t imagining that they wouldn’t come off. He had witnesses to that fact.
But are they really making you see souls? A tiny voice whispered in his ear.
Sighing deeply, he started the car.
Going to the cops was his only choice. He couldn’t go on the run. If he kept seeing people’s skeletons and souls, he’d go mad, or maybe even kill himself.
Things were going to get worse, if not for him, certainly for Andrea and Brian. They’d have to live with the fact that he’d killed a woman and maybe her son. The fact that Becky was not an innocent wouldn’t change things.
Before he went to the police station, he had to see his family one last time, no matter how repulsed he might be at the sight of them turned inside out. He just wanted to hear their voices.
He should also have a few beers while he was at it. It might be a long time before he had another.
“Enjoy your French toast,” he said to the distant shapes, stopping at the light.
Leaning his elbow on the steering wheel so he could massage his head, he accidentally set off the horn. A couple walking in front of his car stopped, staring at him.
“Fuck!”
He mashed the accelerator, mowing them down, the Buick bouncing as it rolled over their bodies. A Ford truck nearly sideswiped him as he blew through the red light and swerved through the intersection. Horns blared. He thought he heard someone scream.
No matter. He had to do it.
The couple of black souls now hopefully lying dead back there had been something else entirely. In the outline of their see-through bodies, he’d seen gray faces twisted in torture within the swirling black mist.
They were already dead inside, vessels for the unspeakable.
Driving too fast over the light coating of snow, he nearly wiped out several times, taking turns without tapping the brake. He couldn’t breathe right. His stomach cramped so hard, it was difficult to sit straight.
Just get home, he told himself over and over. Just get home and say your good-byes.
Chapter Thirteen
Pulling into his driveway, the car fishtailed, back end scraping against the elm tree in the front of the house. Andrea’s car was nowhere to be seen. He looked at his watch, but only saw through it to the working components. He had no idea what time it was or where she could be. The sun was blocked out by the storm clouds.
“Whoa, you all right?” he heard his neighbor Ron’s voice call out when he opened the door. Blackstone looked over to the man’s porch, or where it should be. A black shape stood in the open doorway. “That snow is treacherous. You really did a number on your car.”
Blackstone had always liked Ron. He was a vet, just like him, having served overseas toward the end of Vietnam when things really went south, before the U.S. decided to haul ass out of the hopeless situation. Ron was always quick to lend a hand, helping him do some concrete work last summer on the front steps.
When Blackstone saw Ron now, he also saw a pair of screaming faces—children’s faces. More to the point: the faces of Vietnamese children.
“Go back inside, Ron,” he said, averting his gaze, slipping and falling when he tried to scoot around his car to his front steps.
“You been drinking, Marty?”
“No. Just leave me alone.”
Blackstone struggled to regain his footing. He looked over when he heard Ron’s gate open.
“Dammit, Ron, I said to buzz off!”
“Here, just let me help you up and get you inside.”
Ron didn’t buy that he wasn’t drunk. Blackstone cowered from the man, a weeping girl no older than five locking her eyes on his, lips curled back in agony.
“What did you do?” Blackstone said, cowering from the man’s outstretched hand. In his arm was the contorted face of a boy who bore a strong resemblance to the girl, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Ron chuckled. “It’s more like what did you do, Marty. You’re gonna have to take your car to the body shop. I can help you pound that dent out, but it’ll need a pro to make it look right.”
Blackstone managed to get on his feet without his neighbor’s help.
“You never talk about what went on there.”
“Huh?”
“Now I see why.”
“You’re not making any sense. Wow, you really tied one on, didn’t you?”
Ron went to touch Blackstone again. He lashed out with his keys between his knuckles, burying them in the man’s Adam’s apple.
Gurgling, Ron clasped his hands over his throat, staggering into the tree and slipping onto his ass. He tried to say something, but it came out as an indecipherable sputter.
“I’m sorry,” Blackstone said, the snow pattering his face. “I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t. But—but—”
There was no sense trying to explain himself to the dying man. He couldn’t leave him out here for anyone walking or driving by to discover. Quickly, he dragged him across the inch of snow to the side of the house. He couldn’t see if he’d left a trail of blood. All he could see were the roots and dirt under the sidewalk.
The house was warm and smelled like cookies. Andrea must have made some for Brian for when he came home from school. It was a slap in Blackstone’s face, this scent of ordinary, domestic bliss. Even if he didn’t go to prison, he’d never be able to go back to the way things were. Not after this.
