“Yes.”
“I visited your room after I died.”
A long pause. “But how?”
“I can’t explain that right now. Just know that my spirit is still here. And I need your help.”
Chapter 25
It took a lot of convincing and he still wasn’t sure she would come. He watched out the greenhouse window for over an hour. The sky remained clear and the buildings didn’t rot like the houses in his neighborhood. Maybe Cerulean’s world couldn’t come this far. Maybe the demon only ruled the places where bad things happened. Marty still didn’t fully understand this realm between heaven and hell, but he couldn’t help feeling that the soul snatchers were closing in on him.
The longer he waited, the more nervous he got. He feared time would soon run out. That every plant in the greenhouse would begin to rot, and hellish things would burrow up from the soil and grab him and pull him down into a place where he would scream in pain for eternity.
His fear dissipated when he spotted her walking along the path through the garden. He stepped outside and met her under the trellis covered in purple wisteria. Her eyes widened at his approach, and he feared that she would run from the sight of him. But she stayed.
Jennifer studied his face for a long moment, ran her fingers over his paper-molded features before she finally whispered, “Shakespeare.”
“It’s me, Jen.”
“I’d hoped my nightmare wasn’t true. Then I saw on the news the police had found you, that you’d been stabbed…” she teared up.
“My soul is still here.” He explained how he had been murdered at the lake by three crazy people, drowned and resurrected by his own poems. He left out the parts about hunting down his killers. He didn’t mention being connected to Lyle’s and Skylar’s deaths either. He wanted Jennifer to remember the good in him.
“Jen, my time is coming to an end. My spirit is about to leave this body. I didn’t want to go without telling you that the few months that I’ve known you have been the most wonderful time in my life. Being around you made me the happiest man.” He laughed softly. “You inspired me to write so many crazy love poems.”
Tears continued to stream down her cheeks. “I loved the one you left me. No one has ever written me anything. I must have read it fifty times. You don’t know this but since we started reading together…well…I’ve been writing too. I brought a poem for you.”
She unfolded a piece of paper that she had torn from her journal. Marty read it:
God sent me an angel today.
His name is Marty, by the way.
I don’t care if he’s rich or poor.
He’s the one whom I adore.
He’s nervous, quirky, and shy.
But I think he is a handsome guy.
With his words he touches my heart
I think about him when we’re apart.
Her poem went on for several more verses. The love that she had felt for him became clear and it filled his body with an incredible lightness. He pulled her into his arms and she embraced him. They held each other for a while. How long he had wanted to feel her body against his. They leaned their heads together. He kissed her forehead and then her lips. It felt strange kissing her with a paper mouth, but it didn’t matter at the moment. That she was kissing him back, allowing him to hold her in his arms…it was the most loved he had ever felt.
When he pulled away she playfully punched his shoulder. “Why didn’t you ask me out?”
He smiled. “Because I was a fool. I thought you were too good for me. I thought you would say no.”
“I dropped every hint I could.”
“So you would’ve said yes?”
She nodded and her eyes filled. “Of course.”
Marty looked around the gardens. “At least we had our walks.”
“And picnics reading Shakespeare’s sonnets.”
“I’ll wait for you,” he said.
“Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I can’t say it. Not truthfully. I don’t know that it’s possible.”
They both fell silent. Theirs was a tragic story. The couple that could have been but never was.
She embraced him again. “I’ll always remember you, Marty Weaver.”
“Keep writing. I’ll be your muse.”
“This garden will be our place,” she said. “When I come here, I’ll think of you.”
Marty’s chest ached. He nodded. “Before I go, I was wondering if you could do one last favor for me.”
She nodded. “Anything.”
Chapter 26
Vernon Weaver ached all over as he lay on his cell bed. The prison was full of angry chatter. Cellmates moaned about the heat, bickered with one another. Some just went mad from monotony and spoke to Jesus or Satan or the shadows on the walls.
Vernon’s irritable bowels were also full of chatter. Something he ate for dinner hadn’t agreed with him. He rubbed his belly, only to feel other discomforts complaining in his neck and shoulders. Twelve years in prison was taking its toll, making him feel like an old man at forty-four. He had the rest of his life to contemplate the sins he’d committed. Mostly, he stared at the gray walls, perpetually bored. His cellmate had recently died of a heart attack. Lucky bastard. Now, Vernon had nobody to talk to until the next lifer moved in.
A short, mousy-looking prisoner named “Squeaks” rolled a mail cart by Vernon’s cell.
“Package, Vern!”
Vernon sat up. He hadn’t received mail in a decade, when the fan letters finally stopped.
“Who’d be sending me a package?”
Squeaks shrugged. “It’s got no return address.”
