Had she not said my name, I’m not sure what would’ve happened. I might’ve stood there in shock the entire time, letting this thing consume my friend. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to think about it.
I did move, though. I locked eyes with her, and then I dropped to my knees, acting on pure autopilot. My hand closed over a rock the size of my fist. I gripped it, the cold smoothness filling my palm, and I rose to my feet.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey! Leave her alone!”
The idea seems stupid now. It was laughable to think I could defeat this unknown entity with a stone, but defeating it wasn’t the idea. I wasn’t sure if this thing could even be defeated. All I wanted to do was distract it, to give Ruby a chance to escape.
I cocked my arm behind my ear, stepped forward like a pitcher on the mound, and hurled the rock toward the deep blackness of its open mouth. I heard a heavy thunk, and the whispers stopped.
The figure shot up and focused on me, and for half of a second, I stared into the depths of its attached darkness. I was hypnotized.
It was beautiful…and it was terrifying. It was like staring into eternity. Into all of time, the eons of the past and the eons of the future. But the logical part of my brain, the one still semiconscious, sensed nothing but cold shadows. Cold shadows and death.
That wasn’t enough to keep me from staring, though, and I began slipping out of my own body. Drifting toward the dark.
Who knows what would’ve happened had the figure not shut its mouth. I probably wouldn’t be here telling you this story today. But the darkness did vanish. It blinked out like a shooting star. I thought I heard the thing screech in pain. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but then I heard nothing besides the raging storm.
The thing was fleeing.
As it disappeared, wisps of haze were pulled inward, and I no longer felt its cold presence.
It was gone.
But I knew it’d be back.
7
I rushed toward Ruby, who lay motionless on the ground. Was she already dead? Was I not quick enough?
The rain picked up again, and the wind shrieked. I dropped beside Ruby. She was facedown in the mud. I turned her head gently to the side, making sure she could breathe—if she was still breathing—and then shook her. Her body was stiff.
“Ruby? C’mon, Ruby. Stay with me.”
Nothing.
I shook her again, feeling tears building in my eyes. She’s dead, I thought. She’s dead because you were too slow to help her. And you’ll be too slow to help Clem too—
Suddenly Ruby’s mouth twitched, and she let out a low moan. I turned her over on her back, cradled her head. It was then I noticed her legs. Her dark pants had been torn to rags. Her shoes, the shiny Doc Martens, looked worn and withered, no longer glossy. But the worst of it all was the skin visible beneath her torn jeans. It was glowing a purplish-red, as if she had been severely burned. I reached down and held my hand just above the wounds. Heat came off of them like she was a radiator. Blisters had formed across her shins and kneecaps. Some of her flesh hung raggedly, mimicking the denim of her jeans.
“Ruby,” I said, “we have to go, okay? I’m gonna lift you up, and then we’re gonna head back to the bar.”
She needed to get to a hospital, because whatever was going on with her legs wasn’t in any way normal or healthy, but getting there seemed impossible. I felt like we were stranded on an island, surrounded by fog, so we couldn’t see if the shore was even in reach. Not only was there the storm and the distance holding us back, but there was also that thing to worry about. Was there more than one? Did I startle it by fighting back, and now it had gone to get its buddies? Getting hit by a rock wasn’t going to kill it, I knew that. It would most likely just be pissed off and want to retaliate.
One shitty thing at a time, Carter, one shitty thing at a time, I thought. A good motto to live by.
“I-I can walk,” Ruby mumbled.
I wasn’t sure about that, but I helped her to her feet. She put all of her weight on me before trying to take a step, and as soon as she did, she almost collapsed.
I caught her by the arm and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay. We just gotta go. I can carry you.”
“Like my booze carried you through college?” She flashed a weak smile.
Returning that smile proved more difficult than I could ever imagine. I did, though.
“Exactly, Rube. Exactly.”
Then I picked her up and charged onward, in what I thought was the direction of safety.
