The Summoning

by Mark Lukens

The red-haired man wasn’t out there. Ryan looked down at the concrete floor and he saw the trail of blood drops.

  Blood from the red-haired man’s fingers.

  Drip. Drip.

  Ryan ran down the hall, following the trail of blood. He turned a corner and saw just the flash of dark movement at the end of the hall. The red-haired man had just entered a doorway into a dark room. Ryan raced down the hall to the doorway of the dark room. When he reached the doorway, he hesitated. He looked down at the floor in front of the room and he saw more drops of blood, bigger drops.

  Ryan stepped inside the room.

  The room was dark – it already had drywall up on the walls. Almost immediately Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the murkiness. The room was large; it was going to be some kind of utility room and the doorway was the only way in or out. The room was empty except for the red-haired man at the other end; he stood facing the wall, his back to Ryan. His ruined hands were clasped behind his back, his blood dripping down onto the floor, forming dark puddles on the concrete. Ryan could hear the dripping sounds.

  Ryan took a step towards the man. “This can’t be real,” he whispered.

  The red-haired man made no movement – he just stared at the wall in front of him, his back still to Ryan.

  Ryan took another step closer to the man.

  This man couldn’t be real. This was just a dream, just some kind of nightmare that he was having while he was still awake. Some kind of hallucination. “You’re not real,” he whispered.

  He stood right behind the red-haired man. He reached his hand out towards the man’s back, about to touch his shoulder with his trembling fingers, but then he drew his hand back to himself. The man still hadn’t moved a muscle.

  Ryan glanced behind him.

  No one behind him. No one in the hallway outside the room.

  Ryan turned back around and the red-haired man had turned around. They were face-to-face now, only inches away from each other. Ryan could see the eaten-away flesh around the red-haired man’s mouth in more detail now. He could see the long gashes running from each side of the man’s mouth up to his ears with horrifying clarity. He saw the other smaller scars that lined the man’s pale face; the scars took up almost every square inch of the man’s flesh. The red-haired man’s eyes were so light blue that they were almost translucent.

  “Nice to see you again, Cutter,” the red-haired man whispered, and Ryan could feel the man’s ice-cold breath on his face; he could smell a musty odor from the man that was not unlike the duffel bag of money and the brown suitcase, a wet and earthy smell.

  Ryan shook his head no and backed up a step, nearly tripping and falling down. He couldn’t fall down – he couldn’t be helpless on the floor in front of this monster. He needed to run.

  “No,” Ryan grunted out. “This is all wrong. This can’t be real.”

  The red-haired man took a step closer to Ryan and his polished dress shoes echoed on the concrete floor in the dark room. “This is no dream. This is real. More real than you can imagine.”

  Ryan took a few steps backwards, ready to bolt out of the dark room, back out to the hallway, away from this thing.

  The red-haired man didn’t walk towards Ryan anymore; instead, he raised his ruined hands towards his own face, his smile never wavering. The red-haired man grabbed his own mouth, one hand on top, the other on his lower jaw, his fingers gouged inside of his mouth, finding a grip. And then he pulled on his mouth, pulling his lower jaw down impossibly wide, ripping open the scars on each side of his face, the skin slowly splitting apart with a sick, wet sound. The scars split all the way up to the man’s ears and the lower half of his face hung open, the bottom jaw hanging down loosely, bottom teeth exposed and a tongue (which seemed way too long) wiggling and squirming around inside like a pink snake.

  Ryan stared in disbelief, his grip on sanity suddenly beginning to slip. A short grunt of a scream escaped his throat without his noticing.

  He had to get out of here he had to get out of here he had to get out of here.

  Ryan bolted out of the room and sprinted down the hall. He glanced back at the doorway to the dark room, sure that the red-haired man would be running after him with his loose lower jaw swinging back and forth as he ran. But he wasn’t there, he wasn’t coming after him.

  Ryan turned back around and ran right into …

  … John, who did not look happy.

  “What the hell are you doing, Ryan?”

  Ryan stared into John’s eyes and he tried to speak, his mouth was moving and he was trying to form the words as his mind spun with horror. He looked down at the concrete floor about to point down at the trail of blood that he’d followed earlier, but the spots of blood were gone. He turned and looked back at the doorway to the dark room, but the blood spots weren’t there anymore, either.

  He turned back around to face John. “They were there,” he finally managed to whisper. “He … he was there. In there.”

  “You on something, Ryan?”

  “No. I saw … saw …”

  “You need to get back to work.”

  “I don’t … I don’t …”

  But Ryan couldn’t finish his sentence. He bolted past John and threw open a door that led to the outside. He barely made it a few steps outside before he bent over beside the exterior block wall and threw up the breakfast that Carol had prepared for him.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” John said from the doorway.

  Ryan shook his head no as he wiped away spittle and puke from his mouth with the back of his trembling hand. “I don’t feel very good. I need to go home.”

  John rushed up to Ryan, but he didn’t get too close, there was something about the smell of that vomit, something he recognized, but he couldn’t put a name to the smell. “Yeah, I think you should go home. There’s something fucked up about you and I don’t want you here anymore.”

