by Hunter Shea
“What am I supposed to do?” she said, sniffing back tears.
He caressed her back, rocking her on his lap. “You don’t have to do anything, honey. There’s nothing you can do.”
“But what if there is? If we can feel each other’s pain, why won’t it read my thoughts? I keep telling it to go away, but it can’t hear me.”
“You’ve been telling it to go away?”
“Yes. In my mind. I keep thinking it over and over, picturing it walking into the lake and never coming up.”
Looking at the covered door, Andrew asked, “Can you sense what it’s thinking?”
She shook her head against his chest.
But had it heard her? It was no longer at the back door. Had Kate managed to open up a way to control it?
“Just keep thinking about it going away,” he said. “Meditate on that. I want you to change one thing, though. Instead of imagining it drowning in the lake, just have it disappear. Or find a hole or cave and crawl inside, never to come out again.”
“What if that’s not enough?”
“Think to yourself that it will be enough.”
“I…I don’t know.”
If Kate was in charge of the horror now, the last thing he wanted was for it to drown itself. When it took its last breath, wouldn’t Kate as well? How far would their physical connection go? Would it stretch into the final throes of death, snapping only when both were gone?
He couldn’t take that chance.
“You can do it, honey,” he said. “Promise me you’ll keep thinking it, but stay away from the lake.”
When she tilted her face to him, the yellowing of her eyes stunned him. They were starting to look like—
“Put your big girl panties on and just fucking do what he says,” Nikki blurted. She slammed the wine bottle on the counter, blood-red liquid sloshing on her arm. “Do it! Do it!”
Kate shivered, closing her eyes.
“Do you think shouting at her is going to help?” Andrew said.
“Piss off, Dandy Andy.”
He forced himself to turn away from her. Kate trembled in his arms like a newborn kitten. She seemed lighter than ever, as if the thread between her and the beast was taking bits of her along with it, tug by tug, until there’d be nothing left.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Even though Nikki wouldn’t stop shouting at her, Kate was able to push her unhinged sister-on-law’s voice away until it was a dull thrum of white noise. The heavy, unstable pounding of her heart filled her ears instead, its erratic rhythm making it hard to breathe. She felt Andrew’s hand on her back, smelled the fear-tinged sweat of his body, and tried to send out a steady wave of thoughts for the beast to leave them forever. Andrew had told her not to picture it drowning in the lake, but where else could it go where she’d know they’d be safe?
No, it had to drown.
Her body felt as if she’d been thrown off a tall building into a vat of boiling oil. Every bone had shattered like spun sugar, her skin melting. And through it all, her heart and lungs labored to keep her alive, to keep her wishing the nightmare monster into her dream lake, a dream that she’d been permitted to see but never truly enjoy.
If she and the monstrosity died together, it would be a mercy.
She would miss Andrew. She worried so much about him.
In the cold light of day, she believed in an afterlife, her spirit moving on but still able to love and check in on her husband from time to time.
Some nights, when death seemed to be lurking in the shadows, waiting, there were doubts.
Either way – heaven or eternal nothing – her suffering would be over. At least with the former, she would once again be with Andrew. If she was wrong, he would be left alone for the splinter of time left him, and that was always what made her scratch and claw her way back to him.
You’re not going to have much choice in the matter this time around.
A starburst of pain exploded from her chest, cascading outward. She stiffened like a board as her heart went on a drunken stumble.
Concentrate! You can fight through this. You always have.
Andrew tightened his grip on her, the tone of his voice soothing. Did he know he was losing her? In the end, would it be a relief for him?
If she could convince herself of that, it would be easier to go.
Stop thinking about yourself and tell that thing to die!
Go!
Leave us!
Head to the lake. Step in the cool water. Keep walking until you can’t breathe. Suck in the water. Let it fill your diseased lungs. Let the water embrace you, you goddamn devil! Die.
Die!
She opened one eye when Andrew’s hand brushed against her face.
He was crying.
In that moment, Kate’s will wavered.
“Don’t…cry,” she sputtered.
He leaned close to her ear. “I’m not crying,” he whispered. “I’m just chopping onions.”
A smile quivered on his lips, one of his tears falling onto her own, the salt of him burning her parched tongue.
She couldn’t leave him.
“I love you,” she rasped. “Thank you for giving me more than I ever deserved.”
The cold reality hit him hard and his eyes shimmered. “I love you, my little crip. Always have, always will.”
“No!” Nikki screamed. “You stupid fucking cunt! Can’t you do anything right? You have only one thing to do – tell it to go away. Not get all mushy in the head with Andy. Jesus fuck!”
Andrew didn’t even react to her outburst. His eyes wouldn’t leave Kate’s.
There was so much she wanted to tell him, but Nikki was right. Her infirmities might have kept her from doing much of anything this past decade to help her husband, but this she could do. This she had to do.
“Promise me,” she said.
He choked back a sob.
“Promise you what?”
“Oh, enough of this,” Nikki snapped.
