As Chuck stepped into the yard, the temperature plummeted. His breath escaped in plumes of vapor as he rubbed his arms. Even the friction generated by his hands, however, wasn’t enough to chase away the chills that bristled the thin hairs on his forearms. The grass crunched underfoot as though coated in frost, yet sunlight still streamed through the tree’s branches, lending its rays to the façade of a sunny summer day.
The woman’s eyes followed Chuck as he moved across the yard, straining to keep him within her peripheral vision without the benefit of turning her head. Though her face was petrified in a perpetual smile, her pupils were wide, hinting at a horror her expression was incapable of conveying.
With the oak now at his back, Chuck continued walking toward the table, as powerless to alter his course as the woman was to move. His feet shuffled of their own accord, dragging him closer to the macabre party as the chill in the air leeched what little warmth remained in his body.
The woman’s eyes were no longer riveted on Chuck. Now they darted from him to the knife in her hand and back again. Though perfectly silent, her gaze seemed to plead: Go back, turn away, I don’t want to do this, please, please, please go back.
From behind him, Chuck heard the slow creak of rope against wood, conjuring an image in his imagination of a corpse swinging in slow circles, its head bowed over the noose cinched around its neck. He wanted to spin around, to see if a body truly was dangling from the limbs of the tree. But his feet continued moving forward, drawing him ever closer to the picnic table.
The woman’s eye movements were frantic now and her nostrils flared with panic. Yet still her smile beamed. Still the faceless children gazed upon her expectantly.
The rope creaked again and a shadow flittered past the fence, cutting off the light between the slats as it streaked behind them.
No. Not behind.
Though it was irrational, Chuck was positive the shadow moved in front of the fence, revealing itself only in the spaces between the pickets.
The woman’s grip tightened on the knife’s wooden handle, her knuckles bone-white as her arm quivered.
Her eyes begged.
Please don’t make me do this, please, please, no…
Chuck was now close enough to see the cake clearly. It was rimmed with red piping over buttercream frosting and purple, marzipan flowers blossomed in its corners. Green icing spelled out three short words in looping letters: I’ve found you.
Still smiling, the woman lowered her arm. There was another creak, but this time Chuck couldn’t be sure if it was the sound of a weighted rope against a tree branch or stiffened muscles breaking rigor mortis with the first stirrings of movement.
Sunlight glinted off the blade and the reflection caused Chuck to wince. When the glare had passed, the faceless children had moved. Though now motionless again, each had turned its head so they were facing him. He didn’t think they’d been present before, but Chuck now saw slight indentations where eyes should have been. The skin covering these dips looked tenuous, as though it were only a membrane that would puncture with minimal force.
The thought of doing so made him inwardly cringe as his stomach heaved in revulsion. For he was certain that if the tissue was pierced something foul and sticky would leak out, a viscous goo clouded with infection and writhing with bloated worms so small as to almost be microscopic.
The worst part, however, was that he could feel them looking into him. Without the benefit of eyes, they pinned him with their stares and a whispered singsong melody drifted with the wind, its words formed from the rustling of leaves.
Come and see…
Overhead, dark clouds devoured the sun. The yard was cast into premature dusk and the rope creaked from behind him again. In the gloom, Chuck saw that the children’s heads were illuminated from within. The light radiated through their eye membranes, tinting the depressions with a reddish glow and silhouetting networks of capillaries.
For a moment, Chuck thought he saw a tiny shadow pass through them, as if a miniature person cloaked in darkness strolled through the kids’ heads, passing from one child to another. By the time he blinked, however, whatever had been there was gone. If anything had really been there to begin with.
The smiling mother lunged forward and the knife squished into the cake. As she cut, some sort of red gel seeped out and leaked down the sides of the confection. At the same time, thin fissures split the children’s eye membranes. The slits opened like minuscule mouths, each emitting a shriek so shrill that Chuck’s eyes watered as needles of pain stabbed his eardrums.
Though the woman had only made a single cut, what he’d thought of until now as a cake split open, revealing layers of gristle, glistening muscle, and bone. The slab of flesh pulsed as blood streamed over the tabletop and then all traces of light were gone.
At the exact moment Chuck was plunged into darkness, the wails abruptly stopped, leaving the creaking of the rope and his own labored breathing to fill the void. He knew the others were still out there. He could feel their presence in the darkness, could sense the faceless children’s gazes as thunder rumbled in the distance.
A flash of lightning lit the yard in electric blue and he saw that the children had moved, some frozen mid-step as their motionless heads looked up at him.
The lightning faded as darkness rushed back in and the rope creaked more quickly now, as if whatever weighted it down swung more rapidly.
Another flash of lightning and the children had moved closer, forming a loose semicircle.
He tried to calm his breathing, to imagine the air entering his lungs as a soothing, white light. But the encroaching darkness was so complete it was hard to imagine anything so radiant ever existing there.
The rope creaked louder.
Faster.
Lightning flashed.
The woman’s toothy smile was mere feet away, a nightmarish caricature of 1950s motherhood radiating menace. Her arms were outstretched, reaching for him and the cluster of children surrounding her had followed suit.
Darkness again.
