by Jon Fore
“And you will return… Remember, you are the mistress of the Heart House now… That could never be taken from you…”His voice was sweet and reassuring, like it had been when he gave her communion and brought her to a place she loved so.
Her fingers found pleasure spots between her thighs and her back arched deeply. “Send me the tall one again, and I will go. You know, I don’t even like him, this escaped one, but I did want to fuck him once.”
A large black man came into the dining hall and mounted Madison on the table. She found deep, internal pleasure at the man’s thrusts, and she would have agreed to just about anything at that moment.
“So, you will go now? Or do I need take him away from you?”
“When… I… am… done…” Her breath came in short bursts as she reached her peak and exploded in an avalanche of pure pleasure. She rested a moment, feeling her desire already growing anew. “Now, I will go and bring him.”
Chapter 27
They walked for some time in silence, each taking in the dilapidation of the buildings and streets, the aged wood and mortar crumbling and threatening to collapse entirely. The air was still thick with the ash-colored fog. Random strangled screams drifted to them occasionally, the ending of some survivor by some other survivor.
One thing only Ethan seemed to noticed were the puss-colored hanging plants that had begun to grow on just about every horizontal surface, hanging and dripping moisture, engorged and sweating with a yellowish fluid. These were the same as the plants within the cave, but this time they were not as dry, not as dead.
Somehow, what was in the cave was extending, reaching down into this small town, and bringing it ruin. The filthy bum reached up, popped one of the pustule bulbs allowing it to drain into his upturned mouth. He turned and smiled at Ethan, the yellowish fluid dripping from his chin like rancid milk.
“You should give it a try; sweet as rotten baby feet!” His words formed around the stained bone collision that was the bum’s teeth, still wet with the puss of the plant.
Ethan looked away finding the tolerance for his delusional nightmare not as strong as when he was little. He had spent years dealing with this bum as a child, and some of the calluses remained. Not until the bum began to gargle with the plant’s thick juice did Ethan feel nauseated.
Kayla had begun to warm to Shannon, even with the distorted swelling along her jaw and eye. The little girl was surprisingly unharmed, and Ethan found it difficult to imagine this little girl had hidden so well or ran so fast as to escape the nightmares of the night before. She was an innocent, not a creation or influenced, mindless thing, but clearly resourceful and determined.
The bum suddenly leapt in front of Ethan, grabbed a hand full of bulbs hanging from a light pole, and squeezed them until the liquid ran freely from his hands. His face split in a wicked grin, teeth gapped and pointing in many directions at once as he began to run his slime-coated hands along his body in a mock sexual way. Ethan looked towards the ground as his imaginary friend began to pleasure himself through his stained and torn trousers. This time Ethan finally gagged.
“What’s wrong with you?” Stan asked with crinkled eyebrows.
“Nothing, I’m fine,” Ethan replied, unwilling to let this stranger know of his difficulties. Ethan knew that the bum was not real, that his existence was the product of his slightly deranged thoughts, the parts of his mind not under his control. Once the doctor had convinced him of this, the bum had vanished…well, that is, until now.
“She’s coming… Your first murder did not go well… She is coming…” the bum hissed at him as he jerked savagely at himself.
Ethan wanted to ask the bum who was coming; he knew somehow it was important, but he had not murdered anyone.
“She comes as the Lady of Mist, and fuck is she hot…” This brought on a more savage grip and a greater violence to his self-manipulations.
Ethan had slowed his pace somewhat, not wanting to make contact with the filthy man tormenting him, so Stan skirted around him and moved ahead at a quicker pace.
“I don’t know about you, but I want to get out of…” Stan suddenly stopped, as if he had struck a soft wall. “What the…?” he hissed under his breath.
“What is it?” Ethan asked as he caught up with Stan, Shannon and Kayla close behind him.”
Ethan could see that somehow the fog had congealed, clotted here into a wall of solid, roiling smog.
