by Platt, Sean
“Goddammit!” the soldier yelled.
Larry took his chance, firing several shots at the soldier.
Almost instantly, Abigail realized the error of placing herself in the crossfire. Breathless, and heart pounding, she didn’t know what else to do but run to Larry. Bullets whizzed by her, slamming into the pavement and spitting up chunks of asphalt.
And then one found her.
Pain splintered her chest as Abigail was hurled to the ground.
Oh God, no.
The wound was wet fire spreading through her chest. She writhed on the ground, attempting to get up before giving up entirely. She could only turn on her side and look back toward the van, praying John stayed safe from harm.
And then the pain died, as if she’d reached whatever limits of anguish a person was allowed before something flipped the kill switch.
Abigail’s eyes noticed the spreading pool spilling like ink in the predawn darkness, and wondered how so much blood could pour from a single body.
It felt as if she were seeing the life leaving from someone else’s body.It looked beautiful in an odd sort of way, as the pool widened, growing larger and darker.
Shots continued to ring out then fell into a chorus of silence. Abigail watched the soldier fall. She tried to turn to see Larry, but her body refused to cooperate.
Darkness crawled to the edges of her vision. It was all she could do to turn her gaze back to the van.
John?
The van shook wildly, a mostly muffled scream from John. He sounded like he was in agony. She wondered if the soldier had delivered his threat and, in his last act, pressed the button that would burn her angel to death.
No! John!
Something entered her field of vision. Larry, crouching down, looking at her. His eyes harbored a deep sorrow — as though he was eyeing a corpse.
“I’m so sorry.” He reached out to touch her cheek, but she felt nothing.
Larry leaped up and raced toward the van, his footsteps echoes from somewhere far away as sound dissolved along with her other senses. Darkness, like a gauze, distorted the world as Abigail’s life stained the asphalt beneath her.
She watched as Larry ran first to the fallen soldier and then to the van’s door.
Open the door.
Please be alive, John. Please.
All she wanted was to see her angel one last time before she died. Clinging to the world, Abigail fought for her focus.
Larry opened the van door, and she lost the battle, finally succumbing to the darkness.
Thirty-Four
John
Dread rooted in the depths of John’s brain, a malevolent creature devouring what little hope he still harbored.
He was fetal, curled in the darkness of a van turned prison cell. His back was pressed against the black Plexiglas wall behind him. He rocked back and forth, nervously waiting for the world to come crashing in. Though he listened keenly to the events unfolding outside the van, he couldn’t hear much of anything beyond muffled exchanges while second-guessing his decision to get into the van.
It’s coming.
He closed his eyes, tried to focus on Abigail, connect with her. He could feel her, could even sense her proximity, but there was something — some sort of darkness surrounding her — preventing his access to her mind.
Then the explosions.
Brock shouting.
Abigail!
Then the gunshots.
John jumped up to a squatting position, ready to strike, his body prickling for action. But he was caged, helpless, the van walls feeling even tighter than the coffin around him.
He felt Abigail fading, wounded in the gunfire. He knew it as certainly as he knew the sun would soon be rising. He screamed, using his body as a battering ram, slamming himself against the side door as if he could somehow shake the locks loose.
“Abigail!”
John thought he heard something — her voice?
He stopped moving and tilted his head, hungry to hear any sounds rise above the gunshots. Everything went silent, time seeming to pause for whatever was coming. Either his side door would open to Larry, or the van would start moving, on their way to his would-be kidnappers, away from Abigail, who needed him now more than ever.
Silence was a slow and steady suffocation. He started to rock again, shaking the van wildly, screaming, “Let me out!”
Footsteps approached. John’s body tingled.
The side door slid open. He flinched, preparing for the worst. Larry’s shape silhouetted in the open door. He was silent, but John could see the truth in his eyes and sprawled on the asphalt a few yards away. Abigail, in a pool of blood, eyes open and staring at John in a dead gaze.
His heart crumbled.
John exploded from the van, sprinted toward her, and collapsed to her side, reaching to feel for a pulse even as her eyes held their dead gaze on the van. He caught himself, unsure what damage his touch could do in this state. He called to her, but no response.
“Don’t touch her!” Larry’s heavy footsteps thundered toward them. He reached down and touched the child’s neck. His eyes widened. “Holy shit!” She’s still alive.”
John’s voice cracked. “Call an ambulance, we’ve got to help her!”
Larry looked grave, his hand still on Abigail’s neck.
“We’ve gotta get out of here, John. Now! She’s not gonna make it, even if we stay.”
John’s mind raced. He shook his head, repeating, “No, no, no, no!”
A flicker from deep within the recesses of John’s forgotten memories — a glimmer of something almost recognizable, a faint echo of a lost transmission from a long-dead satellite.
Larry mumbled something about needing to get out of there before the cops, or agents, came. John closed his eyes, trying to block out his voice.
“Wait!” John snapped. “Give me a minute!”
John dove deeper into his murky subconscious, a blind man searching for keys along the ocean floor. Only John couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the keys, let alone recall what they unlocked.
“John … she’s dying.”
