Return to Darkness

by Laimo, Michael

  She nods as she takes the flashlight from me and sticks it in her jacket pocket, looking back at me with clear understanding. “I’ll be fine, Michael. Thank you for doing this for me.”

  No…thank you.

  This all seems too good to be true, as though Shea’s compliance to kill her father has somehow become part of the Grand Scheme—what the Isolates had wanted all along. It’s even perhaps why the Washburns were drawn here to Ashborough in the first place. Regardless, I have no choice to move on with everything. It’s the only real chance I’ve got to bring Jessica back home.

  “Once we get him outside, it should be easier to slide him across the surface of the snow.”

  Shea nods, and with no pause, says, “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Shea grabs one end of the bundle and I grab the other. With a heave, we lift Pops-Eddie up and carry him into the waiting room. At the door, we put him down so I can open the door, then lift him again and move him outside, where we place him on the snow-covered walkway.

  Already I’m out of breath, mists unfurling two feet from out of my mouth. The morphine is again hard at work on my failing system, giving me the near-painless power to carry on, but it’s infusing a sense of lethargy in me. I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to last. “Ready?”

  She nods. “No better time than now, I suppose.”

  So with no further hesitation, we start our journey, each of us grasping one end of the bundle and dragging it on the ground. There’s a layer of hard snow leading all the way up through the woods that makes the moving of Pops-Eddie somewhat easy, even helps us gain momentum. Climbing the hill in the woods, however, proves to be an arduous task, and we have to stop a couple of times in order to catch our breath.

  Night quickly assumes its position over the woodland, making the journey even more difficult without being able to see all the obstacles on the ground: twigs, branches, icy puddles, lumpy mounds of earth. At one point I thought I heard Pops-Eddie groan, and so did Shea…and it might very well have been him, but thankfully he remained motionless.

  With one hand on the bag, Shea uses the other to point the flashlight into the loom of darkness ahead.

  “We’re nearly there now,” I say. The formation of trees and the turns in the worn path are all familiar to me, and it instills a surge of fear into me. Add in the chills from my fever and I’m a bundle of charged wires.

  Deep in the darkness of the woods surrounding us, twigs pop and footsteps patter. The Isolates are there, watching us, invigorated with anticipation and excitement. I suppose this is the shit they live for.

  I’ve always believed their required sacrifice to be some sort of game, one enabling them to not only control the masses here in Ashborough (and beyond), but to also give them something of relevance to look forward to. But after seeing that hideous demon in the fog the night I polluted their den with the virus, I realized that the sacrifice wasn’t for them. It was for the maker of their kind, the creator of the Isolate gene supernaturally injected into the DNA of humans a long time ago.

  Ahead, the clearing comes into view.

  This better fucking work.

  As we drag Pops-Eddie’s body into the circle of stones, my life passes before my mind’s (CRUMBLING!) eye like a short film in fast forward. Years of schooling at Columbia, a Manhattan internship, a secure job at a practice surrendered for a private practice in some quaint town in New Hampshire called Ashborough, and then…my losing battle with the Isolates, my addiction going from Xanax and whiskey to morphine and whiskey, my wound, riddled with infection and slowly killing me from the inside out. And now, me, about to commit murder for the third time in a few months. All this, for the sake of my family.

  “Michael…I’m scared.” Shea drops her end of the bundle alongside the center stone and peers out into the woods, eyes darting from place to place. “They’re out there, aren’t they?” She approaches me and wraps her arms around me, head buried in my chest.

  I hold her close, feeling the warmth of her body and the energy she bleeds into me as though she is making every attempt to become one with me. I can feel her, and it is perfect.

  She looks up at me, this eighteen-year-old gem soiled by piercings and tattoos and bruises who’s spent her life under the ironclad reign of an abusive father. Puffs of mist billow out from between our lips and commingle like the embrace of lovers, drawing our mouths together in a kiss that assures us both we’ll be here for each other until the very end.

  When our lips part, she looks at the bundle and says, “He used to rape me.”

  You knew that already, didn’t you Michael?

