Nightwalk

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  I was failing.

  I was failing Stella. I was failing Casey. I was failing Ed and anybody else who counted on me tonight. Last year I promised Stella I would love Casey as if she were my own, and now the girl fled alone from a monster I had just let get by me.

  And if it caught her…Oh God, if that abomination caught her…

  I put on a fresh burst of speed, and saw they had stopped pulling away from me. At the same time, I didn’t really gain either and knew I couldn’t maintain this pace for long.

  I needed Casey to double back. I needed her to somehow dodge around the thing again and head back my way so I could do something. Anything. Even if it meant tackling and hanging on to the monster so she could get clear of it…that worked for me.

  I had never been much for prayer, but right then I sent a desperate plea to whoever listened up there to give me one more chance. Just let me catch the thing so Casey could get back to Ed where she would be safe. I would hold it until they got clear.

  And whatever happened after that...well, I would figure something out then.

  “Casey! Come baaaack!”

  If she answered I couldn’t make it out over the awful wail of her pursuer. I could only hear its howls echoing back down the dark street, and the sound of my own harsh breathing in my ears. I couldn’t tell if the girl heard me or not.

  And where could she be going?

  Had she panicked and simply taken off blindly down the street? Or had she decided to run back home? Maybe she intended to go back to Ed’s house simply because it was both closer and familiar. If so, had she forgotten the thing we heard in his garage?

  Hell, speaking of forgetting things, had she forgotten the thing in the storm sewer? If she turned down Ed’s street, she would be running right past that monster…and it had “ambush predator” written all over it

  Even as that sickening thought crossed my mind, I saw her light start to veer to the left.

  Oh shit, she really did intend to turn in there.

  “Caseeeeyyyy!” I shrieked. “Look out!”

  She must not have heard me. I saw her light make a sharp turn to the left, and a split second later the blue glow of the dead woman change course to intercept her. Terror clutched my heart in a death-grip as I watched. Casey was mere seconds away from a death more horrible than I could imagine.

  “Caseeeyyyy! Nooooo….”

  But at the exact same time as I screamed, the monster in the sewer struck.

  Its long finger/legs suddenly appeared, fanned out in the blue glow ahead of the monster, and closed as it ran smack into it.

  And that’s when I realized what Casey had done.

  She had waited until she ran past the street to make the turn, and deliberately led the pursuing horror into the waiting clutches of the creature in the storm drain.

  “Smart girl!” I gasped as I closed the distance. “Oh, very, very smart girl!”

  I came to a halt about twenty feet from the scene and watched the struggle with horrified curiosity.

  The flowered banshee struggled ferociously, but I saw almost at once this would be a one-sided battle. The monster that had been chasing Casey was unbelievably tough, but the relative strengths of the two creatures were not remotely close. As I watched the dead woman struggle in its grasp, the legs of the sewer monster shifted position and I heard her bones pop and break as the predator tightened its grip. The purple rings on its legs flared brightly as it continued its attack, and I realized I could make out this fight due to the natural lights of the combatants themselves.

  And like most life or death fights in the real world, this one would be settled quickly.

  The creature in the sewer tightened its grip again and suddenly retracted it legs, thus slamming the banshee against the opening of the storm drain. It jerked to a stop because her body was too big to fit through the opening. But the multi-legged horror would not be denied. It shifted its grip again and pulled twice more…hard…and then, on the third try, I heard her spine snap and the woman folded backward as it started dragging her in.

  Even then, she still didn’t quite fit and it peeled the flesh off the front of her torso as it repeatedly yanked her down, relaxed, then yanked her down again…revealing a glowing blue mass that squirmed against the black silhouette of her rib cage.

  There had been nothing human left…only the shell of a woman the flowers had devoured from the inside.

  Then, with one final yank, the monsters disappeared from sight…leaving nothing but a puddle of luminescent blue liquid on the asphalt, and the air full of glowing petals.

  I got clear of the petals in a big hurry, realizing that inhaling one might be a fatal mistake. Then I gave the storm drain a wide berth before going up and into the yard where Casey held the lantern. She hadn’t moved during the entire fight, and she didn’t move now.

