He had selfishly forced his family to come to his mother’s house, in what he now realized had been a desperate attempt to reconnect with his brothers following the death of his father. All he had wanted was a quiet place—a peaceful place—to mourn. But that had been a mistake—a terrible, terrible mistake.
A gust of wind suddenly struck the house, flapping the cardboard window covering high above Cody’s head.
Come
That was it. That was the last time he wanted to hear that word spoken, uttered, whispered, or thought.
“Please,” he begged, “leave me alone.”
Cody ground his teeth and was finally driven to action.
Corina was lying still on the couch, eyes fluttering, only now her lips were permanently downturned. Cody wiped the tears from his eyes and reached into his pocket, his sweaty fingers quickly finding the two pills that the strange woman had given him.
Half a pill, Alice had said, but she didn’t know about this; she didn’t know about Oot’-keban.
“Corina, sweetie, can you hear me?”
Cody crouched, bringing their faces level. He was nervous—nervous that she would awaken and look at him and speak that word. Tentatively, he reached out with the back of his hand and touched her pale forehead. It was cold.
“Corina,” he whispered, and his eldest daughter’s eyes fluttered and opened, only this time they lacked the lucidity of an hour ago.
He took the pills out of his pocket and stared at his open hand. The two chalky white discs almost blended into his palm. Then he picked the half-empty bottle of water off the table, reached over, and gently placed both pills in his eldest daughter’s open mouth. He put the water bottle to her lower lip next and slowly lifted the bottom. Instinctively, Corina gulped and swallowed, her expression remaining tight, pained. Then her eyes closed again and Cody kissed her cold forehead and told her he loved her. He paused for a moment, deciding what to do next. Instead of standing, he turned to his wife.
“M—M—Marley,” he stammered, trying hard to control his emotions. “Marley? Wake up, Marley.”
He started to cry again, and his words became borderline incoherent.
“Marley, why the fuck won’t you wake up? Why—?”
The wind gusted hard, and Cody turned his eyes to the cardboard-covered window.
“Fuck off!” he nearly screamed. “Fuck off and get out of my fucking head!”
As if in response to his cry, the wind gusted again, harder this time.
Cooooome
Cody ground his teeth and drove his index fingers into his closed eyes so hard that he saw spots.
“Marley,” he repeated, eyes still closed. “I can’t stay here anymore, I can’t handle the—” He caught himself before he said the word. “I can’t handle the wind.”
To his surprise, when he opened his eyes again, his wife was staring back at him. Looking at those hazel eyes, which now seemed black, empty, he was reminded of the eyes of the deer he had seen blundering through the waist-high snow. She was gone, he knew—mad, driven mad by the voice inside their heads telling them to come, and driven mad by being unwilling to leave her injured daughter. He knew then why Seth had just up and left—why he had opted to turn away from the injured man and head in the opposite direction. He knew because he felt it too; he felt that if he stayed another five minutes in this place, he would succumb to the voice, to that ungodly grinding, foreboding, fucking heavy voice in his head telling him to Come. And Mama? Mama, did the same thing happen to you?
Cody pictured his mother dressed only in her blue dress and white cashmere sweater. It was impossible that she had left and he hadn’t noticed—wasn’t it? Surely she would freeze to death.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, he stood.
“I’m going now,” he repeated, unsure of whether or not she was even there, if the fact that he was speaking even registered with her. “I’m taking Henrietta and going.”
You said the storm was not coming.
Marley made no move to rise or beg him to stay, and nothing in her face made him think that she wanted him to leave their youngest daughter, or to take her with them. He wanted that—needed it.
What’s wrong with you, Marley? Can’t you ask—beg—me to stay?
But she said and did nothing—she was gone.
Cody wiped more tears away with the back of his hand.
“I’ll come back for you,” he promised, trying to be strong, trying to sound genuine. The words, however, seemed hollow, and a vision of his two brothers, decked out in layer upon layer of clothing standing by the front entrance uttering those same words, flashed in his mind. Marley just stared.
