by Lee Goldberg
They'd be here soon. He didn't have much time.
He picked up the ax from the passenger seat, got out of the car, and walked into the mill.
It was dark and filled with tall stacks of logs and pallets of freshly cut lumber waiting to be shipped.
He breathed deep, taking in the sweet scent of freshly cut wood. But it was tinged with the aroma of death, like there was an animal rotting away in a dark corner of the mill.
But he knew it wasn't an animal.
And he knew it wasn't dead.
It was Andy.
"Andy?" he called out. “I'm alone. I'm here to help."
"Gee, Matt, that's awfully nice of you," Andy's voice echoed through the mill. “I'd really appreciate a hand right now."
Matt emerged from between the stacks of logs and found himself at the end of a conveyor line leading to the circular saw, the oldest of the Frick rigs at the mill. At the far end, he saw Andy at the controls, pulling the levers that steered the logs into the whirring blade and controlled the cut.
Andy's eyes were the only recognizable part of his face that remained. The rest was exposed skull with scattered bits of dried blood and putrid flesh sticking to the bone.
The skin of his neck had rotted away, leaving only the stringy remains of the ligaments and muscles that had once supported his head, which now hung heavily from the end of his spinal column.
All he needed was a pair of sunglasses and he could be a skeletal David Caruso.
Wearing the Happy Burger cap.
As horrifying as it was, the edge had been dulled. Matt was getting used to the gruesome sight.
What he didn't know was why he was seeing it.
And smelling it.
There was a log heading for the blade, and Roger Silbert, the former Zippy Cola executive who'd fired Matt and Andy, was tied to the middle of it like the heroine in a silent movie serial, his mouth gagged.
"Glad to see you brought the ax," Andy said. “Because I'm afraid when I cut this worm in half, I'm gonna end up with two of the slimy bastards. So if you'd cut down the first one that gets up, that'd be a big help."
Silbert looked at Matt with wide, terrified, pleading eyes as the front of the log hit the blade, spraying him with sawdust. There were only seconds left before Silbert would be halved.
Matt threw his ax like a tomahawk at the electrical cable that snaked from the Frick saw to the junction box on the wall.
The cable split in a spray of sparks, shutting down the saw, and the ax stuck in the wood in the wall.
Matt hurried over to Silbert, fearing the worst.
Silbert's head was covered with sawdust, the serrated edge of the blade stuck in his scalp, blood seeping from the wound. But he was alive, simpering and pissing into his pants, the acrid stench of urine competing with the odor of Andy's rot to turn Matt's stomach.
There was also a strange little sore on Silbert's cheek, like a festering blister, only there was something more malignant about it. But before Matt could give much thought to it, Andy grabbed his shotgun, stepped away from the controls, and marched over.
"Why did you do that?" Andy wailed.
Matt faced Andy and stood protectively in front of Silbert. “Because you would have killed him."
"That was the idea, you fucktard," Andy said. He had the guard's gun wedged under the waistband of his pants and the shotgun cradled in his arms. “Move away so I can blast him."
"I'm not going to let you do this."
"You'd like to kill the bastard, too. You just don't have the balls to do it."
"Enough people have died tonight," Matt said. “This isn't you, Andy."
"What are you talking about? Haven't you heard? I'm the most worthless creature that ever crawled out of a woman's snatch."
"Your father was wrong," Matt said. “You were a good kid then, and I know that deep down inside you're still a good man now."
"You ever wonder what happened to Daddy-o?"
"Nope," Matt said. “I was just glad that he left."
"One night, when he was taking Momma up the ass on the kitchen table, I beat him to death from behind with a crowbar," Andy said. “And then Momma and I borrowed your father's saw and cut him up into little pieces. She stewed the meat and we ate him so nobody would ever find his body. We had Daddy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two weeks before he was finally gone. At least he had the courtesy to marinate himself in beer for most of his life. Can't imagine how much worse he would have tasted otherwise."
"I don't believe you," Matt said.
But he did. No matter how hard he tried to tell himself this was a lie, this was part of Andy's insanity, he knew it was the truth.
"I've been carrying that taste in my mouth for twenty years, buddy. There wasn't enough beer, whiskey, or pussy to wash it way. But tonight, for the first time, it's gone." Andy held the shotgun out to Matt. "Want to take the fall for me again? Huh? What do you say? If they give you the chair, you might not feel a thing."
"I can't get you out of this one, Andy. But I can make sure you walk out of here alive."
"What would be the fun in that?"
The mill was suddenly rocked by the sound of the chopper flying low overhead, and an instant later, a blinding light blasted through the skylight above.
Matt took advantage of the distraction and charged Andy, slamming into him hard and pushing him back against the sorting table, the shotgun falling from his grasp and clattering to the dust-covered floor.
Andy cackled with glee. "You fight like a girl."
He kneed Matt in the stomach, shoved him away, and reached for his gun.