Kate heard the knife slide out of the butcher block. The blade caught a harsh slat of light creeping through the blinds.
Nikki charged them.
“Andrew!” Kate screamed.
He turned but it was too late. Nikki brought the knife down, aiming for Kate’s face. Andrew’s shifting body made her miss. The blade sliced a clean, vicious line down his arm.
Nikki jumped back before he could grab her.
“If she dies, it dies,” she said. “The sooner the better. I want to get out of here and collect my husband. Both parts of him. Damn you both for bringing us here!”
She wrapped both hands around the knife handle, raising it high over her head, lunacy swirling in her eyes.
Andrew blocked Kate with his body, nothing to defend them save his bare hands.
Nikki screeched, looking the part of an avenging demon.
Before she could plunge the knife into Andrew, the house exploded.
* * *
It was as if a grenade had gone off.
The front of the house blasted inward.
Nikki was thrown off her feet
Wood and shrapnel flew across the room, a heavy board crashing through the glass doors. The air was choked with dust and debris.
Andrew froze, his ears ringing from the impact.
What the hell had just happened?
Nikki lay unconscious by the mattress, a jagged shard of wood stuck in the side of her neck, blood bubbling from the wound.
He spun to check on Kate.
She was unhurt, eyes wide with terror and confusion, mouth open, collecting the gray dust that was everywhere. She had hold of his arm, knuckles white, but he couldn’t feel the pressure.
His face stung but he had no desire to see what had happened to it.
Had the bo
iler exploded? Was there even a boiler in the cottage? Or was it a gas line? It was so hard to think.
Nikki.
She was hurt. He was about to pull the piece of wood out of her neck and stopped himself. What if it was like pulling your finger from a dike? Would she immediately start to bleed out?
In movies, when people have knives stuck in them, they always say to leave it in until they get to the hospital. This isn’t a damn movie, but in this case, I think they got it right.
He almost felt guilty at the relief of Nikki being knocked out. But this was beyond knocked out. She could die, and that was what drove a dagger of guilt into his heart.
That hadn’t been Nikki before. If they made it out of here alive, he wondered if the Nikki they all knew could ever return.
Most likely not. That Nikki had died right alongside Ryker.
Kate gasped, pulling on his arm.
Emerging from within the swirling dust came the creature.
It was in the cottage!
What remained of its mangy coat was covered in dust. It turned to Andrew with pus-colored eyes. It seemed bigger than before, if such a thing were even possible. Bigger and stronger, despite looking as if it had contracted a flesh-eating bacteria.
It swatted Andrew off the bed, sending him through the broken doors and onto the porch with the ease of flicking a crumb off the table. Andrew couldn’t catch his breath, his diaphragm hitching.
He watched in helpless horror as it lifted Kate off the bed and draped her over its shoulder like a rag doll. She was too weak to even slap it with her fists. Andrew’s mouth bobbed open and closed, trying feebly to call her name.
Buttons, who had disappeared when the front of the house caved in, padded out from behind a pile of rubble. He growled at the creature. It slowly turned to look at him. Buttons gave a sharp yap, and then whimpered. The beagle kept his distance from the monster, but he also didn’t seem afraid.
Because he has nothing to fear from Kate, Andrew thought. Neither did Ryker or Nikki. But look what it’s done to them. Why?
The creature settled its yellow eyes on Nikki, knowing the dog was no threat. It straddled her, rust-colored drool splattering on her face. It saw the knife she’d meant to kill Kate with, and its lips pulled back in a depraved sneer.
Andrew fought for each breath, straining to get his legs back under him.
It reached down to run a clawed finger across Nikki’s body, prodding the wood sticking out of her neck. A spurt of blood stained its finger.
“Kate,” Andrew wheezed.
She lifted her head but was unable to hold his gaze for long. She collapsed against the beast’s back, arms dangling.
He didn’t know how he was going to get it to let her go, but he had to do something.
It sniffed its bloody finger and grunted. Then it looked at the knife again.
With lightning reflexes, it grabbed hold of Nikki’s head, lifting it from the floor, and bashed it so hard, it exploded. Nikki’s skull cracked open, brains and blood gushing from the jagged cavity, squirting across the floor like spilled stew.
Andrew gagged when he saw a glob of gray matter on his chest.
Still holding the remains of her skull, the creature flung her body across the room. She hit the dining room wall and tumbled out of Andrew’s sight.
Turning its back to him, the monster walked through the debris that had once been a charming cottage, stepping out of the gaping hole it had created when it came charging in. Kate’s body swayed from side to side with each massive step. Buttons looked to Andrew with his dark, sad eyes and chose to follow the beast, to stay beside Kate.
Andrew shook the black spots from his vision and followed. His feet went out from under him when he stepped in Nikki’s gore. Sliding in blood and gray matter, he hurried to his feet, leaving bloody footprints leading to the chasm that was the front of the house.
By the time he made it outside, his decimated car still there, a portent of what was to come, the monster, Kate, and Buttons were gone.
