The Dark Game

by Jonathan Janz

  Not to mention committing murder herself.

  But any reason not to descend those basement steps was a cowardly reason, a retelling of her abandonment of Molly to the hungry ice.

  Lucy had to go down.

  She grabbed the knob, twisted it open, and flicked the light switch.

  The illumination seemed weaker than ever. Several steps down, her doubt began to grow. Why, she wondered, would Rick have chosen to descend these steps?

  She decided there were two reasons:

  One, he’d been drawn down here before. Curiosity, fear, and half a dozen subtler emotions had been stirred by this dank, eerie place.

  Two, he might not have had a choice.

  This second possibility deepened the chill in her bones, made it harder to step from the wooden risers into the pool of shadows at the base of the stairs.

  The pull string was, if she remembered correctly, fifteen feet or so from the steps. She thought she could see it, but that might have been just a downhanging cobweb. Lucy waded into the murk.

  Would she reach for the string only to encounter her father’s dangling corpse?

  She took the last few steps in a rush and groped for the string.

  Found it. Yanked.

  Sucked in breath as the bulb washed the basement with light.

  But not enough light, she realized.

  She heard a weak thumping from her left.

  She honed in on a single steel door. And heard the sound clearly.

  Someone was screaming in there.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rick’s shrieks echoed through the door.

  Lucy grabbed the handle, hauled up on it. Steel ground on steel, the sound enough to make her teeth chatter, but the door came loose. She flung it open, beheld what lay within, and felt her body go limp.

  Rick was half-cocooned in a dingy white web, which issued from the wall in quivering tendrils. His body had been forced into the wall, his torso and arms fixed in place by the undulating surface, leaving only the feet to drum on the ground.

  It was the sight of Rick’s face that got her moving. Or rather the gossamer threads crawling over Rick’s cheeks, the strands grafting themselves to his flesh, and the livid marks there, like the tendrils were feeding on Rick’s body.

  She went for his head, which was almost entirely encased in the horrid white webwork. The tendrils were swarming over his lips, slithering greedily toward his tongue.

  Lucy raked her fingernails down the side of his head, rending the strands easily, and then she was at it with both hands, heedless of the way the wall began to shriek, unmindful of the hissing sound the tendrils made as they shot toward her. She brought out the Bowie knife, began to slash at the tendrils cocooning his torso. She was working on his arms when she realized the tendrils had closed over one of her ankles. Grunting, she kicked to sever the strands. Rick joined her in freeing himself.

  They both fought, Lucy slashing at the skeins with the knife, Rick jerking his left arm loose and bucking against the hammock of tendrils.

  When Rick was free, they tumbled back and landed in the open doorway. They scrambled away from the hungry ridges and didn’t stop until they were directly under the yellow bulb in the main room.

  She inspected his face. There were angry red splotches on his skin, but it didn’t appear as though the flesh had been pierced or corroded.

  Lucy cast a look around the shadowy basement. “Will’s upstairs,” she said. “Let’s get him and go.”

  “The forest goes on forever.”

  Lucy thought of the farmhouse, her father’s bloated corpse.

  “Where then?” she asked.

  He leaned against her. “I think those things…they siphon the energy.…”

  Lucy cast a fearful glance over her shoulder. “Rick,” she pleaded, “we have to—”

  “Wells is in the tower,” Rick said. “The keep.”

  “Can’t we just, you know, get the hell out of here?”

  “I don’t think it’s possible,” Rick said. “I think we have to kill Wells.”

  “How can you.…”

  But the rest died in her throat when she beheld the open doorways.

  Ghostly white strands protruded from several of them, floating, yearning, creeping nearer.

  The house was alive.

  I’ve made it stronger, she thought. In killing Bryan, I somehow fed it.

  She turned away and peered through the other doorways. They were crammed with bodies.

  Marek Sokolov.

  Tommy Marston.

  Evan Laydon.

  Anna Holloway.

  Elaine Kovalchyk.

