by Chad Morgan
“Bethany!” Daniel called. “The board! Now!”
Bethany didn’t move, petrified with fear and despair. Daniel heard the wood cracking. Soon, the door would give way, and one man wasn’t enough to hold on against a platoon of abominations pounding to get in. Their mass would punch though, they wound claw at Daniel, they would rip Bethany apart, they would tear apart that stupid doll . . .
Something slammed against the abominations, and while the door held the wood bowed and knocked Daniel on his ass. Another loud bang and Daniel thought that was it, but the abominations weren’t banging against the door but being knocked aside. Daniel didn’t have time to wonder why. He grabbed a plank and a hammer from the floor and laid it against the door. Right before he hammered in the loose nails, he saw. There was something other than the abominations, something green and brown like dinosaurs made of trees and vines. Whatever these new horrors were, they tore at the monsters and battered them aside. For the moment, Bethany and Daniel were forgotten. Daniel pounded fresh boards against the door and blocked out the supernatural war outside.
9
The war waged on throughout the day and deep into the night. Daniel watched off and on between the boards over the windows and glass door of the medical clinic, partly to make sure he and Bethany were still forgotten, partially to learn about the two sides of this war, but as night fell it started getting very cold and very dark. Daniel dared not try to start a fire. Better to stay hidden. When the sounds of the battle drifted from them, Daniel went into the back of the clinic for something to fight off the cold. That alone was a huge effort as Bethany wouldn’t go back into the dark clinic and didn’t want to be left alone with the monsters screaming outside. He tried to persuade her with rational arguments, but her fear transcended logic and Daniel resorted to ordering Bethany to stay put while he rummaged through the empty clinic. He also had to make sure there wasn’t a back door that was unsecured. He also wanted to know where the wolf had gone, the one he saw in the open doorway. He found no back door and no wolf, but he did find thin thermal blankets. They weren’t much, but it was better than nothing.
Daniel put his coat back on to keep warm. He had taken it to dress his dog bite on his left arm and had left it off until now. The coat wasn’t thick, it was meant for LA weather, not this high-altitude mountain cold, but like the blankets, they were better than nothing. The rip in the left sleeve let his body heat out, but his bandages helped with that. Banging against his sore chest from the inside pocket was Anna’s diary.
He walked into the lobby of the clinic and looked at Bethany, still curled up in a ball on the floor. He handed one of the blankets to her. “You cold? Found some blankets in the exam rooms.”
“I’m fine,” she said, though she was shivering. She had never taken her coat off since leaving the social services office, and it was much thicker than his own, but it wasn’t enough for the nighttime chill. In spite her refusal, Daniel wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She didn’t fight him off or shrug off the blanket.
Daniel walked over to the window and took a quick glance outside. The battle was still going on but some ways away from them. Not far enough, but as far as they could be in the narrow street. “You know, I searched this whole place, I can’t find the wolf.”
Bethany looked up. “What wolf?”
“The wolf,” Daniel said as if it were self-explanatory. “It was standing outside the clinic. Ran in here. You didn’t see it?” When Bethany shook her head, he wondered aloud, “Weird. I could have sworn . . .”
“You saw a wolf run in here?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, excited. “A big gray wolf.”
“And you ran in here with it?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Daniel said, the energy drained from his words.
“Why?” she asked. It wasn’t an accusing tone, but simple child-like curiosity.
“I don’t know,” Daniel said, and he was as confused now as Bethany was. “It was like, it wanted us to follow it.”
“A wolf?” Bethany asked.
“Yeah, now that I say it out loud, it does sound pretty stupid.” Something about the wolf, the only normal thing in a town of monsters besides themselves, called to him, but wasn’t it a wild animal that could have been almost as dangerous as the dog monster that bit him? “I don’t know, it seemed to make sense at the time. Guess it doesn’t matter, there’s no wolf. Must have been my imagination or something.”