All he could do now was sit and wait for Andrea and Brian to come home. Then he’d drive straight to the second precinct.
Standing at the refrigerator, he chugged two beers, tossing the empties in the sink.
Blood.
I probably have blood on my hands, he thought. He’d felt Ron’s hot blood splatter all over him when he punched the keys through his throat. Running upstairs, he undressed, chucking his clothes in the hamper, changed and scrubbed his hands and face as hard as he could, unable to tell if he was having any success.
He made the mistake of raising his head, his reflection glaring back at him from the mirror.
Blackstone screamed.
His skeleton had been replaced by the black oil, the vaporous faces of Becky, Ron, the two people on the road and Noel writhing across the contours of his own face.
The center of his chest felt as though it had been pierced by a spear. Bolts of pain shot down his left arm. Shuffling backward, his back collided with the towel rack, ripping it off the wall.
“No! No! No!”
He couldn’t take his eyes off the souls swimming in his body. Every life he’d taken he now carried within him.
It was hard to breathe. He gulped for air like a fish on land.
A cold fist squeezed his heart.
For the first time all day, his vision began to darken, a small, tender mercy before he slipped away.
His last thought before his heart gave out completely was, “Does anyone ever make it out of hell?”
* * *
The moment Andrea saw the blood in the snow and bashed-in rear of Martin’s car, she ordered Brian to stay in the car.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
“I don’t know. Just stay here until I come back and get you.”
She had a hard time getting her house keys from her purse. Even when she did, she dropped them twice.
Swinging the door open so hard that it banged against the foyer wall, she shouted, “Martin! Martin, are you all right?”
The house was deathly silent.
Judging by the amount of blood in the snow, there had been a really bad accident. Did Martin hit someone? Had he hurt himself? Was he in an ambulance right now? Too many terrible scenarios raced through her head.
“Martin.”
There were empty cans of Schaefer in the sink.
Oh Jesus, was he driving drunk? She kept telling him to stay out of the damn Buick after he’d had a few. He swore he drove better drunk than most people sober. Only an idiot could think like that.
Running upstairs, she stopped in the bathroom and gasped.
Her husband lay on the floor, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling, his face frozen in a rictus of raw terror.
Crying and sobbing his name, she knelt beside him, knees digging into the cold tiles, feeling for a pulse in his neck, knowing she wouldn’t find any.
“Is Dad dead?”
Brian’s small voice startled her. She tried to shield Martin’s body from her son, knowing it was impossible. He’d seen more than any ten-year-old boy ever should.
“I need you to go to your room and close the door. I’m going to call an ambulance.” Her voice quivered, words getting stuck in her throat.
“Did he get dizzy and hurt himself?�
�� Brian said, pointing. She followed his finger to the pair of cheap glasses on the floor. The doctor must have gotten them off. So why had he still been carrying them around?
Slipping them in her pocket, she closed the bathroom door and hugged Brian. He either thought his father was still alive or in shock. His skinny frame absorbed her desperate embrace.
“I don’t know, honey. We’ll get a doctor here right away. Promise me you’ll stay in your room?”
He nodded.
Andrea rushed to the bedroom to call 911.
She didn’t hear the glasses fall from their precarious perch on the edge of her pocket.
Nor did she see Brian slip the X-ray specs on.
Don’t miss the next horrifying tale from the master, Hunter Shea.
JUST ADD WATER
Instant monsters. Instant mayhem.
GROW AMAZING LIVE SEA SERPENTS!
It’s fun! It’s easy! They only cost a measly dollar. Just clip out the ad in your comic book. Then ask Mom to mail it in. A few weeks later, receive a packet of instant sea serpent dust. Then:
Just add water . . . and watch them grow!
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Just ask David and Patrick. Their “instant pets” are instant duds. They don’t hatch, they don’t grow, they don’t do anything. So they dump them into the sewer where Dad pours toxic chemicals . . .
WAIT UNTIL FEEDING TIME.
It’s been weeks since David and Patrick thought about those sea serpents. But now, small animals are disappearing in the neighborhood. Strange, slimy creatures are rising from the sewers. And once the screaming starts, David and Patrick realize that their childhood pets really did come to life. With a vengeance. They’re enormous . . . and have a ravenous hunger for human flesh . . .
Praise for Hunter Shea
“Old school horror.”—Jonathan Maberry
“A lot of splattery fun.”—Publishers Weekly