  Sherilyn Jackson.

  Staring at their nude, undulating corpses, Lucy could scarcely breathe. Marek’s body lay imprinted in the rippling wall at a weird angle, his midsection completely sunken in, the edges of his limbs and shoulders eaten away by the house.

  He was the first killed, Lucy thought. That’s why his body is so desecrated.

  By contrast, Anna’s body appeared pale but preserved. Only the expression of frozen terror on her face, her missing fingers, and the livid bite marks dotting her flesh indicated she was anything but a healthy young woman.

  The worst by far was Tommy. In life he’d been arrogant, too handsome for his own good.

  In death he was scarcely recognizable.

  Except for a few patches here and there, the bones were denuded, his fleshless musculature reminding her of those grisly renderings in biology textbooks. His exposed teeth resembled some comic book villain, his lidless eyes unnaturally large. She only recognized him because of his curly brown hair, which was matted with blood and undulating along with the rest of his carcass.

  “Look out!” Rick gasped.

  She spun in time to see him smashing away a webwork of strands, which had nearly claimed Lucy.

  Her flesh crawling, she joined Rick in ripping the pale skeins.

  “Let’s move,” he said. “This is a deathtrap.”

  They reached the top of the steps and burst into the hallway.

  Chapter Twelve

  …and with a wicked grin, the king slashed down at her with his sword.

  Will reread the paragraph he’d just written, took a deep breath. Anna, the protagonist, had just saved Richard from the castle’s hellish dungeon. Now Anna and Richard were battling the Magic King in the tallest tower.…

  She felt the bite of the blade on her shoulder, dropped to her knees. The king’s grin became triumphant. He surged forward, his sword poised for the killing blow.

  A wave of dizziness swam over Will, his vision darkening. The pain in his back was growing more acute by the minute.

  Concentrate, he told himself. Concentrate and finish the tale.

  Blood dripping from a score of wounds, Richard lunged at the king, the sharp knife aiming for the weak point in the royal armor. The king’s eyes widened as the blade darted nearer, and though his reflexes were astounding, his surprise was—

  “Too slow,” a voice behind Will said.

  Will spun in his chair, and though the movement sent a squalling pain through his back, his shock eclipsed everything.

  Wilson stood in the center of the room, a beatific smile on his face.

  “Did you truly believe you could rush this?”

  Think, Will told himself. Think.

  Wilson had never looked more imposing. The man’s hair had been loosed of its accustomed ponytail, and that, combined with his broad shoulders, made him appear leonine.

  “This is the end, Mr. Church.”

  Will knew he should mount some sort of defense. But Wilson’s sudden appearance, the expression of infinite wisdom on the man’s face, the nasty pain ratcheting higher in Will’s body…all of it conspired to undo him.

  “You have fai
led,” Wilson said.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Say it with feeling, Mr. Church!” Wilson commanded. “You returned to the mansion to fight, did you not? Why tremble as your end draws near?”

  Will glanced at his pages.

  “The notion was a sound one,” Wilson said. “Take the story based on this retreat and use it to assassinate your host.” Wilson stepped nearer. “The truth is, I don’t know what would’ve happen had you killed Roderick in this fairy tale. No one’s attempted it before. And that, though I’m loath to admit it, is a credit to you, Mr. Church.”

  Will stared at the pages, his vision blurring.

  Wilson stepped nearer. “Though you lasted longer than I ever would have believed, I’m sorry to say that your tragic flaw will be your undoing.”

  Will frowned.

  Wilson uttered a breathless laugh. “You still don’t know, do you? My dear boy, it’s the misuse of time. Don’t you know that all stress, all anxiety, can be traced to a lack of time?”

  Wilson towered over him. “You’ve never appreciated it. Your mind has always stewed in the past or fretted about the future. Which is precisely why you squander the present.” Wilson bent at the waist, hands clutching his knees. “Did you really believe you could finish a novel in a few minutes? It took Miss Jackson days to reach this point. How did you think you’d finish it?”