“I fucking know that!” John barked, spinning toward Larry, anger flashing, and then …
John had an idea.
“I can turn her. I can bring her back as a vampire, can’t I?”
Larry nodded. “You know how?”
“I think so, I am remembering … something.”
“If you do this,” Larry warned, “you’re sentencing her to a life of hell.”
“A life of hell is all she’s ever known, but a life of hell sure beats not living at all.”
John looked down at the helpless child — his angel.
Her open, glassy eyes cut straight into his heart. Though Larry said she was alive, John was pretty certain she couldn’t see him. Something resembling instinct whispered in his brain, Just let me take over. He wasn’t sure if the voice could be trusted or if it was wishful thinking that someone or something would answer his silent pleas for guidance.
Bite her.
Do it, now.
John knelt down, leaned in close, closed his eyes, and handed intuition the reins.
As John drew closer to her neck, he could feel her pulse, faint and barely there, against his fevered lips. Something pulled, commanded, compelled him. He opened his mouth. Pain splintered through John’s jaw as his teeth seemed to grind, twist, and churn beneath his gums, his canines growing longer and sharper, piercing the edges of his tongue. Blood flooded his mouth with the acrid taste of metal.
Bite her.
Rationality and doubt pleaded with him to stop.
This is insane; you’re going to finish her off right here!
John squeezed his eyes tighter, ignoring the doubt, and put his mouth on Abigail’s neck. Instincts screamed to just bite, but fear held him in check, wondering about his strength, worrying that he might bite in the wrong pace.
Do it!
Instinct flipped a switch
.
He bit down without thought or hesitation. Blood flooded his mouth, warm and bitter. He drank and swallowed in two reluctant gulps, then breathed into her wound, not breath from his lungs, but something else — essence delivered as elixir. A current, different and less intense than the sort he stole from the lives of so many, flowed, this time from him and into her.
Abigail’s body convulsed. A painful scream burst from her mouth.
John pulled back, afraid his touch had started a fire that would quickly consume her. Her fingers splayed as her legs shot stiffly out. Her back arched at an unnatural angle. Her mouth opened wide, twisted in agony as she fought for breath, her chest rapidly rising and falling. Her eyes opened, showing only white as her irises rolled into the back of her head.
John took another step back, his heart on the precipice — of either fear that these were Abigail’s final spastic death throes or joy that he’d managed to save her.
Then …
Abigail fell limp as if an invisible puppeteer had cut her strings. John dropped to his knees, his breath and heart on pause. Hair hung in tangles over her pale face. He couldn’t tell if she were dead or alive.
A silent moan escaped her open mouth as she lifted her head, hair falling from her waxen face, eyes blinking open. Though barely there, Abigail smiled and spoke in a voice so frail, the gathering wind nearly tore it asunder.
“My angel.”
Thirty-Five
Caleb
Swallow enough pills, and sleep eventually finds you.
Caleb found himself deep in dreams, though not in the bedroom of his youth.
He stood on a deck overlooking a pristine white shore, familiar though only through the hazy fog of fragmented memory. He was more relaxed than he’d remembered feeling in a while. Chasing criminals had a way of owning you even when off duty. Before their mutual I dos, Julia constantly complained, both with words and dancing eyes, about his inability to unplug from work and just be happy.
Julia!
He remembered the shoreline, the pristine white sands of Aruba where they spent three amazing weeks on their honeymoon. Which was, oddly enough, probably the last time he’d felt at peace. She’d made him promise to take three weeks off from work, a luxury he’d never experienced, even though he’d probably built up a half year’s worth of vacation time. He didn’t want to. He had too much work and knew it would pile up without his constant attention.
The world will still turn, and the job will get done without you.
She was right. For the first time in as long as Caleb could remember, he found his shoulders relaxing long enough to let him enjoy life. He returned home with an epiphany, and renewed purpose: life was his to create.
Family first, a husband’s duty.
That vow lasted almost until the end of his first week back, when Caleb found himself buried alive with a case that kept him hostage to the office from early light to mocking moon. One case turned to two, then weeks to months and months to years until, just like that, he’d slowly surrendered to fate’s shackles without even realizing it.
Waves lapped. He took a sip of wine. Behind him, Caleb heard a muffled voice from the other side of their honeymoon villa’s French doors. Even deep into dream and memory, a part of him was also aware of the waking life in which his wife was long since dead. An eager heart sped in his chest.
It had been so long since Julia had visited his dreams. Even though he’d wake up mourning her fresh, these brief visits were better than nothing.
He opened the door and …
Was again a child, back in the middle of that awful night that had been blotted from memory, stepping gingerly into the darkened hallway. Downstairs, Father was still screaming at Mother. The shadow man was just ahead, at the landing of the stairs. He turned back and, in that dissonant voice, warned Caleb to wait.
And he did.
Moments later, his father cried out, “What the fuck?”
The end of “fuck” was severed by a ripping sound followed by a wet thud and a splash that sent chills down Caleb’s spine.
He’s dead. The monster is dead.
While a part of him should have been happy that the man who tormented them could no longer do so, the reality of murder did not bring him relief. Panicked tears welled in Caleb’s eyes as warm piss trickled down his leg.