“Well, hand it over.” Vernon rubbed his palms together, feeling excited for the first time in years.
“Hold on there a sec.” The guard escorting Squeaks examined the package, which had already been opened and searched. The guard chuckled. “Looks like somebody sent you some poems. Got an admirer?”
Vernon shrugged. When he was first convicted, he’d had many admirers.
The guard slid open a tiny gate and offered the parcel. Vernon snatched it eagerly. He started to open the box, when he noticed Squeaks and the guard still watching him.
“Can I read my mail in peace?” he asked them.
They moved on their way.
Vernon opened the box and frowned. Inside were stiff, water-stained papers with smeared writing, much of it unreadable. Some pages had grit and pine needles stuck to them. Others had faded red splotches that looked like dried blood.
“What the hell is this?” He went to the bars and yelled, “Squeaks, is this some kind of joke?”
Feeling deflated, Vernon sat back on his bed. He flipped through the loose pages until he came across a few he could read. The first ones were sappy heart-pourings over a girl named Jennifer; several more told of a miserable life in foster homes, complained about the abuse of child molesters named Mr. and Mrs. Crowley.
It dawned on Vernon who the poet was as he read the poems about Mommy and Daddy. They drummed up memories of an emotionally disturbed boy who had hid under the bed while his parents screamed at one another…the sensitive boy who often clung to his mother’s side. The woman could never be satisfied and was always harping on Vernon, calling him a lousy husband and father. Then one day she went down into his forbidden chamber and got the knifing she deserved.
Her mangled image still papered the walls inside Vernon’s mind, along with the six college girls he’d raped and butchered and assembled into his masterpiece. The Tree of Human Suffering. He smiled thinking about the glory days when he had hunted college campuses and neighborhoods at night for teenage girls walking alone. He cherry-picked the pretty ones to become his works of art and, given a chance to go back to those moments, he’d carve them up all over again.
Vernon’s biggest regret was that he didn’t kill the boy too. That worthless little shit had testified against his father, sending dear ole Daddy here to rot.
&n
bsp; Why had Marty sent these poems? Did he expect his old man to feel guilty?
Well, that wasn’t happening. While the other prisoners eventually found Jesus and repented of their sins, Vernon Weaver revered the darkness inside him. Its name was Cerulean. Vernon walked with the demon in dreams and it showed him secret worlds where rape, murder and torture were acceptable passions. Celebrated even. Cerulean had taught Vernon how to use his mind to travel to Telluria, the dimension where other artists like himself gather to create. He could visit there every night as he slept and make new forms of art. A macabre audience often gathered in the shadows with Cerulean and watched, as Vernon took a rusty blade or saw or pliers and displayed his talents on screaming canvases made of flesh.
He had tried to pass on these gifts to his son―taken him hunting, Vernon’s brand of hunting, where you flayed an animal before the kill―teaching Marty about Cerulean’s secret world. But the boy shrank from knives, favoring his Mother’s imaginary worlds over his father’s flesh and blood real one. Because his mother had been a poet and short story writer, Marty had taken up writing and had no interest in Daddy’s blood work.
Vernon continued reading, shaking his head at the overemotional crap his son had written, most of it whimsical fantasy about love and desire.
Then Vernon read the dark ones and saw that some of Cerulean’s teachings had gotten through. Vernon was starting to feel like a proud papa until he read the last poem, titled “To Daddy”.
Houses old and filthy
Pets of sicker breeds
Daddy is a nice man
He just has many needs
I was not a bad lad
But a boy of unjust penance
Living with a madman
Was my childhood sentence
Daddy beats me and Mommy
When he’s drunk for several days
Daddy is a nice man
But loves in different ways
This beaten child has aged some
A monster so to speak
But none worse than Daddy
Who had thrived off the weak
Daddy is a nice man
He's the only one I got
Since Daddy killed Mommy
In hell he deserves to rot
Knock Knock dear Daddy
Guess who's at your door
It's me who's come to hurt you
'Til nightmares are no more
Vernon’s hands shook with rage. He wadded up the page and threw it against the wall. The rest of the pages he tossed onto the floor.
He lay on his bed. He willed his mind to sleep, to return to the place where dark artists meet. But sleep was being a moody mistress that afternoon and stayed away. Vernon stared at the gray brick wall for hours, with that damned poem singing in his head, until the lights turned out, and the doorway to darker realms finally opened.
Chapter 27
Marty waited until his father finally fell asleep. At midnight, the prison was mostly dark, with just a few dim bulbs glowing outside the cells. There was the occasional cough, or footsteps of a guard making his rounds, the jingling of keys in his pocket, but for the moment the cellblock had gone quiet.
