“Yeah, and I’m telling you…it wasn’t human.”
A chill went down my spine. I gritted my teeth, trying to stifle it. I was thinking about the thing’s giant mouth, and the coldness and death inside it.
“All of a sudden, I started to get dragged backwards,” Ruby whispered. “Even if I could’ve moved, I wouldn’t have been able to g-get away. It was like a black hole s-swallowing up anything in its path. The ground got all w-warped and d-distorted too. D-did you see that, Carter?”
I nodded. “But it wasn’t some random black hole…it was where the thing’s mouth should’ve been.”
“Its mouth?” Tommy repeated.
I said, “It widened and it kept getting bigger and bigger. I couldn’t see too well because of the haze and the rain, but I remember its face was just this wide black opening.”
No one seemed to believe me, except for Ruby. I didn’t blame them for that. I wouldn’t have believed me either.
“You gonna back him up here, Rube?” Tommy asked.
Ruby didn’t answer.
“Rube?”
We all were looking at her, and although she was looking at us, you could tell she wasn’t seeing anything. Her eyes were peering deep into some unknown darkness that no candle could touch. Tommy grabbed the flashlight from the table and shined it in her face. She had paled considerably since I last saw her in the light. Her skin was now almost translucent, and running up her neck and creeping toward her cheeks were a few little red squiggles.
An infection? Or maybe something else? God, I hoped it was something else. An infection seemed possible, considering what had happened, but I didn’t believe it was any infection that human medicine could fix.
Don’t think that, I told myself. You don’t know a damn thing about stuff like that. You can barely put on a Band-Aid the right way, and your remedy for a headache is to just not think about it.
But Ruby looked worse than unwell; it didn’t take having a PhD to know she was close to death.
As I watched her, a stream of red dripped from the corner of her right eye. She was shedding bloody tears, and she didn’t seem to notice.
“Rube?” Tommy said.
“Oh my God,” Stephanie moaned. “Is that…blood?”
“Ruby?” I went to grab her arm, about to shake her, and just as I reached out she snatched my hand and squeezed with crazy strength. My bones ground together, my knuckles popped, and I winced as I tried to pull away, which proved to be more painful than her squeezing.
“It’s back,” she said in a flat voice that somehow wasn’t hers. “The same one from before.”
“What—?” Tommy asked, but a boom of thunder cut him off. The whole room shook. It sounded as if some giant was dropping boulders nearby. Dust from the ceiling fell over us in a powder that I inhaled and almost choked on. The smell was of mold and mildew and wet leaves.
Ruby continued. “It’s upset it didn’t get me. It wants a sacrifice.” She stood from the couch without problem, her burned legs no longer giving her pain.
“Plug your ears,” I yelled. “It’s going to paralyze us with its whispering—”
“It won’t matter,” Ruby interrupted. “The sound is not a sound. It’s mental. Unless you can figure out a way to block out their telepathic abilities, you will have no chance at beating them…” She smiled a smile I had never seen. It didn’t touch her eyes, and her eyes seemed dead. It was almost like someone had stretched a corpse’s lips upward into a grin.
Stephanie shot out of her chair and crossed the distance toward Ruby. She cocked her arm back, and before any of us could do anything, she slapped her across the face. Ruby collapsed in a heap onto the couch, letting out a muffled scream.
“Whoa!” Autumn said. “Steph!”
Stephanie slouched. “I-I just couldn’t hear any more of that… Oh, God, I’m so sorry!”
Rubbing her cheek, Ruby said, “No, no, don’t be sorry. I needed that.” She shook her head and blinked. “The bastard, it was in my brain.”
“What—how?” Tommy asked. “How is any of this shit possible?”
I could tell he believed now. He had known Ruby as long as I had, and never in the many years we knew her had she acted so…not herself. She wasn’t one for practical jokes either. She was a straight shooter who told it like it was. If she said some entity had gotten into her head, then you best believe some entity had gotten into her head. Simple as that.
“I don’t know…” Ruby replied. She touched a leg and winced. Picking up the flashlight from the table, I pointed it at her wounds, now seeing that the red blisters had turned a greenish-black. “But it’s happening. Trust me, Tommy.”