Daniel sat down next to Bethany, and his whole body lets out a sigh of relief. He started fishing out the police pistol, the muscles in his shoulders and arm tightening in complaint as he did so, but once the gun was out of his pocket they calmed down. As he opened the chamber and dumped the empty shells into his hand, he glanced over to see Bethany watching him. Her eyes were on the gun, curious and concerned, but not scared. Daniel checked the shells for an unfired bullet, knowing there wasn’t one. Sure enough, all the bullets had been fired. He dropped them to the ground, the metal tinkling off the tile like metal raindrops as he put the gun back in his pocket.
“We’re out of bullets,” he said. He pointed with his eyes at where the tire iron lay on the floor. “At least we have the lug wrench. Better than nothing.”
“You really don’t like guns?” she asked.
“No,” Daniel said. “Guns are very, very dangerous.”
“Then why did you take it?”
Daniel nodded towards the roars and screams outside. “They’re even more dangerous.”
There was a loud roar close to the closed clinic door. Too close. Bethany cringed, making herself even smaller, trying to pull her head inside her chest like a turtle. For a moment, Daniel thought it was his fault, that he somehow summoned the creature when he acknowledged their existence. He got up, adrenaline shutting up his complaining muscles, and sprinted for the door. He peered between the slats that boarded up the door. The war had indeed shifted closer to them, but the monsters outside were more interested in killing themselves than in them.
He shifted his weight, and Anna’s diary thumped against his sore ribs as if Anna wanted to poke him and remind him of something. He fished out the diary and flipped through the pages. It was too dark to read by, but he could make out the crude drawings, the black ink looking like scorches against the yellowing paper. He looked at a sketch of a deformed abomination, then glanced through the slats. He saw the monster out on the street, bringing its knife-like hands through one of the walking trees. It wasn’t an exact match, but all the monsters were a little different, like blistered-covered snowflakes, but he called it a match. He flipped through and found more drawings, and many of them he spotted out in the street. It was clear, Anna’s drawings were not a manifestation of her insanity, if she was insane at all. Seeing these things, how could she not be driven insane? Before he closed the diary, he thumbed through it some more, but while many of the monsters from the ones that had attacked him were in the diary, there wasn’t one of the new kind, no pictures of forest-type monsters.
Daniel stepped back from the boarded windows. The wooden planks kept the door closed and them out of sight, but the glass was mostly gone and the chilly wind zipped between the boards. Daniel shivered and pulled the jacket tighter around him. He looked down at Bethany. “You warm enough?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
With her heavier coat and thin thermal blanket, Daniel thought she looked warm. Not warm enough to be comfortable, but she was safe from hypothermia. Daniel shivered. “Wish I brought a warmer coat. It’s a lot warmer in LA.”
Another roar pulled his attention back to the door. He watched the war wage on. There were no uniforms, but the different sides couldn’t be more visually distinct. The side that attacked him, the side that chased Bethany and him into the clinic, were the color of burnt or raw flesh, uneven bodies, and blisters like they had all been melted of welded together from spare parts. The other kind looked like mother nature come to life, and for some reason made him even more frightened.
They were shaped to look more like animals. It was sort of like seeing shapes in clouds, the human mind trying to pair the jumble of rocks and branches and leaves with forms he already knew. He saw one that looked like a gorilla, smashing its way with long, massive arms that seemed to morph from hands to giant clubs. There was a pack of fast-moving ones that made him think of birds or dinosaurs. Daniel wondered if the nature-monsters would attack them like the ugly abominations would, of if they would let them be.
“There seems to be two different . . . I don’t know what you’d call them, breeds?” he said to Bethany. “Two different types of whatever those things are. They didn’t seem to like each other much, which is good for us. They’re too busy attacking each other to remember us.”
“`Kay,” she replied, unimpressed.
“The guy in the jail cell,” Daniel said, thinking more to himself than talking to Bethany. “He said they come out at night mostly. Maybe in the morning they’ll be gone, and we can try to find a working car and get out of here.”