  Ryan nodded at John. “Maybe you’re right.”

  4.

  Ryan pulled up into Carol’s driveway, his tires crunching on the gravel. He got out and hurried to her house.

  No one was downstairs right now; Carol wasn’t in the kitchen – a small blessing for Ryan. He hurried across the living room towards the stairs, but then he stopped in his tracks. Carol’s big orange cat sat in front of the stairs. The cat was up on its feet, crouched down and ready to either attack or bolt. Ryan heard a low growl from the cat’s throat. But then after a hiss, the cat raced away down the hall.

  Ryan didn’t waste any time, he didn’t want Carol coming out of her bedroom or den to find out what had terrified her cat. He bounded up the stairs, but he tried to be as quiet as possible. He didn’t want to see Carol right now, he didn’t want to explain why he was home from work a few hours early, and he didn’t want her to see the fear on his face, hear it in his voice. And he definitely didn’t want to see Victor or Tom.

  Ryan entered his room and locked the door behind him. He slipped the skeleton key back into his pocket and he stood there by the door as he scanned the room with his eyes. He looked at the bed, the door to the closet and the door to the bathroom, and then he looked at the bedroom window at the far side of the room. Nobody floating outside the window among the tree branches.

  He stumbled over to the bed and plopped down. His legs felt weak, his mind was spinning. Why was he having these visions of this tortured man? And the man had called him Cutter, but that wasn’t his name – he was Ryan Freeman. He had a driver’s license with his picture on it. And why was he having these continuing nightmares? The red-haired man wanted to take him somewhere, show him something. Ryan felt like he knew what it might be, but it was something he didn’t want to make himself face.

  Ryan jumped up from the bed and paced around the room. He didn’t want to be here in this house, he had only come back here because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Then he thought of Amber who he’d met at the pub. He grabbed his wallet out of his back pocket and plucked out the small piece of folded pa
per, the ticket that she’d written her phone number on. He unfolded it and traced the numbers with his finger.

  5.

  After Ryan took a quick shower, he stood in the kitchen. Luckily no one was downstairs yet. A car was gone from the driveway, he had noticed that earlier when he’d pulled up. Maybe Carol was at the supermarket replenishing her supply of food – God knew that Ryan had eaten a lot of it since he’d been here. He hurried over to the phone on the wall and dialed Amber’s number.

  He listened to the ringing on the other end. He really wanted to see her, he wanted to be with someone to take his mind off of the vision he’d seen today. But she could be busy. Maybe she had been just being polite when she’d written her number down, never really expecting him to call –

  “Hello?” he heard Amber say.

  “Hi, Amber,” Ryan said. “It’s Ryan,” he finished, but he would need to tell her more about himself, she wasn’t going to remember who he was. She probably got offers to go out on dates all the time. Who did he think he –

  “I remember you,” she said.

  Ryan couldn’t help smiling. “Okay. Yeah. I was thinking maybe we could get together and do something.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe tonight.”

  A silence on the phone like she was thinking it over, but not for long. “Pick me up in a few hours,” she said and gave him her address. “Don’t come to the door,” she added. “Please. Just wait in your car until I come outside. I’ll see you pull up.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1.

  To kill time, Ryan drove around town for two hours until it was time to pick up Amber. He had the layout of the town down pretty well by now from his few hours of driving up and down the streets (even though his travels around town weren’t jogging his memory in any way). The town of Edrington sprawled out from a center of the mom-and-pop businesses that lined the main county road that ran north and south. Another main county road ran east and west. Ryan didn’t have to drive too far out of town in any direction before he reached the woods.

  Finally, it was time to pick up Amber.

  He pulled up in front of her house which was located in a crummier section of Edrington. These were small houses squeezed in close together with cracked walkways splitting the unkempt yards, dirty siding and broken windows. There was an even worse neighborhood, a run-down trailer park, only a few blocks away.

  Ryan parked on the street and waited. He didn’t shut off the engine. He stared at Amber’s house; it was small with a cozy yellow light spilling out of the front windows into the darkening world, but like all of the other houses up and down the street, it was in need of many repairs. He glanced at the driveway, but he didn’t see any vehicles parked there.

  He wondered why Amber was so insistent that he not come to the front door. Was she ashamed of her house? Was she hiding something?

  Minutes later, the front door opened and Amber hurried out of the house. She practically ran down the cracked walkway to his car. She jumped into his car and slammed the door shut. She gave him a weak smile as she stared at him with her big brown eyes that seemed so nervous. “I’m ready to go,” she said and seemed to be hurrying him along.

  Ryan nodded, but he didn’t smile.

  Amber tilted her head with a look of concern on her face. “Something wrong?” she asked.

  Ryan shook his head no and tried to smile. “I just had a bad day at work.”

  Amber nodded and sighed. “If you’re not feeling up to this, I understand. We could -”

  “No,” Ryan interrupted and really smiled at her this time. “I’m feeling a lot better now.”

  2.

  Hours later Ryan and Amber strolled down a concrete path that meandered through a park. The path circled a large pond. They both licked at ice cream cones that were beginning to melt in the warm night air.

