by Edward Lorn
Jaleel Warner made up the upper left half of the beast, while Marsha Lake composed the upper right. Their torsos were attached with rope, which Donald knew without a doubt was none other than the rope from the bridge he’d crossed earlier that day. In the center, rising up from between Marsha and Jaleel, was Justine’s boyfriend, Trevor. His eyes were dark obsidian with red gems shining in the middle. The man’s mouth was fitted with jagged pieces of wood, hideously gnarled mockeries of teeth. The thing gnashed, and boards creaked, rubbing together and sounding like nails on chalkboard. The legs were goat-like, but bending backward at the knees like a flamingo. Black flesh shone in the sun from under reddish-brown fur. Its legs ended in hooves that clopped on the asphalt like Dutch dancing clogs.
“Trevor!” Justine screamed.
“That isn’t your boyfriend, chick.” Donald had wanted to be comforting, but his words just came off as weak. He puffed up his chest. “Justine! Look at me!”
“I-I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Just fucking look at me.”
Slowly, Justine turned her head and brought her eyes to his.
“That thing isn’t Trevor. You got me, sister? You fucking got me?”
“Yeah. Yes.” Her breathing calmed.
“Uh, hate to break your spell over there, but what do you think we should do here?” Mark asked.
Donald kept his gaze on Justine, just in case. “Can you run, big guy?”
“If it’s away from that…” Mark pointed at the ghastly amalgamation of the lost. “You bet your ass I can run.”
Lyle bolted for the street. The boy cut right, his shoes squeaking on the asphalt.
“Where are we going?” Donald asked as he took off after Lyle.
Donald kept up as best he could, but soon enough, Lyle and Justine were far ahead of Tubby and him.
“Away!” Mark growled as he snatched Donald up, carrying him under his arm like a football.
Donald bounced up and down roughly as the fat guy blundered away with him. “Hey!” Donald yelled between breaths. “Let me down!”
“I may not… be the fastest fucker out here, Squirt… but my legs are longer than yours. It’s simple physics. I can cover more ground.”
Behind them, closing ground, Trevor, Marsha, and Jaleel laughed.
35
MARK SIMMONS COUNTED.
ONE… TWO… three… four…
With every step, his stomach would sway left to right, throttling the little man under his arm. Donald’s words would come and go. Squirt was squealing, then muffled. Screaming, then mumbling. Mark tried to ignore him, focusing all his attention and concentration on escaping the monster at their heels.
Five… six… seven… eight…
Mark wasn’t kidding himself. Even if he tallied numbers up to a billion, keeping track of every single numeral as it rolled around in his gray matter, the fact remained the same. He was already out of breath, and he hadn’t even reached ten yet.
He could hear the thundering footfalls of the ten-foot giant. The squalling noise it made, the creaking plank-teeth clacking together in Trevor’s mouth, the cracking pavement from the monster’s footfalls, all made Mark move faster. Damn the weight. Damn the wind he so desperately needed. Damn the torpedoes, even. He wasn’t going to fall victim to that thing.
Nine… ten…
Donald was saying something, but at that moment, his face was buried in Mark’s love handle. Mark tried to ask Donald what he was saying, but questions required air, which was something he did not possess just then.
Eleven… twelve…
He couldn’t understand, not for the life of him, why the monster hadn’t caught them yet. His mind’s eye saw a tank, not all that fast, but deadly nonetheless. Though the monster’s legs were five feet long, and its stride was twice as long as his own, it still had to maintain a forward movement. That took energy. Just like a tank, it would need fuel. He imagined the thing running out of gas. Petering out. Good fuel mixing with the crud at the bottom of the tank. Carbon blocking the filter. The engine firing less and less, until finally, it would collapse.
Or he would.
“Mouses!” Donald grumbled, his mouth tickling Mark’s side.
