Dastardly Bastard

by Edward Lorn

  The vending machine was one in a line of three. The other two sold coffee, cold sandwiches, and microwavable burritos. A microwave sat on a counter. Next to it stood a sink that could be operated by foot pedals on the floor. Turning around, she saw a large room with rows of seating set up in the middle and around the outer wall. Above a door on the other side hung a sign with three letters on it: I.C.U.

  The area behind her was large and mostly empty. One lone boy sat in the corner with his head down. A black cloth was wrapped diagonally around his head. When he lifted his face to look off at a nearby wall, Justine realized the boy also wore an eye patch. Her heart ached at the sight. Loss poured off of him; Justine could feel it in her soul. Tears ran down one cheek. He never looked at her. Just sat there, weeping, his chest hitching from the effort.

  Justine had no way of knowing what time it was. Like bars, hospitals mostly kept clocks out of sight. A comforting feeling could be had by not knowing just how long you’d been waiting for someone to die.

  Someone to die.

  Memories flitted to the surface like faeries on an updraft. Justine’s mind swam, the world tilting before her. The warm pink color of the walls started to darken, a deeper maroon coming to the surface. The one-eyed boy stood, brushed off his shirt as if crumbs had settled there, and stepped forward, moving away from Justine, to the double doors at the opposite end of the waiting area. His movements were slow, languid, as if he were moving underwater.

  Keeping her distance, not knowing if the child was to be feared or not, Justine followed. The smell of disinfectant assaulted her senses as she moved into a long hallway. The walls were bisected into two colors—deep blue for the top half, black at the bottom—with a plastic handrail running the length of the hall. Someone had thought it clever to speckle white dots on the black section of wall, making it look as if stars floated in an evening sky. Justine thought she remembered something, but let it go when the boy turned right into an alcove. She came to the spot and looked inside.

  Lying on the bed in the center of the room was Nana Penance. Her breaths were shallow, labored. Justine knew there should be nurses and doctors fighting to save her—she remembered that the chaos had been almost soothing—but no one was there.

  Justine heard herself praying, begging not to be there. She had lived it once. Wasn’t that enough? Why should she have to be witness to the tragedy all over again? Nana had been like a mother to her, as Justine’s own mother had been severely lacking in the nurturing department.

  She went to the side of the bed and gripped the railing. She felt the tears coming, but sniffed them back. She had shed too many. What she saw was not happening, and she would not give in to tarnished memories. Justine felt that she must fight. There was something to fight for; she just knew it. Even if that something was hidden at the moment, it had to be found. Whatever it was.

  Nana Penance was gone. Dead. Justine’s grandmother was not the woman lying in that bed. The scene wasn’t real. Because that wasn’t how it had happened.

  When Nana died, Justine had felt as though the world had become a broken place. Everywhere she turned, she was stabbed. Too many people wanted to console her. There were arms everywhere, wanting to hug, to comfort. She had just wished to be left alone. She’d only wanted to be angry at the wonderful woman who’d helped to raise her, mold her into the woman she had become.

  There had been no sadness. No tears. Only anger directed at Nana Penance for leaving her alone. But Justine hadn’t been alone. No. Someone else had been there, someone she’d lost. Someone she needed to find. “Trevor?”

  “Why don’t you learn to just leave well enough alone?” Nana Penance’s jaw worked like a ventriloquist’s dummy, hinged and loose. Her eyes remained closed, and she was no longer breathing.

  “Where is he?” Justine asked.

  “Why don’t you ask the boy?” Nana Penance’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. The sight made Justine sick to her stomach.

  “What does he have to do with this?”

  “Oh, just everything. Ha-ha, ha-ha.” The laughter was robotic as the unseen puppeteer played with Nana Penance’s mouth in sharp, jarring movements.

  The last time she’d seen the boy with the eye patch, he’d walked into the hospital room, but she didn’t see him anywhere. “What’s his name?”

  “I think you know. I think you’ve known all along.”