But he didn't have it.
Matt did.
And he was pointing it at Andy.
"It's over."
"Who are you kidding? You can't shoot me." Andy looked over at the sorting table, which was covered with cant hooks for turning logs. "Because you like me. You really, really like me."
"I won't let you hurt anyone else."
"But you and your parents didn't mind letting my daddy hurt me every single fucking day. And you don't even want to know what he did to my mother." Andy perused the cant hooks, hefting one and then another, shopping for just the right one for the task. "You knew it was happening, but you just didn't care."
"I did," Matt said. "But there was nothing I could do about it. I've tried to make it up to you ever since."
The mill rumbled again as the helicopter made another pass, raking the interior with light. Matt could hear sirens in the distance, getting closer.
"What you've done, Matt, is make my life miserable." Andy found a cant hook he liked and lifted it up. The curled, hardened-steel edge was sharpened to a fine point.
"You wouldn't get off my fucking back. You were always there, showing me how much better you were, how much happier you were, and what a shit-bag loser I was by comparison."
"I was trying to be there for you, to help you."
"Bullshit. You just wanted to keep reminding me that my dad was right. The only favor you ever did for me was dying. And you didn't even have the fucking decency to stay dead." Andy hefted the cant hook and advanced on Matt. "Try harder this time."
Andy swung the cant hook at him.
Matt leapt back and barely evaded getting snagged by the sharp point.
"Stop, Andy, or I will shoot you."
"You don't have the balls." Andy swung again.
Matt fired two shots into Andy's chest.
Andy looked down at his chest, then back up at Matt.
Andy's face and neck were restored.
The rot was gone.
He cocked his head, regarded Matt for a moment with an expression of profound sadness, and then collapsed.
Matt fell to his knees and dropped the gun on the floor. He stared at Andy, his oldest friend and the first person that he'd ever killed, and couldn't help wondering…
Was the sadness Andy felt in that last dying moment for himself…
…or was it for me?
>
And that's when he heard it, almost lost in the rumble of the helicopter overhead and the wail of the police sirens outside and Silbert's whimpering.
It was barely audible, but it was there, he was sure of it.
The receding sound of wicked laughter.
As he listened to the laughter fade, his gaze fell on something small, wet, and sticky lying in the sawdust on the floor.
A freshly licked lollipop.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Matt sat on the hood of a cop car, watching all the activity while he waited to be allowed to go home. Entire families and kids on bicycles crowded around the sawmill fence, watching and waiting for something to happen. Scores of police officers scurried around, scribbling in their notepads and generally looking dazed and confused. The Sheriff's Department helicopter circled overhead, aiming its spotlight here and there, for no apparent reason. Crime scene investigators crawled all over Andy's car, taking pictures and scraping things into baggies, though Matt didn't see the point of any of it.
Andy had massacred six people and now he was dead.
Matt had killed him.
Case closed.
What more did they need to know?
Matt, on the other hand, had all kinds of questions, none of which could be answered by a geek in a forensics lab.
Andy was going bad days before the massacre, and only Matt could see it (although, to be fair, people had been telling him for years that Andy was an asshole).
How was it possible?
Then again, how was anything in Matt's life possible since the avalanche?
A few yards away, Roger Silbert sat in the back of an open ambulance, his head bandaged and a blanket around his waist to hide his soiled pants, giving a statement to a uniformed officer.
"What can I say? Andy Goodis was a deranged, disgruntled employee. He was also a drunk. I'd been warning people about him since I got this job, but nobody would listen. This is the tragic result."
Matt became aware of someone approaching him. He turned to look and was surprised to see Rachel coming his way.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"The police ran the plates on my car, wanted to know if it had been stolen," she said. "I told them my husband had it and I demanded to see him. Hope you don't mind the lie about us, but it was the only way they'd let me in to see you."
"It's okay," he said. "I'm glad you're here."
She stood in front of the cop car and gave him a hug. "Are you all right?"
Matt shook his head. "Something is wrong, Rachel. I can feel it. Even worse, I saw Andy become evil."
He'd also smelled it, but he didn't want to mention that.
"Of course you did," she said. "We all did. You just didn't want to see it."
"There's a lot I didn't want to see. But I can't pretend anymore. Something happened to me. And nothing is the same."
"Not all of it is bad," she said.
"There's a reason I'm not dead."
"And she's standing right in front of you," she said. "At least, that's what you told me."
"I'm afraid there's more to it. I think it has something to do with Andy, and the way I saw him rot. And I'm afraid that somehow, I'm the reason it happened."
As if on cue, the coroners emerged from the sawmill, wheeling Andy out in a body bag on a gurney.
Matt looked past her and she followed his gaze.
The coroners pushed the gurney up to the van body and were about to slide it inside when they stopped in midmotion.
And so did everybody else.
Matt looked at Rachel and saw her standing stock-still, her head turned, looking at the gurney without blinking, without breathing.
