by Brian Harmon
For a while, he was moving, carried along by an unnatural current, swept away by mud and stone. His arms and legs were useless. He tumbled and rolled, his body tossed, twisted and bent to the will of the raging earth.
Rocks, boulders and branches lashed out from the darkness, snatching at his clothes, tearing and grinding his flesh.
He slammed into something hard and felt exquisite pain explode through his back and ribs. His arm bent too far back. He felt it dislocate from his shoulder. Something ripped down the side of his face, painting a white-hot streak of pain down his cheek.
He was helpless. He couldn’t fight it. He couldn’t even scream.
The pain was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was all-encompassing, driving all the thoughts from his brain until his entire existence was nothing more than an endless stream of agony.
Then even that began to fade as he swam in and out of consciousness. Slowly, he spiraled into an even blacker darkness. The cold nothingness of death was slowly swallowing him.
But it wasn’t real.
Nothing here was real. Not the mud. Not the rats. Not the pain. Not even the hill.
He knew how these things worked by now.
The only thing real was the darkness. And darkness could do no harm. Darkness was literally nothing.
He forced himself to open his eyes.
There was no mud. He was floating in a black void.
Tessa’s bloody eyes stared back at him. She was right there, her face bathed in crimson firelight. Close enough to kiss him.
“Fight,” she said. Her voice didn’t line up with her lips. And it sounded strange, like something from a badly warped record. Then she placed her hands on the sides of his face and blasted him with what felt like the force of a lightning strike.
He gasped and jumped to his feet.
He was in a new place now. An empty, cavernous place. It was pitch black, but he didn’t need light to see. Whatever that strange energy was that Tessa hit him with, it pulsed through his body like an electric current and let his eyes pierce the darkness, revealing what was hidden.
He was nowhere. He stood in a featureless void without walls or ceiling. It was the empty, cavernous space that made up the fringe, without any of the bleed-through from the nearby real world.
This was where he and Paul ended up when they first explored the basement together. It was the emptiness they experienced before he was locked in the storage room with the holiday decorations. And before Paul wandered into laser tag hell.
But he wasn’t alone here.
He could sense it.
He turned and looked behind him.
It was there, only a few dozen paces from where he stood. The rat summoner. It loomed there, an imposing black shape writhing on the ground.
With this curious new sight that Tessa had somehow lent him, he could see through the darkness, but he still couldn’t comprehend what waited for him there. It had no definite shape. And why would it? Shape was a physical concept. This thing was not physical. It wasn’t even psychic or spiritual. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever encountered before. It was demonic.
It was little more than shadows and ash, smoke and malice.
Whatever power Tessa used to grant him vision in this darkness also opened his eyes to these facts. He understood now. He couldn’t destroy a demon. No one could. No human, anyway. And that’s all he was. In spite of Judith’s insistence that he was somehow special, that he possessed some kind of incredible power, he was still nothing more than a mortal man standing before an immortal demon.
He couldn’t hope to survive this encounter.
He also understood that survival was never the point. He wasn’t here to destroy the demon. He was here to contain it. He was here to make sure it could never leave this black place. At any cost.
What he didn’t understand was just how the hell he was supposed to do that.
And he wasn’t going to get a chance to ponder it.
The demon lashed out at him, striking him across the chest and knocking him off his feet.
He landed on his back, cursing. Whatever hit him felt like it left a gash in his flesh. His chest stung from his left shoulder to the middle his right side.
He couldn’t see it, but he didn’t think it broke the skin. He didn’t feel any blood. His shirt didn’t feel torn. But he wasn’t eager to experience that again.
He rolled over and pushed himself up onto his knees, but something bit his finger in the darkness. He cried out and jumped to his feet.
Rats.
He was surrounded by them again.
He tried to back away, but something slashed at him from behind. He cried out in pain and stumbled forward.
That might’ve broke the skin. He wasn’t sure, but that felt like the kind of pain that came with bleeding and maybe even stitches.
He turned to defend himself. This time, he saw it coming and managed to duck as it whipped toward him.
It looked like a giant rat’s tail.
But if that’s what it was, then the rat demon had more than one. Even as he watched the first one withdraw into the shadows, another slashed out and swept his feet out from under him.
He hit the ground again and was immediately set upon by rats. They scurried up his arms and legs, onto his back, into his hair. One bit his hand. Another bit his ankle. Another sank its teeth right into his back, in the gap between his shirt and pants.
He cried out in pain and revulsion and leapt to his feet again, trying to brush the foul rodents off him.
Another one bit him on his thigh, making him curse.
This wasn’t going well.
He was little more than a punching bag. At this rate he was only entertaining the demon while it waited for the party to wrap up.
“Focus!” shouted Tessa in her broken ghost voice.
He looked up in time to see her reach out and grab him by his shoulders. That queer jolt shot through him again, knocking him flat onto his back and forcing from him a painful scream.