“Trust you?” Tommy snorted. “What does that matter? We’re all fucked!”
“Calm down,” I told him, but it just freaked him out more.
“Yes, calm down,” Ruby agreed.
“How can they get in your brain and not ours?” Stephanie asked, clamping her palms over her ears.
“Yeah, how?” Autumn said. She sounded skeptical. Not as skeptical as Tommy had sounded, of course, but skeptical enough. “It’s not like you were bitten or scratched by them, right?”
Stephanie shuddered. “Like a zombie or a vampire?”
“Exactly,” Autumn answered.
“I know what it is,” I said. “At least, I think I know.”
“Well…don’t keep us in suspense,” Tommy said.
“I think it’s because of the void thing you were almost eaten by. It’s gotta be. The creature was taking you somewhere, somewhere humans can’t exist, and now your leg…your leg—” I couldn’t finish. All I had to do was nod at the wound, at the way her flesh was eating itself, and that was answer enough. She was going to lose it. If we didn’t figure out a way to stop the spread of the infection—if that was what it was—I feared we would lose the rest of her too. “Because of this, you and it exchanged information.”
It made sense, right? At least I thought it did. The creature wanted to know more about us, but in turn, it had to show some of its own cards. Although, I don’t think that was originally the plan. The plan was to take Ruby wherever it was taking her without a problem. She wasn’t supposed to escape.
Tommy pulled at the sides of his usually-wavy-but-now-frizzy hair and stared at Ruby. “Okay…then why aren’t you freaking out?”
“Because, Tommy, Carter is right. I know things about it too.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Ruby smiled. It was still a faint smile, yeah, but it was genuine. It was Ruby. She said, “It’s weak. Whatever it did to open itself weakened it.”
“Well…so are we,” Tommy replied.
He had a point. Not only were we weak, but we were charting unknown territories going up against some sort of supernatural being.
It’s still hard for me to call it that. Supernatural. Because supernatural things weren’t supposed to exist.
“True,” Ruby said, “but its abilities require recharging. It can’t outright spam us with it. Time helps them, but what helps them more is—”
“—is eating one of us,” Stephanie finished.
Ruby blinked sluggishly. “Yes, that’s one way to put it…”
“Christ,” Tommy whispered as the candles flickered.
“What—what are they?” Stephanie asked.
“No, why the fuck are they here, and why do they want us?” Tommy said. “Those are the real questions.”
Ruby’s eyes narrowed. Her face became serious, her features stony. “I wish I knew.”
8
“So what are our options here?” Tommy asked after a long stretch of silence. “We have to give them what they want, right? It’s our only chance at getting out of here alive.”
“You want to give it a-a sacrifice?” Stephanie said, eyebrows raised.
Autumn chuckled. “And how do you suppose we choose which one of us bites the bullet? We draw straws? See who can hop on one foot the longest? Because, let’s be real here, th
e thing outside isn’t going to take us on a date. It’s gonna murder us.”
“Fair point.” Tommy tapped the arm of his chair. Then, after a moment, his eyes lit up. “Wait, what about Brock?”
“Brock’s already dead,” Stephanie said. “Wouldn’t they want someone alive—?”
“Absolutely not,” Ruby interrupted. “We can’t give them Brock. He was like family.”
“He’s dead, Rube,” Tommy said. “And we’re not. But if what you believe to be out there is actually out there, we’ll be joining him soon enough.”
I felt the entire group flinch at those words. Harsh words, yeah, but they were true.
Ruby broke the silence, and I wish she hadn’t. “No,” she said. “The death that thing will bring on us is different than the death Brock s-suffered from. It’s worse. It’s an infinity of evil and darkness.”
“Okay…” Autumn said. “Maybe let’s steer this conversation back to sunnier places.”
“Pretty much anything is sunnier than that,” Tommy mumbled.
“Or at least stay on track,” I said. “What the hell are we gonna do?”
“Let them have Brock. It’s that easy,” Tommy said.
