Eli knew.
This son of a bitch knew they were sacrifices. Maybe not fully but definitely enough that if he would have just spoken up sooner, his sister, and the rest of his family, may not be in the mortal danger they were in now. Things may have been different.
Eli bent down and started untying his shoe.
“What are you doing?” Toby asked.
Eli finished untying and removed the lace completely, leaving the tongue of his shoe laying there in the nude, as if Eli had just picked up the shoe from the side of the street and threw it on.
“We’re going to wrap this around your wrists and pretend I have you tied up.”
Paisley could barely withstand the absolute stench that surrounded her. All she remembered was tossing herself out the window, making a run for it, and bumping into Addy. Then she woke up here, tied up in the nearly complete darkness with her head throbbing. And that smell, oh my god, that smell made the disorientation a thousand times worse. What, she wondered, in this terrible, shitty universe could possibly smell that bad?
Her vision was finally beginning to clear. There were lights flickering. No, they weren’t lights. They were candles, tons of them, all over the room. And the room, she saw now, was actually the basement, which she had never been in until now. The light from the tiny flames flicked and tossed against the stone walls like there was a breeze circulating the basement somehow. But there wasn’t.
All she could see ahead of her was the vague outline of a door, one that she somehow knew had to be the door. But even with the yellow light from the candles, she couldn’t make out anything on it that looked like words. She tried to move her hands, but the rope had them pinned together behind her back. She was in a chair, that much she knew. The wood creaked and strained as she tried to somehow wiggle herself free. But there was no luck to be had. Her attempts only seemed to make the rope feel tighter and more painful against her skin.
That’s when she heard the dry clank of footsteps against the cement floor and a person moved into view. At first, they appeared as nothing but a dark figure, a walking shadow come to life. But then she removed her hood, and Paisley saw a face that took a moment to be recognized but quickly gained the terrifying identity of Addy’s mother, the tall, stone-faced woman who had answered the door when they came knocking in search of Addy.
“Hello,” she said, her face remaining still as if it were actually unable to do anything but glare scathingly.
Paisley said nothing. She was trying to devise a plan for escape, but nothing was coming to her. The situation seemed utterly impossible. She was probably going to die down there with that smell and this evil woman, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“I need you to tell me something. And it’s very important, because if you don’t tell me, I’m going to make bad things happen to you. Do you understand?”
Paisley still said nothing. Her heart had begun pounding so loudly, she was actually surprised this she-devil couldn’t hear it. Her feet weren’t tied up. That was the one thing she noticed that could be an advantage to her. Why hadn’t they tied those as well? She wasn’t sure. Maybe there wasn’t time. Or not enough rope. Based on how lax this woman seemed, it might have been that they just didn’t care. But if the woman got any closer, she may be able to kick her. And, while that wouldn’t really help her escape, it would feel damn good to hear her yelp.
“Where is the rest of your family?”
Paisley almost burst out laughing but stifled all but a soft chuckle. The woman stepped closer to her.
“Something is funny?”
Something was funny. Did this lady really miss the car full of people out front? Had she walked right by without noticing? Paisley could only hope. She steeled herself, forcing the brief smile away from her face so that she may look at this woman. Paisley lifted her eyes to meet with hers, still remaining silent, adamant that she would tell her nothing, only try to buy the others enough time to wake up and get away. Now that they were out of the house, she hoped their recovery would be quick, like when her parents had taken Trevor to see the doctor.
There was movement in her peripheral vision, and two others came a little forward, as if breaking off from the darkness itself, but neither removed their hood. It was the third new addition that showed his face. Stepping into the light, he pulled the hood off and looked at Paisley. It was the doctor, a smile on his face as he stepped into brighter light. Paisley had to hold back another laugh. Now that she knew these people were dumb enough to pass right by without checking the car, the outfits were beginning to feel more silly than scary.
Until the doctor drew a long knife from within his gown, the silver blade gleaming off the flame’s light. She gasped, a wave of putrid air rushing into her opened mouth. She gagged as if choking on a solid object. Another dizzy spell came on suddenly. The others, the ones who hadn’t shown their faces, moved forward a little, and she wondered how many more there were behind her, or to her sides, just out of view. She felt surrounded.
Faces started popping in and out of the darkness. There must have been a hundred of them there, standing just beyond the veil of darkness. The darkness seemed to move, the faces with it, undulating in waves. She tried to focus, her head feeling heavy and weightless at the same time, trying hard to distinguish the faces, to see who they were. But it was impossible. Because just as the faces would come into focus, they would disappear.
“Where are they?” the doctor asked, coming forward, holding the knife at ready.
But she was out of it, watching as the darkness swirled like an ocean, the waves, people, somehow floating everywhere now, not only around her, but above her, higher than the door, in the ceiling. None of them were smiling like the doctor. They all looked exactly how she felt, trapped and afraid.
Eli opened the door and walked Toby inside, Toby’s hands behind his back with the rope wrapped very loosely around his wrists. They took in their surroundings with high-alert as they entered. To both their surprise, nobody was waiting on the other side to attack them. In fact, it didn’t appear there was anybody there at all. They scanned the area, baffled.
