by Kevin Lucia
A liquid flopping. He whirled, eyes searching the dimness… as something squelched wetly behind the counter. He leapt back, fearing It would come after him, even though he had no idea what It was.
The slithering sounds swelled, accompanied once more by that throbbing voice, which evoked primordial fears as each unintelligible syllable pounded against Gavin’s brain, over and over…
mene, mene, tekel upsahrin, mene, mene…
“What is that?”
The words slammed into him, turning his insides to jelly. He whirled on the boy, desperately shouting, “What is that?”
The boy stood calm and still, and somehow his voice echoed above the chanting. “That’s the Other. It has many names. The Destroyer of Worlds. Eater of Light. Crawling Chaos.”
Ice-cold fear filled his belly and his bladder twitched. “What does it want?”
“It wants to use you. You have a gift It desires above all else and It wants to make you Its Herald.”
Still holding his hands over his ears – which didn’t matter, because that voice kept echoing over and over, inside his head – Gavin shouted, “Herald for what?”
The boy’s eyes glowed with blue fire, his countenance transformed into something unearthly. “The coming destruction of all there is.”
“Why? Why me?”
The boy cocked his head, frowning. “You’re a writer. One who turns life into fiction, and fiction into life. What’s spawned through your pen becomes life, comes from life. But you’ve forsaken your destiny, leaving yourself open to the Other’s designs.”
“What are you talking about? What destiny?”
The boy lifted his chin and gazed at him, daring a refutation of his claims. “To be a Witness. A Seer. An Oracle of things to come. You must chronicle these things for the Guardian, not the Other, so the Guardian can protect the Threshold, so he will know how.”
“The Threshold? The Guardian? Who the hell is… this is crazy! I’m a writer. I write fiction! I make shit up! None of it’s real! None of it!”
The boy’s voice dropped into a whisper that shook Gavin’s insides. “It is real. All of it. So is everything else you are meant to write… if you choose to.”
No.
It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be.
A terrible understanding inside of him, however, told him it was.
“No,” he whispered, not sure where his words came from, “please. I can’t. I just can’t. It’s too hard. I’m too afraid. I tried to write about you once before, and I just can’t... I can’t.”
The boy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Gavin Patchett. Because it’s time.
“You must choose.”
A sharp lashing cut the air.
Something thick and fleshy snagged Gavin’s ankle and yanked his feet out from underneath him. He slammed down head-first, chin and chest hitting the floor. Salty blood filled his mouth as his teeth dug into his tongue.
And that voice chanted over and over…
mene, mene
tekel, upsharin
Close to screaming, Gavin looked over his shoulder at the thing, the tentacle wrapped around his ankle. A vision borne of nightmares, it throbbed and writhed with a muscular pulse. A dark, mottled green-brown, its hide bristled with thousands of tiny hairs, and as the tentacle tightened around his ankle, those hairs unbelievably pierced his pants and dug into his skin.
And at the tentacle’s end, he saw curved hulks defying description, lined with rows of mad, glittering alien eyes. Its form continuously shifted as tentacles coiled and writhed above It in a serpentine halo.
Another tentacle whipped at him and Gavin cried out as it wrapped around his knee, hairs digging into his skin like rows of needle-sharp teeth, and like a fisherman tired of playing with its catch, It heaved and yanked Gavin toward It. He screamed, high and shrill, hands flailing along the floor, reaching, grabbing for anything…
… and he snagged the base of the cash register’s stand. Even as the strain in his knees and hips intensified, somehow he wrapped his arms around the stand’s base, anchoring himself.
Desperately he looked up and there was the boy, standing only a few feet from him, hands shoved into his pockets, his blue gaze cold and remote.
“Please! Please… help me!”
The boy raised an eyebrow. “Will you write what you see? Will you be a Witness for The Guardian, so he may protect The Threshold?”
He heard a rustling, dry sound, like a snake sliding through autumn leaves, and Gavin realized yet another fleshy arm was hurtling toward him. He kicked out with mad fright, his heart throbbing with both glee and disgust as his foot knocked away something hard and leathery. “Whatever! Just take me away… please!”
The boy squatted face to face with him, blue eyes pulsing. “Have a care,” he warned, “pledging your fealty will save you from ruination; but it won’t save you from death or suffering. There is no ‘safe path’ to choose.”
“I don’t understand,” Gavin whimpered. He heard more wriggling and squirming but another kick met only air as a third tentacle wrapped around his thigh. His shoulders creaked with the increasing strain and he reached deep inside, willing himself to hold on…
But he couldn’t.
Arms shaking, he looked at the boy, his vision fading, dimming at the edges. “What do you want me to do?”
The boy gazed at him, his blue eyes filling Gavin with warmth. “Your gift is your writing. Your tool. Your power.”
mene, mene! tekel upsharin!
And those horrible tentacles pulled harder. Terror suffused him as his fingers slipped on the worn edges of the podium. “What if I can’t?”
The boy sat back on his heels, the warmth fading from his eyes. “Others will write,” he responded tonelessly, “and you’ll be lost.
“You must choose.”
Gavin opened his mouth but before he could speak or even breathe It tore him loose with a mighty jerk. Pain blazed up his legs, through his joints, his muscles on fire, but none of that mattered as he flew forever backward while the pain rose in his chest and exploded there, radiating outward through him as the darkness swallowed him whole…
#
“Clear!”
Pain.
