The Complete Hidden Evil Trilogy: 3 Novels and 4 Shorts of Frightening Horror (PLUS Book I of the Portal Arcane Trilogy)

by J. Thorn

  “Wings!” Joe tossed a handful of sanitary wipes on the table along with napkins and plastic forks.

  “What the fuck are those for?” Drew asked, looking to Vivian and then to Tommy.

  “I don’t know. I grabbed a bunch of shit from the counter. If you’re going to be a dick about it, then . . .” Joe grabbed the chicken-wing basket and gave it a fake heave toward the garbage can at the end of the bar.

  Drew chuckled as the two guys sat down in the booth across the table. Vivian rested a hand on Drew’s knee. Without looking down, he placed his palm on her leg. Vivian’s heat pulsed through the black, sheer stockings. He slid his hand from her knee toward her inner thigh at a slow, even pace. Drew felt Vivian shiver. She placed her hand on top of his, giving him full, nonverbal permission to continue the exploration. Drew circled back around, creating a figure eight from Vivian’s knee to her inner thigh, a laced edge from her panties. As the conversation floated back to Soundgarden and then on to Alice in Chains, Drew caressed Vivian’s skin.

  ***

  “Kill me.”

  The request, spoken through a broken mouth and swollen lips, burst through 1992 and yanked Drew back into the subterranean chamber where Vivian sat before him, bloodied and ready to die. Gaki now stood behind her, thrusting.

  “He rapes me for hours until I’m bleeding and I pass out from the pain. When I wake up he’s still going.”

  Drew tried not to look. He tried to avoid the grin on Gaki’s face where the corners sat caked with drying feces.

  “It’s just a dream,” said Drew.

  “Smell her pussy,” replied Gaki.

  Drew shook and stepped back. Vivian’s breasts swayed with every thrust of Gaki. She moaned from the pain rather than pleasure.

  “Please, Drew. Kill me.”

  “Satiate your hunger,” Gaki said to Drew. “Do her.”

  Drew closed his dream eyes. Vivian lay facedown on the stone floor. Iron hoops sat between the stones, fastening her wrists and ankles. The blood and grime that covered her skin was gone. Vivian’s dark hair spread out over her back, complete with a healthy shine.

  “Take her,” said Gaki. The creature’s voice floated through the air and hung like an early morning mist.

  Drew looked down and saw he was now naked. He was also aroused. Vivian turned and looked over one shoulder with inviting eyes.

  “Put it where you want, hon,” she said to him.

  He dropped to his knees and used them to nudge her legs apart. Drew caught a whiff of her excitement and the earthy, pungent fragrance of desire. He grabbed himself with one hand and placed the other on the small of her back.

  “Fuck me, Drew.”

  Drew heard Gaki laugh and felt his heart racing. As he was about to penetrate Vivian, she looked over her shoulder again. This time, he saw death. Her face morphed back into the misshapen, swollen mess it had been when he first entered the dream world. Dried blood caked her cheeks, and her words whispered through holes where her teeth had once been.

  “Please, kill me.”

  Drew shuddered. He looked at Vivian’s shackled hands. Her left held a dagger. She curled her fingers, angling the handle up in the air as far as she could.

  “Take her!” screamed Gaki. He materialized from the darkness and reached for the knife.

  Before he made it to Vivian’s hand, Drew grabbed the handle. He took the weapon and drove the blade into Vivian’s neck at the base of her spine. He heard the air escape from her lungs as her tense body relaxed and collapsed on the stone. A dark-red line of blood ran from the wound and puddled in the small of her back, where moments earlier Drew’s face had been. She sniffled and gasped one last time before her body ceased to move.

  “Consume her!” screamed Gaki. The intensity of the words bored to the center of Drew’s brain. He threw his hands to his ears in hopes of defending his ears from the horrid yell. Gaki thrashed about, slamming his fists into Vivian’s lifeless body. Drew knelt between the legs of the woman’s remains, one that had been starved, abused, raped, tortured, and finally stabbed.

