by Simon Clark
”No. Drink's fine… just keep it coming.”
That was the moment she stepped over the threshold into her own personal hell. Outside the midday sun shone. Downtown Chicago sparkled on the horizon. More crows glided in from faraway fields to settle on the roof of the Luxor. Inside the dance hall she could hear creatures tearing down the door. Inside her she knew another life was growing… and growing at a hell of a rate, too. And all she could do (even though she longed to scream and tear out her hair)… all she could do was sit here drinking glass after glass of water. What's more, she had an audience of three. One: Benedict, an amateur detective who'd learned that his long lost girlfriend had been transformed into something hideous. Two: Ellery, a guy whose cruel stammer had forged the expression of a martyred saint. Three: Nathaniel, a giant with blue-white skin that resembled cemetery marble, whose legs terminated in large splayed hands.
More water. She could, as the saying went, drink a river dry. The water didn't fill her stomach. Instead, it was channeled directly to the thing growing inside of her. Thing? Could she be nurturing a monster in her womb? She glanced at Nathaniel and shuddered.
***
Logan sat and listened to the crazy music of fists ceaselessly pounding wood, with a chorus of breaking glass and splintering panels. Shit, what was going on over there? He nursed the submachine gun on his lap.
Tempting to check the loony-tunes out, he told himself. But he'd lose the element of surprise.
But what surprise? Ellery hadn't shown his stuttermonkey face. And here Logan waited for what seemed like ever and a day. His butt was numb as corpse meat because he'd sat on this stage for so long. Christ on a motorcycle. If Ellery and his clan didn't give their ugly faces an airing soon he'd have to do something that would make them come out.
Logan reached out in the darkness to what he knew hung there. His fingers brushed the fabric of the back stage drape that covered an entire wall. He smelled dust and dryness. Logan began to consider possibilities.
CHAPTER 35
”What's happening?”
Robyn glanced up at Noel in the doorway Thirsty. She drained another glass. ”What's happening out there?”
”They're still trying to get in through the doorway, but there's so much furniture and junk behind it they can't open it more than a couple of inches.”
Nathaniel said, ”I'll pile more furniture into the stairwell.”
”Thanks.”
Over the rim of the glass as she drank, she could see Noel's puzzled expression. ”Robyn? Should you be drinking so much water?”
Seeing that she was reluctant to halt her liquid intake, Benedict answered on her behalf. ”The child inside of her requires fluid to grow… it'll need protein, vitamins and minerals, too. But I guess its drawing those from Robyn's body ”I wish you hadn't said that.”Robyn panted with the effort of drinking so fast. ”Makes Junior sound like a cannibal.”
”You should lie down,”Noel told her.
”I'm staying here near the water.”Okay, so the statement wore an edge of craziness. But that's exactly what I do need, she thought. I need to keep drinking. I know I'll die if I don't keep the water going down inside of me.
The fetus demanded more water than she could supply through drinking alone. Her eyes had become dry. The moment she took the glass from her mouth, her tongue became as arid as a rock in a desert. Her fingers looked smaller. Even her skin became tightly dry so that she felt it pull as she moved her limbs.
The thing inside is sucking all the juice out of me. Forget cannibal.
Read vampire.
The notion shook her. Fear sent shivers through her bones. Crows cawed.
Echoes of her death cry to come? She closed her eyes, struggling to break the morbid cycle of thought. But even as she diverted thought away from whatever grew inside of her, her imagination fired images into her brain of those creatures breaking into the apartment. What then? She pictured them holding her down on the table and ripping open her stomach to insanely drag the unborn child from her womb…
Drink. The command came again from within. Drink.
Drink. Ellery filled the glass. Trembling, she raised it to her lips to pour more water down her throat to nourish the creature inside her.
***
After three hours of drinking glass after glass of water (how many, she didn't know), her stomach had become swollen. To her fingertips it was hard, as if a boulder lay behind the skin. This wasn't water filling her belly, it was solid tissue. Her unborn baby had grown to the point when she could have passed for six months pregnant. Stomach muscles stretched. The internal pressure became enormous. Almost explosive. Her body must be close to bursting wide open… at least, that's how it felt. Discomfort evolved into full-blooded pain. Every so often the stretching sensation drove her to walk around the kitchen, only now her legs had weakened. The baby robbed her own body of nourishment. The extra weight, too, weighed her down. After a circuit of the kitchen (which gave her a view of the sinister crows sitting in the trees) she had to sit down again before she fell down.
By now Ellery and Benedict didn't speak. Their eyes said it all, anyway.
Nevertheless, they continued to refill the pitcher and glasses without being asked. Out in the hallway Noel and the giant guarded the stairs.
Robyn pressed her lips together to prevent herself from groaning out loud. The baby kicked hard inside her. It moved constantly, stretching, turning, flexing newly formed limbs. She clutched her belly as pain stabbed into her. What would the baby look like? What would it resemble?
The face… what about the face?
Would it even have a face?
A human face, that is. Nathaniel told her it would be a healer of his people, even those breaking down the door. But right now she felt as if the unborn baby would be the death of her.