Stan reached up and touched it, running his hands along the misty solidity. “You can actually feel the fog—it’s like it has a skin on it or something.”
Ethan touched the wall. It felt much like the plants: a thin pliable skin and a snotty membrane with some thick something just beyond. What was most disturbing was the sensation of motion just underneath the cold moist skin, as if the smoky fog was alive and could feel their touch. Ethan withdrew his hand and wiped it absently on his leg.
“What is it?” Shannon asked, her face further contorted with disgust and wonder.
“I bet we could get through it, though,” Stan said absently.
“I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think we should try to get through it. It’s wrong, vile.”
Stan pushed a little harder on the membrane, and it gave under the pressure. A chill wetness coated his hand as it passed through the skin, but it was nothing but fog beyond. “It’s like a skin on a cold bowl of soup, you know? Just beyond feels like fog. I bet we could force our way through.” Stan reached deeper into the toiling mass of gray wetness.
“I think we should try to go around it, find another way,” Shannon added as Kayla began to whimper. The girl was clutching Shannon’s leg tightly as if she were about to fall from a cliff, her face twisted with fright.
“You guys can go whichever way you want; I’m going down Route 79,” Stan scolded as he withdrew his arm and began tearing the foggy flesh open with his hands. The internal roiling smog began to seep from the wound and spill across the ground in a semblance of fluid.
“But you can’t even see in that!” Shannon spit at him. “We should stay together!” she pleaded.
“Hey, I don’t know any of you people, the world’s gone fucking insane, and Stan is out for Stan, got me? Now you people can tag along if you like, but I am going this way.” With that, Stan stepped through the tear and into the undulating, seeping fog.
“I’m not going in there, Ethan; I don’t care where he goes, but I am not going in there,” Shannon said sternly.
“Me neither!” Kayla added.
Ethan stared back into the fog for a moment, looking deep into the rolling waves of ashen gray. He could still hear the faint foot falls of Stan working his way deeper into the fog.
“Please don’t make me go in there,” Kayla sobbed.
“We won’t, sweetie; I think I’m with you on this,” Ethan said as he stroked the girl’s back. “Stan, are you alright?” Ethan shouted into the fog. He did not particularly like Stan and his out-for-himself attitude, but they were less than a mile from 79, less than a mile until they were free.
“The smog is pretty thick—smells bad, too—but I’m fine!” Stan voice wafted through the stagnant smog. “Is that you?” Stan added.
Ethan thought for a second, “No! We are still out here!”
“You didn’t just bump into me?” Stan shouted, his voice gripped by fear.
“No, Stan. Come back out here!”
“Yeah, ah, I can’t see where I am going…”
“Just follow my voice!” Ethan shouted a bit louder.
“Keep shouting! There is something in… Oh fuck!” Stan screamed and began firing.
“Stan!” Ethan shouted, his voice almost as high as Stan’s, and then began to step through the opening into the fog, his handgun leading the way.
“Ethan! No! Stay with us!” Shannon cried.
Kayla had given herself over to outright bawling.
The smog fell over Ethan’s hands and forearms like a cold ocean spray from a dead and decaying o
cean. The feeling of it made him shudder. The bum began to chuckle somewhere behind him in that maniacal, high-pitched squeal, and then Stan screamed—not the frightful scream of one simply afraid, but the scream of one fearing for the sanctity of their very soul.
“Stan! Run!” Shannon screamed which pushed Kayla into a screaming fit of her own.
Something grabbed Ethan’s cuff and pulled hard, almost yanking him into the sightless swirling. Instinctively, Ethan fired into the nothing. His shirt, suddenly released, caused him to stumble backwards and out of the fog.
A train whistle of a scream came from everywhere at once. It pierced their minds, painfully jabbing inside their ears. Kayla screamed in pain, and Shannon moved her hands from her ears to Kayla.