  “You have nothing to worry about anymore. I will take care of you from this point forward.”

  Without warning, the bundle comes to life. At first it’s just a single jostle, but soon a series of panicked thrusts move the blankets about. One end of the package flaps open and a single booted foot breaks out, carving jagged-edged swaths in the snowy ground as it pumps and kicks. From somewhere inside the bundle, Pops-Eddie’s voice emerges: “Get me the fuck outta here! Get me the fuck out! Before I fucking kill you!”

  Yeah right, I’ll do just that, asshole.

  With no hesitation, I pull the hatchet out from my belt loop and walk over to the writhing bundle of wool blankets. My brain tells me to raise the hatchet high, but my common sense tells me otherwise. The animal must be alive at the time of sacrifice.

  Who’s the real animal here, Michael?

  “Fuck you,” I say, and stomp on Pops-Eddie’s head. A screech-howl like that of a wounded dog filters out from somewhere inside the bundle, silenced by another heavy-footed strike of my foot.

  “C’mon,” I tell Shea, grabbing Pops-Eddie’s blanketed (and probably bleeding) head. Shea takes hold of his boots. “One, two, three…”

  We hoist the body up onto the center stone, both of us grunting as it goes up. Pops-Eddie grunts as he thuds down.

  A moment passes where we just stand there, staring at the fidgeting body. It’s not until the whispers from the woods emerge do we break our inaction.

  "Maltor…maltor…maltor…"

  Shea huddles up against me. I pull her close with one hand…and use the other to hand her the hatchet.

  She takes it from me.

  The whispers in the woods grow louder, in greater numbers now. A breeze picks up, carrying the threat of the Isolates into my lungs: I could taste the rot of their words on my tongue.

  "Maltor…maltor…maltor…"

  I look at Shea. Nod once. She pulls away from me and steps toward the stone. The bag holding her father is still moving, but barely. There’s a red bloodstain on the upper closed half, presumably the upshot of a shattered nose, courtesy of my boot.

  "Maltor…maltor…maltor…"

  Icy tears spring from her eyes. “Make them stop!” she cries.

  “Only you can do that, Shea.”

  She shakes back and forth vigorously. I walk over to the stone and stand next to her. Careful not to tear any of the tape, I pull away the upper portion of the bundle to reveal Pops-Eddie’s face. Sure enough, his nose is a busted mess, a soupy smear nearly level with the rest of his blood-masked face. Should’ve stayed in Seattle, I thought. A bullet hole to the brain would’ve been a much less painful death.

  The voices of the Isolates grow louder, riding one another in a vast chorus of evil whispers, and drowning out Pops-Eddie’s gurgling groans.

  “Now, Shea. Now!”

  She raises the hatchet. Sobs explode from her entire face her mouth.

  "Maltor! Maltor! Maltor!

  “Now Shea! Do it now!”

  Screaming, she squeezes her eyes shut and brings the hatchet down onto her father’s face. The blade makes a popping sound as it sinks past the bone of his skull deep into the soft tissue beneath. Blood geysers out in a variety of directions, like a sprinkler gone awry. The blade is gone, buried into the man’s face from a point in his forehead just above the left eye d
own to somewhere amid the pulpy mess of his nose.

  She lets go of the handle and staggers back, screaming hysterically.

  I pull my gaze from Pops-Eddie, and aim it into the woods.

  It’s filled with golden lights. Hundreds of them at varying distances floating indiscernibly in and about the trees and copses. Watching us. And approving of the horrific crime we’ve just committed.

  Shea collapses to the snowy ground, shivering, pulling herself into a fetal shape. She’s in shock, it appears, the fractional hold of the Isolates now gone, leaving her to bask in the horror of the act she just perpetrated. She looks at her father…at the hatchet handle rising from his still-gushing face like a marker. Her eyes bulge from her head, unblinking, dark pupils eating up the blue. I stagger over to her, help her to her feet.

