The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares

by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)

  “Bill, set up DreamCatcher with your new program. I’m going to get Maya.”

  “Maya?”

  “We’ve infected my daughter with this…thing. Now we’re going to get it out. Whatever it takes.”

  I step past him and down the stairs. Behind me I hear, “Glo…I don’t know if—”

  “Goddammit, Bill! I need your help. Maya needs you.”

  As I sprint to the ground floor, I hear something like wailing behind me.

  He’s coming apart…But fuck him. I’ll do it myself if I have to.

  —

  I wait through six minutes of agony before Rosalind’s blue Civic zips around the driveway. I open the rear door before she even gets it stopped. Maya’s lying on the backseat, shaking and whispering nonsense. Her pixie hair standing up in spikes from the blood in it. As her empty gaze alights on me, she wipes her bleeding hand from ear to ear, making a grisly crimson curve on her face. Then she twitches like something’s stabbed her deep inside.

  I drag her out and carry her across my arms. She feels so light, I wonder crazily if she’s somehow been hollowed out. Rosalind calls after me. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to give her an MRI. It’ll save time. I’ll see you at the emergency room.”

  She stares at me as I run with my daughter toward Dreamland.

  —

  The door opens on an empty room, all the DreamCatcher’s monitors still dark.

  Fucking Tynes. He picks NOW to pull another disappearing act?

  I run with Cassie back into the hall, wondering where the fuck he is. There’s a trail of blood droplets leading right to his office. The drops turn to spatters, which turn to puddles and smears. By the time I get to his door, I can make out his footprints.

  Inside, there he is, clutching the armrests of his office chair, facing away, contemplating the stupid phrenology poster up behind his desk. He doesn’t turn when I enter.

  He’s still doing this shit at a time like this?

  “Tynes! Goddammit, will you fucking look at me?”

  He slowly swivels his chair, and the sight of him slams me back against the doorjamb. Not him…HIM.

  Tynes has yanked all the hair out of his head in meaty clumps but for two spikes atop the bloody remains of his scalp. Worse, he’s chewed through his own cheeks, the whole middle of his face gone to expose all his teeth and gums, flaps of skin hanging loose to make one giant gruesome grin. His eyes are lit with madness.

  Maya swivels her head toward him. Her arm rises as though…she’s reaching out to him.

  “Oh, Bill, what have you done to yourself?” He frowns, confused by my question. I ask, “Is…is He…?”

  A weird spasm runs through him. “No…I’m still fighting.”

  “Bill, look at your face. You’re turning into Him.”

  He rotates his head disturbingly far around to check his reflection in the poster’s glass. He frowns as though he can’t see what I’m talking about. Then he whips back around to strafe me with his hungry eyes. “You’re not looking so great yourself.”

  I take a step toward the door.

  Bill rises from his chair, his hands out like he’s soothing a rabid animal. But his fingers are flexing into claws.

  I take another step back.

  “Gloria. I know what you’re trying to do,” he says, urgency making his voice waver. “Please think for a minute.”

  “I don’t even know who I’m talking to right now.”

  Maya shivers in my arms. Tynes gets around the edge of his desk.

  “Look at me, Gloria…your old friend Bill.” He tilts his head, then shakes it as if dismissing some internal argument. He says, “For Maya’s sake. I…I just can’t let you do it.”

  He doesn’t want me to try to save my daughter? Now, after bringing this fiend into our life, he’s worried about what might happen?

  That thing is NOT your “old friend Bill.” Of course He doesn’t want you to cure Maya. And…and…he keeps calling you “Gloria.” Bill always called you “Glo.”

  We stand locked there for a final second.

  Tynes lunges for me right as I turn and bolt out the door, but slipping in the blood, he crashes to the floor.

  Alone I would have made it, but with Maya squirming in my arms, he catches me just outside our lab. She flies from my grasp as we go sprawling down on the cold linoleum. Tynes grabs my belt and lurches on top of me, his mouth dripping blood into mine. I get my knee between us and kick out with all my strength. Emaciated Tynes goes flying off and slams into the base of an AV cart packed with gear for the nearby visualization facility. The impact topples a fifty-inch LED monitor onto him, which lands with a sickening thud.

