Hidalgo seized Cam by the collar of his raincoat and hauled him to the front door. Cam looked out where police and emergency units filled the street. Barricades closed the block at both ends, and uniformed men waited, crouched behind their vehicles. The rain had subsided and the night sky lightened a shade toward the deep indigo of pre-dawn. Everything had been restored as Cam remembered it. Electric lights blared in the windows of the buildings across the way. A figure passed in silhouette, the shape of a cop in a uniform, a rifle clutched in hand.
Snipers, Cam thought.
“Tell ‘em to leave us,” the Hidalgo-thing said. “Tell ‘em to go far away and let us out, and no one else’ll be hurt tonight.”
“They won’t listen to me if I tell them that,” said Cam.
“Then make up something they will listen to!” The thing grabbed the radio from Cam’s uniform and placed it in his hand. “It’s their funeral if they don’t and everyone’s in here as well.”
“No,” said Cam.
“Don’t test me, crusher. I’ve killed my fair share of coveys, and I’ll add you with pleasure. Now, tell ‘em to back off so we can leave this shithole!”
Cam held up the radio, hit the button and listened to the suddenly live, but empty air. The interference that had cut him off earlier had vanished. But instead of speaking, he threw the radio the length of the bar where it smashed to pieces against the jukebox.
Enraged, the thing inhabiting Hidalgo hurled Cam against the nearest wall and then pounced on him. Cam felt some of his ribs snap. The thing spun him onto his back and yanked him up until their faces were inches apart.
“Listen to me, ya prick cop!” the Hidalgo-thing belted. “Ya don’t know what you’re in for. There are forces you little meat dolls have not even guessed at, forces whose needs are served by death and who want the way opened for them into this world, and they do Goddamned not like to be kept waiting!”
The thing dragged Cam back to the door, shoved Hidalgo’s radio into his hand. “Tell ‘em to back off!” it said.
Cam held the radio to his mouth and pressed the button. “This is Officer Broome.”
A voice replied, “Broome? This is Captain D’Amato. What’s your situation? Over.”
Before the transmission ended, Cam heard a voice from the background, faint but audible, say “Shit, he’s still alive?”
Cam waited, gathered his thoughts, recalling the rest of the story of Five Points his father had told him. He pinpointed the thing that had been nagging him: the obvious sense of urgency that drove the force inhabiting Hidalgo. He reached into the overlapping experience of the visions for understanding, and it came.
“Captain, this isn’t the first time there’s been a standoff like this here,” he said into the radio. “I know this will sound crazy, but it’s important, and you have to listen to me. I can explain everything later.” That part was a lie. “About a hundred and fifty years ago nearly two-hundred cops cleared out a five-floor building infested with criminals that used to stand where this bar is now.”
“I don’t follow you,” D’Amato said. “What’s your status, Broome? How many are in there with you?”
“Sorry, Captain, but I don’t think there’s anyway I can even guess at that. Listen to me, please. The cops back then couldn’t enter the building in the darkness because they would’ve been easy prey for the residents, but they knew if word about the raid got out before morning that most of those criminals would slip away in the night. So, they surrounded the building and stood vigil, making sure no one went in or out. They trapped them. And then in the morning—in the daylight when it was impossible for anyone to flee—they went in and did their jobs.” He was nearly shouting now. “Captain, are you getting this?”
A pause. “I’m listening, Broome.”
Cam opened his mouth to say more but fell silent when he heard the click of a hammer cocking and felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed against his neck. The thing controlling Hidalgo slapped the radio from his hand, crushed it with his foot, and kicked it across the floor.
“You’ll die for that,” the Hidalgo-thing said.
“You’re running out of time,” said Cam. “Whatever deal you made, all your sacrifices and planning, whatever power you’ve gained, it all comes with an expiration date, doesn’t it? You’ve been planning this for more than a century, your escape from hell, but you played your hand too soon. You’re too weak. You’ll always be too weak.”