But he could hear it stalking away. With each footfall, there came a deep, labored wheeze.
Andrew entered the dark canopy of trees, following his ears and nose – for it smelled more vile than ever – guiding him to Kate and, most likely, his own death.
* * *
Kate had never fully understood the phrase making your skin crawl until now.
The thing reeked of suppurating disease.
Is this what I’m like inside? she thought. Is this the smell of the diseases that have ruined my life?
Her face brushed against a purple boil on its back. If the boil popped, she knew she would lose her mind for good. This close to its body, she could hear the churning of its lungs and all of the mucus and sludge roiling around its bellows.
A fleeting sense of calm washed over her. For the briefest of moments, she could see into the creature’s mind. What stared back at her was very much herself, though the parts she strove so hard to avoid. She saw the pain and frustration, the longing and dread, all of her fear and anger at the injustice of it all. A raging storm of all the negativity she’d harbored as she lay like an invalid, just struggling to stay alive, formed the soul of this horrid beast. The feelings she’d worked so hard to ignore were darker, more cancerous than the diseases that had been trying to kill her all these years. And then she’d come up here, a last chance at happiness, and her body and the treatment had stolen even that from her.
The treatment. The microwave feels.
Somehow that, combined with her frustration and Ryker’s instructions to manifest her thoughts into reality, had birthed a monster. It was the living embodiment of everything she hated about herself and her life. It was finally free, and it was happy here. How many times had she told Andrew she never wanted to leave the cottage? Now the creature wouldn’t let them leave. It couldn’t. Without her near, it would fade away and die.
Kate should have felt a sliver of kinship with it, but all she felt was a hollow space where all of those negative emotions had lived. She’d managed to exorcise the worst parts of herself. If she could only eliminate them entirely.
Just as quickly, the connection was severed. Her vision was filled with the suppurating sores on the creature’s back, her anger welling up as bursting boils on its flesh.
The cottage was well behind them. She wondered if it was finally listening to her and planned to take them both to the lake.
She had a strong feeling her mental commands earlier had been working. But when Nikki attacked her, its sense of self-preservation brought it roaring back. Kate might have accepted her fate at Nikki’s hands, but this creature wasn’t wholly her own. It might have been at one point, but it had changed…grown…since it had been birthed into the world. It wanted to live, and it knew it couldn’t if Nikki snuffed the life from its…its what? Was she a host? A power source? How could she, who could barely stand, be the source of energy for such a massive beast?
Kate tried to find a way back into its mind – her outer mind – but it either wouldn’t let her back in or the bridge between them was crumbling. The longer it lived in the real world, the less it relied on her, growing into its own poisonous persona.
I brought this on us. Please forgive me, God. I killed Ryker and Nikki.
A dog barked close behind them. She strained to move her neck, to lift her face from the creature’s vile back.
“Buttons.”
Her beagle, her baby, followed them. When he saw her, his tail wagged, though he was whining – wishing, she gathered, that she would stop moving away and let him cuddle her.
He won’t attack it because he knows we’re one and the same.
“Go back to Daddy,” she said. It was a chore to speak with her midsection draped over the beast’s massive shoulder. “Go on. Go to Daddy.”
Buttons didn’t pause or break his
stride. He was going with her no matter where this ended. In a way, she was grateful. If these were her final moments, she wanted to pass in the presence of unconditional love. As much as she craved Andrew’s touch, she hoped he stayed away. If the creature hurt or killed him, she would die a tortured soul. She couldn’t think of a worse way to leave this world.
A fresh, lancing pain radiated from the center of her chest.
The beast stumbled, smashing its shoulder against a tree, forcing it to slow down.
Not sure how many more of these I can take. Not sure how many more I want to.
When she couldn’t draw a breath, the creature stopped, its own lungs seized.
If I die, will it die too? Or will I take my diseases with me, leaving it to heal and grow?
It fell to its knees. Kate slipped off its shoulder, her face in the mulch. Buttons yapped, sniffing around her head.
“I’m all right, But-But. Mommy’s all right,” she said without conviction. Buttons knew she was lying. He whined, pawing at her back, willing her to get up. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to do something as simple as roll over. If she didn’t soon, she would suffocate on moldy leaves and dirt.
I’ll be in the dirt soon enough.
She planted her palm on the ground and pushed herself up, her ruined shoulder a fireworks display of agony. It must have been really bad for it to steal the spotlight from the pangs in her heart and all of the other burning pains in her body.
Every muscle trembled, both from exhaustion and from going cold turkey off her meds. Her pain doctor had once told her that with all of the highly addictive opioids she was on, the thought of going cold turkey should never enter her mind. The shock to her fragile system would kill her. This he had said the day she’d lamented about the treatments for her conditions and a wish for a future without need for pills or patches. He’d said he had many patients who felt the same way, and some simply decided to stop taking them. It always ended in disaster.
“If this isn’t a disaster, I don’t know what is,” she said to Buttons, who wagged his tail excitedly, using his body to help prop her up.