  I crawl to my feet and haul Maya into A-4.107. I turn to slam the frosted glass door, but it won’t close.

  Even pressing as hard as I can, the latch won’t engage. Then I look down and see why: four now-crushed fingers wedged in near the floor. Through the tiny crack, I see Tynes’s left eye rolling to white. His curdled voice: “Gloria. Stop.”

  “Bill, let go of the door.”

  “No. I can’t let you do this to Maya.”

  He wants your daughter.

  That alien voice inside me again. I almost lose it right there. Just fall down and surrender.

  But no, you will never give her up.

  I brace my foot against the door’s base to keep it from opening. I say to him, “I fucking warned you, Bill.”

  Then I hurl all my weight against it. Once…twice. Again. Again.

  Outside, Tynes shrieks as the door finally snaps closed, the sharp edge of the glass cleaving through his fingers.

  He howls.

  I turn to see my little girl staring at the fingers lying on the floor like bloody slugs. I pick her up and throw her onto the DreamCatcher’s platform. Then I realize how hopeless this is. She has to be asleep.

  Do what you must.

  That voice again. I can’t bear it anymore. My hands flap down to my sides in impotent despair.

  And my right one finds the propofol syringe I’d meant for Marco.

  Maya doesn’t flinch when I jab it into the vein in her elbow and press down the plunger. Her eyes beam the purest terror at me for an instant before she collapses onto the bed.

  Outside, Bill is screaming, “No! No! No!…I won’t do that. I…I have to try to—” His words dissolve into a gurgling cry. He slams his head against the glass, leaving a spatter of blood.

  I frantically wake up the DreamCatcher’s computers.

  Outside, Tynes goes quiet, and despite myself, I offer him a prayer of thanks for the smooth build file he’s made of his new Mr. Smoke–fighting DreamCatcher code. It installs perfectly, and in two minutes, the system dings that it’s ready to go. I hook up Maya to the vital-signs monitor and put in the UnderTone earbuds. Right away, the EEG tells me she’s plummeting toward REM. I hit the button to send her into the MRI.

  The door breaks.

  But it doesn’t shatter. The glass has heavy-duty lamination on both sides, which keeps the shards together and inhibits the cracks spiderwebbing out from the point of impact. Behind it, Tynes’s shadowy form winds up for another blow with a sledgehammer. He must have found the workers’ local tool stash.

  He smashes shards to powder, and the plastic coating bulges. It’ll never hold.

  Do I call the police?

  Not yet; they’ll pull Maya out. And you won’t get another chance. They’ll destroy the DreamCatcher when all this comes to light.

  Maya’s descent into REM is inhumanly fast. Mr. Smoke wants her dreaming. But this time He’s got a surprise in store. The first image from her dream flickers to life.

  It’s Him.

  But not via some mathematically encoded trick. He’s right there in the main signal. The demonic face grins at me. Maya’s UnderTone becomes a tortured shriek. Her body spasms once but then goes utterly limp.

  Tynes’s third blow snaps the outer laminate. He drops the hammer and tears a
t the hole, even using the stumps of his left fingers to rip stuck shards out of the way. His face presses against the inside layer. His gaping mouth seeming to gnaw at the glass, his transformation into Mr. Smoke now complete.

  The Mr. Smoke on the DreamCatcher’s screen is faring less well. Fractals of static stab in from the edges, breaking up His evil visage. The whole image clouding. Then He snaps back into focus, but the UnderTone screams loud again, and the screen twitches and blurs and smashes Him into a thousand swirls of chaos. He’s breaking up.

  Please let the door hold. Just a little more.

  Tynes claws savagely at the broken glass. The laminate gives until it seems it must break, but it doesn’t. Tynes picks up the hammer and bashes at it again. He throws his body into it.

  It holds.

  With a scream of frustration, Tynes stalks back into the hall.

  Maya’s UnderTone screech now harmonizes with a new alarm squealing its distress. Maya’s vitals have crashed.

  My daughter is dying.