  Justine didn’t have the slightest clue. She’d never seen the boy. He was no taller than the boy she’d met on the trail—what had his name been? Kyle? Lyle?—and probably about the same age. She didn’t know any blond-haired kids, didn’t know many white kids, period, aside from the ones in Trevor’s family. Still, she knew there was something she wasn’t seeing, a piece of the puzzle missing.

  Nana Penance bucked with a violent, sporadic movement of her hips as she was lifted off the bed and folded in two. Justine backpedaled away from the bed and hit a wall behind her, the back of her head bouncing off the surface.

  Justine screamed as her grandmother’s body was pulled apart, separating at the waist, flesh coming away like sticky tape. Both sections flopped back down onto the mattress. From out of the torso, a black, viscous fluid gushed and poured over the side of the bed. The substance moved of its own free will, bubbling and churning, oozing along the floor toward Justine. She tried to back away, seeking the entrance, but the door was no longer there, just a smooth wall.

  “Why do you fight?” a chorus of voices asked.

  “What else can I do?” She moved to the nearest corner and cowered.

  “I have never seen such insolence, child. You have angered me!”

  The mass congealed, becoming solid, an inky leviathan rising out of the floor, until it was as tall as the ceiling of the hospital room. It spread across the walls, devouring everything in its path. The form swallowed the bed, its shape disappearing under the black covering. The nightstand and IV pole were next. The monstrosity filled the entire left side of the room, throbbing, pulsing with life. A mouth opened in the mass, directly in the center, and stagnant breath reeking of decay flooded over Justine’s cowering form.

  “Did you really think I would be bested so easily? This is my place, child.”

  “I want Trevor back,” she pleaded. “He’s all I have left.”

  “You can’t have him!” the mouth roared, black spittle spattering the wall beside Justine’s head.

  “Why us?” was all she could think to ask. She was surprised she could even speak in the thing’s presence.

  “That is of no concern of yours. I have waited so very long. You, child, will be my vessel. My release.”

  “The fuck I will!” Justine looked down at her shaking hands, trying to find something else to focus on other than the horror facing her. Trevor’s engagement ring stared back, twinkling in the dimness. Justine recalled the words on the inside of the band—Now & Forever. She steadied herself, pushing up from her fetal position.

  “You’re brave, child.”

  “No.” Justine inhaled slowly. “I’m pissed off.”

  “Tread lightly, Just,” Nana Penance’s voice, or what the thing thought her grandmother sounded like, anyway. The impersonation was failing.

  Justine felt as though she was making headway. If the thing used memories against people, then she would use the same tactics to fight it. “Who are you?” she asked, approaching the pool.

  “I am Omega!”

  “Somehow I doubt that. You’re powerful. I get that. But you’re not everything you say you are.”

  “I am everything!”

  “You’re scared.” Justine felt the mass shrinking away, its edges drawing in on itself.

  “I have nothing to be frightened of, child!”

  “Yes, you do. I may not know what it is right now, but I will find out.”

  She reached toward the undulating mass. Unbearable cold washed over her hand. She wanted so badly to pull away, but she wouldn’t allow it. She had to know. She had to
see.

  “Get away from me!”

  “What are you hiding? Let me in.”

  “I am forever! I have no weakness!”

  “Keep telling yourself that, asshole.”

  She threw a punch at the mass. Her fist disappeared into the black void. A sucking drew her in, pulling at her shoulder. Justine let it happen. Something was in there. She had to find out what it was. The mass gurgled as it slurped her up, consuming her. She closed her eyes and stepped into the writhing thing, letting the entirety of it cover her.

  Its voice gurgled. “Get out!”

  Justine opened her eyes to an unfamiliar kitchen. A young boy stood in the middle of the room, his fists balled at his sides, cheeks reddened, tears streaming. He was the boy from the hospital, but without the bandage and eye patch.

  She assumed the middle-aged man by the old wood stove was the boy’s father. His face was weathered with worry, a storm raging in his eyes. Hot frustration boiled off of him in waves. He strode forward and grabbed the boy about the shoulders, shaking him.

  “These things you see are not real, Scott!”

  “They are! I promise! The shadows are real!”