Creaking. Blood rushing and whooshing through his temples and the chattering of teeth. Perhaps from fear. Perhaps from the bone-penetrating cold.
Flash.
Practically nose to nose with the mother, her arms reached for Chuck’s throat and the children were a tangle of stretched arms and grasping hands. One child’s hands brushed his pants, the fingers curled as if only a split second from grabbing the fabric.
Chuck prayed that the glow of lightning would never fade, that darkness wouldn’t give them the opportunity to close those last few inches. And, for a moment, it seemed as though his prayer had been answered.
The lightning flickered like a giant strobe light, creating the illusion of stuttered movement. Fingers flexed in the nanoseconds of darkness and froze in the flashes.
Children and mother alike leaned in, surrounding him on all sides as thunder rumbled directly overhead.
The mother’s arms draped over Chuck’s shoulders in slow motion, her head lilting to the side as her smile morphed into an opened mouth. Her lips formed a perfect heart shape and the children clamored at his legs, pulling his pants as though they could drag him to the ground.
And still the electrical storm flickered as they sank slowly into earth muddied by the river of blood cascading from the picnic table. Chuck wanted to scream, but the mother’s lips were pressed against his own. Her tongue coiled around his, squeezing like a boa constrictor with prey. His taste buds tingled as static sparked on his tongue, each zap sapping strength and vitality as a metallic taste flooded his mouth.
Waist deep in the sticky mud, only the children’s arms remained, reaching up through the earth, grasping his belt, and pulling him down deeper and deeper into the mire. He felt as though his entire body had deflated, as though the mother had sucked out his soul with her unholy kiss.
By the time Chuck had sunk neck-deep into the muck, he no longer cared that the mother’s tongue had transformed into
something so fat and swollen that it filled his entire mouth. He didn’t care that the slime dripping from its segmented body slid down the back of his throat and triggered his gag reflex. He simply wanted it to be over, for the earth to swallow him whole and deliver him into the relief of death.
The ground slurped his head and he sank into complete darkness, mud enveloping his body on all sides. Even in the bowels of the earth, he could still hear the rope creak.
A muffled voice filtered through the sludge, its words barely audible.
I’ve found you. And they will suffer because of you. They will all pay for what you did.
The mother pressed her mouth more tightly against Chuck’s, worming her tongue-creature further down his throat. It fed on the flutters of panic in his heart and gorged itself on the fear rippling his belly, growing fatter and longer by the second.
You will witness their pain.
The rope stopped creaking and the mother became perfectly motionless, as though ensuring Chuck’s full attention would be riveted on the words preceding the void that engulfed him.
And you will welcome the death I finally bring.
You will pay.
You will all pay.
Chapter 4
Chuck was forty minutes late getting to the restaurant. When he’d emerged from the darkness, he’d found himself sprawled across the floor in his office with Control and Marilee hunched over him; Marilee had looked at him in the same way a scientist might study an ailing lab rat, but concern had drained color from Control’s face and she badgered him with questions while also insisting that he lay still until the onsite nurse arrived. He hadn’t told anyone about his vision, had played the incident off as a lack of sleep and nourishment and the nurse seemed to confirm this when she couldn’t find anything wrong with him. But, of course, there had still been paperwork to fill out; the incident report had put him way behind schedule, forcing Chuck to stay late.
He’d sent Control a text, letting her know he’d be late and luckily his partner had taken the liberty of ordering for him. Famished, Chuck had mumbled his apologies and slid into his chair as he unbundled the napkin containing his silverware. Whenever he ate here, he usually tried to convince himself that the dish sitting before him was truly pasta. On this particular evening, however, he didn’t particularly care that it was actually strands of squash and tofu meatballs swimming in a vegetable sauce: It was food and that was enough.
As he shoveled it into his mouth, Control made small talk and he nodded, giving monosyllabic replies as her voice drifted through the lull of a dozen mingled conversations. Technically, they shouldn’t have even been having dinner together. The handbook specifically warned against employee fraternization, especially between a Whisk and Command Center Handler. But this was a rule Chuck was willing to overlook. Especially since there were things he wanted to discuss outside the confines of the office—or more specifically, away from the prying mind of Marilee Williams.
“I don’t trust her,” Chuck said as he twirled faux-spaghetti on his fork. “I swear, I can feel her trying to poke around in my damn head all the time.”
“She’s just doing her job, Chuck. It’s not personal. It’s just professionalism.”
“It’s downright creepy, that’s what it is.” Chuck chewed before continuing. “If she wants to know something, why doesn’t she just ask me?”
“She’s not like us, buddy. You just have to be a little more understand—”
“She wormed her way into your mind yet?” Control shook her head as she lifted a wineglass to her lips. “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a violation, my friend. Plain and simple. And for that matter, what the hell is she even doing working for The Institute anyway? What about child labor laws?”
Control placed her glass back on the table, folded her hands, and leaned forward, studying Chuck’s eyes and expression in the restaurant’s dim lighting.