  Gaki grabbed Drew by the shoulders, putting his face within inches of Drew’s mouth. The fetid stench brought Drew to the edge of unconsciousness inside the dream. The creature hissed and shook Drew’s chin to keep him from passing out.

  “Your salvation is through their pain.”

  Drew felt the words strike deep in his soul before he awoke on the living-room floor, covered in sweat.

  Chapter 10

  “Corner.”

  “Bullshit. You’ll kiss the five and scratch.”

  Drew smiled while chalking the tip. He knocked the blue dust from the end by tapping the cue on the edge of the table. He mocked a childish good-bye wave at Brian while putting his finger on the twenty-dollar bill.

  “Corner.”

  Brian shook his head and stood back. He set his stick on the rack and picked up his beer, fumbling through his pocket for quarters with the other hand.

  Drew hovered over the cue ball and closed his left eye. The talc powder helped to ease the stick between his fingers. He drew it back once, twice, and then a third time in order to make sure he hit the cue ball in the proper place. A millimeter could cost him the shot, the game, and the bet. Brian coughed, pushing the staged act as far as he could.

  The cue ball launched from the end of Drew’s stick. It slid effortlessly and without sound across the green felt until slamming into the shiny, black eight ball. The cue ball stopped moving and the eight ball rocketed into the corner pocket, where it rattled and then dropped into the chute beneath the table. “Fuck!” yelled Brian as Drew rolled his stick across the table with a victor’s touch. He scooped the twenty-dollar bill from the edge.

  “C’mon, punk. Next round’s on me.”

  Drew tossed an arm around Brian’s head and pulled him close into a faux headlock. They shuffled to the bar, where Drew slapped the money down and raised one finger toward the bartender at the other end. She pushed the head of the tap back on the beer she was pouring and winked at Drew, acknowledging his round would be next.

  “Why do I continue to let you hustle me?” Brian asked.

  “Oh, you let me?” Drew replied.

  The bartender served two rum and cokes complete with a bright, plastic stir. They walked to the booth behind the pool table and sat while the next group of players stepped up with a handful of quarters.

  “We haven’t been here in a long time.”

  Drew whistled to add emphasis to the observation. “Maybe since college?”

  Brian nodded. “Yep. It’s been, what, fifteen, almost twenty years?”

  Drew looked around the bar. The faces had all changed, the games had changed, the jukebox had changed. The place had a digital jukebox loaded with thousands of songs and not one full-length recording. He thought about the obscure cuts they would punch into the old jukebox, the ones that only the real fans knew. He had played “Slaves and Bulldozers” far more than “Black Hole Sun.”

  “Used to be our Thursday-night hangout, remember that?”

  “Some of them,” said Brian, smirking. “The four-dollar pitchers erased a lot of memories.”

  “There were never many chicks here. Something about the place didn’t appeal to them.”

  “Maybe it was the filthy beer taps, or possibly the jukebox loaded with metal and grunge, or maybe it was the hole in the floor of the bathroom that functioned as the toilet, or possibly the bullet hole above the condom machine.”

  “They’ve sure cleaned the place up,” Drew said, looking at the fancy, neon signs decorating the stucco walls. “The pool table might be the last remnant of our old college hangout.”

  Brian held his glass up to Drew and invited a toast. Neither man said anything as they tipped the drink back.

  “It’s good to have you back, man,” said Brian. “Been kinda worried about you lately. The thing with Vivian, and then Johnson goes AWOL for three days, and you ain’t been right.”

  Drew nod
ded with an apologetic motion. “I was in a funk.”

  “I want to help, man. I’m your bro. You gotta let me in sometimes when you really need it.”

  Drew nodded before draining the rest of his drink. The thickest, sweetest rum sank to the bottom of the glass. Drew felt the sugary spice march down his throat until the sensation warmed his chest.

  “What do you think happened to Viv?” Drew asked.

  “She’s always been a crazy broad. God only knows who or what she got mixed up in. I feel like shit about it. It ain’t like we hung much, but still. You know somebody for that long, it hits you when they become a victim. Some dude really had it out for her, hurt her good.”