A light had blinked on in front of us, just a circle of white. I managed to get through the parking lot before I ran into the person carrying it. The haze had dissipated slightly, but the rain was still on the uptick, creating a veil that helped blot out mostly everything.
The light had seemed far away to me, but when I hit the source, I realized the dark had a way of playing tricks on your mind.
Regardless, I screamed and almost dropped Ruby. Thankfully, the person I’d bumped into also screamed, and I recognized that scream instantly.
It was Tommy.
“Tommy? Oh, thank God!” I said. “But what the hell are you doing out here?”
I guess that was kind of a stupid question. I wasn’t thinking straight, though.
“Looking for your dumb ass!” He shined the light in my face, and I squinted at the brightness, feeling like some translucent fish from the depths of the ocean where the sun never reaches. It was like I’d almost forgotten what light was.
Like any sane person, I was glad. In a way, it seemed like a form of protection. You might think that’s a silly idea meant for children, that light keeps the monsters at bay. I’ll admit, at one point in my life, I did too. I still remember all the times Clem had woken me in the dead of night, claiming there was a monster in her closet or under her bed, back when she was just two or three, and I remember shaking my head, smiling a little, because it was cute and I got to be the big tough dad who checked all the usual hiding spots, knowing there were no such things as monsters. I would tell her this, and that she had just had a bad dream, and that it was her mind playing tricks on her, and all the usual things, and it would seem to calm her down. Until the next night, when I’d get a text or a call from Julia, who’d curse me out for putting the idea of monsters in Clem’s head.
See, we grow up. We get lost in the maze of adulthood, the rat race, the social pecking order, the relationships, the jobs, the money, the bills—and we forget what it was like in the dark when we were little kids. How every creak you heard wasn’t the house settling but a hideous beast creeping toward your cracked-open door. How every scrape on the window outside wasn’t a tree branch swaying in the wind, but the claw of some starving vampire with fresh blood dripping from its fangs. How the shadowy lump on your nightstand wasn’t the folded clothes your mom forgot to put away, but a goblin from the depths of hell, waiting for the right moment to pounce on you.
But after having seen what I had seen in the clearing in the park, having glimpsed the monster that awaited within the darkness, I knew the truth.
Monsters are real.
Tommy lowered the flashlight, and his lips drew back in a grimace. He was staring at Ruby’s legs.
“Holy shit…what happened?”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at them again. Something told me—probably I was judging by Tommy’s expression, I think—that her injuries had somehow gotten worse.
“I-I don’t know,” Ruby answered.
“I’m not sure you’ll believe it,” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes…but…it just doesn’t make any sense.”
The rain tried drowning out our voices. Then a burst of thunder exploded directly overhead and that drowned out our voices.
Was the storm angry? Or was it the monster in charge of it?
“C’mon,” I said, “I’ll try to tell you about it inside.”
Autumn let us in, and only because she had seen Tommy’s flashlight, which he told us he had found
in a spare closet somewhere in the back of the bar.
“Had to take the batteries out of your smoke detector to get it to work… Hope you don’t mind, Rube,” he had said.
Ruby was in too much pain to offer a clever comeback, and we needed the flashlight more than we needed the smoke detector at the moment.
Autumn’s eyes were wide, and I noticed a dry spot of blood on her upper lip that had run from her nose. My brain was in a blender, though, and I didn’t say anything. I also paid almost no attention to the covered body near the counter, Brock’s corpse. Almost none. If the place had remained dark, I wouldn’t have seen the blood from his head soaking through the pale orange and yellow of the Navajo blanket. Any other time it would’ve tripped me up, but all I wanted to do right then was sit down.
I took Ruby to the back room. The muscles in my legs were burning like crazy. Each one of my steps was more like a wobble. I rounded the table where the Monopoly board was set up and bumped the corner. A sharp burst of pain shot through my shinbone, and the metal game pieces scattered off into the shadows—but oddly enough, I was happy for being able to feel. Had you lost complete control of your body like I had, you’d be grateful for the feeling of pain too.