While Vernon groaned in his sleep, Marty’s ghost concentrated on his poems. The papers that were scattered across the cell floor began to slide towards a pile in a shadowy corner. One by one, the pages climbed and attached themselves, forming into a set of legs, torso, arms and head. The eye pits were hollow this time, the body’s core filled only with Marty Weaver’s vengeful spirit.
Marty flexed his hands as he stared at the monster that had brought him into this world. The rage of watching his father stabbing his mother had never been stronger. With hands raised to strangle, he approached his sleeping father.
Vernon stirred and sat up with a groan, as if waking from a nightmare. His eyelids flipped open, but there was no shock on his face when he saw the intruder. “Hello, son.” He smiled and spoke with a double voice, “We knew you’d come. We’ve been waiting.”
Marty froze. There was a familiar black malice in Daddy’s eyes. Hearing the second voice was even more disturbing. “Cerulean?”
Daddy nodded. “He’s my muse too. He’s been with me since I was a boy, when I first visited the lake. I introduced him to you when you were knee high, remember?”
Marty recalled their family trips to the lake. His father taking him to the water’s edge and talking to their reflections on the water, as they fed worms to their “friend” who lived in the depths of the lake.
Cerulean spoke through his father’s lips, “I’ve been inspiring you both to express your natural born talents. And protecting you. That was my promise to your father.”
Marty shook his head, disbelieving. “Why?”
His father stood, but the solid black eyes and voice were Cerulean’s. “Your writing has enormous power. Look at the body you’ve created with it. With your father’s artistry with tools, your poetry, and my guidance, imagine what the three of us could create together. We can open more doorways for the dark artists to come here and create.”
His father’s possessed body moved closer. The brick wall behind him melted away, as if devoured by acid, revealing the dark dimension beyond this one. “I have so many other worlds to show you. Where I’m from you can have a different Jennifer every night.”
Marty felt the soothing draw of Cerulean’s voice, just like it had mesmerized him many times before. He fought against it, backing into a corner. The walls on either side of him blackened and blew away like ash in a windstorm. Behind him creatures hissed.
“I’ll protect you from them,” Cerulean promised. “I’ll take you someplace safe. And I’ll put Mommy back together the way you remember her. You can be a family again.”
“Only this time we won’t fight,” his father said. “And I promise never to hit her. The three of us will take picnics to the lake. And you can bring Jennifer.”
Where the walls had dissolved away, Marty saw the magic cove at the lake, his family having a picnic on a sunny day, and Jennifer was there with them, laughing with his mother.
More than anything Marty wanted to be part of that normal, happy family. “What do you want me to do?”
His father held open his arms. Cerulean’s voice said, “Embrace your father. Wrap your poems around his body and then join us inside him. We’ll break out of this prison together and return to the lake. Your mother and Jennifer will be there waiting for us.”
Marty thought of his mother. Remembered her ghost with the hideous stab wounds. She had warned him about his father. That he had punished her nightly.
“You killed Mom. All those girls. You’re nothing but a monster!”
“You and I are the same, Marty. Like father, like son. Come with us to the place where you can do anything you wish.”
Beyond the open wall behind his father, the beautiful tableau suddenly changed. Marty witnessed the other world―Telluria―for what it truly was, a holocaust of shadowy figures torturing people in horrific ways. He recognized the razor eater he had killed. The man with the ponytail was now stretched out like a drum, screaming as the artists embedded razorblades into his red glistening skin. Tara, Zane and Seth were there too, their faces covered with animal masks, voices screaming in agony, as they suffered at the rusty blades of their carvers. Only Tara seemed to enjoy the pain. Her bloody rabbit mask turned and found Marty and he thought he heard muffled laughter.
Then the tableau changed…his father, wearing an apron of human skin, stood near countless dismembered girls piled like broken doll parts…reassembling them with tools…an entire forest of human trees planted around a blood red lake. Mounted to one of the trees was Jennifer, her body sliced up with his father’s signature style of mutilation.
Marty shook his head. “No, I won’t let you.”
“Join us,” his father demanded. “Let us use your body to walk the earth. This is the only way we’ll ever be free.” Vernon stepped forward. “Now give Daddy a hug and a
kiss.”
As his father’s mouth opened up, Marty peered into the darkness inside his throat. “No, I won’t.”
“Then you leave us no choice,” Cerulean said.
Daddy’s hands choked Marty. His father’s mouth opened wide and dark tentacles shot out and wrapped around Marty’s head. He fought to break free as the demon began sucking his spirit from its protective shell.
Darkness Rising: A Novella of Extreme Horror and Suspense Page 11