  “C’mon Shea…we have to get out of here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The woods close in on us, like a crowd of admirers struggling for a glimpse of a passing celebrity. Cannonballs of terror blast up inside me, suffocating me as they lodge in my throat. The real world takes on another identity, one consisting solely of fragments seeping their way in from my tortured dreams.

  I hold Shea’s hand tightly as we travel the muddy-icy trails, slipping down the hill toward the perimeter of the woods leading into my backyard. The image of Pops-Eddie’s hatchet-face lies heavily in my head, our heads, causing my breathing to come in painful bursts, my heart to jostle in my chest, my jaw lock, my skin crawl. The adrenaline once pumping through my veins has been exhausted, and now all I’ve got is the smidgeon of morphine in my body working hard to keep the agony at bay.

  As the environment swirls about me in dark, muddy tones, I utter, “I need to rest…”

  “The house is just ahead, Michael.”

  Indeed it is, but it looks like a monstrous shadow to me beneath the glow of the backyard floodlight, sinister and unwelcoming. Like the great demon in the woods. The woods clear as I stagger crookedly into the backyard, the stress and physical insult I’ve placed upon my body finally taking its toll on me. “Please, Shea…help me.”

  I feel her grab my hand, and at some point the frigid air turns warm as I enter into the unwelcoming embrace of 17 Harlan Road. Into my office we go, both of our soiled bodies collapsing down onto the loveseat. Mere seconds pass before darkness takes hold and ushers me into the uncharted realm of my dreams.

  Chapter Forty

  "Michael…"

  In my fevered dreams, Shea is there, making love to me again. She is unblemished by anything so foreign as a tattoo, a piercing, or a scar. I am laying on my back, her body’s muscles rippling as she squeezes me tightly and drains me of my seed over and over again. I can see her skin, milky white and perfect, glistening with sweat, cut, toned abs flexing with each thrust…and with each orgasm I attain she pumps me harder and harder, bringing me pleasures I never considered imaginable in all of my years as a sexually-driven man. The night is perfect. There are no horrors. The sacrifice has been made.

  "Michael…"

  It’s Shea’s voice, as crystal clear as any reality that had come my way over the years. I peer up…and she is gone. I call her name.

  From somewhere she answers: “Michael.”

  I feel my body shaking, a slight pressure upon my arms. I open my eyes and see a shadow looming over me. This is still a dream…or is it? I can hear my tempered breathing, see the sun-drenched windows in my office. Then, the flutter of my eyelids as reality enters back into my life.

  I am laying on the loveseat in my office. My body is ravaged, I can feel the pain, the fever. It is overpowering. I can barely move without feeling its dire consequences: the aches in my joints, the soreness of my tendons and muscles, the chill in my bones.

  “Water…” I utter, and the shadow alongside me disappears. I burrow into my pocket. The pill bottle is still there. With pain, I pull it out and am somehow able to open it and shake out some pills. I put them in my mouth—two, three, four?—and the shadow returns, pushing a mug into my hands.

  I look up. Shea comes into focus.

  “Sit up, Michael.”

  With the pain of a thousand gunshots riddling my gut, I squirm up and choke down the pills, chasing them with the mug’s warm water. As the water runs down my throat, it awakens me to the fact that I’m a man halfway to becoming a corpse.

  But the deed has been done. And from the dream that lingers in my (crumbled) mind, I can recall the all-encompassing pleasure that has drowned out all the adversities, all the horrors in my life, bringing to me the strong possibility that the game is now over. I have done what Phillip once did to me.

  All I can do is wait now. Wait and pray for them to return my family to me.

  I look at Shea, now nearly in focus. She is no longer the clean, unblemished Shea from my dreams. She is the familiar Shea of my real world, battered and abused, and still beautiful. She is my savior.

  Savior…

  “How do you feel?” she asks.

  “Shitty. You?”

  “Strangely invigorated. I slept well.”

  “Where?” A terrible vision strikes me, of her crawling into my bloody bed and sleeping alongside the beheaded corpse of Bonzo the cat.

  “On the sofa in the waiting room.”

  I nod. The morphine is already beginning to take effect. I feel fatigued and drowsy, the physical and mental pain subsiding rather quickly.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nods. “I am.”

