by John Everson
Watchers filed past Mark, exiting the room. Only…they weren’t leaving the ceremony. They were capturing Mark’s salvation.
They pulled Selena into the torture chamber and stripped her naked. She didn’t protest. Mark’s heart sank as he saw the cream globes of her ass step and shift as they led her to the table where the man’s corpse lay.
When the figures stopped near Rae, she looked directly at Mark, her lips wet with orgasm. “Hi, baby,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
At that moment, the dark woman stepped out of the shadows and picked up the head of the man on the table from where it lay abandoned on the floor. A smear of blood from its neck brushed against the black skin of her belly, and Mark thought she looked even more evil with that smear on her naked skin.
“Yvonna,” Rae smiled, greeting the woman.
The Midnight Queen only nodded and stepped forward with the head.
Rae rose from her crouch at the crotch of the dead man and grinned at Mark. He couldn’t help but stare at the snake pattern that covered her midsection. A tattoo that marked her forever as the property of sin.
Mark swallowed, thinking about that. He intended to drag her out of here, and she had NightWhere scarred into her flesh. Of course, he had put it there…
She teased her tongue out into the air at him, a teasing sensual display. Her face was smeared with blood and something almost clear; Mark knew it for what it was-a glazed mess of semen.
He thought she was going to walk towards him, but instead, she turned away.
The arms of the Night Mother wrapped around his wife’s pale shoulder blades, and Mark found himself watching his wife’s lips lock with the dark lips of Yvonna. The Midnight Queen’s long black fingers slipped around Rae’s back. His wife’s skin seemed to meld into the body of the other, despite the fact that they looked like representative figures of night and day.
Kharon walked forward to take Selena’s hand from the grasp of the other Watchers. His grin was vile.
“I’ve waited a long time for this,” he said. “Your blood will make us stronger for decades.”
Mark barely registered the words; he was already reaching for the gun he’d bought at the pawnshop. This was the moment, the reason that he’d gone to the lengths he had to own it.
He would never have crossed the law to own a gun before this night. He would never have thought that he’d be chasing his wife into the depths of hell though, either.
Yet, here they were.
Mark pulled out the gun, aimed it quickly at Kharon and fired.
The report was loud and somehow solemn.
Kharon collapsed to the floor, the pale skin of his forehead suddenly blossoming an explosion, not of red, but of black.
Then he turned the gun on the woman of midnight and shot her in the chest. The snakes on her black skin exploded in a rain of dark blood.
Mark didn’t slow; instead, he turned his gun on the hooded Watchers and opened fire on each of them. Some ran from the room, and Mark had to pause to reload, but very quickly the room changed from being driven by a line of black-hooded, druid-like creatures to being the grave of the same. Two hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hugged him from behind.
“C’mon, baby, you give me your gun, and I’ll give you mine,” Damia’s voice growled in his ear. “I know you still want it.”
Mark tried to raise the weapon, but something smashed his wrist, and it dropped and skittered away on the floor. Then Damia pushed him forward and planted a foot in the small of his back.
Mark lost his balance and fell, just as a chain slapped against his ribs.
“Fuck!” he yelled and rolled into a ball trying to protect himself as Damia rained the chain down. The hermaphrodite had lost any of the gentleness of its feminine side; Damia was fiercely angry. Her eyes flashed; even her tattoos seemed to glow with hatred.
“Shoulda taken advantage of me while you had the chance,” Damia huffed, spitting the words out in time to the beating.
Mark struggled to roll out of range, at the same time reaching a hand into his back pocket. The steel bruised his back and thighs and knocked stars into his eyes when a link caught the back of his head.
And then he rolled to his feet and sprang at Damia, slicing upward with the hunting knife he’d had tucked away.
The blade caught Damia right in the crotch. The chain dropped to the ground and the hermaphrodite let out a hideous high-pitched wail.
Mark shoved the knife as hard as he could and twisted, before staggering back. His hand was warm and wet, and Damia’s normally perfect, snow-white skin was spattered in what looked like ink. He/she hadn’t stopped screaming.
“There, now I’ve fucked you,” Mark breathed. “I hope you’re happy. Now you can keep that, and fuck yourself whenever you want. Isn’t that what your kind does anyway?”
