NightWhere

by John Everson

  Nothing had prepared him for this.

  Mark pressed the knife in farther, and the woman on the table moaned. The blood flowed out from around the blade now, heavily. Drips poured over her side and spattered the rock slab.

  “Much better,” Kharon said. Then he began to speak. The words were guttural, foreign, but the rest of the robed figures apparently knew them. They soon joined in, until the small room echoed with the sound of chanting in unison.

  To Mark, the words sounded evil.

  He pressed the knife along the snake drawn on the woman’s belly, and gulped as the blood flow increased. He could see the flesh pulling apart under his knife, opening an inch deep to reveal her insides.

  Sweat poured down his sides and tears wept absently down his face.

  Mark cut.

  And then the knife seemed to disappear inside her as he pulled it around the final curve near her belly button. Blood sprayed out and pooled across her middle, before flowing to the table. The woman screamed faintly beneath the burlap, and Mark could see the pink of her guts inside…the blade had slipped through her dermis to breach her belly.

  “Oh shit,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  He drew the blade out and stepped back from the table.

  The chanting rose to a fever pitch as the woman’s cries grew. At last Kharon raised his hands, and the room went silent.

  “She is ours,” Kharon announced, as four of his followers went to each corner of the table. “Now make her yours.”

  Damia suddenly curled around Mark’s leg, brushing her breasts against him. With a cool hand, she stroked his penis, which despite Mark’s wishes, instantly grew erect.

  “Take her,” Damia said. “Use her for your pleasure.”

  Mark shook his head. “No, I can’t. We need to get her a doctor-one of those cuts is too deep. She’s going to bleed to death.”

  Kharon shook his head. “She will have no help until your defilement is finished.”

  Mark hesitated, and then realized that the only way to end this was to go through it. Protesting would only lengthen the time it took to get help.

  He put his foot on a step at the foot of the table and crawled above the woman. “I’m sorry,” he said again and again as he positioned and pressed himself inside her. She was warm and wet. Lubricated by her own blood. As he pushed his body against her, the blood flowed faster from her belly, and Mark’s own stomach was quickly coated in the sticky warmth of her blood.

  “Make her yours,” Damia urged. “Take her deeply.”

  Mark stared at the black-painted breasts and the red snake cut below them and felt his cock respond to the horror in a way he would never have guessed. He was incredibly hard now, and his motion increased as he surrendered to the primal act. The woman groaned with each thrust, and soon Mark’s own moans joined hers, and he let go, spasming again and again until he was gasping for breath.

  When at last he pulled back, the blood had smeared across all of her stomach and chest, washing much of the black paint away. He could see the true color of bloody, tan skin beneath the crimson.

  “Get her a doctor,” Mark demanded.

  “There is just one more thing you must do,” Kharon said. “Stand and wash her clean.”

  “Give me a washcloth then,” Mark said.

  There was laughter.

  Kharon shook his head. “You were washed clean by all of us not so long ago. You have the means. Use it.”

  Mark knew instantly what he meant. He shook his head. “I’ve done enough.”

  “Her defilement is not complete until you have shown her how low she is to you. Worthy only of being your receptacle. Do it now.”

  “I want to see Rae,” Mark said.

  “When you finish here,” Kharon said. “Not before.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Mark whispered.

  “Not here,” Damia laughed. “I told you that.” With her hands she pushed him to stand upright above the bloody woman on the table.

  “Wash the night from her,” Damia said. “And she will be reborn to NightWhere.”

  Mark struggled to do as they demanded. But nothing came. He remembered all of those times he’d stood at a urinal and been flanked by men on either side and found it impossible to go…and sometimes had left without doing anything, only to return five minutes later.

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus. And eventually…he felt his tubes open. When at last he released, he opened his eyes and watched his penis dissolve the black paint from the woman fully. It washed away even faster than it seemed it should have, until the woman on the table was no longer painted in anything but her blood and Mark’s piss. Kharon walked to the head of the table and untied the burlap sack from around her head, as his helpers released her arms and legs.

  “I promised you that if you completed the three levels of NightWhere, you would see your wife once more,” Kharon said. “Here she is.”

  Mark looked down in horror as Rae’s face stared up at him from the bloody mess he had made of her body. Her brow was creased in pain, but there was a trembling smile on her face.

  “Oh my God, Rae, I didn’t know.”

  He dropped to his knees and put his hand on her hair. “I would never have done this if I’d known it was you.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “That’s why they covered my face. I wish that I could have watched.”

  He leaned down to kiss her. She allowed him, but did not respond.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “Let me take you out of here now. You need a doctor.”

  Rae shook her head and pushed Mark to lie down on the slab. She rolled herself on top of him, gasping with pain as she did, as fresh blood oozed out all along the circle of the NightWhere snake.

  “I’m not leaving here,” she warned, her voice hitching in pain with each word. She ground herself against his crotch, her eyes rolling back in her head as she did. She gave out a handful of guttural moans that were as filled with anguish as pleasure. To Mark she sounded hideous, but when Rae finally focused and looked down into Mark’s eyes again, she smiled.