“No,” Ruby said firmly. “His family doesn’t deserve to bury an empty casket. I couldn’t do that to him, or them.”
Autumn patted Ruby’s forearm. “Steph is probably right. They want someone alive.”
“They want us all,” Ruby clarified.
“Grim,” I said.
“Very,” Tommy agreed. He leaned in his chair, shaking his head. “Then what?”
“We barricade ourselves inside,” Ruby said. “Try to survive until the storm passes.”
A terrible thought crossed my mind then: What if the storm doesn’t pass? But I buried it, and said, “Ruby, I don’t know if you can last that long. Your legs look bad.”
“Bad?” Tommy laughed. “Bad is an understatement. They’re fucked up. Beyond fucked up.”
I elbowed him, making sure it was hard. You know, to get the point across.
“No need to sugarcoat it,” Ruby said. “They feel all sorts of ‘fucked up’ too. I think I’ll lose them. I don’t know what that thing did to me, but I’m not worried about myself. I’m worried about you guys. You’re all so young. So much of your life is still ahead of you.”
“Ruby, you’re talking like you’re ancient or something,” I said.
“You’re only in, like, your sixties, right?” Tommy said, grinning.
“Hilarious, Tommy. Really funny. You know I just t-turned forty-nine. You got wasted at my party and puked in one of the flowerpots on the sidewalk.”
Tommy chuckled. “No way. Wasn’t me.”
“It was,” I said.
“Yep,” Ruby agreed.
“Regardless, it was quite a rager, if I do say so myself,” Tommy said. “Even if I was the only one raging.”
I turned back to Ruby, not liking how she was no longer pale. Her cheeks resembled the weird color of the burn wounds on her calves, giving her an unnatural hue.
“See?” I said. “You’re young, like us. Besides, we’re all in this together, okay? We’re a team.”
“Yeah, the B-Team, maybe,” Tommy mumbled.
Expecting another elbow from me, he tensed when I stared at him. I didn’t hit him, but he got the point. “Okay,” I went on. “Here’s the deal: we’re gonna lock this place up tight. We’re gonna barricade the doors and the windows and any other spot the thing can get in. And we’re gonna wait.”
The last sentence wrenched my insides. I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to sprint out into the unknown darkness and the storm, and go get my daughter.
She’s safe, I told myself. Julia may not care about you, but she loves Clem more than anything. And Steve…he isn’t a bad dude. He cares for both Clem and Julia. And they’re not dumb. It won’t take them long to realize whatever is going on isn’t normal.
God, what an epiphany. See, I wasn’t too fond of Julia or Steve, but admitting to myself that both had Clem’s best interests at heart helped lift some of the weight off my chest.
“Wait?” Autumn said. “I don’t know how long I can wait. My cat is—”
“Princess is fine,” Stephanie said, reaching over and grabbing Autumn’s hand. “You just filled her food and water bowls and cleaned her litter before we went out.”
Autumn nodded. “I did.” But she still looked to be on the verge of tears. It was an odd sight. I hadn’t known her for very long—all of what, a few hours hours—but in those few hours, she'd been as cold and stony as a statue.
Stephanie lowered her voice and spoke in a tone that I don’t think we were meant to hear, but a lull in the thunder made it so we could. “And he’s fine too. Trust me. That place runs a tight ship.”
Ruby and I were ready to let this go. It was none of our business. Tommy, on the other hand, wasn’t as kind. Never one to think things through, he acted impulsively more often than not, and now was no different. He leaned forward like a gossiping high schooler and said, “Who’s he?”
I figured he thought he was Autumn’s boyfriend. “Tommy, man…c’mon,” I said. “Drop it.”
Autumn rubbed her cheek, where a tear might’ve fallen. “No, it’s okay. I already told you all about my dislike of guys in bands. No harm in telling you this too.” She paused, inhaled deeply. “It’s my dad. He’s got Alzheimer’s, and he’s currently in a nursing home.”
“Oh…shit,” Tommy said. “I’m sorry.”
