It seemed to spot her then, pausing mid-air for a moment on the sidewalk as if in thought. Leaning at a crazy angle sideways toward the street, it lifted a finger in her direction. Can’t be pointing, can’t be looking at me, my GOD how can it even see? she thought, backing away.
The low wail that came from the gaping cavity of the bulb didn’t echo, even in the stillness between the buildings.
With a sudden jerk of ballooning body, it lunged forward, sailing at a surprisingly fast pace toward her. The talons of its fingers clicked against the sidewalk. It took a good minute or two for her mind to observe, process, and react to the beast making its steady way toward her. When it finally sank in, Nadia screamed.
***
Room 101 was dark, but there, unmistakably, blood had splattered one of the walls. Jesse recoiled first from the sight of it, then the smell. The latter left an unfamiliar aftertaste in his throat. He’d been around plenty of death in Thrall, and had smelled human blood before. What decorated the walls did not have the organic stink of human viscera. Those finger-flecked chunks outside did, but in the apartment, it was more animal. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
He took a deep breath almost involuntarily and the noxious reek climbed up into his nose. Yup, that smell definitely was worse—road kill magnified, like the way a bunch of dead deer struck down on a highway might smell on a hot summer afternoon.
Like ox ass, he thought, but pushed the thought away.
He crossed to the far wall, which seemed to have taken the brunt of whatever had happened in that room, and shined the flashlight on it. The wall had caved in some, as if something had been flung against it. Something very big, Jesse figured by the size of the dent. The thickest splatter of blood seemed permanently pressed into the mark. He imagined things—the tricoils, maybe, or the things in the Raw—duking it out in the den. Maybe one had hurled the other against a wall and broken its massive body. The mental image made him shiver.
He turned away from it and looked around. A TV sat sullen in the corner of the room, and a couch stood across from it. Among the splotches of black on the couch cushions, Jesse could make out handprints. Above an easy chair that had seen better days, a painting with a cracked frame streaked with dust hung slanted on the wall. The man and woman in the painting, out for a leisurely stroll along the shores of some fantasy lake, had had their eyes gouged out. Long rips in their canvas bodies extended from their painted necks to their painted waists.
Feeling cold beneath his skin, Jesse turned to a small hallway that led to a trio of doors. In apartments like these, that usually meant a bathroom and two bedrooms. All three doors were closed. Perfect, Jesse thought with a tinge of sarcasm. Of course they are. In apartments in Thrall, closed doors could mean anything.
With a deep breath (through his mouth this time, and not his nose), Jesse reached for the knob of the middle door. The soft ping of something dripping, real or imagined, came from the room on the other side. Jesse stopped, listening, his breath held tight in his chest. The dripping stopped. No further sounds issued from the other side of the door. He eased it open.
The edge of a porcelain tub came into view, as well as the checkered tiles of the floor. The undisturbed grime of neglect had stained the grout between the tiles a dark brown, and discolored the tiles themselves. Jesse pushed the door open all the way.
The bathtub was empty, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d half-expected chopped up body parts filling the tub with blood. He peered into the sink. Nothing there, either. No soap, no shampoo, nothing under the sink. He opened the medicine cabinet. Aside from a rusted can of shaving cream, a fuzzy toothbrush and a few bugs, the medicine cabinet was empty, too.
He backed away and closed the door. One down, two to go.
The door to his left was locked. The one to his right stood slightly ajar. The splintering hole down its center reminded him of what Jack Nicholson’s ax had done to a door in The Shining. His fingers barely touched the wood, and it swung open on silent hinges.
A flash of movement on the far side of the bed caught his eye, and he jumped. The gun in his bag felt like a solid, separate weight to him, reminding him of its presence.
The headboard of the bed was flush with a side wall, the bed extending outward to the center of the room. To either side of the headboard was a night table. Opposite the foot of the bed was a closed closet door, the sliding kind. Both the threadbare rug on the floor, floral once, and the squiggle-patterned bedspread were splotched with dark green. Against the back wall stood a dresser missing most of its drawers.
Whatever had moved seemed to be gone. No, a voice in his head corrected him, not necessarily. It could be in the closet, or under the bed....
It was more likely that he’d imagined the movement. Still...hadn’t Tom said something about “little ones,” back at the 7-11?
He blinked. The longer he stared at the center of the bed, the more the patterns seemed to swim. Or maybe, he thought, things beneath them moved, slithering over each other between the blankets and the sheets. He rubbed his eyes and turned away.
Jesse reached for the closet door, careful all the while to keep an eye on the thin band of space between the floor and the scalloped edge of the bedspread. It was an old-fashioned kind of closet door whose panels slid back, one behind the other. It skittered with a puff of dust three or four inches along its track and then stuck.
“Shit.” He wrapped the fingers of both hands around the edge of the door, plunging them for a moment into the closet’s interior. He yanked hard and the door flew back.
The closet was empty, except for three badly torn blouses and a pair of bloody sneakers. As Jesse exhaled, long and slow, and then drew in another breath, he was aware of his own scent, of the stale, cool sweat beneath his arms. Empty.