  Drew shook his head and stared at the melting ice cube in his glass. “She didn’t deserve to suffer like that.”

  “Damn straight, Drew. Nobody does.”

  “Do you remember the times she came here with us?”

  “Vaguely. I remember that she had the hots for you but you were too hung up on Molly to take Viv for a ride. I can remember her hanging with us two or three times, but she eventually stopped coming out.”

  “There was one time. Don’t think you were here that night. There was one time I knew I could’ve done her. We had our hands moving, nowhere south of the border, but damn close. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve been different if I hadn’t chased Molly out of state, if I had stuck around and given Vivian a chance.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Drew looked at Brian and pushed a sleeve across his eyes.

  “Some freak hurt her, cut her up, and left her body in the river. And that’s not your fault.”

  “I know, I know. My brain goes in funny ways. Been thinking a lot about Vivian lately. She got really weird after college.”

  Brian laughed and slammed his glass on the table. “You sayin’ if she took your schlong she wouldn’t have been such a nutty bitch?”

  “Have some respect, bro. She’s dead.”

  “I’m not trying to disrespect her, Drew. I’m just sayin’ that you are not responsible for Vivian’s life. We make a million choices a week. Every day we’re deciding things that could dramatically change our lives. You can’t hover over that. You can’t second guess leaving the house a minute later and avoiding a car accident. You can’t control how the universe deals the deck. Man, you have to savor the moment because nothing else exists.”

  “Thanks, Buddha.”

  “I’m serious, Drew. And you’re way too serious. Quit thinking seven steps backward and seven steps forward. I’m not telling you to forsake your future, throw your 401k money to the casino. What I’m saying is you need to live more in the moment and enjoy it rather than thinking about what it could have been or what it might become.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I’ve always been this way. I’m too metacognitive for my own good.”

  “Thanks, Freud. Call it what you want, but you have to stop taking responsibility for the universe.”

  Drew nodded his head and looked at the bartender again. He could not help but notice how much more attractive she became with each rum and coke served. She saw the motion and pulled the soda gun and bottle of rum, one in each hand.

  “Another?” he asked Brian.

  “It’s not like you raped and murdered Vivian with your own hands. It’s not your fault.”

  Drew closed his eyes and nodded. “You’re right, man. Not like I stabbed her in the back of the neck.”

  Brian squinted and tilted his head sideways. Before he could speak again, the rum and cokes arrived with a healthy dose of sugary intoxication, which bent the conversation back toward the glory days of Soundgarden and the merits of getting Rage Against the Machine back together.

  ***

  Drew pulled into the driveway, the streetlights casting a hazy light on the neighborhood. He fumbled for the keys and caught a glimpse of 2:47 a.m. on the dashboard clock. The illusion of island happiness from the night’s rum put a smile on Drew’s face. He hoped Molly would be waiting up for him.

  The refrigerator hummed. Drew dropped his keys on the kitchen counter and kicked his shoes into a corner, where they landed in the shape of sleeping puppies. He opened the fridge. The lone lightbulb blinded Drew as he fumbled for the water pitcher. “Two full glasses and I’ll be good to go tomorrow morning.”

  He drained two and a half glasses to be on the safe side. Two aspirin followed. Drew did not bother with a shower, and skipped brushing his teeth as well. Any thoughts of sex with Molly disappeared as his head hit the pillow and Drew succumbed to the power of a rum-induced, dreamless sleep.

  ***

  “Morning.”

  Molly shook the sleep from her eyes and followed it with an exaggerated yawn that told Drew she was rested and in a good mood, one of the indicators that married couples use to measure the worth of the day.

  “What time did you get home?” she asked, watching him stir scrambled eggs in an iron skillet. The kids sat in the living room, engrossed in the latest cartoon.

  “After last call,” he replied. Drew kissed her forehead before reaching into the refrigerator for the cheese.

  “Omelets for both?” he shouted into the living room over the rapid-fire laugh of a character on the screen.

  “Yes!” the kids yelled back in unison.

  “You want one?” Drew asked Molly.

  She ignored the question and put her arms around his waist. Drew felt her breasts on his back and shook his head.