"Rachel?" He waved his hand in front of her face. "Can you hear me?"
But there was no reaction. She was a statue. Everything was still. Everything was silent. It was as if time had simply…
Stopped.
Even the helicopter was suspended in the air, its blades no longer moving.
Impossible.
But there was a lot of that going around lately.
Even the air itself seemed to solidify.
Matt tried to slide off the hood of the car, but it was like trying to swim through Jell-O.
He caught some motion out of the corner of his eye.
Someone else was moving.
Matt turned and saw a uniformed police officer strolling jauntily towards him across the yard, spinning his nightstick like a bandleader's baton and whistling the Happy Burger song.
It was him.
The doctor from hell.
Only he wasn't a doctor now.
"I can't tell you how entertaining this has been," the cop said with a wicked smile, flashing those oh-so-sharp incisors. "I have learned so much."
"Who are you?" Matt asked. "What are you?"
The cop strolled over to the paramedic unit and regarded Silbert and the officer with amusement.
"You already know me, Matthew. Everybody does, if only a little bit. But you and me, we're going to have a very special relationship. Let me introduce myself. My friends call me Mr. Dark."
He reached out and touched the festering sore on Silbert's cheek. The sore erupted, spraying yellow puss all over his face, rotting away the skin.
It was like watching time-lapse photography of a decomposing corpse. Within seconds, the flesh was gone, dripping off his bloody skull in thick globs, leaving only his bulging eyes and perfect teeth.
Silbert reached out to the officer in front of him, the one frozen in midnotation, and snatched the gun from his holster.
In that instant, time started again, the suspended sound returning with a deafening roar, followed by the blast as Silbert shot the officer point-blank in the stomach.
Silbert grinned and turned towards Rachel.
Matt launched himself off the car and into Rachel, tackling her to the ground as Silbert opened fire, the bullets shattering the windshield.
As Matt and Rachel hit the ground, a dozen officers drew their weapons and fired, bombarding Silbert with a hail of bullets.
Silbert jerked into a grotesque dance of death, like a puppet yanked by every string at once, before collapsing, thoroughly perforated, into the back of the ambulance.
Matt rose up on his knees and hurriedly, but intently, checked out Rachel, looking for any signs of blood. "Were you hit? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she said. "What happened?"
But he didn't answer. Now that he knew that she wasn't hurt, his priorities abruptly shifted to something more urgent than her questions.
He had to find Mr. Dark.
He had to stop him.
Matt got to his feet and saw pure chaos, police officers and paramedics and coroners running around everywhere in a mad panic. He pushed through the throng, looking for the man responsible for the mayhem, for the death.
He couldn't see him.
But he could hear him.
Mr. Dark's maniacal laughter rode over the cacophony of panicked cries and frantic shouting like a musical loop on a merry-go-round.
"Why am I alive?" Matt yelled.
Mr. Dark's singsong reply came from somewhere nearby and yet far away.
"That's for me to know and you to find out."
Matt continued to push through the crowd until he reached the fence, but Mr. Dark was nowhere to be seen.
But he was out there.
Matt had no doubt about that.
He could hear the laughter.
Rachel watched helplessly in her living room as Matt finished stuffing the few clothes he had into a hiker's backpack. He was leaving her again, and it was death that was taking him away, only this time it wasn't his own.
It was all those others. The employees at Happy Burger. The sawmill security guard. Andy Goodis, Roger Silbert, that poor cop.
"You said you loved me," she said.
"I do," he said.
"Then stay."
"It's why I have to go," he said. "I don't want anythin
g to happen to you. I'll be back someday, I promise."
"All you have to do first is find somebody nobody saw, a guy who probably only exists in your mind."
"Do you think I'd go, that I would leave you behind, if I wasn't certain that what I saw was real? If I didn't believe that your life could be in danger if I stay?"
"You need help, Matt," she said. "You can see a shrink. Maybe he can give you something that will make the illusions go away."
"What happened to Andy and Silbert weren't illusions," Matt said. "Neither was my resurrection."
She started to cry, even though she thought the hours that she'd already spent doing it had sapped every tear she had left.
"Please don't go," she said. "I'm begging you."
Matt gave her long, warm kiss. As she wrapped her arms around him, her kiss taking on an urgent longing, he gently broke away from her grasp.
"It isn't just Mr. Dark that I'm looking for," he said. "I should be dead. Maybe I am dead. Whatever the explanation is, I won't find it here."
She sniffled and swallowed hard. "Where will you go?"
He shrugged. "All I know is that I have to get there before he does, before the evil spreads and more people die."
Matt hefted the backpack onto his shoulders and picked up his grandfather's ax.
"I'll be back," he said.
And with that, Matthew Cahill walked out the door and down the road, chasing the receding echo of Mr. Dark's twisted laughter wherever it might lead him.
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