He hadn’t the breath left to laugh, and the situation didn’t call for it. He found himself doing it anyway. “What… the… what?” Mark shifted his hold, lifting Donald up and away. He tossed the little guy up over his bouncing shoulder, laying a hand across his back to keep him stable.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Donald screamed. Mark knew he had just given Squirt the worst possible view of the monster—a full frontal shot. “Faster, damn it! Move it, Tubby!”
Donald didn’t have to tell him twice. Mark had played football in high school. He knew once he got his weight moving, the momentum would carry him faster than his legs could. Coach Peterson had made it abundantly clear that uncontrolled momentum could make a person stumble face first into the turf. Mark knew there was no turf. It would not be a soft landing if he should lose his footing. He leaned back a little, pulling his gut in and up. The action didn’t help his fight for oxygen. In fact, it made him dizzy. Bright, sparkling stars exploded in his vision. He feared he would go down despite his efforts. Then, the terrible beastie would gobble Donald and him all up.
“The houses! Inside, asshole. Inside! Get us out of here!” Donald wailed from over Mark’s shoulder.
Houses, Mark thought. Squirt said houses. Not mouses!
The rows of tract homes did seem like a temporary reprieve. As if Justine and Lyle had heard Donald’s demands, which wasn’t possible given they were about a football field away, the two cut left into the front yard of an old Victorian number with high arches and a slanted roof.
Mark decided he was closer to the right side of the tract. He concentrated very hard on stepping up and onto the curb instead of tripping on the concrete and serving Donald and himself up on a silver platter. Just as he reached the sidewalk, Mark saw the monster in his peripheral vision as it tore a mailbox from its base and hurled it at him. The steel compartment sailed over Mark’s right shoulder, barely grazing him. Mark was suddenly very glad he hadn’t thrown Donald over that shoulder. He was sure Squirt felt the same way.
“Go, go, go, go!” Donald erupted. The little guy slammed the balls of his palms into Mark’s back.
Mark leaned further into his escape, his legs burning, Donald squealing, his mind spinning from the lack of oxygen, not slowing, not even when he jumped the single step onto the porch of the house. Stopping was no longer an option. He just prayed that the door wasn’t made of oak or something even sturdier. He prayed it was made of plywood, or balsa, or fucking paper. And Mark was not a praying man.
He took the entire door off at the hinges. He was all too glad at that one, precise moment to weigh every bit of his five hundred pounds. Thank God he hadn’t lost that weight.
Mark tripped on the kick plate even as he broke down the door. The momentum he’d gained set him and Donald rocketing into the foyer. Mark landed hard on the broken door and almost cartwheeled end over end. Donald was flung into the hallway. The little guy rolled, trashing a table with pictures on it, sending the frames flying. Glass shattered, wood cracked, and all the while, Donald kept going, disappearing through an open door.
When Mark’s body finally came to a rest, he found his knee was screaming with pain. He felt the skin over his kneecap tear a little when he tried to pull it away from the wood. A very clear picture came into his head, one where his knee had been driven into the door, creating a mouth lined with sharp, splintered wood, and those makeshift teeth had sunk into his knee. He cursed loudly, calling for Donald. He didn’t know what help Squirt could be, but that monster was still coming.
At some point in time, Mark had lost track of his counting. Lying there on his belly, he began to count again. He knew it wouldn’t help, but at least he would leave the world in a settled state of mind. He didn’t want to go knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door with a clou
ded head.
36
LYLE LAKE WANTED VERY BADLY to give up, but his father’s voice wouldn’t let him. He’d lost his mother, the last remnant of everything he loved in this world, but Dad didn’t care. His boy was going to survive. He was a goddamn Lake!
“Don’t you quit on me, Brody. Don’t you dare quit!”
“Yes… sir!”
“What?” Justine asked from beside him. She was breathing hard, starting to slow.
Lyle could only imagine how bad off the camera man and the little guy were. He was backing down on his promise to help Mark, the man who had saved his life back on the trail, but somehow he knew they would be fine. Those two had survived so far, they would just have to make it a little longer. Or a lot longer. He had no way of knowing for sure.
