He looked down.
There was a package.
DVD inside.
He popped the disc into his player. Puffed his cigarette. Watched video of himself at Father O'Hara's.
Jesus fuckin Christ.
Someone had been there. Following him a few feet away. That same creepy nightvision shit as with the tunnel video. Except he was the one on display.
Felipe watched himself move.
In the dark. He approached the front door. Knocked. Waited. No answer.
He tried the knob.
It turned.
Inside of O'Hara's was a mess. Like someone had turned it over. Garbage everywhere. Empty pizza boxes. Cartons of he didn't know what, overturned, leaking thick white fluid. He pinched his nose.
The camera so close at this point Felipe had no idea how he hadn't heard the guy.
But it went on.
He was checking magazines on the small table in the living room. Looking, maybe, for the delivery date since the whole place looked like it hadn't been lived in for months. He couldn't remember.
Fuck.
The magazines, man. Weird filth. Beyond pornographic. Stuff would make your dominatrix blush. The camera lingered on them. A lot of it piercing and blood play with folks who didn't look like they were enjoying it.
A Bible was there too. Most of the pages torn out. Strange things scribbled all over it. Arcane pictograms and words he didn't recognize. One bit written in English mentioning something under Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. But that was all.
In the kitchen, he found rotted food. Half eaten meals with maggots crawling around in that nightvision sight.
Felipe saw the bathroom. Blood in the sink. The enormous flow of it letting him now that, yeah, someone had been here. And not too long ago.
He pulled back the shower curtain.
A body hung there, held up from its feet by barbed wire that cut into the ankles. The veins there all popped, looking like loose dark spaghetti. The body had only part of a head. Most of it gone.
In the corner of the screen there was a shadow. Something with too many arms. Whipping and whirling about. Tentacles played over the scene, though the kid didn't hear it behind him. That black mass waiting.
Static started, low in the background. Sputters of white on the screen.
A deep bass pulse.
The kid turned.
The shadow was gone.
He headed back toward the door, just wanting to get out. Sickened by it all.
The cameraman always just a few feet away, avoiding the kid's gaze and the flashlight's glare as it panned across the ruined living room.
The video started tearing. Ripping at the edges.
The static started blaring.
The deep pulse echoed.
Felipe grabbed at the sides of his head. Watching himself on the damn tape as a shape formed at the corner of the screen. He wanted to scream. To warn himself to watch out. Because holy shit something was coming out of the dark. Something was coming crawling and he didn't see it.
God almighty. Get out of there. Run.
The thing grabbed him.
He hacked away at it with the tools on his belt.
He punched into the writhing madness with his crowbar.
Made it bleed as it tore at his flesh. Ripped into him.
Felipe looked at his arms and his chest. Watched as the black thing on the tape did the same violence to his skin onscreen as he saw on himself. And in the shadows he was combating ebbed a roiling, throbbing sea of arms and open mouths and blinking eyes.
God almighty.
But he did manage to fight them off.
While the guy holding the camera laughed.
Laughed.
***
Felipe drank himself dumb again.
Next time he woke up, there was a note under his door.
See you soon.
***
Felipe sat at the back of the train with Dan.
"I had the shittiest weekend," Felipe said to Dan. Gesturing with anger. Telling him: You have no fuckin idea what's happening to me. Something is following me. And someone's watching me. I was attacked. I saw a body at the priest's house.
The kid showed the old guy his bandages.
The old guy said, "You sure you didn't get into some scrape you don't quite remember? Asshole with a knife can do a lot of damage you don't realize until the next day."
The two of them, riding the train to the next stop, where they'll get off and check from 67th up for breaks in the track.
"I like you, man," Dan said, "but we both know booze likes you too." He paused. "And I'm not saying you've got a problem or anything, but this all might be some shit in your head."
"Hey fuck you. Booze's never been this kind of problem. I never seen shit before. You even hear what I was saying? I watched a video someone took of me at the Father's house. Like he was waiting. And then a DVD copy of it got dropped off. You follow?"
Dan nodded. Sparked a cigarette since there was nobody in the last car with them. "You saying the thing behind the wall's got something to do with this?"
"I don't know. I think so. Something to do with it, yeah. Father O'Hara too."
"That body might have been the Father's. You check?"
"Thing was missing a lot of its head, man. I needed to get out."
"Fair enough. What about the thing that attacked you?"
"Don't remember. It was hard to see on the tape. Had tentacles. Sharp."