His mother screamed. At first, he assigned the sound to the horror of seeing her husband murdered. Yet the scream held an elevated fear that went far beyond the terror of a frightened witness, sharpened by the acid panic of self preservation.
“Hello, Mother.” The man in shadows spoke in a voice of boots crunching gravel.
Then, the sound of ripping flesh and gurgling, followed by silence.
Caleb waited, fear circling the drain of his throat.
She’s dead; you killed her!
The adult part of Caleb was frozen as well. He remembered nothing of this night. These memories were not those he’d owned for so long. This wasn’t how his parents had died, yet he knew it wasn’t a dream. This was a truth he’d been hiding from, or which had been somehow removed from his mind. Entombed memories were no less real for their burial. He urged his dream self to step forward, and unravel the mystery.
“Mommy!” young Caleb screamed, bolting down the stairs and into the living room.
He saw his father’s smoldering corpse, flesh still bubbling on a headless, twitching body.
The next two things he noticed in unison.
The shadow man, now looking slightly more human, stood in the center of the living room, his arms outstretched, while his mother, throat slashed and blood soaking through her thin gauzy night shirt, danced. Her arms were raised, her lifeless head rolling back and forth, barely there and maybe only by a thread of muscle or bone. Her feet hovered inches above the ground. The shadow man moved his arms wildly like a crazed marionette as Caleb’s mother danced some perverse jig.
The monster laughed.
Caleb screamed. The shadow man turned to him, surprised, and allowed his mother to collapse to the floor in an inanimate, bloody heap.
“Forgive me, a son should have one final dance with his mother, yes?” The trailing S a serpent’s hiss.
Caleb was confused. He longed to run at the monster, pound him, tear him apart, anything. But fear bolted his ankles to the floor.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Caleb?”
The monster drifted closer.
Caleb wanted to run. The adult Caleb also wanted to turn away, tears streaming down his sleeping cheeks. Neither Caleb could do anything but watch the mind movie that had no pause.
Finally, the child spoke.
“Why did you kill her?”
“Because!” the monster yelled, his voice sounding more boyish and human than before. “She left me. You all left me behind. With him.”
“She’s not your mother!” Caleb cried out.
“Ah, what have they done to you, Brother? You really don’t remember me, do you? It’s me … Jacob.”
Just like that, the shadow man’s shape dissipated like spiderwebs in a twister, and standing before Caleb was a boy, not much older than himself, naked and coated in the freshly spilled blood of Caleb’s parents.
Caleb was torn between confusion, anger, and a sudden, bottomless sorrow. None of this made sense, and his head felt as if it were going to split and spill its contents onto the gore-strewn floor.
“She made you forget, but I” — Jacob pointed at his head and spread his lips in a lunatic’s smile — “NEVER forget!”
The monster boy stepped forward.
Caleb took a step back, shaking.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you two. You’re my brothers.”
Brothers? Two? Who else is he talking about? Adult Caleb was puzzled, though his mind was too entrenched in the dream to untangle the logic.
The monster headed to the front door, opened it, and disappeared into the night.
This was all too much for
young Caleb. What was he supposed to do now? He wanted to march behind his mother into the arms of death. Adult Caleb, reliving these memories and feelings for the first time in decades, was willing to follow, to die right there in his dream.
But he couldn’t. Instead, he would wake. But something held him in the dream, in his past. Something yet to see.
A tiny voice called from upstairs. “Is he gone?”
Both Calebs glanced up at the four-year-old peering back between the banisters.
A boy so young should not see such things.
Adult Caleb stared at the child, feeling the cold weight of reality crashing through the deceptions he’d held true for so long.
I have a brother?
“Go back to your room, Johnny!”
The tears came fast.
Confusion, shock, and pain threatened to overwhelm him, but Caleb couldn’t allow it. Though only a child himself, he had to protect Johnny.
Family first, a brother’s duty.
Caleb snapped awake.
“John?”
Thirty-Six
Larry And John
Larry
The black van rolled along the highway beneath the bruised blush of early dawn. Larry looked in the rearview for the third time in two minutes, searching for cops, feds, or more gunmen, then stepped harder on the gas.
They were heading toward one of the many safe houses he kept scattered throughout the region. He had no doubt that an entire team of feds was turning over the motel, scouring through every hair and fiber, sorting through what was easily the biggest mass murder the area had seen. Since most of the bodies were burned to a crisp, the murders would be tied to John, intensifying an already white-hot manhunt.
Larry wasn’t too concerned about what was left behind. The motel and van (and even the van’s registration) were bought through an assumed name, and neither his DNA nor fingerprints were in any database, so it was doubtful that he left much of a trail. While circumstances had forced Larry to abandon his surveillance equipment, which would no doubt raise a battery of questions as to who was living there and what in the raging fires of hell they were doing, he’d managed to retrieve the bank of hard drives where he kept nearly all his research. Of course, he’d also grabbed the plastic totes from his van — essentially his portable survival kits, loaded with weapons, cash, and a few other items of contraband he didn’t dare leave behind.