  “Thank you, baby. I have only one more trial to pass before I can go into The Black.”

  “What is that?” Mark asked.

  Damia stepped forward to the table and helped slip two white gloves over Rae’s hands. When the hermaphrodite stepped away, Mark saw that each of Rae’s fingertips ended in silver. The gloves had claws.

  Triangular, razor-sharp blades. As the weapons registered, Mark felt hands grab his ankles and wrists.

  “This is the fun part I was talking about earlier,” Damia said. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

  She gestured to a dark corner of the room, and a figure stepped forward. Mark could have sworn she was not in the room before. “This is the Night Mother, our Midnight Queen. Yvonna,” Damia said. “She has been waiting for this for a long time.”

  Yvonna was beautiful.

  And horrible.

  Her skin was black as pitch; Mark couldn’t tell if she’d been painted as Rae had been, but she looked just as strangely black. The thrust of her nipples was only slightly less dark than the midnight of her skin. The sign of the snake was tattooed on her midsection in the same way that Mark had carved it into Rae. But the image of the snake repeated itself over and over across her cheeks and forehead and arms and legs. Tiny snakes were visible on her eyelids and when she raised her hands Mark saw that even her palms were scored with the snake.

  Mark struggled briefly against the hands that gripped him, and Damia continued speaking as Yvonna stepped closer. Damia reached up to stroke Rae’s cheek.

  “Her final trial is that she must have sex with your corpse and take your death seed inside her as she feeds your life to Yvonna,” Damia said. The playful lilt of her voice no longer sounded filled with wry humor. She was unsmilingly serious. “Corpse seed will be Rae’s danake-her coin-to enter the door of fire and truly belong to the night.”

  Yvonna smiled, reveali
ng ice-white teeth that shone strangely against the black of her skin. She looked like some kind of denuded demon covered in dark symbology.

  Rae flexed her steel-clad fingers and smiled down at Mark’s face.

  “You always said you’d give your life for me,” she said, her voice a playful whisper. “Well, honey…now I want it.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Breaking Dawn

  Mark looked back and forth between the sigil-covered demon-woman, Yvonna, and his blood-spattered, demonically grinning wife. He wasn’t sure how she could even be kneeling upright with all of her wounds. He could see the pink coils of her intestines through the slit in her belly. Yet she was not only upright, she was menacing. Rae reached down with her forefinger and drew its blade across his chest. She didn’t press, yet instantly a line of crimson welled on his skin.

  “I won’t take too long, I promise,” she grinned, moving her legs to straddle him, getting in position for the fuck of his life. And death.

  Mark made a sudden lunge with his hip, knocking Rae off balance. She gave out a cry of pain as her wounds gaped open. She fell to her side. As the Watchers were distracted for a second by Rae’s fall, he yanked his right hand out of the grip that held it, slamming the Watcher hard against the edge of the table with his sudden pull.

  As the Watchers grabbed at his arm to restrain him again, Mark wrapped his fingers around the dagger that he’d used on Rae. He swung it in an arc across the side of the table, slicing arms and hands that reached for him. Rae grabbed him around the neck, trying to pull him down. Mark looked up once at her eyes, and saw a woman that he had never seen before.

  She looked hateful. Murderous. The love that he had once imagined in her face was completely gone. She only wanted him for one thing.

  Mark was willing to sacrifice a lot for Rae. He’d already given more than he thought possible. But he didn’t intend to give her his life.

  He stabbed her in the chest with the knife, and she screamed in anger, falling back. Then he sliced the wrist of the Watcher holding his other hand, and leapt forward off the table right at the two who held his feet.

  After two quick stabs, they released him and Mark didn’t waste a second. He ran for the door without looking back.

  He sprinted down the long corridor, past the rooms of pain and degradation, and darted through an open arch to a small foyer where dozens of candles burned. Noise grew behind him. Mark yanked open the heavy wooden door and then pulled it shut behind him.

  He recognized the room as soon as he stepped into it.

  The Blue Room. He’d managed to get back to the front facade of the club. He now knew that this was just a false face-the real NightWhere was behind the medieval doors. In The Red and The Black. The Red seemed to be just another word for hell. Mark did not want to find out what The Black was. Though Rae seemed determined to get there.

  The outer room of the club was alive with people still. They danced in a half-clad bacchanal to the gothic tones of the band, and a handful of people were lined up to get drinks from Sin-D’s bar. The bartendress looked up as he took stock of the club, and her eyes widened when she saw him.

  Mark didn’t waste time. He bolted to the front door, pushing aside the ever-present doorman as the pale man’s long fingers grabbed futilely at his shoulder.

  “You can’t go out now,” Tailor insisted, but Mark threw himself against the door and forced his way through.

  “I have to,” Mark said.

  “Wait!” someone screamed from the club, but Mark pulled the door shut. Then he turned around and looked at where he’d ended up.

  Instead of leading outside, the exit from NightWhere had put him in another room. This one had a large window on one side, and a desk and rolling chair on the other. It appeared to be someone’s office. Only, the chair lay on its side, and the window was so dirty you could barely see outside. It didn’t look like a place that had been used in a long, long time.

