Music? Rafe hadn’t thought of it like that. But, as he listened more intently, it did seem like a gentle, lilting tune.
And just a little off-key...
“We have to run,” he said again. “I’m gonna go.”
“It’s getting dark,” Abe warned. Then he let out another, long sigh. “If we’re going to try this, we should wait until just before dawn. Assuming those things are still at rest, that is. If they’re not, I say we wait.”
“Fair enough.” Rafe patted Abe’s shoulder.
“And where are we running to?” Asked Erika. “The marina,” Rafe answered quickly.
“But they came from the ocean.”
“We’ll never make it on land. There’s no escape on this island.”
“What about the goddamn baby?” queried Peter.
“You don’t have to worry about us,” Gayle said quietly. “We’ll take care of ourselves.”
“Gayle—” Abe began. She silenced him with a shake of her head.
“Then we wait,” Erika said. She returned to her spot on the floor.
“You should stop drinking if you want half a chance,” Abe said to Peter. In response, Peter raised the bottle in his hand, as if in a toast, and tilted it over his lips.
Despite himself, Rafe was sizing up the others, guessing who’d make it and who wouldn’t. Peter was shaping up to be more of a liability than Gayle; but Rafe was convinced that neither would make it.
He studied Emma’s sleeping face. The corners of her tiny mouth were upturned in the slightest smile. Rafe wished for her blissful ignorance, for the comfort of dreams.
* * *
That night, he did dream.
He was surrounded by darkness, by a pressure that filled his head and weighed down his limbs. Then a soft blue light began to filter down from somewhere above.
He was underwater. Standing at the bottom of the ocean.
And something was coming out of the darkness.
He tried to run. His legs kicked in place, muscles burning, his arms churning as water swept into his lungs. But he didn’t drown; no, he just kept struggling and suffering and trying to force a scream from his flooded throat.
A coldness came over him, and his limbs froze. It was the same icy cold from the corpse-house. It was Nightmare.
The current stirred at his back as the entity spoke.
Rafe asked a question in his mind, knowing the thing could hear him. “Are you one of them?”
Shadows passed over Rafe’s face. He glanced up and saw, floating beneath the ocean’s surface, great pink clusters – the creatures, clinging to one another, tentacle-like things threading through their arms and legs and claws and tethering them to each other. Even from this distance he could see their closed eyes, their slack jaws with rows of razor-sharp teeth.
“Are you...are you God?”
The thing laughed. It was the most awful noise Rafe had ever heard, and it rang through every bone in his body. He prayed for the water to drown him, but he knew it was in vain.
“What do gods need with dreams?”
Rafe looked again at the clusters floating overhead. So the creatures were just vessels for the stealing of dreams? But how...
Rafe began to choke. The pressure in his lungs and behind his eyes built until his vision went dark. And the hideous laughter of the nightmare-god filled his senses.
* * *
Abe shook Rafe awake. “You’re screaming!”
Rafe pushed the other man away and scrambled to his feet, gasping for breath. “We have to go NOW.”
Abe shook his head. “There’s...something happened.”
Rafe looked over Abe’s shoulder. He saw Erika by the barricaded door, Peter slouched behind the bar. Gayle was kneeling with her back to the others, whispering softly to Emma.
She turned and stood, the baby in her arms, and even in the dim pre-dawn light Rafe could see her puffy blue skin, her limp little arms and the innocent smile erased from her face.
“Jesus.”
He stared at Gayle in horror. How could she do it, to her own daughter?
Then he noticed that the others weren’t looking at Gayle. They were looking at Peter.
He sipped a glass of wine and cleared his throat. “Is it time to go, Rafe?”
The world had finished coming apart in the time Rafe had slept. Peter looked shamelessly at the smothered infant, and even though Erika and Abe were staring him down, they didn’t look outraged, or even mortified. They had accepted what he’d done. He’d taken care of a liability.