  But Mr. Smoke is almost gone. I can barely discern the outline of him in the fizzing static of the screen. “Hold on, Maya. Just hold on.”

  I’ve never prayed in my life. I don’t even know who I’m asking, but I say, “Please just let her live.”

  Are you sure that’s what you want?

  I pound my head, trying to jar loose that infernal hiss. A dim rumbling sound starts outside. A faint vibration in my feet.

  Now there’s an earthquake?…Stop it. You’re going crazy.

  The dulcet ping of Tynes’s program hitting some kind of success threshold. The horrific siren of Maya’s pulse flatlining. I slap the release button on the MRI bed. Then…

  A massive gray block explodes through the door, knocking me clear across the room into the wall. The last thing I see is a white appliance flying off the top of the cart Tynes has rammed through the glass. It slams into my face.

  —

  Wake up now, Gloria, I’m not finished with you yet.

  A crushing pain in my head wrenches my eyes open. They clench shut again before I can process what they’ve seen:

  Tynes straddling Maya on the MRI bed. His hands clutching at her chest as he leans over, biting her face.

  My head jerks up, and I look again.

  No, that isn’t it…He’s KISSING her. His charnel house of a mouth over hers, bubbles of blood forming around his teeth. What is he DOING? Does he think he can breathe more of his sickness into my daughter?

  I rise like a marionette getting all its strings yanked at once, ripping free of the cord tangled around my shoulder. I throw myself on Tynes and hurl him off the platform. He shouts, “No!” as we slam to the ground.

  I find that my arm has popped snugly under his chin. As if of its own accord, my right hand finds my left biceps, my left hand the back of his head. I squeeze with all the fear and hate and despair now boiling inside me, and the choke slots into place like a dream. It feels perfect. Pure and true.

  He hurt my daughter and now I have him, and he will never be able to harm her again.

  Tynes’s feet beat against the floor, and I wrap my legs around him and squeeze with those too.

  Yes, finish it.

  “Go to Him, you motherfucker,” I whisper.

  Tynes gives up so easily. It feels like only a few seconds until he’s still.

  As I push him off me, his head lolls to the side and I get a final view of that hideous grin. I take Maya in my arms and find her pulse. It flutters faintly, but then there’s a stronger beat. Then another…

  I stare at the DreamCatcher’s final image and see no sign of Him. The tide of relief staggers me.

  I survey the shattered ruin of our lab. My daughter will live, and maybe she’s even saved…but what am I supposed to do now?

  Run.

  Two people are dead, and who knows what’ll happen to the other Somnos? There is no way I can explain this. They’ll think I’m crazy. They’ll take away Maya and lock me up. And what if she’s not cured? Who’s going to help her?

  Run.

  Upload the new DreamCatcher code to your private repo. You’ll find a way to get access to an MRI. You’re going to need it for yourself.

  I run with my daughter out of Dreamland forever.

  —

  The parking lot of a cheap motel. ATM card maxed for the day. I’m looking at my broken nose, both eyes starting to blacken. The long gash along my eyebrow. Don’t go in there. They’ll call an ambulance. They’ll call the police.

  The asshole manning the desk takes my cash and asks if I want him to “check on me” later.

  You’re a junkie who just got rolled. He won’t call anyone.

  As night falls out the window of this comically disgusting motel room surrounded by fat, tatted gangsters hanging around the parking lot, I feel the slightest respite. My head swims, and I so badly want to collapse onto that sticky polyester bedspread and…

  But no. I don’t want that at all. And my daughter has blood all over her. I dampen a washcloth in the sink.

  We can clean ourselves up, but the problem’s on the inside, isn’t it? What will you do if Tynes’s cure didn’t work?

  Look at what happened to him. His new DreamCatcher didn’t help. It made him worse. He didn’t feel Mr. Smoke pressing on him today because He had already taken over. Tynes tore out all his hair and ate his own cheeks. He made himself into Mr. Smoke. He’s been fighting his demon for months, and then one night after his “treatment,” he’s all the way gone.

  Maya stirs as I wipe her face. Her eyes flutter open, and I almost think she’s about to smile at me. But then she recoils.