“Stan!” Ethan yelled. His heart raged against the confines of his ribs and his stomach clenched into an icy ball. “Stan!” His voice broke through the boundaries of multiple octaves.
A thin twig of a thing shot from the tear in the membrane and landed between Ethan and the clutching girls. It looked like an impossibly long stick, still sheathed in bark, but with a claw-like hand with too many fingers. The length of the thing segmented like some insanely long insect, and it twitched spasmodically. Shannon screamed again as it landed and she jerked Kayla away as it began to drag white lines in the cement of the sidewalk.
“Stan!” Ethan screamed, backing away from the wound in the smog wall. There was no answer.
“He’s gone, Ethan. Come on!” Shannon yelled at him as she lifted the young girl into her arms and rushing back towards the drugstore.
“Stan!” Ethan screamed once more, his throat a rasping harp of fear, before catching up with Shannon. He withdrew backwards, holding the gun before him.
Kayla continued to sob as they reached the end of the block. They stopped for a moment for the girls to cry and for Ethan to bring his breathing back under his control. He looked into Shannon’s eyes. They were wild, not the wild of being frightened, but the wild of an animal whose young were threatened, who strived against overwhelming odds to survive. Ethan wondered if perhaps she was beginning to slide into that comfortable insanity he had longed for as a child.
Ethan retuned his attention to the tear Stan had made and huffed breath towards it like venom. Whatever came from that smoke, Ethan reasoned, was not human, dead or otherwise. Something else had begun to hunt in the milky gray storm and it had gotten Stan.
Something came through the hole and plopped down on the sidewalk wetly. It quivered a bit then rested lazily on the edge of the curb. “Stay here,” Ethan said softly as he headed back towards the smog-wall.
“Ethan, no!” Shannon hissed at his back, but he continued, stalking the now motionless mass. He walked a wide berth as he got closer to the glistening red thing, but no matter how close he got to it, there was simply no sense to be made of it. When he got as close as he dared, he stopped, trying desperately to make something out of the shapeless mass. It was almost like a shiny red ceramic bowl with a mostly white marble to one side, but that made no sense either.
The bum came from behind him and walked right up to the bowl thing. He hooked the tip of his toeless shoe beneath the edge and lifted it slightly, showing Ethan the entire thing. In a sinfully wicked voice, he chuckled, “When was the last time you saw the back of someone’s eye?”
Chapter 28
Ethan bit back the surge from his stomach, the sudden need to evacuate the junk food he had eaten at the drug store. He spit the excess saliva from his mouth and turned away from the bum. Shannon and Kayla were still at the end of the block watching him, clutching each other desperately. The elegant form of Shannon’s body, the parental way she held Kayla helped ease the nausea and fortify for him a reason to continue, to seek out a way to escape this living nightmare. He began walking back to them, hoping that Shannon knew how to get to the other road that would lead them out of town.
“What was it?” Shannon asked when Ethan was close enough for her not to shout.
“Nothing. We should head to the other road, see if it is clear or not.”
“It’s going to be blocked like this one,” Shannon replied hopelessly.
“We should try at least,” Ethan said. “Let’s get there and see what’s going on. It’s coming on mid-afternoon, and I don’t want to be caught here at night again, at least walking the streets, you know?”
“And Stan?” Shannon asked, already knowing the answer.
“He’s not coming with us,” Ethan replied vaguely for Kayla’s benefit and began walking back the way they had come.
Shannon watched him a moment before following him. Kayla was still thoroughly upset and clung to her like the lost child she was. It made walking difficult, so Shannon lifted the girl into her arms and carried her along with the bottle of bleach cleaner the child did not seem to want to let go.
“Do you know what time it is?” Ethan asked. “Here, I’ll carry her.”
“No, I don’t have a watch.” Shannon replied as she handed Kayla to Ethan.