Rafe grabbed Abe’s shoulder. “What are you thinking? Are you just going to let this go? Jesus, Abe!”
“Keep your damn voice down,” Abe shot back. “The things are still resting. Now’s the time.”
Erika and Peter began dissembling the barricade.
Rafe fell to his knees beside Gayle. Her face was expressionless, her lips whispering sweet nothings over the cold body of her child. He touched her arm. “Gayle...”
“We’re not going,” she said calmly. “We’re staying with Neil.”
“Neil?” Rafe shook his head furiously. “Gayle, you need to come with us!”
“My baby is here,” she replied. “She can’t leave. She lives here now.”
Rafe spun to face Peter, his hands clenched in white-knuckled fists.
Peter looked him right in the eye and said, “She needs to stay with her family.”
“The elevator might be safer, but I really think we have a better chance on the stairs,” Abe said. “That way they won’t know we’re coming.”
Erika nodded and pulled the last table away from the door. “There are two sets of stairs. Let’s split up. We’ll get down quicker.”
“All right. Who’s coming with me?” Abe placed his hand on the doorknob and looked back.
Rafe still couldn’t believe things were unfolding like this. He was the only one still acknowledging Gayle’s existence. Erika approached Abe and said, “I’m with you.”
“That makes us buddies,” Peter said to Rafe. “Think you can keep up?”
“I hope they eat you alive,” Rafe growled.
Peter was unfazed. “What makes you think they eat people?”
“Oh, they do,” Rafe whispered, closing the distance between himself and the other until they were nose-to-nose. “What do you dream, Peter?”
Abe put his hand between them. “Let’s go. Me and Erika first. We’ll take the stairs off to the right, you guys go left.”
Together, he and Erika unlocked the door and pulled it open a fraction of an inch. They stared and listened for several moments, then pulled the door open enough for Abe to stick his head out and get a look at the entire hallway.
“Let’s go,” he whispered. Then he was gone.
Erika ducked out after him. Peter stretched his arms and rolled his head. “I’m not gonna wait up for you, Castillo.”
Rafe looked back at Gayle. She had settled in one of the chairs, still cradling Emma, and offered him a vacant smile. “You’d better run.”
He turned back. Pe
ter was gone.
Rafe tensed his legs, lowered his head and broke into a sprint.
* * *
The stair access door was wide open. Rafe ignored the blood on the walls and floor, all of it a crimson blur as he leapt into the stairwell and took the concrete steps three at a time.
There was a faint echo below him, Peter in the lead. It occurred to him that if there were creatures in the lobby or on the stairs, Peter would reach them first. Maybe it would give Rafe a fighting chance.
Or maybe he’d stop to watch Peter die.
He had all but given up on thoughts of survival, even as he raced down the stairs. He knew that this was bigger than Fevgos. He knew that there were greater monstrosities behind the razor-fingered harvesters. Regardless of where he fled, Rafe was unlikely to “make it” in any sense of the word – but at least he’d get away from here, away from the others with their liquor-stained breath and Gayle with her dead baby and the creatures perched on the rooftops just outside the windows.
He grabbed the railing and swung himself over a landing without touching the floor, avoiding a puddle of blood. He began skimming every landing this way, taking the steps four at a time now, seeing Peter just a couple of floors below him. He could hear the other man’s ragged panting. Too bad Peter didn’t have his steroids. They were probably back in his room.
Rafe overtook Peter at the bottom of the stairwell. He grabbed the door leading to the lobby and glanced through it, then took off.
The lobby was every bit the charnel house that Erika had described. Unrecognizable body parts littered the floor, counters and some were even plastered to the walls. The entrance had been blown in, as if by a hurricane, and debris swam in a slick of gore. The street outside appeared deserted. Dawn was almost here.
Abe threw open the other stair door and raced across the lobby. Without a word, he passed Rafe and Peter and shot down the street.
Rafe and Peter crossed the threshold and emerged in the chilly morning air, glancing in both directions. There wasn’t a soul to be found. A few cars were in the middle of the road, windshields awash with blood.
