by Carver Pike
“What is it that has you so scared?” Gabe asked.
Haylay nervously placed a finger to his mouth, gesturing for Gabe to keep quiet. He looked all around to make sure they weren’t heard.
“There are figments all around us,” Haylay said quietly. “I can hear them whispering.”
“Figments? What the hell are figments?” Gabe asked in a hushed voice.
Haylay once again put a finger to his lips.
“No one really knows. No one who’s actually seen them has lived. Everyone knows that when you hear their whispers, you run.”
“Whispers?” Ivy asked.
She listened intently and tried to hear them.
“The sound of their whispers is enough to make you stay away from your windows at night,” Haylay said.
Gabe certainly hoped they wouldn’t be dealing with figments tonight.
***
Sergio could see Gabe and the others speaking to each other up ahead, but his focus was elsewhere. He was at the back of the group, and didn’t like his position. Conductor, Dozier, and Language were ahead of him, but he felt utterly alone.
Several times he’d spun around to check their rear and found nothing but the foreboding darkness. He knew the others were nervous and a little afraid, but he was about to shit his pants. Fear wasn’t the right word for it. He was terrified, and he hadn’t seen a single tangible thing to be afraid of.
It all stemmed from a feeling that seemed to be yanking at his gut. If ever there was a time to trust your instincts, Sergio knew this was it, but where else could they go? At this point, they had to either walk forward into the darkness, or turn around and walk back, and somehow, he knew that going back might be the worst decision of all.
It was the shadows behind him that scared him most. They seemed to move with the group. It was as if he could never really see more than a few feet behind them, so he really wasn’t much of a rear guard.
The constant dripping sound only added to his frustration. He believed what Haylay was saying about the alleys. In a world where little black insects could dissolve his friend’s arm and leg, why wouldn’t he believe that similar creatures stalked the pitch black alleyways?
Sergio had never been a religious man. When you grow up in gangland, prayers are reserved for fallen friends, guys you grew up with who’d been struck down by a barrage of bullets from a rival gang.
Back home he’d had a rosary hanging from the blinds on his window, but he only kept it there to satisfy his grandmother.
Now, however, he tried hard to remember the prayers his grandmother had taught him. He wished that he’d paid attention all of those times she’d forced him to kneel down in front of a lit candle and pray to the saints.
The only prayer that came to mind was the one that started, “now I lay me down to sleep,” which Sergio didn’t feel really fit with the current situation.
The darkness was relentless. He felt as if it was bearing down on him, ready to pounce at any moment. The air seemed to get thicker. Sergio could see Gabe talking to Haylay at the front of the group, but the words were distorted, as if the air was too dense for them to travel the short distance from their mouths to his ears.
He was confused. His head felt a bit hazy and he wondered if the drinking had finally caught up with him. He’d heard of weak-tasting alcohol that could hammer down on you at the last second, like the Soju of South Korea, but he’d never experienced it himself.
He tried to shake off the trance-like state he was sinking into, but it wouldn’t go away. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes, something flashed into view, too quick for him to react. A long, bony, claw reached out and wrapped around Sergio’s face. He screamed as he felt himself yanked back into the darkness.
***
Gabe spun around as soon as he heard his friend scream.
“Keep your eyes on the front,” he ordered Ivy and Haylay as he dropped back to where Conductor, Dozier, and Language were all huddled with their guns pointed at the darkness behind them.
“He was right behind us,” Dozier said as Gabe came to his side. “What the fuck?”
Language stepped ahead of them, closer to the shadows, her gun out in front of her.
“Sergio!” Gabe called out, but there was no answer.
He looked back at Ivy and saw that her attention was on him instead of their front. She started to leave her appointed spot when Haylay grabbed her arm.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Haylay said as he scampered quickly to stay away from the front. “You ain’t leavin’ me alone up here.”
“Don’t fire!” Gabe ordered as he returned his attention to their rear. “You might hit Sergio.”
“I cain’t fire at what I cain’t see!” Dozier replied.
Suddenly, right before his eyes, Gabe watched in horror as Sergio leapt out of the darkness, with his arms reaching out to his friends. He was trying to escape. His face had been ripped open, and his body was in mid-air when several of the long, bony hands reached out and yanked him back into the shadows.
“Fire now?” Dozier yelled.
“No!” Gabe replied.
He tried to keep his group in order as everyone began to freak out, but his mind went blank. As he searched his brain for a proper reaction to the events that were unfolding, he saw Haylay run for the first door in sight and yank wildly on its handle. The door wouldn’t budge. He frantically tried the next door, but no one living along the alleys left their back doors open at night.
“We’ve got to help him!” Dozier yelled, but to Gabe, it sounded far away.