Footsteps sounded off the painted concrete floor behind me. Autumn and Tommy helped ease Ruby onto the couch while Stephanie held the tiny flashlight. Once Ruby was settled, I about collapsed in the nearest chair, taking a long, shaky breath.
“Christ, Ruby,” Tommy said, peering at her wound, his nose wrinkling. “Your legs look like they got barbecued. What happened? Lightning hit you?”
Ruby didn’t answer. She only trembled and winced.
“Do you have a first aid kit anywhere? Or some rags?” Stephanie asked.
Ruby nodded her head toward the front. “There—there’s rags out there.”
“I’ll run one under some water to make a cool compress.” Stephanie left the room.
Autumn brought one of the candles closer, squinting. She, too, grimaced at Ruby’s blistering flesh.
“What the hell happened, man?” Tommy asked me. “Really?”
I shook my head, taking another deep breath. How do you tell someone you were attacked by a monster without them breaking a rib from laughing? “I—I’m not sure, not really. I ran toward the park across the street, thinking Ruby would’ve gone in that direction—”
“I’m an idiot, Carter,” Ruby interrupted. “I shouldn’t have gone out like that. It’s just…just I wasn’t thinking straight…after seeing what Brock did.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. It’s all behind us—”
“But you’re a bigger dummy for following me!” She tried to smile again. It was weaker than when she had tried outside. Worry stabbed at the back of my mind and slashed at my heart. She seemed even paler than earlier. The orange light flickering from the candles refused to reflect off her cheeks.
I reached across and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back weakly.
“Okay, now that you two tree saps got that out of your system, can you tell us what the fuck happened out there?” Tommy barked.
Ruby shifted, wincing in pain, just as Stephanie came back in with a couple wet rags. She handed them to Ruby rather than put them on her legs herself. Ruby then wrapped them around her shins, at first baring her teeth like a rabid animal and then sighing in what seemed like relief. That gave me a bit of hope.
“Ah, that’s n-nice. Thank you, Stephanie.”
“No problem. Let me know when you need it refreshed.”
Ruby offered another weak smile, and then, in a voice weaker than that smile, she began to tell the others what had happened.
“Carter was right,” Ruby said. “I headed for the parking lot, thinking I’d find Debbie’s body somewhere over there. I didn’t. So I kept on to the park. It’s so dark out there, though, you can h-hardly see a damn thing. I moved about three inches with every s-step. Right when I headed into the trees, the idea was that Brock wouldn’t be s-so bold as to murder someone in the middle of an open area. Now…I think he was just as crazy as he seemed.” She sniffled, shook her head. “Poor k-kid. He was only twenty-two. And Debbie…she was so beautiful and h-her heart wasn’t as cold as she s-some—sometimes seemed.”
“Hey,” Autumn said, “she might be okay.”
“You didn’t find her body, that’s true,” Tommy agreed.
“Yeah,” Stephanie added, “whatever’s happening out there, it isn’t, like, the end of the world.”
Silence fell over the room. Even the storm decided to calm for a few seconds, mocking us. We were all thinking it; you could tell by the way no one met anyone else’s eyes. Stephanie was wrong.
This was the end of the world.
“What—what did you see?” Autumn asked. She was leaning forward, her fingers poised on the edge of her lips as if she was about to chew on her nails.
“I saw a monster. That’s the only way I can put it. I saw a monster.”
“Just one?” I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer.
“Just one. But there’s more.”
“How do you know?” Tommy said. He still seemed skeptical. I didn’t blame him; this was a hard thing to wrap your head around.
“I can’t explain that either…I just know.”
Tommy folded his arms over his chest and leaned back. “I’m assuming you saw it too, Carter?”
I nodded. “Some of it. Not as much as Ruby.”
“What did it look like?” Autumn asked.
“Like you and me,” Ruby answered.