“We work in a covert, underground facility that steals its electricity from the surface world,” she reminded him softly. “Our paychecks are drawn on offshore accounts that an army of lawyers with subpoenas coming out of their ears couldn’t touch, and are signed by a CFO whom I suspect is as fictitious as the company we supposedly work for. I don’t think labor laws really apply in that scenario, buddy. Now, do you want to tell me what this is really about?”
Chuck sipped his ice water as he glanced over the rim of the glass at his partner, buying himself time to organize his thoughts. Finally he laid everything out for her, starting with the first nightmare on the night Nodens was murdered and ending with the episode at the office. When he was finished, the two sat in silence for a moment, listening to the clinking of silverware and murmurs of conversations from other diners.
“So in the conference room,” Control finally said, “when Marilee said it was coming for you, she wasn’t actually referring to the boxes. Hmmm…I did think that seemed a bit strange at the time.”
“Exactly!” Chuck gestured with his fork as he spoke. “She’d been in my head and she knew. What’s more, she wanted me to know that she knew.”
Leaning back in her chair, Control stroked her chin as Chuck waved away an approaching waiter as if shooing a bothersome gnat. Her eyes had narrowed and her lips were pursed as she softly clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. The two had worked together long enough for Chuck to realize this meant she was processing information and he remained silent as he absently pushed the remaining pasta around on his plate.
“SBAR,” Control eventually said. Her tone had become curt, letting Chuck know that this was no longer a dinner between friends but a meeting. “You’ve given me the Situation and Background. What’s your Assessment and Recommendation?”
“My assessment? Two words: Albert Lewis.”
Control visibly stiffened at the mention of the serial killer’s name, obviously taken by surprise. The gleam in her eye told Chuck she was intrigued by the idea, but the woman’s frown betrayed that she was unconvinced.
“Think about it,” he insisted. “What other spirit would have a beef with me?”
Lewis did seem to be the logical choice. With the help of Control’s dead sister, Chuck had demolished the madman’s personal hell. All the souls the sadistic killer tortured had been freed and allowed to continue their journeys across The Divide. The castle lurking amid a scorched landscape of cinder and ash, the macabre sentinels that safeguarded his stronghold, and even Albert Lewis himself: all had been reduced to their most basic particles and scattered through the cosmos. To a sociopath who sipped suffering like a fine wine and believed himself to be God in the realm of the dead, such an affront would not be taken lightly.
“So,” Control asked, “you’re thinking that Lewis wasn’t actually destroyed then?”
Chuck shrugged. Up until today, he’d assumed Albert Lewis had been consigned to a type of Limbo, his shattered soul incapable of either setting to work on a new Cutscene or crossing into the mystery that lay beyond The Divide. But perhaps all those pieces of his essence had found a way to coalesce. If iron filings can be drawn to a magnet, perhaps something similar occurs when a soul has been strewn through the corridors of eternity.
As far as Chuck knew, there’d been no research done in this area. Albert Lewis, after all, had been a singular case.
“Occam’s Razor teaches us that the simplest explanation for any given circumstance is generally correct. I think that principle applies here. Like I said, who else would have it in for me?”
Control chewed on her bottom lip as she toyed with the napkin in her hands. Her brow was creased with wrinkles and she sighed heavily as she shook her head.
“I don’t like it. We’re in uncharted territory here, buddy. I mean, this thing has already killed one person…and it obviously has you in its sights. But it’s playing with you first.”
“Torturing me first,” Chuck corrected. “That’s what it is. Psychological torture. And who else have I crossed paths with who got
their jollies from torture, hmm?”
What had begun as a pleasant meal now felt like a wake. Tension hung in the air as thickly as the scent of garlic and oregano; both Control and Chuck frowned over their half-finished entrees, the food forgotten as stress tightened their expressions. Nodens’s death may have been relatively quick, but it certainly hadn’t been easy. The man had suffered through precisely a minute of agony. But those sixty seconds must have felt like an eternity.
What both Control and Chuck thought—but neither voiced—was that the Sleeper had only been a minor player in the events that had brought down Lewis’s brutal regime; if that type of cruelty had been inflicted on him, then what lay in store for the man who’d actually been responsible for the coup?
“Back to SBAR.” Protocol was familiar territory and Control’s shoulders relaxed, despite how quickly the words spilled out of her. “We just covered Assessment. But there’s still Recommendation. Thoughts?”
“First and foremost, we don’t tell Marilee shit. If she wants to know my suspicions, just let her try to dig them out of my head.”
“Chuck, you really have to let it—”
“It’s for her own good,” Chuck insisted. “The less she knows about Albert Lewis, the better off she is. She wasn’t involved in anything that happened out there. She shouldn’t be a target. So let’s try to keep it that way.”
Control had been Chuck’s Handler long enough to recognize a rationalization when she heard one. If it was even suspected that information sharing had been regulated, the firestorm of interdepartmental politics to follow would be the bureaucratic equivalent of Hiroshima. Currently, however, that seemed like the least of their worries. So Control chose not to push the issue.
“Okay,” she conceded, “Marilee is kept in the dark. For her own safety, of course. But what then? We don’t know how to fight this thing. Put you in a Crossfade and you can sling energy like a sacred warrior. But this isn’t a Crossfade.”
The Realms of the Dead Page 16