Rafe realized that, among the carnage, he hadn’t yet seen a single human head.
They were eating them—
And as Rafe stood in the street, trembling with horror, he was startled by a high-pitched scream from somewhere up above.
It was Gayle. Leaning out a tenth-floor window, she shrieked, “THEY’RE DOWN THERE!”
“Bitch,” Peter gasped. Then he took off.
Rafe saw silhouettes rising on the rooftops, saw claws splaying to capture the sunrise – then the things began to scramble down the sides of the buildings.
He ran. He ran and ran and ran, pumping his legs like pistons, every muscle in his lower body on fire, the world shaking violently around him as he surged through the streets of Fevgos. He heard feet scrambling behind him and claws raking over cobblestones. Shadows jumped from building to building overhead. Rafe turned onto a street that sloped downwards, toward the beach, and put everything he had into his sprint. He felt that any second he was going to take a tumble and break his neck. He didn’t care.
Leaping onto the hood of a car, Rafe cleared the vehicle with one jump and heard the creatures scrabbling over it. He’d gained maybe half a second by putting the car between them and himself. But he needed it.
He was nearing the end of the street, where it intersected with Fevgos’ main thoroughfare. Sucking air into his searing lungs, Rafe jumped up onto a porch and used his momentum to hit the railing and propel himself into the air, over the street—
And he soared over the heads of two creatures who’d been waiting just around the corner.
Rafe struck the street and pain knifed through his right foot. He pushed on, gritting his teeth as he felt the pain spreading, not caring that it hurt but knowing that he was beginning to slow down, just as he was reaching the beach, just a short sprint from the marina.
He chanced a look back over his shoulder.
There were at least three dozen of them at his heels. They weren’t winded in the slightest. They were gaining on him.
He raced across the sand. There was something up ahead, a body, lying in a muddy paste of earth and blood. It was headless, but it was Abe.
Rafe looked toward the marina and saw Erika scrambling up a fence. A creature struck out at her, just below the knees, and her legs came off like broken toothpicks. She fell into the creature’s arms.
Then he ran into something, and he found himself unable to move, the burning in his legs spreading up into his gut, ears ringing. He looked down and saw five glassy claws skewering his belly.
The creature jerked its fingers free, and Rafe fell into the sand. It was cold against his cheek.
The creature straddled his back and raked its claws over the back of his head. He felt his scalp being peeled away.
The others ran past him, toward the marina. He heard a distant scream. He wondered what dark dreams Peter’s mind would yield.
What in dreams was so beautiful that it wrought such horror? What had Man taken for granted all these many years? Rafe closed his eyes, ignoring a distant tugging at his skull, and tried to recall the last dream he’d had before this all began.
He caught a sliver of memory, tried to wrap his mind around it, like a mother sheltering her child - but it was taken from him, along with everything else, as the creature sucked his brain through the back of his head.
* * *
As twilight fell, the creatures assembled on the beach.
They began to walk, silently, into the evening tide. Tentacles sprouted from their backs, embracing one another; and their glazed eyes went dark before they hit the water.
###
Dark Entities is the first book in the New Voices of Horror imprint from Dark Regions Press.
Available in signed collectible editions featuring interior illustrations by artist Tim Moran at:
www.darkregions.com/books/dark-entities-by-david-dunwoody
Dark Regions Press
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.
The press has staff throughout the country working virtually but also has a localized office in Ashland, Oregon from where we ship our orders and maintain the primary components of the business.
Dark Regions Press staff, authors, artists and products have been interviewed/mentioned/listed in Rue Morgue Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist Online, LA Times, The Sunday Chicago Tribune, The Examiner, Playboy, Comic-Con, Wired, The Huffington Post, Horror World, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Sony Reader store and many other publications and vendors.
Visit us at: http://www.darkregions.com
e(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Dark Entities Page 11