“We served up that boyo we did tonight to the slithering ones, the final covey we needed, and they almost took his shakester, too. Had her in their clutches, and then one of these wretches heard her screaming, saw the body, and used the telephone before we could manifest ourselves all the way. When two crushers showed up, we figured, hell, what’s two frogs except dead meat and polish for our blades, and no one’ll ever hear from them two again, and no one’ll ever mourn ‘em. But then the others arrived, the ones you called on your damn radios, and we kept ‘em out, but they called others, and now there’s more of ‘em out there than there are of us,” the thing said. “But I swear your soul will be mine to piss on.”
Cam stole a glance out the window where shining dawn filled the low spaces between buildings. The thing inside Hidalgo saw it, too, and then he hurled Cam into the center of the room. The mob swarmed over him, pummeling each other just to get a clear shot at Cam. They kicked him and raked their fingernails over his flesh. They pounded him with fists and crushed his throat with their knees. Cam ignored the pain burning along every nerve in his body and fought back, smashing their noses, lashing out with his feet. He crawled under their grip and lost two inches of ground for every one he gained. His strength faltered.
The room grew deep with cold, and something stirred the air. Long roiling shapes took form as if creeping out from the narrow openings of giant shells, and Cam only dared to glance at them. A melodic groaning emanated from the things, commanding and hypnotic. Around the room a few of the possessed figures collapsed, going one-by-one down to the floor and emitting a whistling sound. With each one fallen, the floating masses grew denser as they absorbed the dead spirits. They hovered above Cam like swollen storm clouds. Their muffled snarls grew louder.
A small explosion rocked the room. Window glass shattered. A gray canister trailing smoke arced through the front of the bar and noxious fumes spewed into the air.
Outside the dawn brightened.
Another wave went down, this time including Dubby, the girls, and the paramedics, releasing those who had come through to help the Hidalgo-thing but whose wills were weaker than his. The buzz of energy rose to a dizzying whine. The bloated shapes bulged and rippled, and their forms shimmered. The others fell next, freeing their spirits to whip around the bar in a vortex of energy flowing directly into the slithering things. Cam averted his eyes as their features solidified. Their throbbing gills, fat limbs, and multitudes of eyes repulsed him.
Only the thing inside his partner remained.
It set Hidalgo’s foot on Cam’s chest and squeezed him to the floor. “Good job, ye fucking prick. Good job,” it said.
Cam watched Hidalgo’s finger wrap around the trigger of the gun and waited for the shot.
A second projectile smashed through a window, and the door exploded inward as the police broke through, weapons in hand.
Sunlight poured in.
The slithering things looked thin and insubstantial in the light, and the Hidalgo-thing screamed in pain. The moment’s distraction was enough. Cam grabbed Hidalgo’s ankle with both hands and twisted his entire body. Hidalgo fell sideways and his gun fired wild, sending a slug into a neon beer sign on the wall. The thing had no time for another shot. Hidalgo’s body convulsed and jerked like a marionette then crumpled, and in its place stood the spectral figure of a leather-skinned old man. He was bald and sharp-eyed, his body a tall knot of muscle and sinew, and he wore a bowler hat tilted on his head, a verminous smile on his face. Ethereal tendrils snaked down from the slithering things
and tugged away the hate-filled vapor.
More sunlight broke through the windows, igniting a chorus of inhuman screams. A vast shadow fell over the room, casting out the young daylight like an eclipse. Floating, wriggling masses swept through the space. Gunfire erupted as the panicked cops fired on the dark shapes twisting. Cam choked on the foul atmosphere, his red eyes watering with the chemical sting of tear gas, blurring his sight of the slithering things as they withdrew from the bar and vanished.
Light returned and the air settled.
Cam crawled to Bennie, felt for his pulse, and found it.
“Help…he needs help,” he said.
When the other cops had undertaken caring for Bennie, Cam staggered to the door and out into the fresh, morning air.