“There! Look!” Justine yelled.
Lyle looked at where she was pointing. The house was huge, almost mansion-like, with high arches and white columns. The gray roof was slanted, with a large hole in it, possibly where a chimney should have been. The windows were devoid of glass, only frames built of two-by-fours showed in the bays. Lyle noticed there was no front door either.
The boy stood in the opening where the door should have been. He was around Lyle’s age, with blond hair that parted over the strap of an eye patch. Lyle had no idea why he should be afraid of him, but he was, nonetheless.
The boy waved and called, “In here.”
“Come on!” Justine veered toward the porch.
Not liking the idea, but seeing no other course of action, Lyle turned, sprinting across the yard and up the steps, making it there just before Justine. He closed the gap to the doorway’s empty frame in just three long strides. He came to a sliding stop inside, looking all around, trying to take in everything he was seeing. The inner walls of the house had yet to be installed. Lyle could see right through the boarded frames. No plumbing or wiring was strung through the empty space. A pile of carpentry supplies lay off to one side, ten feet from where he stood. A door with gaudy glass latticework sat lonely and abandoned, leaning on the far wall. The fireplace that led up to the yet-to-be-installed chimney chute smoked as if a fire had been there recently. Lyle wondered who’d light a fireplace in a home that wasn’t even ready to be lived in.
He spun around and found Justine behind him, bent at the waist, trying to catch her breath. Then, he saw a closed door that hadn’t been there before. Turning around, he found the scene had changed. The home had been completed and was occupied. Specters roamed the floors, traversed halls with paneling that hadn’t been there just a moment before. The ghosts silently milled about, bumping into one another, yet passing through walls with no trouble.
Through the throng stepped the boy with the eye patch. His one good eye stared, and Lyle felt his heart skip a beat. Something was wrong with the kid, but Lyle couldn’t pinpoint what it might be.
“Do you like my collection?” the boy asked. He tilted his head quizzically.
“Who are they?” Justine asked as she stepped up beside Lyle.
“They are the memories I’ve collected throughout the years. Those who have come and gone, throwing shadows, being bad.”
“What have you done, Scott?” Justine talked to the kid as if she knew him.
Lyle didn’t like where the scene was going. His father’s voice sounded in his head, stern, no nonsense, telling him to stop being so scared. Lyle puffed out his chest, trying to look brave.
“I’ve only done what I was allowed to do. These are the remains of the lost. I have taken their bad memories away. Left them empty. Most people are empty. Did you know that? That’s how the shadows find purchase. They hide in the darkness. But He sees it. He calls them to Him. Like He called me.”
“Scott. No.” Justine was shaking her head. Lyle wanted to say something, but couldn’t find the right words.
“Don’t you remember the poem I wrote? I left you so many clues. You chose to ignore them.”
The ghosts of the lost stopped. Every one of them stared at Lyle and Justine with hollow eyes.
“What do you want?” Lyle asked.
“It’s not what I want, Lyle. It’s what you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want to be left with that hole in your heart? Those painful memories of a dead father, and now a dead mother?”
“You killed my mother! I don’t… you can’t…” Lyle fumbled for words. Emotions were crashing against his foundation, threatening to sweep his legs from under him.
“The Bastard must be fed, or the world will know true pain. Imagine if you couldn’t tuck away your saddest, most devastating memories. Think what it would be like to wonder, constantly, what you might have done to change things. It would eat away at you. For your own benefit, the Bastard eats those memories.”
“My father’s memory doesn’t hurt.” Lyle was very certain of that. There was something in those words, something more powerful than Lyle could ever hope to be.
“I’m here, Brody,” Dad said, even if it was Lyle’s own inner voice. He would call it Dad for now.
“You’re selfish.” Lyle felt tears gathering in his eyes. “You use this… this place to suck us dry. You think you’re helping, but you’re not. I want all my memories, even if they do hurt. They’re all I have left of him. Just because you’re hungry, it doesn’t give you the right to make us your buffet.”