Pain blazing through his body, exploding in his chest, radiating outward, jerking him in spasms like before, back there, only different somehow…
“We’ve got him! Heartbeat, very weak…”
And the voices faded into an indecipherable hiss as his head lolled on a rubbery neck. He lay flat on his back, was rushing forward…
ambulance
… a droning, shrill cry waxing and waning, coming and going…
siren
… and before everything faded away to a blessedly empty, weightless black he saw an EMT lean over him, a man whose blue eyes blazed with power and strength and warmth…
#
“… I said, you’re pretty damn lucky, y’know?”
Gavin blinked rapidly.
Swallowing, feeling lightheaded and weak. He tried to move his legs and fear spiked his heart when he felt them restricted, bound…
he cried out as it wrapped around his knee
… and the world slowly coalesced around him. He was reclining in a hospital bed, staring out the window as snowflakes fell endlessly from a whitish-gray sky.
He swallowed again.
His abdomen ached dully, the pain blunted by meds but still throbbing insistently. Small cuts and abrasions on his cheeks and forehead stung. His head pounded, echoing his heartbeat, and though he knew it to be fancy, he thought he felt two ghostly, burning patches on his chest.
clear!
“Hey. Gavin. You with me?”
That was Jim. He’d been talking for a while, but the fatigue and the drugs had left Gavin fuzzy. Reluctantly, he turned his attention from the snow’s mesmerizing descent to his agent’s worried face. “Sorry? I spaced out for a bit.”
“I said you’re pretty lucky that old guy in the tr
uck showed up when he did. You were only out there for about ten minutes. Any longer, you probably would’ve bled to death.”
Gavin shook his head and looked away, his eyes drawn back to the wintry scene outside. “Ten minutes,” he whispered, seeing fragmented images of an elderly man with amazingly blue, compassionate eyes and an EMT on the ambulance with the same blue eyes, interwoven with other, nightmarish images he had no words for. “Felt like a lifetime.”
Jim nodded as he leaned against the wall. “Very well could’ve been. They lost you on the way here, you know. Heart just quit for some reason. Stopped, total flat line. Had to shock you a few times before they got you back, I guess.”
clear!
Blazing, blinding pain, jerking through him.
“And you’re lucky your kidneys were only bruised. At first, the doctors thought they’d both been lacerated, and they thought you’d be on dialysis for life.” Jim smiled wryly. “Can you imagine that? Carrying around a piss bag for the next twenty years?”
Gavin snorted, still looking outside. “Only bruised, huh?”
“Yeah. Someone must have read the CT scans wrong because when they did a laparoscopy for a closer look, everything checked out.” Jim shrugged. “Like I said, pretty lucky.”
“Yeah.”
They remained silent for several moments, until Jim finally stirred and said, “Listen, I talked to Franklin, and he says not to worry about–”
“I’m an ass,” Gavin said.
“What’s that?”
Gavin turned and met Jim’s gaze, marshaling what little courage he had left. “I’ve acted pretty miserably lately, haven’t I? Drinking too much. Bitching like an ungrateful bastard.”
Jim shrugged, his expression neutral. “Everyone hits a bad patch now and then.”
Gavin swallowed and forced himself not to turn away. “Call Franklin. Tell him I screwed up. Tell him I’ll stop my complaining, that I’ll try to make it right, no matter what.”
Jim smiled faintly. “I’ll tell him, Gav. He’ll be glad to hear it.” He paused, then added, “We’ll work it out. Promise.”
He glanced at his watch. “Woa. I’ve gotta run back to the hotel, shoot off about a dozen emails.” He looked back at him with such concern, Gavin instantly felt horrible for the way he’d treated Jim the night before. “You’ll be all right for a bit?”
Gavin waved limply. “I’m fine.”
Jim moved past the foot of the bed and then abruptly checked himself, remembering something. “Almost forgot. When the EMTs brought you into the OR you were clutching these as if your life depended on it. They had to pry them from your fingers, so I figured they were important and you’d want them.”
He withdrew the objects from under his arm and handed them to Gavin, who accepted them wordlessly; afraid his pounding heart might trigger the nurse-call alarm. “Hang tight until I get back.” He flipped Gavin a jaunty salute and left the room.
Gavin stared for several seconds at what he held. The topmost object was a marble black and white composition book. He’d written the bulk of Shades of Darkness in notebooks like it; had even started writing its sequel in one before pitching it and moving on to other stories he’d thought more marketable at the time.
Carefully, his hand trembling, he shifted the objects, and when he saw the other thing – a hardcover novel – his heart stuttered, because in his hands he held a slightly soiled, faded copy of Shades of Darkness. His mind rebelled against the implications, because he knew without a shadow of a doubt the only copy he owned was at home in his office, but here it was, nonetheless.
He breathed once.
Waited for an interminable moment, then flipped the cover open to find the following: To Hank…
Gavin slammed it shut.
Tossed the book onto the table next to him like it was a ticking bomb. Sucking in deep gulps of air, he mumbled, “No way. It’s not possible. There’s no way.”
And yet, two opposing refrains echoed in his mind…
mene, mene, tekel upsharin
you’re here to decide your destiny
Gavin reached out and grabbed the standard hospital pen that all rooms came amply supplied with. He picked up the notebook he’d dropped into his lap and opened it to the sight of a white, pure, empty page. He clicked the pen, waited for a moment…
And began to write.
And he wrote into the night, as the bitter wind howled and beat against his hospital room window.
About the Author
Kevin Lucia is a Submissions Reader for Cemetery Dance Magazine and his podcast "Horror 101" is featured monthly on Tales to Terrify. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies.
He’s currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children.
He is the author of Hiram Grange& The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles. His first collection of Clifton Heights Tales, Things Slip Through was published November 2013. He’s currently working on his first novel.