"Think it was Father O'Hara?" Dan asked, tapping the ash from his cigarette.
"What kinda man is that? Has tentacles with eyes and mouths all opening? No. But I gotta find that guy. He's gotta know something."
"Least you were able to fight it off." Dan chuckled.
Felipe patted the tools on his belt. "I never take these off now. Not after that first night watching the DVD." He snapped his fingers. "Watching that tape the Father shot. Son of a bitch. I wonder if O'Hara's the one following me. Taping me."
"Why you think that?"
"He was the guy taped that thing under the tracks first. Maybe it made him lose his shit. Like, here's this long-time priest. God-man. Sees something happen so bad it destroys his beliefs."
"Like what kind of loving deity would allow a creature that horrible to exist."
"Yeah. That kind of thing can shake the shit outta you. Happens just to regular folks in wars and stuff. Seeing those nightmares. And this thing, man, it doesn't even show all the way on tape. You get glimpses. Teases. But it's like staring into black madness. Drive a person bugfuck. Shit, me not being able to remember stuff's probably just because my brain can't handle it. Shuts down."
"Maybe. Yeah, maybe. What about other folks who saw the tape of Jimmy? I saw it. Couple other guys did too."
"Don't know. I think it does something to you. Bad dreams. But nobody else saw the actual thing like O'Hara did. He was right there. Other MTA guys in the tunnel were off getting rope or whatever."
"To pull him up. Never even found the body. MTA and NYPD figured he drowned or something. Plugged the hole. Out of sight, out of mind.
"Speaking of which."
The train slowed to a halt at the 67th Street stop.
Felipe followed Dan out the sliding doors. They waved to the conductor. The subway cars sped away a moment later, going north toward 71st Street. On the south-bound side, a local R rumbled on its way.
Checking to make sure the coast was clear, Dan hit the tracks. He waved Felipe down, and the kid landed next to him.
Neither moved.
Dan saw Felipe looking down the tracks. At the hole.
"You want to go listen again," Dan said.
"Yeah," Felipe said, starting to walk into the dark. "Yeah, I do."
"Obsession like this is bad for your health." Dan following, slow, behind him.
"I'll be fine. I just want to listen. Maybe it can tell me something."
"Considering all that's happened to you since, isn't this a terrible ide
a?"
"Just hang on," he said. He put a hand on either side of the hole for support and leaned his head in close to the barricade.
"Bad idea, man."
Felipe didn't even acknowledge the old guy now. He pressed his ear to the wood. Closed his eyes. Tried not to listen to the rats and debris rustling in the darkness around him.
He heard it. Weird pounding. Half-acoustic pulsing. That wet heavy sound. Sliding against the rock down there. Right on the other side.
The voice came again. Those whispers. Those whispers spiraling up from the blackness. The words pushing themselves out. Slithering between the cracks. Crawling up into his brain.
Jumbled nonsense again. Just guttural croaks. Mumbles echoing.
And then the words began to come through clear. Words he could understand. He wasn't quite hearing them – that wasn't the right way to put it. He just started to understand them in his mind.
It is nice to meet you, the voice said.
Felipe survival instinct told him to flee. Instead, he whispered, "Nice to meet you guys too. More than one of you down there?"
Yes. We are many. But we are not all the same. You have to be careful.
"Careful of what?"
The one that got out.
The mad one.
A slithering noise behind Felipe. He heard it. A cold ball of ice formed in his chest. He trembled. His breathing grew ragged. He let his head fall forward so that it thudded on the wood. He turned, slow. Not wanting to see what was making that noise behind him.
No, he hadn't heard Father Daniel O'Hara creep up. Hadn't heard at all. Too engrossed with the voice on the other side. Hadn't heard O'Hara start to change, either, until it was too late.
Dan said, "Come to me, child."
Felipe stared in horror at the former priest.
Tentacles sprouted from O'Hara's torso. Black wet tubular protrusions. Along each ribbed tentacle grew mouths and eyes. They opened and salivated. Blinked and glared. Smaller tendrils emerged from his neck, writhing like sea anemones. His jaw split horizontally. The skin tore away. Hung in flaps on the sides of his teeth. His eyes began to glow. Bright white orbs with pinpricks of black at the center.
It smelled like rot. Decayed meat.
O'Hara laughed.
Static flared in Felipe's head.
The half-acoustic pulsing thudded in front of him and all around him.