***
An hour later the pressure inside her body made Robyn want to scream.
”You should lie down,”Benedict told her gently. ”It's making demands on your body that must be hard to bear.”
”I'm staying here.”But, God, oh God, was he right about the unborn infant's demands. It sucked the moisture from her flesh, even from her blood. Now it squelched through her veins with the thickening consistency of mud. Her eyes were gritty. Arms and legs had gotten stick thin. Her body was shrinking in on itself in its effort to feed the baby. Only her stomach had grown. Now it had become gross, engorged by the baby (the creature?) it contained. Her T-shirt and sweatpants had stretched with her belly. Everything seemed at bursting point. Stinging pains darted across overstretched skin.
Go on: SPLIT! I dare you! SPLIT!
She stared at her belly expecting at any second to see the skin part with a ripping sound. Then two hands would appear, two bloody hands that would push aside her gory entrails as the monster escaped from her womb Vertigo spun her senses. Images of the monster baby breaking out of its dungeon of flesh boiled inside her mind. Even her brain must be shrunken with dehydration now. Thought became harder. Only the irrational mind movies became more frequent and increasingly vivid. She barely moved now. All she did was drink, rock slightly on the chair, stare at her stomach. Flesh quivered, stretched, pulsed as some entity swam through its prenatal ocean. The view of her own body mingled fascination with absolute horror. Meanwhile, a voice in the back of her head said: Not long now.
***
This was hell. Logan was numb in the rear end. His back ached. He was sick of waiting here in the dark, listening to the lunatics beat on wood beyond the doors. Logan couldn't wait any longer. They'd already killed his buddy. What did he want to wait for? To invite the jerks out for dinner? With the surge of impatience that ran in scalding rivers through his body came the recollection: He needed the element of surprise.
More of them than me, he reasoned. Of course, he could give them a hell of a surprise. He thought about that four hundred square feet of stage curtain. Then he visualized the cigarette lighter in his pocket.
***
Anxious, Ellery offered her another glass of water.
Robyn shook her head. ”No. I don't need any more… I don't need-ah!”She bit her lip as muscle spasms detonated nerve endings. ”It's starting… the baby's coming…”
Her eyes blurred with those cruel surges of pain; she could barely see.
She heard Benedict, though. With a tautness in his voice that did nothing to put her at ease he told Ellery to bring Noel to the kitchen, adding, ”You'd better warn Noel. He's going to see things that are going to be difficult to handle.”
Christ. Spasms tore at her. Grunting, she clenched her fists and ground her teeth.
”Time to lie down, Robyn.”
”No. I don't want to lie down.”
”Robyn-”
”No! Lying down will make me feel vulnerable. I don't want to feel vulnerable. This is my child. This is me giving birth. I'm going to be in control!”She stood up, grunting with pain at the downward pressure exerted between her legs. Shit… felt as if she was going to extrude a two ton granite boulder from that little private place Grimacing, she made it to a bare expanse of kitchen wall, then stood leaning back on it, so it took her weight. She shuffled her feet apart.
Meanwhile her heart thundered in her chest; her respiration came in rapid tugs. And just when she thought there was no moisture left in her body to perspire, all of a sudden the sweat did come, pricking through the glands in her skin to raise beads of moisture on her face. She cried out. ”Oh! It's going to come fast.”A scream sounded in her ears. For a second she didn't even realize that yell blasted from her own lips.
”Robyn…”
She glanced up through blurring eyes to see Noel hurry toward her, his arms outstretched, ready to hold her until it was over. ”Noel… you're not seeing this.”
”Robyn, I'm going to stay with you.”
”No, you're not.”She panted. ”I love you. I want us to be together for years and years and… uh. ”That pain kicked in hard. ”I don't want you remembering this every time you look at me.”Groggy, she looked to her right. ”Benedict. Ellery Will you help me?”
Through her own grunts of pain she heard them promise they would. She nodded. ”Noel, leave the kitchen.”
”Robyn, I love you. I want to-”
”Nathaniel. Drag him out if you have to. OK?” Through smeared vision, she managed to make out Nathaniel's nod.
Noel didn't have to be forced, however; reluctantly, he returned to the hallway. She prayed he understood. Nathaniel placed his hand on Noel's shoulder, a gesture of both affection and compassion. The door closed.
”Right,”she panted. ”First things first. Help me out of these clothes.”
***
No food, no water, no light, no cigarettes. Nothing soft for an aching butt. Blood sugar levels falling. Irritation climbing. Anger taking flight to screaming red skies. Shit, Logan had had more than he could stomach of this. When his body had squeezed what fuel it could from his muscle tissue, it extracted residues of all the narcotics he'd devoured over the last couple of weeks. From his liver, kidneys, spleen, even from the body fluids held in reserve in his scrotum, the chemicals all but flew through his arteries to his brain. When those babies hit, all trace of logic and rational thought withered, to be replaced by a cranky, bad-tempered mindset to get this job finished.
Wired, Logan moved fast. Jerking the lighter from his pocket, he rotated the milled wheel. With a pop, the blue flame appeared to dance on the wick. Oh, man… he could even smell the funky lighter fuel smell. A sexy liquor perfume that warmed his blood.