But the rats that were crawling on him were thrown clear and the ones crowding around his feet fled in terror, giving him room to think. And his vision brightened a little more, too, allowing him to see more of this empty world.
Although as he scrambled back to his feet, he wasn’t sure if that was such a good thing. He could now see that there were millions of rats out there. They stretched forever into the void, an endless, wriggling swarm just waiting to overwhelm him.
But the vision also gave him a different kind of clarity. He was beginning to understand what he was up against.
He turned his back to the apocalypse sized mischief and faced the demon. This was the enemy. The rats were nothing more than another distraction.
He could see it more clearly now. It was a great, malformed shadow that bubbled up from the black ground. It was literally dripping rats. Several long, wriggling tails snaked out from the greater darkness, like vile, hungry snakes. A huge, rat-like head rose up, massive teeth flashed in the darkness.
Moira was wrong.
This wasn’t a demon.
It was demonic. But that didn’t make it a demon any more than being a mammal made a rat human. This was something lesser. The hellish equivalent to a beast of burden, perhaps. Or a pet.
Tessa knew. There was a connection between the dead and hell. And not just the wicked dead. She could sense these things. That’s what she was trying to tell him.
But it didn’t matter what it was. He couldn’t fight this thing. That much he knew for certain. Even if it wasn’t a full-fledged demon, it was still demonic and therefore still beyond his all-too-human abilities.
He needed to take a different kind of approach.
One of the thing’s many tails shot out and snagged his leg, yanking him off his feet again. Suddenly, he was being dragged across the ground toward that writhing pile of shadows and rats.
He struggled and kicked. He clawed at the ground, but he couldn’t free himself.
He couldn’t even stay on his feet. He was way out of his league on this one.
Icy hands closed around his, sending another of those awful jolts through his body, making him convulse and thrash against the ground.
“Concentrate…” said Tessa.
“I’m not sure that’s helping!” he shouted at her.
He was still being dragged toward the rat monster. When he tried to look back to see how far away he was, something lashed out at him again, painting a hot stripe of pain across the back of his shoulders.
He cried out again.
What was he supposed to do?
“Not real!” said Tessa.
Not real. Of course. Like the mudslide. Nothing was real. It was all an illusion, a convoluted lie to distract him from the truth.
But what was the truth?
Behind him, the monster suddenly began to rise. Those huge tails beat against the ground. It let out an excited shriek.
Something had changed…
The party!
He had to put a stop to this now.
“Imagine…” said Tessa.
That was it! He recalled his conversation with Moira in the basement hallway, when the zombie rats were about to eat him alive.
Moira told him that a demon’s power was its victim’s imagination, its ability to create nightmares and elaborate worlds from nothing, using little more than the fears that were already inside people’s heads. And by showing him the field of flowers, she’d shown him that it was also a demon’s weakness.
Because Eric had a pretty awesome imagination.
That was it.
It was possible to turn all this back on the demon. That was what Tessa was trying to tell him. Concentrate. Focus. Fight.
In order to fight this thing, he had to let go of everything.
He just had to let go…
He closed his eyes. He forced himself to relax. Even as he was being dragged across the cold ground, closer and closer to the monster, he let his muscles go slack. He pushed away the pain. He pushed away the fear. He pushed away the burden.
He let his mind go blank.
And then he imagined that he was inside an impenetrable vault. He imagined the cold metal surfaces, the massive, steel door, the sterile, empty space.
He was still being dragged backward, but even with his eyes closed, he knew it was working. The ground beneath him had gone smooth as polished steel.
But he wasn’t going to be able to imagine the vault sealed. He was going to have to do that himself. And to do that, he was going to need something to hold the demon while he worked.
He imagined chains. Enormous, powerful chains.
With a furious shriek, the demon let go of his leg.
He wasted no time. He jumped to his feet and opened his eyes.
He was inside a huge, steel-lined chamber. Massive chains crisscrossed the room, each one piercing the writhing, shadowy form of the rat summoner.
It wasn’t the chains that was holding it. Nothing physical could hold a demon. It would be like trying to chain water. It was the idea that was binding it.
But it wouldn’t last long. Even as he looked upon the queer vision of the bound monster, one of the chains snapped and whipped across the room like a broken rubber band.
He had to get that door closed.
He turned and ran to it. It was large and round, like the kind of bank vault door you sometimes saw in movies. It was precisely what he’d imagined, of course. But as soon as he reached it, he discovered the flaw in his plan.
There was no handle on the outside of the door. There was nowhere even to grip it. It was completely featureless and smooth as glass.
Realization sank in then.
He wasn’t going to be able to close this door from the outside. Because this was his prison. He imagined it. He built it. It was going to have to be sealed from the inside.
Moira was right. It was going to require a sacrifice.
Another chain snapped and crashed to the floor. He turned to look and found that he was no longer alone with the monster. The fat clown was back, the one that liked to turn up whenever things were at their worst. He was walking toward him, his enormous gut wobbling back and forth as his oversized shoes slapped the vault floor.