“I love you,” he whispered, but his wife’s only response was to let her eyes close.
Still crying, he turned back to his youngest daughter, who was sleeping on the chair behind him. After quickly checking her body for exposed skin and not finding any, he picked her up and set about putting on his gloves and as much outerwear as he could find. Just as he was wrapping a brown and green wool scarf across his face, Henrietta grunted and woke.
“I want that, Daddy,” she said in a sleepy voice. He couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken—had actually stopped crying and said a word.
“What’s that, sweetie?”
Cody’s gaze followed her outstretched arm. The stuffed owl that Oxford had bought her with what must have been his last few dollars lay on the floor. For some reason, this made him cry even harder.
Eventually, the sobbing passed and he managed to pick up the stuffed animal and hand it to her.
Strong. I need to be strong.
A deep breath.
Cody offered a final glance at his wife and eldest daughter. They moved so little that he had to concentrate for a good minute to confirm that they weren’t statues—that they were real. He felt angry at himself and at his father—Fuck you, Gordon—as without his death, they would have stayed home. They wouldn’t have braved the storm and come to this place.
“Where we going, Daddy?” a sleepy Henrietta asked. “Mommy not coming?”
I love you, he thought, hoping that somehow, like the voice on the wind or in his head or wherever the fuck it was coming from, his own words would resonate with his wife and eldest daughter.
“No,” he replied, turning from the family room and heading for the door. “No, Mommy not coming.”
To his surprise, Henrietta didn’t burst into tears and beg for her mommy as he half expected her to. On some level, Cody almost wished she had wailed—maybe this would have snapped Marley from her stupor. Instead, a look of understanding crossed Henrietta’s round face, and the toddler simply nodded. At not quite three years old, she couldn’t possibly understand, of course, but for some reason this acceptance by his younger daughter gave him strength. The little girl almost seemed relieved; like Cody and the rest of them, maybe even more so, she knew something was wrong here. She wanted to get away from this place almost as much as Cody.
“Where we going?” she asked again.
“South, sweetie; we are going south.”
7.
At First Alice Thought that Deputy Coggins had lost his mind and was shooting at her. From below, she saw three distinct muzzle flashes illuminate the darkness, but the loud reports and their echoes reverberated repeatedly off Mrs. Wharfburn’s massive ceilings and walls, making it sound like a dozen or more bullets had been fired.
She did not turn, could not turn, but when the bullets missed her, she realized that Deputy Coggins was not aiming at her but was shooting at something behind her.
The first two reports were accompanied by the sound of breaking glass—clear misses. The third, however, hit something dense, making a heavy thunk sound that reminded Alice of the sound a large stone made when tossed into a lake. But to her surprise, no cry of pain or even an angry shout followed this thunk—she heard nothing, not even a grunt.
Then she remembered the animal tracks that she had seen in the snow on her jour
ney from Cody’s house to here.
Was it a wolf? Was Brad shooting at a wolf?
Alice was terrified, unable to turn and look, but somehow she doubted it; the look on Deputy Coggins’ face and the way he had said, “Oh. My. God.”—just like that, three separate, complete sentences—suggested that it was something worse.
A bear?
Brad was yelling something at her, but her ears were ringing from the shots and all she heard was one muffled, unintelligible word that seemed to drag on and on. Her head pounded. Her side hurt. Her fingers were frozen. Her face was numb. Yet despite all of this, Alice somehow mustered the courage to turn.
It was the smell that hit her first. Even before she had fully turned, the horrible stench that filled Mrs. Wharfburn’s Estate accosted her again, except now every putrid flavor of the smell that had made her gag upon entering the Estate intensified: rotting eggs and decaying meat, tinged with the spicy-sweet aroma of habanero peppers.