”Party's over, Eh-Eh-Ellery.”
Seeing clearly now in that beautiful blue glow, he touched the stage curtain with the flame.
Boyoh-boy-was he right, or was he right about that dry material.
***
Benedict barely had time to drop Robyn's sweatpants in the corner, where they'd be out of her way Then Robyn's baby came.
With the face of an athlete racing toward the finish line, eyes staring straight ahead, mouth open, panting, she concentrated on nothing but pushing the baby along the birth canal. Perspiration dripped down her face. Still with her back to the kitchen wall, she slid into a crouching position. Ellery stood by her side, unable to help in real terms, but attentive.
”It's coming,”she panted. ”Oh, God, it's here…”
Benedict moved to be close to her but instinct had kicked in. The woman delivered her own baby, taking it in her hands, as it slipped smoothly, wetly from her body. Her abdomen convulsed with powerful muscle tremors as she expelled the child completely. Benedict noted there was no umbilical cord. Then this was no ordinary pregnancy. The child would be different, too, perhaps in ways he could not even imagine.
Ellery moved as if he'd had years of experience of assisting at births.
He picked up the big, soft bath towel he'd left across the back of the chair for this purpose, and with Robyn's help, wrapped the baby. When he placed the bundle, cocooned in fluffed cotton, in her arms, she looked down at the newborn child.
”Ellery,”she said softly, ”would you move the towel down a little? I want to see my baby's face.”
Ellery did so, delicately teasing the towel down so Robyn had a clear view.
Benedict West found himself holding his breath in anticipation of what the new mother would see when, for the first time, she closely examined what she had just given birth to.
***
The moments went spinning out as if everyone in the kitchen at the Luxor dance hall had been cut free from time and space. Here was the most natural thing in the world, a mother with her newborn baby. Only forces beyond Benedict's understanding had interfered with the processes of conception, gestation and birth. This was no ordinary situation repeated endlessly in maternity wards. This might happen only once every thousand years.
Benedict could barely breathe as he watched Robyn examine the child as only a mother could. His heart beat with hammerlike fury against his ribs. He found himself anxious as to how he would react if she looked up at him in horror and screamed out that the child possessed some monstrous feature or alien limbs. Those moments went spinning out and out as if forever. He waited for her to utter the results of her scrutiny. He felt the itch of a fear sweat on his back. Surely, she'd have to speak soon. Maybe she was afraid to express what she'd found in words. As for Benedict, he couldn't bear to look at mother and child.
Instead he focused on the kitchen table, not daring to even glance through the window in case he saw something hideous reflected in the glass A hand touched his forearm. He looked down to see Robyn as she sat there on the floor, back to the wall, the baby bundled in the towel.
”Benedict.”She breathed out the words. ”He's perfect.”
Ellery flashed Benedict a sudden grin that lit up his face. ”A boy!”
Benedict crouched down, too. ”And he's…”
”Fine. Perfect. A beautiful baby boy.”
Benedict glimpsed a tiny face with plump cheeks. A wet cowlick of hair stuck to a forehead. Bloodstains still smudged the clenched hands that poked over the edge of the towel. One hand gave a little twitch; briefly, small fingers extended. Four fingers. One thumb. Each with a delicately formed fingernail.
Benedict sighed with relief. ”I'll go tell Dad.”But he'd only walked halfway across the kitchen floor when he paused. ”Wait… does anyone smell burning?”
CHAPTER 36
Benedict went to the end of the hallway to see what he could see down the furniture-choked stairwell. Behind him in the kitchen, Noel and Nathaniel had gone to see the baby for themselves. Benedict could hear Robyn (now dressed once more) reassuring an anxious Noel that the baby was perfectly healthy and perfectly normal. Benedict guessed Nathaniel was anxious,
too. If the baby was this much-needed healer, then he needed to know the newborn was in good shape, too. There was also the question: how would this healing process in that gray borderland between the two worlds work?
Although that mystery would have to wait. Those monsters at the other side of the barricade were still hammering at the door (and ripping away chunks by the sound of it). Another powerful question needed an answer, too. Where the hell was that smoke coming from?
***
Shit… this wasn't the best decision he'd ever made. In fact, his whole strategy had gone butt-side-up. Logan backed across the stage, watching the sheet of flame spread up the massive stage curtain. Heat stung his face. By the light of the fire he'd started, he could see smoke pouring across the dance hall ceiling more than twenty feet above his head.
Already the lighting gantry had vanished into a blue fog. Gobs of burning material fell from the curtain to the stage. The heat scorched his exposed skin.
Shit no, not your best decision, old buddy. But I couldn't wait forever.
I needed to get this show on the road.
Only now his enemies would probably scatter from the inferno before he could extract retribution with the gun.
Whoever was pounding on wood hadn't let the fire disturb them. Maybe they didn't even know that this dry-aspaper place had caught alight? The idea of a bunch of goofballs sitting around Ellery Hann playing a big marching drum or whatever the hell the source of the noise was sent balls of flaming anger surging through Logan's veins.
