Paint It Black

by Val Crowe

  A wave of nausea went through me.

  I had to sit down. I waited for the sensation to pass. If it didn’t, I’d need to get to the toilet before…

  Woozily, my body lurched up off the bed.

  Wait, what?

  I hadn’t done that.

  A humming sound in my head, vibrating my temples. My arms flailed and I staggered, unable to find balance.

  I panicked.

  Something was controlling my body, and it wasn’t me.

  I tried to move my arms.

  I couldn’t.

  Instead, they were being thrown out in all directions. The thing inside me was like a baby deer. It didn’t know how to use its body yet.

  Stop it, I tried to say, but I couldn’t move my mouth.

  I wanted to scream.

  I couldn’t.

  My arms found purchase on the walls of the Airstream, and they steadied me. A few more moments of confused flailing, and my body seemed to come under the control of whatever was moving it. I began to walk forward awkwardly, my limbs stiff like a robot.

  I tried again to regain control of myself, but it wasn’t happening.

  My body was moving.

  My body went to the door of the Airstream and opened it. My body walked down the steps and outside into the oppressive heat.

  Stop, I tried again. Then, Mads!

  My body set off across the campsite. It ambled past my truck and into the woods.

  Where was I going? Was this thing inside me moving me purposefully, or was it just taking me out for a test drive? Would I get my body back, or was this the end? Damn it, I’d been considering suicide, but I wasn’t even going to be able to do that if this thing had taken complete control of me.

  Was that why it had taken control? To prevent that? Could it read my mind?

  If it could, maybe I should stop thinking. It might know everything that I knew and I’d never get the advantage on it.

  For a while, I didn’t think anything, just watched as my body navigated its way through the woods. The thing that had taken control of me was doing a better job of walking now. It was almost smooth. It was a quick study, I guessed.

  Eventually, I started to wonder how I was supposed to figure out a way to fight it if I didn’t think. I couldn’t. I had to think.

  Maybe it couldn’t read my mind. I couldn’t read its mind, after all. I didn’t know what it was doing.

  I was going to have to think of some way to stop this thing and get my body back. Being trapped inside here like this… it was not the kind of thing I thought I could handle. I’d go mad.

  My body cleared the woods, coming out into a clearing.

  It was a playground, something that had been built on the campsite. The playground was old. There was a swing set and a rickety-looking slide. And there was a merry-go-round, the handles rusted.

  A little boy was sitting on it, using his feet to push it around slowly, and it was making a low creaking noise when it went around. The little boy had his head down.

  I started toward him.

  Wait, no. What was I doing? Why was I going to that kid? I struggled against myself, trying yet again to take control back of my body, but it was no use. I was trapped and useless inside.

  Outside, my body was lumbering over to this kid.

  I stopped next to the merry-go-round, and my shadow (such as it was on this gray day) fell over him.

  He looked up. He put down his feet and stopped the merry-go-round. His shoes scuffed against the dirt. “Hello?”

  I reached out for him. “Come here, you little shit.”

  No! I screamed, battering against the inside of myself, scrabbling my nails against my own skin. Not this. I won’t watch this. I won’t do this.

  The boy stood up, an alarmed look crossing his face.

  I smiled at him, but it wasn’t a nice smile. I took a step forward.

  The boy turned on his heel and ran.

  He was quick.

  Whatever was controlling my body was good, but it wasn’t great. It tried to run and failed. Instead, I fell face first into the dirt on the ground.

  It knocked the wind out of me.

  And in that split second, I had an in. I reached out and took the control of my body back.

  The barnacle appeared in front of my face, screaming and spitting.

  But I had myself back now. I wasn’t going to let go. I made myself get up, and I ran back into the woods, all the way back to the Airstream.

  I had skinned up my chin. My body felt strange and loose, like someone else had been sweating in my clothes. I didn’t like it.

  “Mads?” I called out.

  Where the hell was she?

  “Mads, I need you.”

  She said she wouldn’t let this happen to me. But maybe no one could stop it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Rylan was sitting in the front seat, scrolling through my phone, which was attached to the car stereo. “God, what is this playlist?”

  “You don’t like it?” I said.

  “Um, no,” she said. “I know it’s considered nifty and retro to be into music that your grandparents listened to, but it’s not really my thing. Plus, have you noticed how all this stuff is made by men? Where are the women guitar players?”

  “I have a Heart song on there, I think,” I said. “Maybe some Joan Jett.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Look, my truck, my music,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Wade. “This song rocks.”

  I reached over and turned it up.

  Rylan turned it down. “I guess we’re just going to jam out to the music and not talk about where we’re going or anything like that?”

  I had been reaching out to turn the volume back up, but now I put my hand back on the steering wheel. “Okay, fine. Where are we going?”

  After my body had been taken over by the barnacle, I had decided that we needed to be as proactive as we could. So, I started thinking about places with negative energy, and I thought that maybe another haunted place might be a good idea. I knew that Rylan had filmed at a lot of haunted places, so I went through her youtube channel until I found something that seemed pretty nasty.