  “No cuts or bruises?”

  “No. I’m a bit fucked up in the head. But we didn’t have a choice, did we?”

  “That’s right. We didn’t.”

  With pain I bring my legs over the edge of the loveseat and sit up.

  “You okay, Michael?”

  “No…one of those things gored me in the gut a few days back and it’s killing me. I need to get into the examining room.”

  Shea stands and holds out her hands. I take them and allow her to help me to my feet. Damn…the pain is brutal, and I can only pray for the seconds to tick by until the painkillers take full effect. She guides me into the examining room, where I lean against the table and try to control my breathing.

  “Shea…I need some fresh scrubs. In the cabinet, above the sink.”

  She opens the cabinet and pulls down a green shirt and pants. “What’s next, Michael?”

  “They promised to return my daughter to me…I’ve done what they asked. Now all I can do is wait. Once I get Jessica back, we’ll have to find a way out of here.”

  For now, I keep most of my dark history here in Ashborough a secret. She doesn’t have to know that my wife has somehow become one of those things, raped by the great demon and injected with not only its seed, but with the Isolate gene as well. She doesn’t have to know that I’ve tried to escape Ashborough before, with dire results.

  She places the scrubs on the table alongside me. “Do you need help?” Her eyes bore into mine, deep and intense. Loving. For a moment it occurs to me that Christine may very well be lost forever, and that Shea could very well take her place, despite her youthful age.

  It’s all part of the Grand Scheme, Michael, the little man in my head interjects. Shea for Christine. You for her father.

  Confusion besets me. I am a murderer! I’ve killed Phillip Deighton. Old Lady Zellis. And now, helped to kill Pops-Eddie. Would it make me more of a terrible man to leave my taken wife behind with the Isolates for Shea Washburn?

  I nod to Shea and lift up my arms as she pulls my sweatshirt off. She then removes my blood and pus-stained T-shirt.

  She looks at my wound and gasps. Her face crumples as she pulls away from the revolting stench seeping out from my body.

  Hesitantly I peer down and see the mess about my stomach, the gauze dangling like streamers, adhered solely from the dried pus and blood circling the damaged area. In the stark light of the examining room I can see the skin adjoining the wound, turned a pallid gray color with a soft, grainy te
xture. I poke at the damaged flesh with an index finger and little pieces of it crumbles away like crumbs from a stale piece of bread.

  You’re in a heap of trouble, Michael.

  No shit. The skin about my wound can be categorized as necrotic tissue, or dead flesh. In all my years as an internist, I’ve never seen this before; modern medicine has taken hold of this circumstance which in the past was only seen on untended victims in the battlefield. Now, in the war I’ve been fighting against the Isolates, I’ve succumbed to a need for debridement—the removal of the connective tissue, muscle, and perhaps bone. There’s no saving this part of me now. The skin surrounding my wound has to be removed, before I lapse into septic shock.

  Farther along, around the necrotic ring of tissue, the skin is beet red and oozing with pus—a moat of infection nearly twelve inches in diameter. Without question the bacteria flourishing in my wound has now spread to my bloodstream. It’s eating me from the inside out, fighting back against the morphine ravaging my nervous system.

  I tear away the bandages. More of my dead self crumbles away. It occurs to me that paralysis and death is right around the corner.

  I need to remove the dead tissue.

  Shea places a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.”

  “I know.” I look at her. She’s standing there, a hopelessly lost child with me as her only hope. Somehow her presence reminds me of Jessica, of how I must save myself in order to save her.

  “What’s happening to it?” she asks, motioning toward my wound with a look of terror on her face.

  “It has to be cut out. The dead tissue.”

  “Now?”

  “I see no choice. I have to wait here for my daughter, and the infection is too far along now for me to simply wait it out.” My words sound slurred to my (crumbled) mind, but may very well be coming out clearly as intended. I can’t tell anymore. “Damn…I need an IV drip to stave off the infection. I need some serious hospitalization. Shea—I’m going to die soon.”