The doctors kept Cam in the hospital for six days. He suffered from exhaustion, multiple bruises, two broken ribs and, inexplicable signs of exposure, dehydration, and malnutrition. In the places where the thing inside Hidalgo had touched him he also had first-degree burns. Captain D’Amato visited him during his stay, and told him Hidalgo was recovering physically, but would tell them nothing but the ramblings of a paranoid lunatic about what happened. He had taken a bullet during a brief crossfire with the police after threatening to kill them all if they didn’t leave and then firing on them. The higher ups and doctors attributed it to the forced injection of narcotics. Everyone in the bar had been arrested and hospitalized with injuries similar to Cam’s. A cache of drugs had been found in the storeroom, and word was the dealers in the bar had launched a drug-fueled riot after killing a rival dealer. Cam’s role in bringing the conflict to a close would be noted. D’Amato said nothing of the horrible remains hidden underground or the incomprehensible ruin of the men’s room, and Cam couldn’t bring himself to ask.
The day after Cam left the hospital he visited his father in the nursing home and brought him a book of maps of the city published in 1912. He had overpaid for it in The Strand, Manhattan’s biggest used bookstore, but whether his father could still read or not, he loved to sit for hours paging through old books, and Cam wanted to thank him in some way for his help, however unintentional it had been.
They sat in his stuffy room for three hours and Cam told his father the whole story, spending the most time on the parts of it that made no sense, not knowing if his father’s dedicated attention was fascination or just pleasure at the warm, steady sound of his son’s voice. But at the end of the tale, Cam took his father’s hand as he always did before leaving, and this time his father squeezed back with a strength he had not demonstrated for months. On his face was the barest sketch of pride, and the corners of his mouth shifted to suggest a smile. The expression lifted Cam’s mood, and when he left his father sitting with the book of maps studying whatever secret geography he perceived in the age-weathered lines and colors, it was with the conviction that the old man knew exactly what he saw, and that the old man knew much more than he had ever said.
About the Author
James Chambers’ tales of horror, crime, fantasy, and science fiction have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. In 2011 Dark Regions Press published his collection of four Lovecraftian-inspired novellas, The Engines of Sacrifice. Publisher’s Weekly described it as “chillingly evocative.” Most recently, Dark Quest Books has published his zombie novellas, The Dead Bear Witness and Tears of Blood, the first two volumes in the Corpse Fauna novella series. Chambers is also the author of the short story collections Resurrection House, published in 2009 by Dark Regions Press, and The Midnight Hour: Saint Lawn Hill and Other Tales with illustrator Jason Whitley. His stories have appeared in the award-winning anthology series Bad-Ass Faeries and Defending the Future, and he has also written numerous comic books including Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals, the critically acclaimed “The Revenant” in Shadow House, and The Midnight Hour. His work has also appeared in Bad Cop No Donut, Dark Furies, The Dead Walk, The Dead Walk Again, The Domino Lady: Sex as a Weapon, Dragon’s Lure, The Green Hornet Chronicles, Hardboiled Cthulhu, In An Iron Cage, Mermaids 13, New Blood, Warfear, Weird Trails, and the magazines Bare Bone, Cthulhu Sex, and Allen K’s Inhuman. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and the chairman of its membership committee. His website is: www.jameschambersonline.com.
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Dark Regions Press is an independent specialty publisher of horror, dark fiction, fantasy and science fiction, specializing in horror and dark fiction and in business since 1985. We have gained recognition around the world for our creative works in genre fiction and were awarded the Horror Writers Association 2010 Specialty Press Award and the Italian 2012 The Black Spot award for Excellence in a Foreign Publisher. We produce premium signed hardcover editions for collectors as well as trade paperbacks and ebook editions for more casual readers. We have published hundreds of authors, artists and poets such as Kevin J. Anderson, Bentley Little, Michael D. Resnick, Rick Hautala, Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, W.H. Pugmire, Simon Strantzas, Jeffrey Thomas, Charlee Jacob, Richard Gavin, Tim Waggoner and hundreds more. Dark Regions Press has been creating specialty books and creative projects for over twenty-seven years.
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