  I called her and said we should go to this abandoned asylum she had visited with a bunch of screaming, jumpy girls. Where the hell did she dig those chicks up?

  She said that place was about as haunted as a hollow log, and that she’d had to edit the hell out of the footage to make it look like anything had happened there at all.

  I said that it was starting to sound like all her haunted escapades were products of creative editing, and she hung up on me.

  But then she called me back and she said she did know of a place we could go, actually. A place that was really haunted.

  Then we argued about when to go. She wanted to wait until her day off from work, which was three days away, but I didn’t know if I’d even still be myself if we waited that long. I reminded her of the fact that she was still barricading herself into her bed every night, and that the barnacle was about to kill her any day now.

  She agreed to call in sick to work.

  So, now we were roadtripping it. But in all the arguing about the particulars, I hadn’t even bothered to find out where exactly it was that we were going.

  “Well, this place is a town that I came to film,” said Rylan. “I got there and a bunch of crazy shit happened, but none of my equipment would work, so I couldn’t capture any of it. It sucks because it was definitely the creepiest place I’ve ever been.”

  “Stop it with the hard sell,” said Wade, leaning up from the back seat. “We’re not going to click to another video. You don’t need to hook us. Just get to the punchline already.”

  “It’s called Boonridge,” she said. “It’s a ghost town. People abandoned the place back in the 1930s.”

  “How come?” I said.

  “Because this guy named David Mosely went nuts one day and went into the post office and shot everyone
inside with his shot gun.”

  “Hell,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was a massacre,” she said. “Fifteen people died, four of them kids.”

  “Man,” said Wade.

  “When they asked him why, he said that he was sick of waiting in line to mail something,” she said. “But he shot all the people working behind the counter too, and he didn’t even have a letter to mail. So, he obviously thought he was being funny.”

  “He didn’t kill himself?” said Wade. “Usually, big thrill kills like that, guys shoot themselves afterward.”

  “No,” said Rylan. “He was arrested. But he didn’t live to see trial. Someone got to him in the jail, and no one knows who. He was stabbed seventy-eight times.”

  I let out a low whistle.

  “Anyway,” she said, “after it all went down, the town seemed poisoned. No one could stand to be there, and they all started moving out, one after other. So, now, there’s no one there. It’s a pretty creepy place, actually. We went in some of the houses when we were there, and it looked like people had gotten out in a hurry. They left cans of food on the shelves and stuff.”

  “So, what kind of supernatural stuff did you see while you were there?” said Wade.

  “Nothing worked,” she said. “All our phones were dead. None of the cameras worked. There was a wind that started blowing, and it got really intense and loud, and we couldn’t even hear each other, because it was whistling at us. All the doors and windows were banging open and shut—”

  “That could have been from the wind,” said Wade.

  “It wasn’t,” said Rylan. “I could, you know, feel it.”

  I was feeling a little nervous. We needed a really powerful place, and if she was saying that all that had happened was some windows banging open and shut, it didn’t sound promising.

  “Well, I hope it works this time,” said Wade.

  “Me too,” said Rylan. “I can’t live with this barnacle forever, can I?”

  “Well, I definitely can’t,” I said. “It’s trying to take me over.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Rylan. “How come you’re driving if you think that the barnacle could be taking control of you at any moment? Isn’t that dangerous? I don’t want to get in a wreck.”

  “Does the barnacle even know how to drive?” said Wade.

  I shot him an annoyed look in the rearview mirror. “I think it’s harder for the barnacle to take control of me when I’m concentrating on something. It’s better if I’m driving.”

  “Maybe,” said Rylan. “Or maybe you just wanted to have control of the music.” She made a sour face.

  I shrugged. “Maybe.” And then I turned it up.

  * * *

  There were no passable roads into Boonridge. About ten years back, a big storm had downed a few trees, which were blocking the road into town. It was very overgrown anyway, barely recognizable as a road anymore. We parked the truck as close as we could, and then we fought our way through the weeds and small trees that had grown on the road.

  It was odd, because the road was pretty much gone, overtaken by the elements. But when we got into the town, it seemed strangely intact. It was obviously old and decrepit, and there had been a lot of damage. Roofs caved in, ivy growing over walls, animals nesting in buildings, that kind of thing. But everything was still standing. And the grass might have grown high around the buildings, but in the center of the road, it was bare and dirt and empty.

  The town wasn’t very big. There was a wide road going up and down the center of everything. A dirt road, but fairly clear, as I’ve said. There were maybe ten or twelve houses, an old general store, a church, and the post office. They all squatted along the side of the road, their dark windows scrutinizing us as we walked up.

  It was very hot. The sun beat down on top of us, and it seemed to give everything a too-bright look. Everything was orangey and overexposed. A punishing sun in an undead town.

  And it smelled.

  There was a putrid smell that permeated the air and got worse as we moved further into the center of town.