Justine spoke up. “Why are you still hiding?”
“I’m not hiding, Justine. I’m right here. You wanted me. You got me.”
“You’re not Scooter.”
“What did you call me?”
“Scooter. Your father used to call you Scooter. What? You don’t remember?”
“Shut up.” The statement was quick. Lyle saw the boy’s face twitch as if he’d been slapped. “The boy’s name is Scott.”
“The boy? He’s the boy now, huh?” Justine actually laughed. “Your slip is showing, asshole.”
“You need to leave, Brody.” Dad came out of a wall. “Things could get bad.”
Following Justine’s lead, Lyle said, “My dad’s dead.” He turned from the Dad-specter and balled his hands into fists.
“You still believe you have control over this, child?” the boy growled. “What makes you think any of you will leave this place alive?”
“Because you’re still hiding,” Justine said. “Show yourself. If you can.”
“Your weak wills would not be able to withstand my presence. I am the end of all things. The fallen blessed. Omeg—”
“Yeah. Gotcha. Still not impressed. Why don’t you show us what exactly it is that we would be so scared to see?” Justine grabbed Lyle’s hand. He was glad. Even if she wasn’t, he was scared damn near to death.
“I will devour you, child. When I am done, I will feed your bones to the chasm.”
“Prove it.”
Lyle looked up to Justine, more in awe than anything else. She stared down at him, squeezing his hand. “Hold on, kid. Time to put up or shut up.”
37
“I WOULD SUGGEST YOU GET up, Mr. Simmons.”
Mark was hallucinating. That wasn’t Annabelle’s voice. Perhaps the splinters in his leg had found an artery, and he’d lost too much blood.
“You’re not imagining this,” Annabelle said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Mark raised his head. Annabelle was beautiful again, her head whole. She smiled as she reached and brushed something off his cheek. She was down at his level in a catcher’s stance. Given the girth of his stomach, he was a good two feet off the ground when he inhaled, almost eye to eye with her.
“You look good.” Mark laughed, and it felt far too good.
Annabelle looked away, grimacing. The corner of her mouth lifted. She seemed as if she was considering something. Mark knew what that was even before she said it. He wondered, if Annabelle wasn’t a projection of his own mind after all.
“It can only get you if you let it.” Annabelle looked back down at him and nodded. �
�Right? I mean, you’re not really here. Are you? I don’t think any of you know exactly where you are, but that doesn’t matter. You’re not here. You’re not lying on a broken door. There’s no wood in your knee. And I don’t exist. Not really. Not anymore.”
“Thank you, Annabelle.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.”
“Right.” Mark nodded. “Now if I can just—”
He wrenched his leg loose of the snag. The pain exploded far too much to be just in his mind, but he didn’t let that stop him. He was on to something. He began pulling himself off the floor. Annabelle was already walking away. She was heading straight for a wall.
“Hey,” Mark called. “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
“I know. Me, too.” She shrugged. “But whatcha gonna do?” She pointed out the door behind Mark. “I suggest you do something about that. Good luck.” Annabelle vanished through the wall.
He turned around, steeling himself for the battle at hand. The monster was lumbering around on the front lawn. The thing wasn’t trying to come for him. Pacing back and forth across the expanse of the grassy area, it grumbled and fumed. Shards of chipped wood rained down from Trevor’s horrid mouth as he gnashed his teeth. Marsha hung from her side, eyes rolling around in her head, drool dripping from her lips. Jaleel laughed maniacally as if he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.
Mark leaned forward, his belly pushing through the threshold out into the porch area. Trevor raged. Marsha’s eyes gazed upon Mark as if he were a tasty treat. Jaleel stopped his caterwauling long enough to train his eyes on Mark’s stomach. None of them met his eyes. They were all focused on his tummy.
He leaned back.
The monster went back to pacing.
“They can’t see me in here.” To test his theory, Mark stuck his arm out of the doorway, up to his elbow.