It was all too much for Alice and she vomited, the projectile kind, water and bile jettisoning from her open mouth and spraying at the base of a huge, dark silhouette that squatted mere feet from her. The reaction was so sudden and vulgar and distinct that it reminded her of the time she had wolfed down six Quaaludes and had needed to sip ipecac in order to get them back up again. Hunched over, trying to regain control of her body, she felt a rumbling grow inside her head—or maybe outside of it, she didn’t know for certain—a rumbling that rattled her molars, blurred her vision, and forced the pistol-induced tinnitus away like a pesky fly. Eyes watery, with more vomit rising in her throat, she forced herself to look up, trying to take in—to understand—what hell loomed before her.
Despite the fact that it was but a foot from her, the thing’s face was shrouded in shadows. She saw what she thought was a mouth—a set of paper-thin lips extending in a slash almost all the way around the thing’s head. Buried in the thing’s mouth was a row of teeth, almost comically small in that horrendous gash.
It was a grin of nightmares.
Before her gaze drifted upward, the rumble coming from the thing’s mouth increased and she felt something graze her hip. In the next instant, mired in horrible fascination, Alice felt herself being slowly pulled forward as if she were standing on a moving carpet at the airport.
Instinctively—and it was exactly that, instinct and nothing more—her right hand shot out and made contact with the thing’s lower lip.
Punching the beast was a preposterous act—pathetic, really—but several unexpected things happened next in rapid succession. First, she felt the odd sliminess of the pink skin, like raw chicken that had been left on the counter for too long, and then she felt the hardness beneath. Next, her hand rang from the force and the three clonnys that she was still clutching in her hand were crushed. The pain forced Alice’s palm open, and somehow the majority of the smashed pieces actually flew into the thing’s cavernous mouth.
Alice retracted her hand immediately, her knuckles throbbing from the impact. The thing’s lip quivered and the rumbling, which she now knew could only be one thing—laughter—increased in tempo. The piece of pink flesh that she had punched slowly fell away, revealing more of the same hard green shell beneath.
A hideous tongue, long and tacky, slid out of the thing’s mouth and licked at where Alice had struck, and she caught sight of a dozen or so white clonazepam remnants clinging to it like Velcro. The touch grazed her hip again, but this time the sensation did not linger as it had before.
The tongue suddenly recoiled, pulling back into its mouth with startling speed, and the thing quivered before twisting awkwardly to one side. The rumbling ceased, and Alice sighed as the pressure inside her head relented. The thing’s neck, as thick and nearly unidentifiable as it was, seemed to bob; it was going to be sick. A horrible retching noise suddenly filled the air, and for the briefest moment the thing’s head lowered and she caught a glimpse of its entire face, dead-on for the first time.
“Aliiiiice.”
Despite the hard green skin and bulging eyes, the thing had an uncanny resemblance to someone she knew—someone she knew very well.
“Allliiiiiiccccccee.”
Alice’s bladder let go, but she barely noticed the warmth spreading down her legs.
“Allllliiiiiccccceeeeee. How many chances did I give you, Alice?”
She couldn’t move, couldn’t even breath.
“Allliiiicccce. I gave you a job, kept you out of jail. Allliiiiiiicccccce. Alllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiccccccccccccccce.”
This last utterance of her name seemed to draw on into infinity.
“Dana?”
Chapter Nine
Oot’-keban
1.
Deputy Bradley Coggins Watched in horror as the thing—the dark green monstrosity—toyed with Alice, its elongated fingers brushing her waist almost erotically. But that wasn’t the worst part; the worst part was the thing was laughing—laughing its horrible, deep, rumbling laugh.
He had fired at it—had hit the thing—but it had barely even noticed. If it weren’t for his still ringing ears and the dot of blood marking the beast’s shoulder, a splash of red on what little remained of Sheriff Drew’s pink flesh, he might have convinced himself that he hadn’t fired at all.