Time was up.
If the door was ever going to be closed, it was going to have to happen now.
He ran behind it and threw his weight into it. But it wouldn’t move, not even with all his weight pushed against it. It was too heavy. He wasn’t strong enough.
Behind him, those big, slapping shoes grew closer and closer.
Slap…
Slap…
Slap…
Behind him, another of the rat monster’s bonds snapped.
It was over. He wasn’t strong enough after all.
Chapter Forty-Four
Eric pushed against the massive door, but it was hopeless. It wouldn’t budge.
“Please!” he grunted. He had no idea who he was talking to. God, perhaps? Whatever guardian angel he had that incompetently kept letting him get into these awful situations? It didn’t matter. Anyone who might be listening. Anyone at all. “Help…me…” he groaned as his feet slipped against the floor, his soles squeaking against the metal.
Those clown shoes came to a stop right behind him.
This was it. He’d really blown it this time. Karen… Paul and Holly… All those children… Everyone.
He’d failed everyone.
Then something unexpected happened. The clown’s meaty, gloved hands slammed against the door and pushed.
The metal hinges ground together. The door began to creep closed.
Eric looked up, confused.
The fat clown was helping him?
With a strained look upon his face, he heaved the door closed a few more inches.
Wait… But the clowns were the bad guys… They were evil…
“Please,” groaned the fat clown. “Save…the children…”
That voice… It wasn’t natural. Like Tessa’s, it warbled. The volume and pitch changed, as if he didn’t have full control of it.
He wasn’t like the other clown at all. He wasn’t a remnant. He was like Tessa. He was a ghost.
And now that he thought about it, maybe he had it all wrong. He turned up every time things were at their worst… When he was trapped in the mirror maze. When he was overwhelmed in the Midway. When the hell rats had him and Paul cornered. And finally on the go kart track.
He wasn’t there when things were at their worst…he was there because things were at their worst.
“You’ve been helping me,” he grunted.
“The children…were in trouble… I had to…help the children...”
Like a true clown. He did it for the love of the children.
He turned and looked at Eric. “You’ll save lots of children…” he said. Then his eyes—kind eyes, he realized, not evil at all—drifted to something behind him. “Protect him…”
Eric looked over his shoulder.
Tessa was there. She was nodding at the clown.
“What?”
But Tessa reached out and seized his head again. That awful, searing jolt passed through his body. The next thing he knew, he was standing in the dark on the other side of the door, watching it swing closed.
“Wait…” What just happened? Had Tessa just kicked him out of the vault? But that was his job. That was his sacrifice to make.
Inside, he heard another chain snap. The monster let loose a horrible shriek. And the door slammed shut.
Just like that, the door was gone.
His phone alerted him to a new text message.
THE DARK ENERGY IS COMPLETELY GONE
Because the monster was gone, with its demonic energy. And with it the fat clown.
No. The good clown.
The real clown.
He ran a hand through his hair. He never even said thank you…
Something was there next to him in the dark. He tur
ned to find Tessa standing there, worrying about him.
“I’m okay,” he told her.
She gave him a sad smile.
He turned and looked at the place where the door had been a moment before. Now it was only empty darkness.
It was ironic. For most of the day, he thought Bellylaugh Playland was full of ghosts. But except for the one he brought with him, there was only one. And he turned out to be the real hero all along.
He turned and looked around. “Where the hell are we, anyway?”
He saw a faint light and moved toward it. As he walked, it grew brighter and brighter, until it was nearly blinding. Then, all at once, he was back in the doorway of the doll room, looking out at the records room.
“You came back!” sighed Moira.
Eric looked around, confused. Helena and Melodi were sitting at the desk, looking back at him.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“The demon is gone,” Moira assured him. No longer was she merely mist. Nor was she skin and bones. She still looked sickly thin, but already she was beginning to return to her natural, exquisite beauty. “You’ve saved us all. I can never thank you enough.”
“I had a little help,” said Eric. He didn’t bother telling her that the demon wasn’t a demon. It didn’t seem to matter now.
But before he could say more about it, there was a loud groan from the hallway.
They all turned to find the clown standing there, stretching. Except he no longer looked like a clown. His face was no longer painted. He was just a man in an ugly green sport coat and a stupid-looking tie.
“I forgot what it felt like to be me,” he said.
“What’re you still doing here?” asked Eric.
“Just wanted to thank you,” replied the former clown. “I’ve had a lot of fun today.”
“I wouldn’t call any of what happened today fun.”
“Just the same,” it replied. Or was it a “he” again? It was difficult to tell. “I enjoyed myself. And now that I’m free again, I think I’ll go exploring. See what kind of mischief I can get up to.” He pointed to Eric and grinned a clownish grin. “I can’t wait to see you again someday.” Then he winked and disappeared into thin air.
“Oh dear…” said Moira.