  “Stop that or I’ll burn these eggs.”

  Molly winked and headed back to the bedroom. She let her robe slip open enough to make Drew excited.

  “C’mon up when you’re done.”

  Drew smiled and finished the omelets for Billy and Sara. He placed the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and made sure the stove was off.

  “Got some things to do upstairs. You guys okay?” he asked the kids.

  They nodded without looking up.

  They would sit there through Armageddon if the television still worked, he thought.

  He climbed the stairs toward the bedroom, where Molly’s robe hung on the hook.

  ***

  The teapot whistled and demanded attention from its master. The old man sauntered toward the stove like a bride milking the walk down the aisle. His white hair sat in wisps on his shoulders, and his beard stretched to his navel. He gripped the hand-carved cane with his left hand while extending his shaking right hand toward the pot.

  “Let me get that,” said Ravna.

  The old man whisked the air from in front of his face and wrinkled his nose as if a foul odor had crept into the room.

  “I’m not feeble,” he replied.

  “I was not suggesting you are, Mashoka. I was trying to be polite.”

  “Then sit down on the couch and allow the master of the house to serve his guest.”

  Ravna put both hands in the air to signal his compliance. He walked two paces from the kitchenette to the pillows on the floor, chuckling to himself when he thought of the terms “house” and “guest.” Neither felt accurate, the eternal wordsmithing and curse of the writer.

  Mashoka turned the burner off and poured the boiling water into two ancient, porcelain cups. He dropped a hand-filled tea bag into each, instantly releasing the aroma of citrus and mint.

  “Peppermint?” Ravna asked.

  “Spearmint,” replied Mashoka.

  The old man added two spoons, a cradle of organic cane sugar, and two pieces of toasted bread to the tray. He leaned his cane on the wall and lifted the tray. Ravna rushed to his side with his arms extended.

  “You have prepared the tea. The least I can do is carry the tray.”

  Mashoka relented with a nod. “Fifty years ago I would have carried you carrying the tray.”

  “Fifty years ago I was not even a sparkle in my mother’s eye. Relax, Mashoka. I am not here to challenge your authority.”

  The old man cracked a smile that sent the lines on his face rearranging at various
angles. His soft eyes shone through the narrow slits created by his Japanese ancestry. Mashoka pushed the silken headband up a bit on his forehead and followed Ravna into the seating area.

  “How much of the orange grind do you have left?”

  “Enough for another batch of leaf, provided the spearmint plant produces again.”

  Ravna nodded.

  “How is your mother?” the old man asked.

  “Fine. I guess.”

  “A woman’s mood is not a matter of chance.”

  “An Asian proverb?”

  “Obi-wan, the new Clone Wars cartoon.”

  Ravna laughed and Mashoka did the same. The old man shook his head, trying to hide a genuine smile.

  “Do you know why I asked to see you?” Ravna asked.

  Mashoka sat still, staring into the younger man’s eyes. “Gaki,” he said to Ravna after taking a sip of his tea.

  “It has made it here, to our town, so it would seem.”

  “It would seem that way,” replied Mashoka.

  “I thought you might be able to help me.”

  “Help you do what?”

  “Banish it.”

  Mashoka shuddered and let his cane fall to the floor. It rattled on the bamboo hardwood and rolled to a stop on the cushion between the two men.

  “I am old. Frail.”

  “It has killed twice so far, Mashoka.”

  “You do not know this for certain.”

  “I don’t know for certain that the sun will rise tomorrow, but it will not stop me from greeting the day.”

  “Zhuangzi?”

  “Fortune cookie, Fire Dragon Chinese, East 8th Avenue and Core Road.”

  Mashoka smiled and shook his head at Ravna. “Very well. Let’s call it even.”

  Ravna placed his empty cup on the tray and folded his hands. He ignored the other treats and stared deep into the old man’s eyes.

  “You know we cannot look away. I will chase it with or without your guidance.”

  Mashoka sighed and placed his cup next to Ravna’s on the tray. He no longer had an appetite for the toast or frivolous small talk.