“Except really tall,” I added. “I didn’t see its face.”
Ruby chuckled emptily, and there was no humor in the sound. “That’s because it didn’t have one.”
My stomach sank. “What?”
The others’ jaws dropped.
“Yep.” Ruby was nodding. “It didn’t have a face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth.”
“So it was just, what, blank?” Tommy was on the verge of laughter, and that pissed me off. I took a deep breath, reminding myself he wasn’t there. He hadn’t seen that claw emerge from the mist and snatch Ruby into the darkness, and I had.
“No, not blank. It had…like…I don’t know how to describe it. Its skin was all twisted and bunched up where its features should’ve been.”
“How did it see you, then? Or hear you? Or even smell you?” Tommy asked.
“I don’t know that either.”
“It seems kinda…I dunno, impossible.”
“It does,” Ruby agreed. She pointed to her leg. “But something did this to me, Tommy. You don’t think I’d go out there and set my own damn legs on fire, do you?”
“Well…okay, I don’t, but…”
“Just zip it, Tommy,” Ruby said.
I tried to insert some lightheartedness into the conversation. “With how much Tommy yaps, you’d think he would’ve been the lead singer of the band.”
Tommy showed me his middle finger.
“Then what did that to you?” Stephanie interrupted. “If it wasn’t fire.”
“No, not fire at all. In fact,” Ruby said, “it was cold. The coldest cold I’d ever felt. The cold of death. But I didn’t feel that until after”—she bit her bottom lip and squeezed her eyes shut as a wave of pain passed over her—“ah…okay…sorry. I didn’t feel the c-cold until after I heard the noise.”
“The noise?” I repeated, leaning forward and putting a hand on her arm. “I heard it too. It paralyzed me long enough for that thing to take you into the clearing.”
“T-then I s-saw the carnival.”
Now I was really confused, and I was sure the others were too.
Ruby continued, “There were lights and music and all sorts of people. It w-was like I was a little girl again.” Excitement crept into her voice. “And the Ferris wheel. I loved that thing as a kid.”
“Did you see a carnival?” Tommy asked me. He sounded beyond skeptical now. I shook my head, and he looked at Ruby. “You sure you’re not
losing your mind?”
“No,” she said. “It was the sound. It made m-me have…I don’t know…some kind of visions.”
Visions, like Brock talked of…my mind said.
Stephanie and Autumn shifted uncomfortably in their seats, looking anywhere but Ruby.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
Autumn swiped at her upper lip, where the spot of dry blood still was. “Was the noise, like, a bunch of whispering?”
Ruby nodded.
“Then yeah, we heard it too.”
“Did it paralyze you?” I asked. “Make you see stuff?”
“No, but we definitely felt something,” Stephanie said. “A sharp pain went through my head, Autumn’s nose started bleeding, and Tommy looked like he was having a seizure.”
Tommy waved a hand. “Yeah, right. I had some chills, that’s all. I’d expect that when the temp drops as low and as fast as it has since the storm. You know I’m not built for chilly weather.”
I fixed my gaze on him. “But you heard something?”
“Uh—”
“You can’t lie to me and get away with it, man. I’ve known you pretty much your whole life.”
Tommy exhaled and sat back in his chair, a frown creasing his brow. “Yeah, whatever, I heard something.”
“Just accept it,” I said. “Something weird is going on.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” Autumn agreed. “But…I don’t know, maybe it’s just a prank or something. Or like a government experiment gone wrong.”
“A prank? An experiment?” Tommy repeated, trying and failing to hide the smirk on his face. “I think I’d believe monsters over that.”
“Gotta agree with Tommy there,” Autumn said.
The others nodded.
Ruby said, “That noise, I couldn’t m-move at all. And then the thing…it grabbed me and pulled me into the fog.”
“I came after you then,” I said, “and that was right when I froze.”
“So you definitely saw something?” Tommy asked, still sounding like he didn’t believe a word of it.
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