Mark rushed forward, grabbed at Rae’s arm, and twisted her about. She punched him repeatedly in the chest with her free hand. “Are you crazy!” she screamed.
Mark grabbed her with both hands, preventing her from hitting him further. “I came to take you home,” he said.
He had hoped that her lips would split into a smile, that her eyes would raise and widen, that her cheeks would expand as they always did when she was happy.
Instead, Rae laughed at him.
“You are an idiot,” she spat. “I don’t want to go to your home. This is my home now…and you just shit all over it.”
Rae kneed Mark in the groin and he fell back as she stepped around the table and grabbed the arms of Selena.
“Do you see this?” she asked, as Mark gasped and struggled to stand back upright.
“This is the pussy that wants you now,” she said. “Maybe you should open your eyes for once in your pathetic fucking life and pay attention to what’s really going on around you instead of what you wish was going on.”
Rae pushed Selena back one step and then another. “Do you think that I used to fuck your best friend or that I wanted to go to swingers clubs because your pathetic cock made my happy, Mark? Seriously?”
Rae grabbed a lock of Selena’s hair and twisted it around her wrist like a bracelet. “I was bored to death, Mark. I needed someone, something, that could excite me. And that was not you. I know. You thought you knew me, and you thought you were giving me what made me happy but…no. Just proves, I guess, that you can never truly know anyone. Not really. So, thanks for coming here to be my white knight, but, no thanks. I have finally found the place I was looking for all my life and there is nothing that you can do or say to pull me away from this. NightWhere is my home.”
Rae turned away from Mark and gave a wide, feral grin to Selena. “As for you, our little angel-spy bitch…” Rae walked the pale woman backwards another step and then gave a heavy push with both of her arms.
“I hope you find him worth the effort. He wasn’t worth mine.”
Selena fell backwards into the iron casing of an iron maiden. Rae didn’t wait for her to catch her balance. Instead, she grabbed the heavy metal door and flung it closed. As the dark metal creaked quickly closed, Selena gave out a single horrible shriek from inside.
“Who needs saving now, Mark?” Rae asked. But she didn’t wait to hear his answer. Rae walked towards Yvonna, who was slowly raising herself up from the floor, blood streaming like pitch across her midnight skin. Kharon, too, rose from the ground despite the torrent of black blood that streamed from the gaping hole in his head.
Rae put her arms around the Watcher and the Midnight Queen, supporting them. Damia staggered across the room to join them.
Rae’s face turned back to meet Mark’s eyes. For a split second, some remnant of the old Rae looked back at her husband, as she explained almost gently. “I never wanted to be rescued,” she said. “I’ve been dreaming of hell my whole life. I’m home at last.”
With that, she pulled Kharon and Yvonna forward, towards a black door at the back of the room. Damia limped ahead and opened the door
as they approached, and Mark could see the flicker of flame from beyond its reach. Something moved and shifted beyond its opening…something hellish and evil.
Something that spoke.
“Welcome, to The Black,” a female voice echoed, as Rae stepped through the opening. “We’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time.”
With that, the door slammed shut.
Rae, and all of them, were gone.
Mark looked away from the door and realized that the rest of the Watchers had disappeared as well. Even those that he’d shot.
The room was completely empty. He looked at the rack of whips and chains on the left wall and realized that it had simply…disappeared. Likewise, the iron racks that had taken up the back half of the room. And other torture devices had suddenly vanished as well…even the sacrificial table in the center of the room was gone, taking with it the headless body.
The one thing that remained was the tall metal case that vaguely resembled a human body.
The thing that Rae had pushed Selena into. An instrument of medieval torture and execution. An iron maiden.
Mark rushed over and grabbed the outer case of the thing, pulling it open to set Selena free.
But instead of leaping out, her body only fell forward to the ground, its pale flesh gored in a half-dozen places by the blades that extended from the inner casing of the iron maiden. They ran red with the blood of his guardian angel.
Mark knelt at her side, rolling Selena over to look at her face. Blood blossomed from the wounds in her breast, belly and thighs. Her hands bled from where she had raised them to protect her face, and the gouges of the knives still had sliced through her palms and into her cheeks.
“Selena,” Mark cried. He slipped an arm beneath her head and raised it up. “I told you to wait for me,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes, and those electric orbs caught his and held them. “I couldn’t let you be killed.”