A search of the night tables yielded two packs of double-A batteries, a stiff but chewable pack of gum, a deck of cards, a Swiss-army knife, and the strangest assortment of sex-toys he’d ever seen. He left the toys, but scooped up the rest and tossed it into his bag.
In the dresser, he found old photographs. Faces grinned up at him from an array of special moments. A little blond girl in pigtails and corduroy pants blowing out candles beneath a “Happy Birthday” sign as other children looked on. A young boy in a cap and gown, squinting into the sun and smiling. Bikini shots of a twenty-something girl on a beach someplace with palm trees. Another shot of the girl in a light blue prom dress, her arms around a young man in a suit whose cummerbund matched the purple streaks in his spiky hair. More of the girl on the shore of Serlings Lake, where she stood proudly behind a boy of maybe three or four in overly large swimming trunks. The boy grinned with pride, shovel raised high above a sandcastle. A shot of teenagers laughing and hugging and making faces at the camera in the soft glow of sunset and campfire light as they sat on the shore of Serlings Lake. That last photo he studied the longest, the faces vaguely familiar. Off to the side was the public restroom building. In the background, a blur blacker than the silhouetted trees behind it broke the surface of the water.
It was an omen, he thought, of things to come.
What had happened to the people in those pictures? Jesse wondered if they still retained any of the memories he held in his hands, those moments in their lives untouched by whatever was wrong with Thrall. Or maybe they had been touched, as the last picture suggested; nothing and no one that lived there could really help but be touched by Thrall. Maybe that’s why those pictures had been left behind.
Jesse tossed them back into the drawer in which he’d found them, suddenly angry. What the hell was he doing in that goddammed apartment, or for that matter, in town at all? Did he really think he was going to find Mia in some apartment building that had dropped like Dorothy’s house from the sky last night?
He was there, though, and he didn’t think he could bring himself to leave without looking around. That made him angry, too, and scared. Best thing to do was to get in and get out, like he’d said. He’d find
Mia and Caitlyn if he could and get the hell away from Thrall. California, maybe, or Seattle or shit, he’d even settle for Arizona. And if he couldn’t...well, at least he’d tried; he could take that to bed with him on those nights he couldn’t sleep.
He turned to the bed. Sinking to one knee, he lifted the edge of the bedspread, and peering down, swept the beam back and forth underneath. He braced himself for the possibility of something small and sharp and angry springing out onto his face. Nothing did. The space beneath was also empty. His face was safe, at least for now.
Jesse stood up, wiping his hands on the rear of his pants.
The loud burst of static made him jump. He frowned, cocking an ear toward the sound. It was coming from the den; static from the non-channels on the TV, the salt-and-pepper oblivion between the end of the cable television line and Channel 2. The “cow-in-the-snowstorm” channels, as Mia’s dad had called them.
But the TV was broken, he was almost sure of that. And somehow he doubted that the apartment’s tenant had paid his or her electric bill that month, anyway.
Jesse clicked off the flashlight. His hand felt for the metallic lump in his backpack. He waited, listening without moving as someone flipped through the channels. He knew that was what was happening by the subtle changes in the noise patterns. Many nights had stretched into early mornings while he himself had flipped from the last of the infomercials through the static of the cow channels. He’d tried to get lost in their rhythms: the soft, soothing buzz of channels 75, 84, and 86, the angry drone of 119 and 68. And on lonelier nights, he’d learned to appreciate the low hums of channels 80 and 95. They had a pulse of their own, a pulse to match the pumping of the skewed bodies and fleshy streaks.
As if on cue, the buzz from the den pulsed down the hall, punctuated at uneven intervals by moans and groans and the occasional “Oh! Oh yeah! Oh yes! Ohhhh!” Then it was back to the static again.
Drawing the gun out of his bag, Jesse slid out of the bedroom and into the hallway, listening for noises over the static. As he moved closer to the den, he fixed his gaze on the gray-blue flicker of light against the walls, and the sharp cuts of shadow cast from something moving just beyond his line of view.
The static broke off and he paused, just around the corner from the den.
“Hey everyone, welcome back.” The voice from the TV had the talk show host condescending tone of superiority and tittering amusement. The studio crowd cheered. When they quieted, the voice added, “We’ve got a great show for you today. Our subject is fathers who abandon their pregnant girlfriends.” A round of boos. Jesse frowned. The gun hung at his side, forgotten for the moment. “Today we’re going to pose some interesting questions to our fathers. Questions like, ‘Do you really think you can find your child now? And even if you do, what makes you think you’re worth loving?’”
A cold cloud of dread dropped onto Jesse’s chest as the crowd responded with enthusiastic cheers. Something was very wrong, here, very...personal.
“Oh, and I think some special questions are in order for our father guest of honor here.” More audience cheering. “Jesse Coaglan, come on out! The studio audience wants to know. The viewers at home want to know. Even if you could find them, Jesse, what makes you think you can get them out of Thrall? What makes you think we’ll let them go? What makes you think we’ll let any of you go, you fucking coward?”
Oh...oh shit. The cold dread-cloud expanded, blew, and hailed panic into his gut. Just as he was about to storm out into the den, the canned banter was clipped off by static again.
Static, and something else. Something very much like breathing. Then the static snapped off, too.