Language was pulling on Dozier’s arm, trying to lead him away from the darkness, but he refused, readying himself to fight. For a moment, there was a ringing in his ears as he watched Conductor yelling at Haylay and Dozier hollering at the shadows.
He remembered Afghanistan, and the craziness that ensued every time he and his buddies were shot at by hidden assassins. He hadn’t been in charge back then, but he remembered the cool and collected way that his sergeant had taken control. The sergeant hadn’t stood up, in the center of the action, witnessing his people getting killed, like Gabe was doing now.
He felt a hand on his arm and a gentle shake that stirred him from the memory of his sergeant’s face, before the mortar exploded and took the sergeant’s face with it.
“He’s already dead!” Ivy assured them. “If we don’t fight we’ll be dead too.”
She didn’t wait for Gabe’s approval. She opened fire, shooting wildly into the darkness.
“Ivy, no!” Gabe yelled.
She continued shooting, screaming as she sprayed bullets at anything that might be hovering in the black air behind them. When she stopped, it wasn’t because she’d decided to listen to Gabe, but because she’d run out of bullets. She quickly dropped her empty magazine to the ground and pulled another one out of her pocket.
Gabe tried to stop her before she let a second wave of bullets go, but she shook away from his grasp, inserted the new magazine, and took aim.
As her finger reached for the trigger, Sergio stepped innocently out of the darkness with a smirk on his face. Gabe stepped back, surprised to see his friend again, especially unscathed after Ivy’s shooting spree. Even the claw marks from before were missing. He looked unharmed in any way. He laughed a little under his breath.
Dozier looked over at Gabe, shook his head, and then looked back at Sergio. Ivy took a step forward and lowered her weapon, just to raise it again as Sergio took a step closer.
“Whoa! Calm down, honey. A dude plays a practical joke and you try to kill him?” Sergio asked.
Gabe raised his gun and pointed it at Sergio. The others followed his lead. Sergio raised his hands high above his head, still smiling, as if surrendering after a stupid joke he’d decided to play.
“I was just playin’ around, man. That’s pretty fucked up,” Sergio said.
Gabe couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. He looked around at the others to see if they were as confus
ed as he was, and they all seemed to be shocked. Ivy was the only person in the group who looked absolutely sure about shooting their old friend. She had her gun aimed right at his head.
Gabe lowered his weapon and looked over at Haylay, who had finally given up on his escape attempt and joined the others. He stood with his hands on his hips, watching Sergio.
“They say figments are shape shifters. They can morph into whatever form they want, and they’ve found us,” Haylay said.
If Gabe hadn’t seen Sergio’s ripped up face moments before, he might have fallen for the trick.
Sergio looked genuinely concerned.
“What…what’s going on?” he asked.
He approached Dozier and Ivy quickly shook her gun in his direction.
“Stop moving! Don’t move!” she commanded.
With his attention, and the attention of all the others, focused on Sergio, it took Gabe a moment to realize that figures were stepping out all around them, completely surrounding them.
An old woman in a baggy, flowered dress stepped towards Dozier with her hands out as if offering him a hug. He backed up a couple of steps and nearly dropped his battle-axe. He looked terrified, but hopeful, both at the same time.
“Ma?”
“Baby,” the old woman said, her slippers dragging against the wet cement as she walked towards him.
A teenage boy wearing a high school baseball uniform and a cocky grin, an obvious jock well aware of his talents, stepped towards Gabe. He tossed his baseball high into the air and caught it in his mitt. He did this over and over again.
“Gabriel,” the boy said. “Wanna play some catch?”
Gabe took a step back and then looked over at Ivy, who was shaking her head, trying to warn him not to fall for it. He looked back at the boy.
“Jimmy?”
“Hey, little brother,” Jimmy said.
“Gabe, that’s not your brother…and Dozier, that’s not your ma, either,” Haylay reminded them.
Jimmy, Dozier’s ma, and Sergio all turned to look at Haylay. They stared at him with blank expressions.
“Uh, guys, get ready, ‘cause we in a whole lot of trouble,” Haylay told them.
Gabe didn’t know how to react. He knew the figures he was seeing weren’t true. His older brother was long dead. Yet, it seemed wrong to shoot Jimmy in the head. It looked as if Dozier was having the same reservations about shooting his mom.
Gabe turned his attention to Haylay, who had ditched the conversation and was trying to open another door, which was also locked.
As if they’d heard Haylay’s warning, and didn’t like it, the three figures all turned their heads and looked at him. Their facial expressions suddenly changed from no expression at all to total rage. All three opened their mouths and let out an ear piercing scream; three separate screams that joined together in one agonizing blast.
The screams shattered the windows around them. Gabe and the others covered their ears and bent over in pain. Even with his hands blocking the majority of the sound, it felt as if his veins were about to burst through his forehead. Gabe saw his friends doubled up in pain the same way. Defending an attack was out of the question.