But then there was a noise. Toby knew straight away that it had come from the basement. He tried to hurry ahead but was held back by Eli’s grip.
“Let’s take it slow,” Eli said, whispering. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us down there.”
Eli remembered the pocketknife he had in his pocket and wished he had more, not only more weapons but more time. They needed a plan, and beyond this rope thing, they had none. But sometimes that’s just how life was, a fucking mess, chaos, and you never knew what was going to happen next. Like meeting Paisley and throwing his life on the line to save her and her family. Sometimes you just had to go for it.
They headed for the basement, but slowly, their steps soft as to not alert those below of their presence. At the basement door, they halted, both taking in a deep breath, knowing that beyond this door there was not only danger but a horrible smell, that of death. And it may be the last door either of them ever walked through. Toby wished it were a better door, grander, maybe made of gold or something. It was a funny thought, one to calm his nerves. It didn’t work.
Toby opened the door.
The doctor seemed more like an insane surgeon now, his hand firmly gripping the blade as it hovered over Paisley’s fingers. He said he would take her fingers off and make her eat them if she didn’t speak the answers he wanted. She shook, pinning her body as far back against the chair as she could. But she wasn’t going anywhere.
She could give a fake answer just to get him to stop. Wasn’t that the fatal flaw in most torture tactics? The fact that people would say anything to not lose their fingers, or worse, their life. She stuttered something, but it was nothing but jumbled nonsense. She couldn’t even line up her thoughts long enough to formulate a sentence let alone a plausible lie.
“Please don’t,” she mumbled.
It was not the strong, firm lie she
wanted, but it did cause him to stop and look up, directly into her eyes. The faces in the dark were still there but were blurred now by tears.
“I will stop. All you have to do is tell me where the others are.”
She was right about to shake her head no, her throat too dry, too worn out to speak another word, when the basement door squeaked open behind her. Everybody stopped and looked up. A smile formed on their faces, striking fear and anguish into her bones. They must have found them. There was nothing left now, other than to die.
Down the stairs came Toby, Eli in tow, Eli’s hands placed firmly over Toby’s. “I found this one outside.”
Eli’s voice almost brought a smile to Paisley’s face until his words processed in her mind. He found this one outside. Which one, she wondered, had they found? And how had he found one but not the others?
“Let me go!” Toby yelled. “You fucking monsters! Let me go!”
Addison’s mother laughed. “Monsters? Is that what you think we are?”
Toby thrashed around, pretending to try to break free from Eli’s grasp. It caught Eli off guard, almost causing him to lose his grip. But he held strong, glad of Toby’s actions because he wasn’t sure anybody would believe their act, especially with Toby being a little bit bigger than Eli himself.
“You lure people to this house,” Toby yelled, the words not truly an act, but all the built up rage finally escaping. “Then you feed them to this house like cattle. You sick bitch!”
But the woman only laughed, shedding a wide grin for them all to see. She started to talk, but another cut her off. A hooded figure stepped forward from the dark.
“You think it is we who are the monsters?” a girl’s voice said as the hood was removed to reveal Addison. “We are the protectors. We are the reason this city is still standing, the reason it prospers. Without us, all of it would crumble. It is you that are the monsters. You are merely six people. The city is made up of thousands. You selfish ingrates would have them all die so that you may live?”
“So that we may live?” Toby was growling now, his words coming out with such disdain, such hate, that it was nearly palpable around him. “We didn’t do anything wrong to deserve to die! You don’t get to decide who lives and who dies!”
“Unfortunately for you,” Addison’s mother said, a small smile on her shadowed face, “we do. And we have decided that it is you two, and the other four, who shall die.”
They circled around Paisley, looking to surround Toby. Paisley started jerking at her arms again, but the ropes were just too tight. She couldn’t break free.
They were like stalking hyenas as they approached Toby. But he was ready. Eli had already loosened his grip. He couldn’t take them all; Toby knew that. Plus, one of them had a big-ass knife. There was only one thing he could do, and he had no idea if it would work or do anything at all.
He burst forward, pulling his hands apart and sending the rope dropping to the floor. He went for Addison, her being the smallest, and charged right through her. She jumped out of the way at the last moment, startled that he had broken free. As he passed by her, he was glad, a small part of him happy that he didn’t have to ram her to the floor.
He stopped at the door, the etchings just barely visible in the flickering candlelight. The way the candlelight danced against the stone walls made him feel like he was in an ancient cave standing before the entrance to an Egyptian tomb.
There was clatter and commotion behind him as everyone made to rush him. Toby shoved the key into the lock and screamed the words like he had been rehearsing them all day.
“ULTRA HAEC QUAEDAM TENEBRAE MANENT IPSAS UT LIBERES VERBA CLAVE CANTA!”
As the final word slipped from his tongue, he turned the key.
A light breeze whipped through the basement as if the door was releasing a breath it had long held. Toby released the key and stepped back. For a long moment, he wondered if that was it, if the gust was all that was held behind the door. Until a black mist suddenly began seeping through the outlining cracks of the door.