  At shadows, Justine’s heart skipped a beat. She knew that conversation. She’d had the same one with her own mother. It would go back and forth, over and over again, until Justine gave in and retreated to her room. No matter what was said, the shadows were real. They hovered, hid behind shoulders, came off people like stink. Justine had always thought they meant death, the looming presence of life at its end, but she had come to believe they stood for much more.

  “You’re sick, child. That’s all. I’ll get you help. The doctors will know a way to deal with your crazy hallucinations!”

  The father turned, leaving his son to cry in the kitchen as he walked out of the room. Justine wanted to reach out and grab the boy, to hug him, to tell him everything was going to be all right. She understood. It wasn’t his fault. He had to know that. She had to tell him, but she couldn’t move.

  It occurred to her that the scene was not of her time. The old woodstove in the corner, the black-and-white checkered floor, the claw foot fridge… everything spoke to the fact that she was seeing a scene played out long ago. Yet, she had to try.

  “Scott?” She didn’t think he would hear her, but he did.

  The boy turned his head, meeting her eyes. Through his tears, she saw calm realization. It hurt deep inside her.

  “I don’t want to see any more.” His shoulders hunched, chest bucking. The boy went to a drawer by the sink and pulled it open. He rummaged, feverishly hunting for something. Justine felt an impending sense of doom. Everything was going wrong.

  Scott pulled something silver from the catchall. The prongs of the utensil shimmered like liquid in the candlelight of the kitchen. The boy gripped the fork white-knuckle tight, holding it out in front of himself, staring at it.

  “I just can’t see any more.” Scott shoved the fork into his eye.

  Everything was spinning. The world became unhinged. When it righted itself, she was standing in an office. The boy’s father sat across a desk from a man in a white lab coat. The coated man looked emotionless behind his curly black beard. His bald head reflected the bookcases behind him.

  The father asked, “What can we do for the child?”

  Scott, Justine thought. His name is Scott. And you ignored him, you bastard.

  “We can only watch him and make sure he doesn’t do anything like this again. We’ll medicate him. See that he is sedated.”

  “I have so much going on right now. I wasn’t paying attention. He’s troubled. I know that. There’s the new logging company coming in, that chasm we found, the state moving about like crazy, trying to steal that land right from underneath me. I just didn’t see this being that big of an issue.”

  He’s your son!

  “You can come by, take him out for day trips. You have to maintain contact. He needs you right now, Mr. Fairchild.”

  “I know.”

  Fairchild? The name was familiar, but where had she heard it before?

  Justine was whisked away again through a black, seemingly endless void. Her ears popped as the pressure shifted. She felt herself rising, being pulled through time and space, passing through a rift in the world.

  She landed in a child’s room. Pictures hung from the walls, abstract charcoal renderings of stick figures with black lines coming off of them. If Justine hadn’t made the same pictures, once upon a time, she wouldn’t have realized the wavy black lines were shadows. That was how they looked, at least to a child’s eyes. Dark, wispy threads emanated from people, evil pouring off them, clinging to their bodies, stretching to heavens the world should never see. The older Justine got, the less she saw them. Before she was ten years old, she’d seen them everywhere, on everyone she passed in her life. Her room had become a sanctuary from the horrors of the world.

  At the highest point of the picture pyramid was a piece of parchment filled with a child’s scrawl. She read the words aloud.

  “The Dastardly Bastard of Waverly Chasm did gleefully scheme of malevolent things. Beware, child fair, of what you find there. His lies, how they hide in the shadows he wears. ‘Cross wreckage of bridge is where this man lives. Counting his spoils, his eye how it digs. Tread if you dare, through his one-eyed stare. This Dastardly Bastard is neither here, nor there.”

  She felt sick inside. Cold.

  When she stepped forward to get a better look at a certain picture, she noticed the texture of the walls. They were padded.

  “He can’t see you when you’re inside, you know.”

  The boy spoke from the middle of the room. Legs crossed under him, he was bent over, coloring a piece of paper in big black swirling motions. That black hole terrified Justine.