That act, firing his gun, had sapped all of the deputy’s courage, and he felt his body go cold despite the incredible heat emanating from the monster below. He could not move; all he could do is watch. It was as if his mind could think about moving, could process the act, but somewhere just below his neck there was a conduction problem and the signal refused to continue to his limbs. He wanted to go there, he wanted to run downstairs and save his girlfriend, but he remained rooted, helpless.
The shadowy beast had a hand around Alice’s waist now, the long, dark appendages completely encircling her body, and it was pulling her slowly toward its mouth, all the while still laughing. As Alice neared the horrible orifice, it slowly began to open as if being controlled by a massive hinge, and Coggins could see a row of tiny teeth—Dana’s teeth—inside the hole. It was fucked up on so many levels, the least of which was the fact that Dana had rescued her from an abyss from which few return, but now was sucking her into another dark, horrific pit.
Then Alice did something that shocked Coggins: she hit the beast—she literally reared back and punched the thing—and it seemed to Coggins that the laughing changed, becoming so low and guttural that his own teeth started to vibrate.
Images of the skinless man with the limp being devoured whole flashed in his mind. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen to Alice, or to anyone else for that matter.
But Coggins didn’t have to do anything—something odd happened. Instead of continuing to bring Alice closer to its open mouth, the long fingers around her waist suddenly unfurled and the thing moved—shuffled? Slid?—a foot or so away from Alice. The thing’s long tongue darted frantically about its mouth for a moment, and then its whole body, its entire thickness, started to contract, and Deputy Coggins realized that he was watching the thing gag.
This is your chance! his mind screamed. Run Alice! Run!
But Alice did nothing.
Why are you standing there? Run!
“No,” Jared moaned from somewhere behind him.
And with that word, whatever spell Coggins had been under broke.
Deputy Coggins shook the paralysis from his body like a thin layer of dust and ran down the staircase so quickly that he nearly took a header when he tried to holster his gun at the same time. Stumbling, falling over the last few steps, he reached Alice in seconds. Trying his best to ignore the gagging, retreating beast and the foul stench emanating from it, he grabbed Alice around the waist with one arm, acutely aware of the eerie similarity between what he was doing and what the thing had done moments before. He tried to pull her back toward the staircase but she resisted, her legs remaining locked at the knees. Now that the laughing had stopped and the ringing in his ears and teeth was nearl
y gone, he realized that Alice was saying—whispering—something, a single word over and over again.
“Daddy... Daddy... Daddy...”
Coggins felt his heart wrench. Dana had been like a father to her, and if seeing him—it—like this was enough to make even the most stable of people go mad, he couldn’t imagine what was going through Alice’s mind.
He snapped out of it and pulled again.
“Come on, Alice.”
With his eyes still firmly fixated on the retching beast that receded further into the shadows with each gag, he tugged Alice again. This time she mobilized, or, in the very least, she became pliable enough to half stumble, half allow herself to be dragged to the bottom of the staircase. Keeping his eyes trained on the dark shadow into which the beast had retreated, he hoisted her up onto the first step with a grunt. Then the next, then the one after that. He had to stop to rest on the third step, breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry, Dana,” Alice muttered, her eyes rolling back in her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“No!” Coggins shouted. “Stay with me Alice!”
He shook her and her eyes rolled forward again, seeming to focus.
“C’mon, Alice!”
To his surprise, she responded by stiffening a little, and when Deputy Coggins went to pull her to the next step, she seemed to facilitate the process.
“Keep it together, Alice,” he repeated, and pulled her up another step. It was an impossible request, but, fuck, this entire day was impossible.
Once they reached the fifth or sixth step, Jared ran to them, tucking one of Alice’s arms around the back of his neck as the deputy did the same on the other side. Silently, the three of them humped their way to the top of the stairs and then down the hallway. They entered the third doorway, the room in which they had first found Oxford, and plopped Alice’s limp body onto the chair, where she collapsed in a heap. Oxford, Deputy Coggins noted, had been dumped unceremoniously in the center of the room where he lay face down, his back rising and falling rhythmically with each breath.
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