  Will opened his mouth, but Wilson interrupted, “By cheating. You thought you’d skulk up here like some treacherous jackal and undo Mr. Wells with your woeful scribblings.”

  A thought dawned in Will’s head, one so obvious he couldn’t believe he hadn’t arrived at it earlier. “You had to stop me,” he said. “Why else would you be here?”

  “Mr. Wells deemed it necessary.”

  “He knew I’d figured out—”

  “Nothing, Mr. Church. You’ve figured out nothing, learned nothing.”

  Will gripped the pencil tighter.

  “And now,” Wilson said, reaching for him, “you’re out of time.”

  Will swung the pencil at Wilson’s face, but Wilson snagged his wrist, squeezed.

  Above the cracking sounds, he heard Wilson growl at his ear. “Have you forgotten, Mr. Church? I see. I know.”

  Will twisted in his seat. “Let go of me.”

  “Let go of you?” A wintry smile. “You’re like an idiot in a Faulkner novel, spouting revelatory dialogue without realizing it.”

  “Fuck you,” Will moaned, sinking to his knees.

  “More profundity!” Wilson crowed.

  Will glanced about for the pencil, but it had rolled under the bed.

  Wilson drove him to the floor, his mad face drifting nearer. “‘Let me go,’ you say. Don’t you realize how selfish you are? Everyone considered you a good person, but at heart, you’re an abandoner.”

  “Didn’t…abandon…my friends.”

  “Have you saved anyone?” A rough shake of Will’s wrist. “Good intentions mean nothing.”

  “Why did you stop me then?”

  A pause, Wilson’s face tightening. “What?”

  Will glared up at the man. “Why did you stop me? I was at the climactic moment—”

  “Ungainly drivel.”

  “—and the peasant was getting ready to strike the king down—”

  “‘Smite’, you dolt. It should have read ‘smite’.”

  “—but you weren’t writing it,” he said. And as he stared into Wilson’s bitter face, the thought revealed itself to Will, as lucid and brilliant as a spotlighted marquee. “You’re jealous of me.”

  Wilson snorted. “Of all the writers Mr. Wells has entertained—”

  “You can’t write,” Will said. “You can’t create.”

  “—to believe I would envy you, the indolent, passive—”

  “The Siren and the Specter,” Will said. “You know it’s a good book, maybe even a great one.”

  “I know no such—”

  “And you know you could never create something like it because you’re only what Wells allows you to be.”

  Wilson’s upper lip twisted in a snarl. “Silence.”

  “An errand boy. A lapdog.”

  “Silence!”

  “You’ll never do anything worthwhile because Wells holds you prisoner.”

  Wilson clutched the front of Will’s shirt. “I am in every college in the world! I am better known—”

  “Paper,” Will answered. “You’re only known on paper. Even when they discuss you, they do it in the abstract, studying you like a rock, reading you through different lenses—”

  “I’ll kill you,” Wilson spat.

  “Marxist, feminist, postmodernist—”

  Wilson shook him.

  “—at the whim of undergrads—”

  Wilson slapped him.

  “—but you’ll never be real.”

  Wilson’s hands closed over Will’s throat.

  “WILSON!” a woman shouted.

  Wilson’s grip loosened. Will gazed up into the man’s outraged face, the eyes darting in impotent rage.

  “Roderick needs you to bring Mr. Church now,” Amanda Wells said.

  Will looked up at her, remembered the tapestry on the third floor. If she really was the woman in ‘Incident on a Paris Rooftop’, she’d never sanction this sort of depravity. Will mentally implored her to look at him, but her gaze remained fixed on Wilson.

  “Bring him to the keep,” she said.

  The snarl still fixed on his face, Wilson released him and stood up shakily. “Get up,” he muttered. “I’m going to enjoy your death.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  When they entered Sherilyn’s room and found the overturned chair, Rick didn’t hesitate. “We have to go to the keep.”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows in question.