  “But I do,” he finished.

  “Who is he?”

  The boy shrugged.

  She had to go about it in a different way. “My name’s Justine.”

  “Scott.” The boy went back to his drawing.

  Justine noticed he wore the eye patch again, the aftermath of his self-inflicted wound. “You know, they can’t hurt you. The shadows, I mean.” Justine knew the comment wouldn’t help, but she had to try something. She needed his trust. She needed answers.

  “But they do.” The words were final.

  Justine realized the boy was further gone than she had ever been. She’d had Nana Penance, a beacon in the dark, an understanding soul who had helped her cope with her visions. The boy, he’d had nothing like that. No one believed him. The shadows had won.

  “I’m so sorry.” Justine’s voice cracked, filling with emotions she hadn’t seen coming. “My God, I’m so very sorry, Scott.”

  The boy just shrugged again. He looked back to the page he was working on, and continued coloring.

  She was looking at a lost soul, one who had given up all hope of a normal existence. Justine thought about Nana Penance and what her life would have become without her help. Was the boy what should have become of her? Was he the embodiment of the outcome Justine had skirted? She thought so. When Nana Penance had died, Justine had dived into Trevor wholeheartedly to bolster the wall between her and the shadows. But what did she have left? Trevor was gone. Yet his memories remained, just enough of him left to hold up that wall.

  “I have to go.” She didn’t want to leave Scott, but she needed to find a way out of the nightmare. The boy, the sad, pitiful soul, was gone. Whatever time he had lived in was now past, left behind by a world moved on.

  “He’s waiting for you.” Scott met her gaze with his one good eye as he finally looked up from the picture. “He’s going to get you. This Dastardly Bastard is neither here, nor there.”

  The boy held out the picture. The charcoal drawing began to swirl, collapsing in on itself. Justine felt herself being pulled forward.

  “Stop! I don’t want to do this anymore!” She curled into a fetal position, wrapped her arms around her knees, an
d shook violently. Her mind was cracking. She was being flooded by feelings and emotions not her own. They shouldn’t be there. She willed them to leave.

  “Do you give up?” The voice was everywhere. Justine thought she could hear it laughing.

  “No! You’re nothing more than what we make you!” Her words felt right, comforting, though she had no idea where they came from. This thing, whatever it was, was feeding off of her. If she chose, she could maintain control over it.

  She found a focal point, a blinding white light in the darkness—Trevor’s eyes as he had woken up in the tent that morning. His calming baby blues, the serenity in those pools, would be her salvation. She swallowed hard, the lump in her throat protesting, but finally dropping away.

  Rising from the darkness, Justine found that a soft glow shone on her, bright enough to make her squint against it. “Where is everyone? You’re hiding them from me. I want them back.”

  “You will die, child. Find them or not, your fate is sealed.”

  “Damn that. I want them back.”

  “Then come. But be warned. I can be very unforgiving, child.”

  The light around Justine continued to grow until she held the back of her hand to her eyes to shield them. From the retreating black came three sullen figures, walking toward her, arms at their sides, eyes looking straight ahead. They shambled like the undead, their movements jerky and forced. Justine remembered the pictures on Lyle’s cell phone, the shadowy puppeteer while he played with the group. As each one stepped into the light, she began to recognize them. Not knowing what else to do, she went to the smallest body and laid her palms on the sides of his face. Kneeling, she forced him to look at her. Something moved in his eyes, a flame. She thought it could be candlelight. Above the flicker of fire, an Asian woman looked back at her. Justine somehow knew the woman was a key. What the key would unlock, Justine had no idea. Still, she needed to try it.

  Justine moved into the memory, ready to fight.

  30

  THE MONSTER WAS GAINING ON him. Donald struggled to increase his speed. He could feel the thing behind him. He rounded a curve and ran right into a stalagmite. He bounced off the calcium deposit and landed hard on his back, knocking the wind from his lungs. As he strained to sit up, a cold hand pushed him back down. The creature seemed to be upside down. It peered into his eyes, gnashing its teeth, saliva dripping.