The old woman was the first to charge at them. She rushed forward and grabbed Dozier by his throat, lifting him in the air. His feet kicked rapidly beneath him as he choked. He tried to remove one of his hands from his head to defend himself, but the screams were too loud and he returned his hand to his ear.
His face was bright red and spittle seeped from his mouth as the old lady raced forward with him at a tremendous speed, carrying the large man as if he were weightless.
Gabe wanted to help his friend, but he couldn’t remove his hands from his ears. He watched, helpless, as Dozier kicked at her gut with all of the strength he had left, but simple fighting techniques were no match for the monster with its claws gripped around his neck.
She slammed Dozier into the brick wall behind him. The brick cracked and crumbled upon impact. Dozier’s head drooped down, and Gabe knew that he was about lose consciousness. Suddenly the old lady’s face changed. It began to morph into a pale white, dry and wrinkled skeletal-like face with pitch black eyes.
Gabe dropped to his knees with his hands still at his ears and watched as the rest of the figures changed into the creatures with stretched white arms and bony fingers, each ending in a long talon.
They wore black robes that hung down over their feet and when they moved they seemed to glide as if they had no feet, no longer walking like the humans they pretended to be.
Gabe could see that the figment was killing Dozier. He wouldn’t be able to go on much longer without breath.
He reached for his gun to help, but as soon as he removed his hand from his ear, he cried out in pain and replaced it. He looked over at Haylay and watched as he suffered like the rest of them. He knew that Haylay must be cursing him for not listening about the alleys.
Gabe had believed him when he’d said that dangerous things lurked in the darkness, but he’d never imagined that they would be slaughtered like this, defenseless due to the ear shattering shrieks the figments were emitting.
Conductor was on his knees a few feet away from where Gabe was hunched over, gritting his teeth and screaming along with the figments. Gabe wished he’d never let the man travel with them. This wasn’t a fight for a simple train conductor. In fact, this fight wasn’t any of theirs.
Gabe’s eyes began to water. As he tilted his head to the right in his attempt to wipe the blurriness away with a sleeve, something, anything, he saw Conductor lift one of his feet and place it on the ground, where he wobbled on one knee.
Then the man rose up on both feet. He stood there, looking slightly dazed, with his eyes on Dozier’s attacker. He turned to look at Gabe, gave him a wink, and then let his hands drop.
Gabe couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The pain he was feeling couldn’t be anywhere near as horrible as the pain Conductor must feel with nothing blocking his ears.
Conductor stood for a moment, lifted his head to the sky, and screamed, but he refused to return his hands to his ears. He shook his head “no” while accepting the pain. The man staggered, as if about to fall over. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell down to one knee. Then it happened.
Gabe saw the blood flow from Conductor’s ears as his eardrums burst. He must’ve counted on it happening. That’s what the waiting had been for. Gabe had never expected that kind of self- sacrifice, especially from an image. Gabe knew the monsters could kill the man, but they’d no longer be able to punish him.
Gabe kept his hands shoved against his ears as he saw Conductor pull his pistol out of his holster and run towards Dozier, blood dripping from the man’s ears. The crazed image leapt over Language, who was curled up in a ball, and raced to aid his newest drinking buddy.
Gabe could see Conductor snarling and growling, but couldn’t hear the noise over the high-pitched wales that were seeping in through his hands. Conductor put the barrel of the pistol against the back of the figment’s head and pulled the trigger. The figment scattered like dust and disappeared.
The remaining figments fell silent, ceasing their violent screams and focusing their attention on the one man who dared to stop them. Gabe released his hands from his ears and fought the ringing that remained.
It sounded as if the monsters’ screams had been replaced by low growls that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep in their guts. Low rumbling filled the air.
Conductor made some sort of noise that sounded nothing like words. If he’d been hard to understand before, now Gabe couldn’t make out a single word. Conductor was whipping his head around as if trying to decide on his next target.
Gabe hurried over to Dozier, whose eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. He fell forward and hit the ground on all fours, gasping for air. He fumbled as he tried to remove the axe from the strap on his back, so Gabe took it out and handed it over. Dozier took the axe, but then fell
over and went into a coughing fit.
“Y’all leave us alone! We just tryin’ to go on about our way!” Haylay yelled at the remaining figments.
Gabe’s group circled up with their guns pointed in every direction. He handed Dozier over to Language, who always seemed happy to look after him, and turned to Haylay.
“Think there’s a chance we can bargain with these things?” he asked.
Haylay wrinkled his face.
“You must be out of your motherfuckin’ mind. You want to bargain? With what, baby? Them things don’t want anything you got. They just want to eat you. Ask ‘em if they want a leg.”