"I had been down there for so long, child," O'Hara said, his voice distorted and scratchy, sounding like there were high and low frequencies colliding to form a sonic cacophony. A mockery of human speech. "Sleeping. Waiting. Dreaming. And bored.
"When they woke me up, I was so hungry. I had to eat. And then I saw the priest. I grabbed him as he tried to watch me feed. Pushed myself into him. Started to play with his toy. The video machine."
Felipe looked and saw the camera floating. Recording. Held up by one of the tentacles.
The shape that had been O'Hara still laughing. Insane.
Felipe fell to his knees. Banged them hard against the steel tracks. The static in his head grew so loud he thought his skull would burst. He coughed. Almost vomited. Dipped forward and landed face-first in a fetid puddle.
"I am hungry again," the squirming shape said.
Felipe spat filth from his mouth. Said, "Why me?"
"Why? You make the mistake of thinking there is a reason for it all. That this means something. I am a son of my father. The alien other god. The nuclear chaos that rips through the cosmos. I share my father's traits. I brought that uncaring madness here, when this rock was just a hot ball. And I have had so much fun playing with you. There were never any voices behind the wall. It was always just me. It always will be just me. Crawling around that stupid mammalian brain of yours.
"I am chaos. Eternal."
Felipe dragged himself off the dirty tracks.
An express train blew past them on the center tracks.
He knew they wouldn't be seen. Not in the dark. Not with the trains moving as fast as they did. Conductors didn't pay attention to the normal shit around em half the time in the light.
There was no hope of someone coming to his rescue like magic. Not this late at night. There weren't even any people on the platforms.
He pulled the crowbar from his belt. Approached the writhing shape.
The O'Hara thing attacked him. As it had in the apartment. Though now with the intent of feeding instead of playing. It wrapped its tentacles around him. Started to dig into his flesh past the bandages. Flayed him. Blood began to cascade down his arms and chest in rivulets.
Felipe struck back. Shoved the hook end of his crowbar into the tentacle eyes nearest him. They popped like grapes. Great gouts of gore shut up. Splashed him with yellow-green.
The shape howled and laughed with the new pain.
Felipe beat the thing. Hammered on it with half-blind, barbaric strokes.
It hoisted him up as he struggled and fought. Opened its mouth enormous, distended as a snake's would be before devouring a meal too big.
Felipe swung the crowbar up and rammed the pointed end through the underside of the former priest's jaw. He skewered the monstrous beast's head. Shoved the point all the way through until it burst out the top of the ancient thing's skull with a squish and a small geyser.
The static peaked. The pulsing quickened.
Blood fell from Felipe's ears. Veins exploded in his eyes.
The shape dropped him. He held onto the crowbar as he fell. His weight and gravity pulling it free with the wet sound of falling spaghetti.
O'Hara screamed.
Felipe hit the ground and crawled. Pushed himself through the roiling living ropes of the ancient thing. They grabbed at him. Pulled him. Tore through his clothes and into his flesh. But he got to where he wanted.
The son of chaos howled, "You will suffer. You will beg to die, but I will not let you." It started pulling away strips of skin from under Felipe's jeans. Its tendrils and chewing mouths looking like dark licorice against the deep red of Felipe's blood and muscles. The hundred eyes all seeming to smile.
Felipe said nothing as he smiled back. No snark or one-liners.
He was happy. Soon to be at peace.
He reached for the third rail with his crowbar. Laid it against the electrified track.
The world exploded electric blue.
The nameless terror screamed again. In fear.
Felipe's nervous system overloaded. Cooked. His innards hissed. Expanded and crinkled. He would have cried out, but he had no breath in him.
The perverted form of the former priest shook and jittered. It leaked its wretched pus from open mouths and sores and wounds that the kid had created. The hundred eyes along its tentacles ruptured. Its face crunched into an expression of hate and disbelief.
It cried out for its father. The nuclear chaos. The one surrounded by endless pulsing and mindless piping.
But there was no rescue.
Both man and monster were destroyed in a merciful bolt of electricity.
William Vitka is a journalist and author. He's written for CBSNews.com, Stuff Magazine, GameSpy, On Spec Magazine and The Red Penny Papers to name a few. His debut novel, INFECTED, was published by Graveside Tales in late 2012. His anthology of short stories, THE SPACE WHISKEY DEATH CHRONICLES, was published at the crack of 2013 by Curiosity Quills. He lives in New York City.
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Madness Under The Tracks Page 2