  A cluster of flies ahead clued us in to what that the smell was.

  Something dead—an entire deer carcass, its guts hanging out in goopy red ropes, its fur mangled and chewed. One of its eyes was open, and it glared at us in fright or reproach.

  We stopped and stared down at it.

  Wade pointed. “There’s a piece of plywood over there and a shovel. I say we slide this thing onto it and move it off into the woods. That smell is too much.”

  Rylan wrinkled up her nose. “Won’t moving it be worse?”

  I wasn’t sure if I didn’t agree with her. But the smell was oppressive.

  “It won’t be that bad,” said Wade, who was already heading over to get the plywood. “Little help, Deacon?”

  I went after him. Together, we dragged the plywood over and laid it down on the ground next to the deer.

  Rylan brought the shovel over.

  Now, everything in place, we all paused again, surveying the dead deer. None of us did anything for several moments.

  Rylan gingerly poked the deer with her shovel.

  A mess of white maggots poured out of the deer’s stomach, along with a wave of even more putrid stench.

  We all coughed and backed up.

  But once we’d recovered, Wade took the shovel from Rylan and scooped the carcass up. He dumped it onto the plywood in one smooth stroke.

  It landed with a plop. Now the other side of its head was visible. Something had cracked the deer’s skull, and bits of brain matter were oozing out.

  I recoiled.

  “Come on,” growled Wade. “Help me drag this out of here.”

  I hesitated, but then I moved forward, nodding.

  Together, we maneuvered the plywood out of the road and into the woods. I wanted to leave it right at the edge, but Wade convinced me we should take it out further to make sure we wouldn’t smell it.

  When we returned, we were sweaty and winded.

  “Should have brought some water,” I muttered, shading my eyes from the brutal sun over head.

  “Yeah, should have brought a damned picnic,” muttered Wade.

  I came to a stop and looked up and down the road. “Where’s Rylan?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “She’s on the other side of the building here, in the shade,” said Wade, striding over to where he was talking about. There really wasn’t much shade right now, owing to the position of the sun.

  I followed him.

  Rylan was not on the other side of that building.

  I swallowed. “We shouldn’t have left her alone. What were we thinking?”

  Movement.

  I turned, and there she was. She was up in the bell tower of the church—what was left of it, anyway. There was no bell up there and the wood didn’t look strong. It looked rickety and about ready to buckle under any kind of weight. “Rylan!” I yelled.

  Both Wade and I sprinted over to the church and then skidded to a stop right beneath, looking up at her, shading our eyes from the sun.

  Rylan had a glassy look in her eyes. I could see the barnacle twisting itself around her, chattering and chuckling, seeming pretty pleased with itself.

  “Damn it,” I muttered.

  Wade was heading for the church.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” I said.

  “Going after her,” he called over his shoulder. “Can’t be you. You got one of those things, too. It might take over you up there.”

  “But the wood doesn’t look strong enough to hold both of you,” I said. “You could fall.”

  “Yeah, well…” He didn’t finish.

  “Rylan!” I screamed.

  She didn’t even acknowledge me.

  I looked around, and the sun was so hot, and my brain felt like it was being cooked, and I swear I could still smell that dead deer no matter what it was we did, and there was the post office, a little building made of black wood with a faded s
ign and a door that was hanging off its hinges, like it was smiling at me, like it was inviting me, like—

  “Wade!” I rushed after him.

  He didn’t stop.

  The air was humid. Running through it was like running through soup. I caught up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. And then I pressed the oil into his hand.

  “Sprinkle it down,” I said. “Sprinkle it down to the ground. Make a trail to Rylan.”

  He looked at it. “What are you trying to do here?”

  “Save her,” I said, and then I took off, heading for the post office.

  I ran all the way until I got within five feet of the place, and then suddenly, I couldn’t run anymore. I had to slow down. The air was thicker here, a swamp of rot and death. It was hard to catch a breath.

  I fought through it, fought to that dark open door.

  I pushed the door all the way open and I stepped over the threshold.

  It was cooler in here. It should have felt nice, but it was still humid, so it was clammy and musty, and as I breathed in here, I felt as if something was getting into my lungs, something was getting into my body.

  The barnacle unwound from my neck, twisting.

  There was a rush, a loud sound like a rushing waterfall, and then the post office came alive. Full of people, moving around. It wasn’t like back in Ridinger Hall, not as though I’d been transported to another time. Instead, these people were superimposed over the rotted skeletal remains of the building. They moved slowly. They had sunken, hollowed out eyes. One of them smiled at me. Its teeth were sharpened into points.

  The barnacle was breaking apart, settling into them.

  It had worked! It wasn’t attached to me. I couldn’t feel it any more. I felt as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I stretched my neck, rubbed one of my shoulders with one hand.

  The people-things all sighed with one breath. They seemed to solidify.

  They were stronger now.

  They had the barnacle’s power—everything from Ridinger Hall. And there was my presence, too, whatever that it was that I did when I was close.

  And Rylan…