  I try to calm her. “Honey, it’s okay…It’s okay. You don’t have to worry about that man. You’re safe. He will never try to hurt you again.”

  She stares at me. “But…but, Mommy…I think he wanted to help.”

  Something flickers in my mind. Tynes screaming at me, “Look at me, Gloria…your old friend Bill!” It wasn’t him, it was Him.

  Though is that right? He wasn’t ALL gone. He was still fighting. Using the pain to keep Him away. Why else would he yank his hair out…and CHEW THROUGH his own cheeks?

  The memory returns: Tynes up on the MRI bed, straddling my daughter, air hissing out from between his teeth. The way he clawed at Maya’s chest…

  He wasn’t really CLAWING…more like he was PRESSING. Like trying to…Like he was giving her…

  It hits me. A blow to the temple.

  CPR.

  He was trying to save her life. You gave her a propofol dose sized for a two-hundred-pound man. No wonder her vitals crashed. And the cart he smashed through the door? That was the first-aid trolley we’re required to keep on hand for our residents. The plastic thing that hit you? Think. You pulled a cord from around your shoulder and you felt something on the end of it. A paddle…It was a defibrillator.

  Bill was trying to save your daughter’s life.

  And you strangled him.

  Maya murmurs, “Mommy, what happened to him?”

  “He got very sick, sweetie.” My mind is a crackling blaze of panic. Screaming over and over, What have you done? What have you done?

  Get a grip. Tynes was a monster. He attacked you and Maya. He was trying to stop you from treating her.

  You do what you have to.

  She says, “No…I mean—”

  I can’t have this conversation right now. “Here, honey, let me clean up your hair.” She trembles as I sit her in front of the mirror and try to tease out the brown clots. She grabs a crusty strand and regards it, rubbing the dark granules with her thumb.

  Good. She’s trying to help.

  But then with a sharp jerk, she yanks it out.

  “Maya, no!”

  That’s when I see it. In her once immaculate blue eyes: little ripples. Swirls. Smoke.

  He’s still inside her.

  I look away, knowing she’ll catch the horror on my face. It takes everything I have to stifle a cry of grief
. Our cure didn’t work. And He still has my beautiful baby girl.

  But you knew that, right?

  I notice Maya studying my face intently in the mirror. She says, “I have to…the Man is still here. And He won’t go away. What does He want, Mommy?”

  What does this evil thing want?

  All of it.

  The words are out of my mouth before I can really make sense of them. “He wants to take over. He wants to hurt anyone who tries to stop Him. He wants us all for Himself.”

  Maya nods. I take a shuddering breath. “But that’s not going to happen. We’re going to keep fighting.”

  Maya yanks out another lock of hair. I wrap my arms around her and grab both wrists. Maybe a little too roughly. She struggles against me. “I am fighting. Why are you telling me not to?”

  “You don’t have to hurt yourself.”

  “Yes, you do! It’s how you fight Him.” She twists hard in my arms, but I hold firm. Maya abruptly goes slack and slumps into my embrace. “But you’re not,” she says.

  “Not what, sweetie?”

  “You’re not fighting Him…Why aren’t you?”

  “Listen to me. I swear to you, honey. I will never let Him have us. I won’t rest until we figure out a way to get rid of Him.”

  She closes her eyes. “You can push Him back when you’re awake. But when you’re asleep He’s too strong. When you’re dreaming He’s always there…and it feels like you’ll never keep Him out.”

  She’s right. My eyes overflow as I face the truth: our only chance to reverse this sickness, to drive Him away, died with Tynes. I squeezed the life out of our only real hope back in Dreamland.

  Alone, I’ll never be able to fix the new DreamCatcher code. I don’t have what Tynes had, and no amount of determination, no amount of hard work, will ever change that. Mr. Smoke is with us now. He’ll warp and scour my daughter’s mind until her life is a festering hell. Until she begs to die. He’ll get stronger and stronger every night.

  Every time she dreams.

  I let go of her hands and just gaze into the shifting mist in her eyes. She pulls out another strand of hair.

  Maybe I can’t destroy Him. But there’s nothing in this world I won’t do to protect my daughter. To spare her this terror and pain. Nothing.