  “That’s your plan?” Ryan asked Amber. “You’re going to get out of this town.”

  Amber nodded. “Yep. That’s my dream. To get away from this depressing hell-hole.”

  Ryan glanced around at the idyllic park they were in. “It doesn’t seem so bad here.”

  “Yeah, the perfect little town.”

  Ryan licked at his dripping ice cream cone – it was delicious. “So, what’s so bad about this town?”

  Amber walked beside him in silence for a moment and then she looked at Ryan. “You don’t know about this place? No one’s told you about it?”

  “No,” Ryan answered. “What is it?”

  They came to a picnic table and sat down. They had eaten the last of the ice cream cones. They sat close to each other. Amber shivered even though it wasn’t cold. Maybe it was the ice cream she’d just eaten, Ryan thought. But he believed it was her feelings about this town that sent the shiver through her body.

  “Ten years ago there was a serial killer in this town.”

  Ryan just nodded and let her continue.

  “He killed at least thirteen people that they knew about. Who knows how many other bodies were never found. A person would go missing and then they would find the body somewhere in town, badly mutilated. A lot of people in this town were related to the victims, or knew the victims, or knew people who knew the victims. It’s like an invisible thread that runs through everyone in this town. You can’t go anywhere or talk to anyone without the memories of the murders coming up.”

  Ryan stared at her.

  She smiled at him. “Sorry, I know it’s a gruesome subject.”

  “No, I want to hear about it. Nobody has told me anything about this.”

  “It’s not something that we talk about too much.” She paused. “I really don’t like talking about it, either. I wish I hadn’t even brought it up.”

  Ryan sat there as a silence blanketed them for a moment. But he didn’t want the conversation to end; he didn’t want to leave Amber just yet. He didn’t want to go back to Carol’s house.

  “So they caught the killer?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah, sort of. He killed himself. No one knows why he killed himself, but nobody really cared why, everyone was just glad it was all over.”

  They were quiet for another moment and Amber looked up at the night sky, at the stars twinkling against the darkness.

  “I just want to get out of here,” she said. “I want to go someplace where I don’t know anyone.”

  “When are you going to leave?”

  She shrugged, shook her head slightly and looked at him. “I don’t know. I’m trying to save up the money right now, but it’s tough.”

  Ryan nodded. “What are you going to do when you get to this other town where no one knows you?”

  “I want to go to school to be a nurse. A nurse that works with kids. Maybe even the physically disabled. I want to help people who can’t help themselves.”

  Ryan smiled at her. “That’s a noble endeavor.”

  Amber studied him and her eyes narrowed even though she was still smiling. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No!” Ryan nearly shouted out, but he couldn’t help smiling which he felt made him seem guiltier. “No, I mean it. Most people don’t have dreams like yours. They dream of becoming rich and famous. They don’t dream of helping other people.”

  Amber studied Ryan for a moment, and then she seemed content that he was telling the truth. “What about you? What are your dreams? Your plans?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know. Just drifting right now. Taking it one day at a time.”

  Amber reached her hand towards Ryan’s face. He didn’t back away as she touched the corner of his mouth and wiped at it with her thumb.

  “You had a little bit of ice cream on your mouth,” she whispered to him.

  They stared into each other’s eyes. Her touch, like the handshake at Charlie’s Pub when they first met, sent shivers of electricity through his body.

  They leaned closer to each other.

  And they kissed.

  3.

  After Ryan dropped Amber o
ff at her house (but she would not let him walk her to her door – she was adamant about that and Ryan wasn’t going to argue with her about it on their first date), he went back to Carol’s house. His car tires crunched on the gravel as he pulled up into the driveway and parked behind the other two cars.

  He got out of his car and walked across the front lawn to the porch. He tried his best to sneak across the floorboards to the front door. He unlocked the front door and entered the house. It was dark inside the living room, but there was a light coming from down the hall where Carol’s bedroom and study were; it was a flickering light, like light from a candle. He closed the door and locked the deadbolt, trying to be quiet.

  He snuck across the living room floor and peeked to his left at the dark dining room and archway to the kitchen beyond that. He glanced to his right to the hall and he could see where the light was coming from, a door was cracked open on the right hand side of the hall, and the soft, yellowish light flickered around the door’s edges. He paused for a moment, expecting the door to fly open and Carol to rush out into the hall.

  But she didn’t. And he didn’t know why he’d had such a thought.

  He shrugged it off and hurried up the stairs, being as quiet as he could.

  In his bedroom he lay down on his bed after locking the door and checking on the stacks of cash underneath his bed – his nightly ritual. And checking the bedroom window, he couldn’t forget about that, it was another one of his nightly rituals. He had inspected it closely, making sure it was locked. He looked out the window, even though he didn’t like being that close to it, and watched the smaller tree branches and leaves rustling in the night breeze. There wasn’t much of a breeze outside, but still the leaves rustled and the sharp points of tiny branches scratched at the glass.

  He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, watching the flickering shadows dance across the plaster from the TV’s light. He thought of Amber, of her dreams of running away, of starting over.