  Mark ran to the door on the other side and turned the knob, but it wouldn’t open. And the lock appeared to be on the other side. There was no button to press or knob to twist to unlock it from within.

  Behind him, the door opened up and Tailor stepped out. “You can’t leave,” the doorman said. “Come back inside.”

  Mark laughed. “No fuckin’ way.”

  He grabbed a paperweight from the desk and threw it as hard as he could. It caught Tailor right in the forehead, and the doorman collapsed with a grunt to his knees.

  Mark grabbed the chair from beneath the desk and lifted it over his head. With a yell of anger, he flung it against the window. The glass exploded and a cool draught of dawn rushed into the room. The doorman was getting to his feet, and Mark righted the chair from where it had fallen sideways on the floor. Then he stepped up on the chair and jumped like a diver to arc through the window.

  He landed with a whoof of expelled breath on a patio paved in red brick. His shoulder felt raw, but he didn’t slow to look at the damage. Already he saw a half-dozen Watchers reaching through the broken window a few feet above. He ran away from the window as somebody leapt out behind him. He realized absently that he’d fallen into a courtyard. On the far side, he could see the dark opening of an alcove and he ran to duck through it. Behind him he heard the slap of feet against the pavement.

  Mark threw himself into the dark alcove, praying that there would be a door to the outside.

  “Over here,” a voice called from his left. “Hurry.”

  He looked in the direction of the voice and saw a figure standing there at a doorway. One hand was on the knob while her other motioned him closer. “They’ll catch you if you don’t come now.”

  Mark only took a millisecond to realize that whether this was a trap or not, it was his only option. There was no other exit from the alcove and the Watchers were right behind him. Damia ran in the middle of a crowd of six black-robed Watchers. The white of her skin stood out against the night and the robes. And as Mark turned, they entered the alcove with him. He launched himself to the door as hands grabbed for his waist.

  Mark swung his fists backwards at his pursuers as he ran forward, thwarting the grabbing hands with punches. He threw himself through the door, landing off balance on the floor just inside. It slammed shut behind him and he heard the metallic click of a lock setting just before the air was filled with the hammering thuds of fists pounding on the outside of the door.

  “Shit,” he gasped, raising himself to a crouch. “Thanks.”

  Then he squinted in the dark, trying to make out the face of his savior. The place was too dark, but hands slipped gently around his shoulders and helped him back to his feet.

  “Come on,” a feminine voice said. “The lock won’t hold them for long.”

  “Why are you helping me?” he asked.

  She put an arm around his waist and walked him quickly down a dark hall.

  “Because you tried to save her,” she said. “That was a really loving, selfless act. But you could never have saved her. Those who have chosen The Black…are already damned. But you…you still have a chance. I want to help you get clear of all this.”

  She pulled him forward, pressing against his back as they navigated the shadowed hall. It was as if they were racing through a tunnel, with a light of salvation at the far end. A few yards ahead, Mark could now just make out the outline of a door. The grey light of dawn filtered in through its small window. As they got closer, Mark could finally see a little bit of his surroundings. He looked up at the woman who guided him and instantly knew her familiar pale-white face. She was almost albino. Beauty in shades of cream.

  Her eyes were filled with fear.

  “Hurry,” Selena said.

  “I am,” he said.

  “If they catch us, they will kill both of us.”

  Selena pulled him through the door. Mark looked around, disoriented for a moment. For the first time in hours his world wasn’t masked in shadows and dimly lit by bloodred light. He was able to see his
surroundings clearly. The first rays of the morning crept over the horizon and reflected off the quiet rush of the canal nearby. He looked back at the building they’d just exited and knew exactly where they were. The abandoned fuel refinery on Kedzie. He used to pass this on the way to work each day. They were at the edge of Blue Island. Behind the door stretched an office building and beyond that was a steel castle of tanks and towers that belched white smoke into the crisp air.

  “Come on,” he said. “We need to follow the canal up to town.”

  They broke into a run along the sidewalk. Behind them, Mark heard the slap of other feet on the pavement. They rounded the office building and Mark led the way left, towards the gate in the complex’s perimeter fence. He pointed as they ran. “There are some businesses just a few blocks away. We can get help there.”

  Selena followed him through the gate, and they had only gone a few yards down the sidewalk outside the refinery when Mark realized the sounds of pursuit had died away. He darted a look behind them and saw nothing but fence and empty asphalt. He slowed his run to a walk.

  “Where did they go?”

  “It’s dawn,” she said. “They need to close the club. There’s no point in drawing attention to this with a crowd of half-naked people running down the city streets. They know how to find you. They can always find you. They’ll be back.”

  Mark shrugged. “Then I guess I’d better get ready.”

  Selena looked him up and down once. “I’d suggest that first you’d better get some clothes.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Breaking Down

  Rae cried. But every tear hurt. Her body was racked with pain so extreme she couldn’t move. She curled up on the stone table and called for Kharon. After Mark had run, the room had emptied, all except for Rae. As her face pressed against the cold stone, she felt her heart pumping louder in her chest. Struggling.

  Her breath came in short, hard gasps.