It came out slow at first, and then in a stream, licking up the walls, following them like vines until the darkness spread to the ceiling. This darkness was impossibly black, like a new color darker even then the shadows that lurked in every corner of the room. Even as it climbed across the ceiling like flames, they could all see the blackness separate from all the other darkness.
The entire room had fallen into silence. All except Eli, who hurried past the stunned captors and used his pocketknife to cut the ropes off Paisley. None of them seemed to notice, their eyes fixated on the ceiling and walls.
The door opened. Toby hadn’t touched it. Nobody had. But it was open, and Toby was staring inside. The candle flames had grown in height, as if feeding on the darkness. Their light shone through the door at a well. It was short, built up just a few feet off the ground. On the stones that formed the well were carvings that Toby recognized as Native American in origin from history classes he had taken in school. They depicted people holding spears, fighting back a monster that engulfed most of the remainder of the well, the creature drawn in with some sort of black substance.
Like the well was a beacon, it drew Toby in until he was standing over it, looking straight down into its depths. All he saw was blackness, not as if it were a bottomless hole, but rather, as if it were filled near the brim with black ink. On the inside of the well, between the rocks and the ink, were more rocks, these ones shaped differently, as if carved out with different tools than the others. And on those rocks were even more symbols, these ones completely different from the ones on the outer rocks and those on the door. They looked beyond ancient, something similar to hieroglyphs but completely different at the same time. As if being told by the well itself, he suddenly knew that those carvings were left by peoples who knew no time, who existed long before those who wrote on the door and long before those that carved the people on the rocks. They were people from the beginning.
A light rumble erupted under his feet, just enough to pull his attention away from the pit of black. He stepped away from it, back into the real world, as if severing an invisible connection. Then the black that was in the well leapt from its confines straight into the air, smashing into the ceiling like it was being poured onto the ground, only the ground was the ceiling. It splattered and spread, far more violently than the mist had. It rampaged out the door directly over Toby’s head and infected the entire basement in moments.
First it ran along the walls just as the mist had, but then it sprung away from it in long strands, latching onto the faces of the doctor, Addison’s mother, and the two that had never spoken or uncovered their hoods. It pumped into their mouths, and into their eyes, and even into their pores, stretching them wide and filling them until their skin went dark and their eyes went blank. It expanded beneath their skin like veins of pure darkness, cutting off into different directions like the roots of a tree, as if they were in a hurry to be everywhere all at once.
It skipped right past Toby. He stood there in complete shock. He thought as it leapt from the well that he was dead for sure. But it was as if the darkness had ignored him, choosing instead to attack these other people, its captors, the ones who held it hostage for God only knew how long.
Toby regained himself and burst toward Eli and Paisley. He grabbed them.
“C’mon!” he yelled, dragging them behind him. “Let’s go!”
They rushed up the stairs as the blackness twirled and exploded off of every surface, a massive tsunami surging over a dam and engulfing the city below.
They reached the peak of the stairs. “Get her outside! I have to look for the others!” Toby yelled.
“They’re in the vehicle already!” Paisley said. “Everybody except Robbie!”
Robbie had woken suddenly. Every atom in his body felt like it was ready to burst. It was as if his body were giving him one last chance to live, to escape. He had been dreaming for so long, and so darkly, that he had begun to thin
k those dreams were reality.
But they weren’t. He rolled off his bed and hit the floor with a painful thump, which woke him the rest of the way. He looked up, seeing that his bed had somehow been pinned against the door. He couldn’t move it. That’s what his mind, what logic told him. But while he slept, it was as if a thousand whispers had sewn themselves into his mind, infinite voices that all blended together into one message.
He had to get out of this house.
He grabbed the corner of the bed and started pulling. But nothing happened. The bed didn’t budge. He didn’t even have the strength left to move a damn bed. He pushed back the tears, the sorrow, that he felt building up within him. He just had to escape.
With everything he had left, he grappled the bed again and pulled. It moved. The bed slid across the floor just ten or so inches. But it was enough. He pulled the door open and turned himself sideways, thankful of the weight he had lost.
He popped through to the other side and immediately fell to his knees. The strength it took to move the bed really had been all he had left. He felt a sort of gust behind him, like someone had just cracked a window but then closed it again. He looked behind him. From the cracks in the floorboards, a darkness began seeping up. Small black droplets slid through and then lifted as if gravity didn’t exist and flung up to the ceiling, splattering on contact.
When he looked back down at the floor, he saw that those few drops were not the only ones. The entire floor was turning black. He didn’t know what it was, only that he needed to get away from it. But he couldn’t. He tried to stand, to get out of there, to run, but his body didn’t react to that need. Whatever energy he had; it was gone now.
And as the blackness took form in front of him, rising in front of him like a starving beast, he wasn’t even angry. It was a fact that he had already known to be true. Before he even moved the bed, before his last ounce of energy had been sucked from him, he knew that he belonged to this house. He remembered the woman he had seen in the hall, the one that looked like she was running toward him. He knew then that she wasn’t really running toward him, or toward anything at all. She was running away, away from this darkness. The same one that reached its black tentacles toward him now. But he wouldn’t run. He couldn’t, not even if he wanted to.
A Place So Wicked Page 24