The young girl took hold of Ethan around his neck and embraced him tightly. It was the first rush of pleasure he had felt in days. The tender girl in all her fear knew only to embrace and hold tightly to an adult. This pushed at the hearts of those adults, reaffirming their need to protect the child. A small side-effect to this was the adults usually fell in love with them. Ethan, even with everything that had happened in the past week, was still capable of emotional attachment, and needed only this simple invitation. He felt this love, this caring, this overwhelming need to protect the girl, and it almost manifested itself in tears.
“I got you, Kayla. Nothing bad is going to happen to you, I promise.”
Shannon smiled weakly at the pair; she too had fallen victim to this instinctual love, this parental bond, but now it was sliding towards Ethan as well, her brother-in-arms was now becoming the male side of her parental want. She knew he had problems, but there were doctors to deal with that, and even in the orange jump suit, he was an attractive man—a bit younger than her, but close enough to not really matter. She suddenly realized how lucky she was to have found Ethan in his little hospital cell.
“It seems to be getting darker faster than I had thought,” Ethan commented as he looked across the overcast sky. “We may need to hole up in a building or something, wait the night out.”
“You think that is a good idea?” Shannon asked sincerely.
“No,” he said thoughtfully, “but I am sure it would be better than being caught out here at night.”
A sudden baying screech raced down the mountain and sliced through the fog. It was the same screeching of the night before, and it raked their ears to hear it. Like the evening before, it brought their nerves to a painful grating and their teeth to grinding.
“Let’s make it back to the drug store and see if we can find a clock or watch or something,” Ethan suggested.
“How about some ear plugs?” Shannon asked only half jokingly.
The howl ripped at them again.
“Yeah, ear plugs sound like a good idea.” Ethan smiled back.
They began walking again, this time a bit faster. Ethan was able to carry Kayla without too much difficulty, the backpack full of bleach jugs counterbalancing the weight of the child. Shannon, now unburdened, was able to keep pace with him. The drug store was many blocks away, and the light bled from the sky as if mortally wounded. They quickened their pace, rushing themselves to their supposed sanctuary. Still, the distant screams reached them from almost every direction, the nail-biting screeching continued to assail them from the mountain, and now with the sound of motion, scratching, footsteps, and dragging weight as well.
As they came down the last hill, the base of which was the large parking lot of the drug store, Ethan caught movement out of the corner of his eye. In one fluid motion, he spun himself to put his body between the motion and the child he carried, drawing the gun from one of the jumpsuit’s large pocket.
Just above the sights of
his gun, he saw a large crow, or possibly a raven. It was all black, at least where it still had feathers, most of which were torn off or skinned like a branch. It was eating an orange tabby cat that was lying there—still soft with fur, still flexible with its recently lost life. The strange reversal of roles, a bird eating a cat, disturbed Ethan, made his reality shift momentarily like the smog swirling all around them. The bum came from nowhere, as he always did, and strode to the cat. Ethan turned away before the bum could show him something he did not want to see and continued into the darkening parking lot.
The tall lights that illuminated the parking lot suddenly sizzled and hummed to life as the trio past underneath them, yet another indication that the day had escaped and they were not going any further. They rushed through the automatic doors and over the large scab that had developed under the heads still hanging from the stucco. Once inside, Shannon turned back to the doors, waited for them to close, and slid a lock into place to keep them from opening.
“Is there a back way into here, a loading dock or something?”
“Yeah, I’ll go check it.”
“Be careful and meet us in the sporting goods section. There are sleeping bags there and more weapons.”
“Try to find us some food …” Shannon trailed off as she reached the end of an aisle and disappeared towards the secretive behind-the-scenes area of the store.
Kayla squirmed in his arms a bit so he let her down to walk but kept a tight hold on her little hand. She was such a precious little treasure, and Ethan did not want her to wander off alone. He took her around the store with a basket and collected some frozen meats, still not ravaged by the odd aging effect, some cellophane-wrapped dessert items, and a tub of Neapolitan ice cream, a set of disposable salt and pepper shakers, and a six pack of cold soda.