Jesse chanced a cautious peek into the room, and bit his tongue to keep from making a sound. Hot blood washed over his teeth but he barely noticed. The thing in the center of the den was a good eight feet of nightmare beast illuminated by the muted glare of the TV, and it was all Jesse could do to keep from bolting across the room to the door.
The lean torso hovered at head level in the den, and from his position, Jesse could see a writhing mass of small tentacles beneath it that licked the floor occasionally with a small crack. Long, arcing blades of bone extended out at an angle from joints along either side of its body. The first pair pressed into the meat of the walls for purchase while the two remaining pairs flexed up and down. Its tail was split five or six ways, and the individual cords lashed over its head like long whips, lacerating the ceiling above it.
The labored rumble of its breathing shook the picture on the wall. It turned toward him, and with a quick ripple along the torso, the blades shifted so that the middle pair braced it in place. Jesse got a good look at the head of the monster and stifled a scream. Three empty sockets in an inverted triangle simulated where eyes and a nose should be. As it swung its head from side to side, the skin around the sockets rippled and wrinkled, giving the face a sense of expression. From a wide mouth beneath the lowest socket, long saber teeth hung halfway to the ground. Around their massive width came a low growl. Sprouting from the neck were long, bony arms, ending in hands which, aside from their exaggerated size, looked frighteningly human. They grabbed at the air in front of the teeth.
Its head swung around to the front doorway through which Jesse had come. The door stood fully open. Jesse could see the doorframed den across the hall that was apartment 102. If he could alert Tom and get him to at least wound the thing with the shotgun, maybe they could make a break for it. He was pretty damn sure, judging by the size and shape of the horror in apartment 101, that the bullets from the little gun hanging limply in his hand would bounce off its body.
“Tom....” The weak whisper stumbled a few feet and died before it reached the hall.
With a sharp twist of the neck, the beast turned back in his direction. Jesse froze, his breath like ice in his chest. The tentacles beneath the monster wavered toward him, the hands clawing the air in the direction of the sound.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit....” His lips moved without sound, his body tingling.
The thing’s jaw dropped open and from the depths of its body cavity came a roar so fierce that it shook the walls of the apartment. Jesse felt its cold breath. It carried the same animal stink as the blood on the wall.
Thunder blasted from the hallway, and fireworks of red exploded on its shoulder and neck. It roared in pain, bucking away from the source. Jesse chanced a quick look at the door, where Tom stood with the shotgun aimed at its bulk.
“Thank God,” he muttered.
“Don’t thank anyone yet. I’m gonna cover you. When I begin shooting, get out of there.”
With a ripple of its back, the monster maneuvered itself to face Tom, repositioning its blades in the wall. Its tentacles whipped fiercely beneath it while its hands clawed at the air between it and him. It looked mad as hell.
“You don’t have to ask me twice.”
“And get ready to run like hell. I can’t take one of these down with this. We’re going to have to outrun it.” The thing coiled, and without another word of warning Tom opened fire on its shoulder blades. Jesse ducked low and bolted for the door, heading toward the stairs.
He froze when he heard the scream from below. It was followed within moments by the appearance of Nadia on the stairs. She leaped them two at a time and skidded to a halt in front of him.
“Let’s go,” he said, tugging her back the way she’d come, but she resisted.
“Not that way. There’s something down there—”
Behind him, a wail rattled the doors in the hallway, followed by a thump that shook the floor. Tom squeezed off another two shots, then swung out into the hallway.
The beast from room 101 crashed through the door and into the wall mere inches behind Tom. “Go! Go! Go!” he yelled, pushing at their backs.
Jesse tossed his gun into his backpack and led the exodus down to the end of the hall.
“What the hell is that thing?” Nadia screamed, near hysterics.
A metal d
oor stood at the end of the hall, next to the caved-in elevator. Fire stairs! Jesse pushed in on the metal bar. It fought against him, barely moving.
Tom fired at the thing swimming toward them down the hall, but it was undeterred. Its claws snapped ahead of it. Its blades gouged the walls in a grotesque breaststroke. In its wake, a black ichor oozed from the plaster. “A hold up?” Tom asked, his voice strained.
“Working on it.” Jesse threw all his weight onto the bar and the door opened with a rusted groan. The three tumbled through and the guys hurled themselves at the door. It closed again just as the beast threw its own weight against the plane of metal, jarring their bones.
“Fucker,” Tom snarled at it, slinging the shotgun back over his shoulder.
Jesse’s gaze fell on the staircase leading up. It looked as if something had bitten off a chunk of it, chewed, and spit the debris back out onto the landing. What little they could see of the walls beyond looked burnt out. Something growled from above their heads up there, possibly on the third floor, and it didn’t sound any friendlier than the thing slamming its body into the quickly denting door.
Grabbing a long piece of metal railing from the debris pile, Jesse jammed it between the bar and the door. “Won’t hold for long,” he muttered, “but—”
With a sudden squeal that made Jesse’s skin crawl, a long white blade passed through to their side of the door like a knife through butter. When it grazed the railing, tiny sparks flew up along the length. Nadia’s scream was clipped by light sobbing.
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