“’Kay,” she repeated, just as unpassionately.
The wheels in Daniel’s head were turning though. He turned to Bethany, his brow furrowed. “He also said he knew you. And your mother.”
Bethany didn’t say anything. Her eyes were wide in the moonlight, the classic look of a child in fear of being in trouble. Problem was, kids were used to being caught doing something wrong, even without knowing what they had done was wrong to start with. Children had an ingrained sense of paranoia in them, and they knew when they were being accused of something. Daniel walked over and knelt in front of her. He spoke in what he hoped was a soft and calm voice.
“Bethany, talk to me,” he said. “What do you know about this place.”
“Nothing,” she said, but she shifted her eyes away from his. Again, for adults, this was a sign of lying, but for kids did the same rules apply?
“You didn’t want to come here,” he said. “Did you recognize this place?”
“I don’t know,” she whined.
Daniel tried to swallow his frustration. “Bethany, I need to know. Have you ever come to this town?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated, a pained look on her face that convinced Daniel she meant it.
“Okay, let’s back up a bit,” he said, looking for a different tact. “What happened with you and your mother? Can you tell me about where you lived? Places you went?”
Bethany thought for a moment, then said, “We lived in an apartment by ourselves until Grandpa died. That’s when I met Uncle Marcus, at Grandpa’s funeral.”
“You never met your uncle before then?” he asked.
Bethany shook her head. “No, it was just me and mommy.”
Daniel nodded, soaking the information all in. “Then what happened?”
Bethany’s face grew heavy. “Uncle Marcus died, and Mommy got sick, and then she died.”
Her words trailed off into tears, having picked on an emotional wound that was still tender and fresh. Daniel reached out to put his arm around her, saying, “It’s okay.”
But Bethany squirmed out from under his arm and swatted it away. “No, it’s not okay! This is a bad place! Mommy should never have stopped hiding!”
As Bethany screamed, the growls and cries from outside seemed to stop. They hadn’t, of course, but in his mind, he saw all the monster of both types stop and look towards the clinic. “Bethany, calm down. Calm down.”
“No!” she shouted. Her little fists were clenched and she pounded her thighs with every sentence. “Mommy stopped hiding! Then the ghosts came! Then Uncle Marcus died and Mommy went into the hospital! Then she killed herself, and then they called you!”
For a moment, Daniel forgot about the things outside just as Bethany obviously did. “Why, Bethany? Why was your mommy hiding?”
“Because she had to hide me from you!” she spat.
Daniel reeled back, having been slapped by Bethany’s words and her damning stare. When he spoke, he had to squeeze the words from his constricting throat. “She told you that?”
“I heard her tell Uncle Marcus,” she said, and guilt bled into her righteousness. “She didn’t know I was listening.”
“Why?” Daniel asked. “Did she say why?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t remember.”
His next question was a ball of razor blades, and it cut as he pushed it up his throat, but he had to know. “Beth? What did your mother tell you about me?”
The glare Bethany shot at him had more anger than a nine-year-old should be capable of feeling towards anyone. “She told me I didn’t have a daddy.”
Daniel fell back. Did Anna say that? His Anna? What the hell had he done to piss her off so badly? How had he instilled such a fear of him in his former girlfriend that she felt she had to disappear, not only from him but from her family as well? He racked his brain. Sure, they had little spats - what relationship was perfect? - but she didn’t break up with him. She had vanished from everyone, told his daughter he didn’t exist. Before now he thought mental illness made for a good excuse, something that could be forgiven, even understood, but the monsters tearing themselves apart outside was proof Anna wasn’t crazy when she ran away. Might have been driven crazy later. Monsters come to life was enough to drive someone over the edge – hell, he wasn’t sure he wasn’t losing it now – but that would have come many years after Anna had run off if it did at all. What had he done to her? He looked to Bethany, hoping an answer would rise out of her somehow, but she rolled over, showing her back to her and pretending to be asleep.