She coughed then, and blood seeped past the thin join of her lips. Mark felt a pang of fear. He’d already lost Rae…he couldn’t lose Selena too!
“I thought you were an angel,” he said, reaching down to press his fingers against the gaping hole in her left breast. His fingers were quickly covered in rich, red, hot blood.
“Not anymore,” Selena whispered. “I went beyond The White to try to save you. I was your guardian. But I broke the truce to help you escape…and then get back in…I interfered.”
She coughed suddenly, and a spume of frothing crimson exited her lips to speckle Mark’s face.
“But still,” he said again. “You’re an angel. You can’t die…just…heal yourself.”
Selena shook her head. “Not anymore,” she whispered. “I did what I came here to do. You’re free now. Just…do this for me. Go home. Live again.”
“No,” Mark said. “You were here for me. I’m not going to leave you now.”
He slipped his hands beneath her slim form and lifted her body from the floor. He pressed his lips to hers in the gentlest, most loving kiss he could give.
“Stay with me now,” he begged. “I need you more now than I ever did before.”
Mark moved through the door that led into the hallway of The Red, and then with a quick thrust of his hand, opened the door to the Blue Room and moved past the last couple of laggards still hanging at the bar towards the door out of NightWhere. Tailor still stood guard, but Mark didn’t even wait for the Watcher to try to stop him. Instead he aimed a kick at the man’s crotch, and threw the door open himself as the Watcher fell backwards.
He stepped outside and saw the orange of the sun on the horizon.
“Are you with me?” he asked the still form in his arms.
Selena struggled to open her eyes again. Those icy blue orbs stared into his again. But the spark was gone. She was fading.
“Stay with me,” he begged.
“I’ve always been with you,” she whispered. “You just never noticed.”
“Well I know now,” he said. “And I know that we just need to get those cuts stitched up and you’re going to be okay.”
Selena coughed again. A wet, wheezing sound. “If you say so,” she said.
“I’m your guardian now,” he promised. “Just hold on a little longer.”
Mark saw the inconspicuous grey of his Sonata out in the empty field near the vacant farmhouse. Normally it blended into a crowd and was often difficult to spot, but now…it stood there alone. NightWhere was gone, and soon, Selena might be too. He began to run. When they reached the car, he struggled to pull his keys from his pocket without dropping her.
“We’ll be at the hospital in just a few minutes,” he whispered, finally unlocking the car and carefully slipping her into the passenger’s seat. He lay the back of the seat down as far as it would go. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll never let anyone hurt you again,” he said.
Selena responded with a sad, but hopeful, smile.
“I know,” she whispered. “And I want you to know I’m glad I broke the truce.”
He kissed her forehead. The glow of the dawn colored the horizon and lit her face in a dusky-red light. Like NightWhere, but then again, not at all the same. This light bore hope, not blood.
“Hang on for me,” he begged, as the car started.
Selena nodded, but didn’t answer.
All he could promise her was love, but love was supposed to conquer all, right?
Mark pulled onto the road back towards the city, whispering three words to Selena like a prayer: “I love you.”
“I know,” she answered, smiling faintly. A trickle of blood bled from the corner of her mouth.
“Hang on,” Mark repeated. “I promise, if you just stick with me now, I’ll never leave you again.”
Selena nodded. “I know,” she whispered and a tear slipped down her face.
One clear, wet, saltwater tear.
John Everson
John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Covenant, as well as the novels Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren and The Pumpkin Man. Over the past 20 years, his short stories have appeared in more than 75 magazines and anthologies and have also been compiled in the collections Creeptych, Deadly Nightlusts, Needles Sins, Vigilantes of Love and Cage of Bones Other Deadly Obsessions. His work has been translated into Polish, Italian, Turkish and French, and optioned for potential film production. He is also the founder and publisher of the independent press Dark Arts Books.
John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There's also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker courtesy of Charlee Jacob, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can't really play but that his son Shaun likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife Geri is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it's usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he holds down a regular job at a medical association, records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno, designs photo collage art book covers for a variety of small presses, loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of '70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a tall glass of Newcastle.
To catch up on his blog, join his newsletter or get information on his fiction, art and music, visit John Everson: Dark Arts at www.johneverson.com.
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