She covered her face with her hands and stifled a sob. Then we all did something I would’ve never expected, as if our brains were tuned to the same channel. We scooted closer to Autumn and tried to comfort her. Even Ruby leaned over from her spot on the couch, wincing in pain, and put an arm around Autumn’s shoulder.
Tommy spoke again. He said, “I’ll be honest, that fucking sucks. I don’t know much about the disease, if there’s a chance of recovery or anything, but my great-grandma had dementia and I remember how hard it was for her. She’d call me ‘Chad’ or ‘Michael’ more than she ever called me by my real name. No one had any idea who those names belonged to either. My point is, I can’t say it’s gonna get better, but I can say I feel for you and that I’ll pray for your old man.”
Autumn, tears making her makeup run, smiled. “Thank you, Tommy. That’s really nice.”
He shrugged. “See? Not all guys in bands are douchebags!”
I laughed at that; so did the others.
“Well, I should probably get to locking this place down,” Tommy went on after a moment, standing and stretching his arms above his head as he yawned.
I checked my phone and saw that the time was a quarter past three in the morning on the date of my daughter’s fifth birthday, and here I was, trapped in another town far away, held hostage by a freak storm and a monster lurking outside. Weirdly enough, I felt better. I felt better because I wasn’t alone.
“I’ll help,” I said.
“Me too,” Stephanie offered.
I shook my head. “No, you guys stay with Ruby. Keep her company.”
“You make it sound like I’m d-dying,” Ruby said. She started to laugh, and the laugh turned into a coughing fit. I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the way my throat was tightening.
Because I knew it then—I think we all did. Ruby was dying.
Tommy and me stacked chairs in front of the doors and windows. Luckily, there were only a few weak points: the front door, the front windows, and the back exit. We got it all locked down pretty good, though.
The windows—except for the small ones high on the walls of the break room—were completely blocked, and so were the front and back doors.
After we were done, I went to the break room to check on Ruby, but she was knocked out on the couch. Her head was tilted back, her mouth was open, and she was snoring like a chainsaw. I shined the light at her leg. The wound looked the same—at least that’s what I told myself—and I thought that was a good sign. N
ot better but not worse.
Autumn was also sleeping in one of the plushy arm chairs. She had a pink flowery jacket spread out over her, and I wondered if that jacket had belonged to Debbie, because I hadn’t seen it earlier. Had Debbie forgotten it here some fall day as she hurried out to meet her abusive boyfriend? I tried not to think about stuff like that, because the thought only brought sadness.
Stephanie was still up. She was sitting in the chair next to Autumn.
“Did I wake you?” I asked.
“No. I can’t sleep. I’ve always hated weather like this. It’s silly…but thunder and lightning still scares me.”
“Not silly. It scares me too,” I said, remembering all the times I spent hiding under my bed as a kid during violent summer storms.
“And this one is…you know, different.”
I nodded. “It is.”
Stephanie chuckled. “Not very comforting, are you?”
“I-I’m sorry—”
“Joking,” she said. “I like honest people. The kind who tell it like it is.”
I flashed her a smile as I turned for the door, where I could already hear Tommy’s snores echoing in the empty front room. “Try to get some sleep. I think things will clear up once the sun rises.”
“There you go. That’s better.”
“Good night,” I said.
“Good night.”
I went out to the front. I burrowed into a booth facing the blocked front door and windows and stretched out across the plush bench. I knew I should’ve slept, but I also knew sleeping would prove to be impossible, no matter how tired and exhausted I felt.
I must’ve been there for another thirty minutes, listening to the storm, when finally the thunder didn’t seem so close. It rumbled faintly, which brought on a hopeful thought. Was the storm finally passing? Moving farther away? Was it passing because the monster had gone? Had it realized we weren’t worth the trouble?
Just don’t go toward Clem, I thought. Please spare her.
My daughter’s face floated into my mind’s eye. It was her smiling, showing the little gap between her baby teeth—teeth which would fall out in a year or two, leaving a bigger gap behind. I wondered if I would ever see her face again. If I would ever get to pick her up over my head and spin her around and around.
The Whispers: A Supernatural Apocalypse Novel Page 8