There was a huge roar from outside. Daniel shot to his feet. Even Bethany stopped feinting sleep and sat up, her eyes wide. He felt dirty just hearing it . . . no, he felt it. This was a different roar, a deeper roar, a guttural noise that echoed within them, like some dark resonance. He ran to the window.
Striding down the street was the largest abomination he had seen so far. Unlike the other monsters, this one was unique as far as Daniel could see, with a massive head like a melted crown. It killed indiscriminately, batting away creatures from both armies, but unlike the nature-inspired beasts, the others never tried to strike it. In fact, it almost seemed like they knelt for him like he was royalty. This king monster cut a swath through the battle with claws as tall as Daniel was. One of his own soldiers, one of those damn whip-arm things, had the misfortune of having its back to it. The snake-arm saw it before the rest of the body knew what was happening and tried to slither away, but the king monster picked it up single-handedly. Its mouth unhinged or something because it grew to fit around the torso of the whip-arm creature, then bit down and ripped the lower half from the part clutched in its teeth. It spat out the top half and threw the bottom half towards the clinic. Daniel ducked to the side as the black blood sprayed over the outside of the clinic.
He leaned his head in, checking for more flying blood. Instead, he spied three of those nature monsters barreling down from the other end of the street. They were bowling the abominations out of their way as they zeroed in on the king monster. The king monster never paused in his stride but swung its long claws. The nature monsters were shredded as if they ran through a wood chipper, then burst into flames. Daniel could hear the fire crackling, but the dying creatures let out a wail that made him feel their pain. To Daniel, it sounded like a mother crying over the grave of her dead child. Several of the abominations ran to the blaze, only to catch fire themselves. The king monster didn’t look back, even as one of the surviving nature creatures tried to get back to its feet, only to be taken down by a pack of those damn dog monsters.
Daniel hung his head and rested it against the boards over the door. “What did you get yourself into, Anna? Why didn’t you tell me about it? Why didn’t you trust me?”
He wasn’t sure, but under the sounds of wood burning and creatures roaring, he thought he could hear Bethany crying.
10
The sun was high and bright, shining down on the wet beach sand
and rolling ocean waves. The air was missing the salt smell though, and while the sun gleamed Daniel still felt cold. The people running through the sand and playing in the water didn’t seem to notice. They were all scantily clad in swimsuits and didn’t seem cold at all. They all seemed young and fit like he had wandered into a supermodel party, but that couldn’t be right. He looked down at his feet. They were bare, each step sinking an inch into the wet sand, but he couldn’t feel it. He noticed that dangling from his left wrist – his non-injured, non-infected left wrist – was his father’s watch. He had given that to Bethany, but of course, he was at a time before Bethany was born now. He shook his wrist. He couldn’t feel the cold metal of the watch, but his wrist ached from the effort. This wasn’t real. He was still in Shellington Heights, curled up on the floor of that dirty clinic, shivering under a thin thermal blanket.
He remembered this day, but the details were a bit off. For one, there was a couple playing in the waves he thought he had seen on the cover of a celebrity magazine. Another woman was lying on the beach sunning herself, huge bikini-clad breasts gleaming with tanning oil, her hair large and teased and years out of style. Daniel was sure she was a porn actress from the eighties, a vague fantasy from when he first entered puberty. He figured his mind was filling in the details he had forgotten with other random memories like a library of stock footage.
“Do you remember this day?” Anna said.
She was beside him, holding his hand. He wasn’t surprised to see her, but was she there before? Dreams didn’t have to obey continuity, so he accepted it as another one of those dream things. She was wearing a white sundress which flowed in the wind coming off the ocean, her shoes in her hand. Damn, she was so beautiful. Anna looked up at him with that Mona Lisa smile of hers, her brown eyes glittering like the ocean behind her.