  “Come on,” Rick said, leading Lucy toward the staircase. “Everything points toward the keep. Wells writes in the tower, the ceiling is covered with paintings…I think it’s the psychic center of the house.”

  They moved down the hallway. Rick’s body throbbed from the welts and lacerations. He attempted to block out the pain, not because of its intensity, but because of its associations. His skin still crawled from the sucking, gnawing ridges. He had no idea what sort of creature had been feeding on him in that lightless pit, and every time his thoughts tended in that direction, he mentally fled.

  How large was the creature?

  How far did it go on?

  What in the holy fuck was it?

  “You sure this is the way?” Lucy asked.

  “This is how Wells took us last night. There’s a door tucked in the back corner of the library.”

  Lucy watched him. “You all right?”

  “Considering I just got the full body treatment from the world’s largest leech.”

  She shivered. Rick didn’t blame her. He couldn’t stop shivering either.

  They paused outside the library door.

  “Have you noticed how dark it is?” Lucy glanced over her shoulder. “It’s the middle of the day, but it’s like there’s an eclipse on.”

  “How—”

  “The house is stronger now,” she said. “I think it wants us dead.”

  “Let’s go in. I stand still too long, I start to feel those ridges on my skin. Like a toothless old witch chewing on me with whiskery gums.”

  “God.” Her face crumpled in a look of terror and disgust.

  He twisted the knob, pushed it open.

  Even at a distance of more than thirty feet, the heat plowing out of the sooty stone fireplace was blistering. Yet the library had never appeared darker. The bookcases, lamps, and chairs were mere shadows in the gloom.

  They advanced into the room, by tacit agreement keeping as far away from the shadow-steeped book
cases as possible. Rick had begun to sweat.

  “You ever think,” Lucy said, her voice hushed, “we might be playing into Wells’s plan?”

  “If his plan is to dehydrate me.”

  “Should we—”

  He didn’t see the cleaver until it swept down.

  Lucy reacted first. She thrust him out of the way. The cleaver whistled past and severed the tip of her middle finger.

  Stumbling forward, Rick watched Miss Lafitte follow through with her swing, heard Lucy yelp and grasp one hand with the other. The firelight was strong enough he could glimpse the damaged finger, the blood spurting out of it.

  The crazed maid had been hiding in the shadows and was already gathering for another attack. The maid raised the cleaver and flew at Lucy again.

  Lucy retreated, and though Rick saw the handle of the Bowie knife still protruding from Lucy’s hip pocket, he could see she was too focused on stemming the blood flow from her injured finger to fight back.

  His eyes had adjusted to the firelight. He seized the back of a wooden chair, rushed toward the maid, chair raised high. He’d brain the maniacal bitch with it.

  But Miss Lafitte was too sly. She ducked just as the chair whooshed toward her. Rick was thrown off balance and ended up on his knees. She swung the cleaver in a deadly arc. Rick dodged it. The blade chunked into the wooden seat of the chair.

  The maid shrieked in fury.

  Her body arched over Rick, she made to extricate the cleaver. Rick jacked an elbow into her gut. The maid oomphed and doubled over; Rick was calculating his next move when she roared in pain and wheeled around.

  Lucy had remembered the Bowie knife. Blood sluiced from Miss Lafitte’s flayed shoulder.

  The maid lunged at Lucy, swiped at her with sharp fingernails. Lucy sucked in breath, twin stripes of blood forming at the top of her chest.

  Goddammit, Rick thought. He strode toward Miss Lafitte and gripped her waist from behind. Miss Lafitte began to twist in his grip, but before she could carve him up with those wicked nails, he pivoted and hurled her into the hearth, the blaze lighting up the whole room and throwing out a cough of heat so intense Rick suspected his eyebrows had been singed. Judging from her lack of a scream, the maid had been knocked unconscious before burning alive. Better for her, probably, but Rick didn’t give a shit. He had to make sure Lucy didn’t lose more blood.