  “Casey?” I approached cautiously. “Casey, are you okay?”

  I knew a stupid question when I asked it, and I could see right away she really wasn’t. Not even close. Sweat poured down her drawn face and her eyes looked almost too big for her head. I think every muscle in her face and neck stood out, and she actually trembled as she stared at the storm drain.

  “Casey?”

  Her huge eyes shifted from the storm drain to me and she trembled again. The muscles in her jaw twitched, but she said nothing.

  “Casey?” I soothed as I eased up to her. “Casey, talk to me.”

  She tilted her head, opened her mouth, closed it, swallowed, then opened it again.

  “It’s okay,” I spoke softly. “It’s all okay now. Understand? But I need you to tell me you’re okay too. Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded, still without saying anything. Then she got a funny look on her face, opened her mouth wider…

  …and threw up all over my loafers.

  “Yeah, okay,” I sighed, “I guess that works too.”

  I patted her back, offering what comfort I could as she retched.

  And she didn’t just urp up a little. That poor girl emptied the contents of her stomach and any other organ hanging around nearby. I got the full conglomeration of the orange juice she had grabbed earlier and the frozen lasagna I made for dinner, sprinkled with peanuts I realized had to have come from her raiding my box of Snickers on top of the fridge.

  But since we were having a moment here, I decided the Snickers bars could go unmentioned.

  And, of course, even that pitiful excuse for a moment didn’t last for long.

  “Waitaminute!” she gasped, and straightened up abruptly. “Where is Uncle Ed?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where is Uncle Ed?”

  “I imagine he’s back where the thing attacked us…”

  “You mean you left him back there all alone? In the dark?”

  “Well, yeah. Considering what…”

  “Oh my God, Mark!” she exploded, and headed back in the direction we came. “He’s old and only has one good leg! What were you thinking?”

  Just imagine, for a moment there I had actually been concerned about her. So much for that.

  “Oh, I don’t know…” I shot back as I stalked along beside her, “I think it went something along the lines of ‘Golly, I better run help Casey before the bad glowing lady rolls her up in a taco and eats her!’ You do remember her, right?!”

  “Of course I remember her. I killed her, didn’t I?”

  “Oh right! Like you planned that all along.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes! I planned it as soon as she started chasing me. It wasn’t exactly rocket science, you know.”

  “You were lucky. What if it hadn’t worked? What if the creature hadn’t been in there anymore? Huh? What then?”

  “Gee, I suppose in that case I would have gone with some other obvious move…like circling back and returning to you guys. I mean, it’s not like I had a whole intersection to maneuver in, right?”

  “Oh right! You know, for somebody with all the answers you sure did a lot
of rolfing on my shoes back there.”

  She somehow managed to glare at me and look hurt at the same time.

  “I never said I wasn’t scared, Mark! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Wrong with me?” I stared back with incredulity. “Wrong with me? I’m the one who tried to help and you’re the one who blew up at me!”

  “You left Uncle Ed all alone!”

  “Ed is a grown man who also happens to have a gun. You were the one I was scared about. And I damn sure didn’t hear any objections from him when I took off after you.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” She smacked her palm off the side of her head. “That’s not the point!”

  “Well I’m dying to hear what the point is, Casey, because it must be a real doozy! Does it come with logic and common sense attached, or do I have to pay extra for those?”

  “Oh that’s great, Mark. You should write that one down. It’s obvious you aren’t…”

  At that point my latest adventure in bridge building got interrupted.

  Casey came to an abrupt halt and squinted forward, causing me to do the same. And as soon as we stopped talking I heard it.

  Rasp-click…rasp-click…rasp-click

  The sound issued from the darkness ahead of us.

  I squinted into the blackness, every nerve on sudden alert. It sounded mechanical in nature, but after everything I had seen and heard tonight, I didn’t feel confident assuming anything. I could easily imagine some big insect making a sound like this as well.

  Fortunately, this time my fears were unfounded.

  “You two are unbelievable,” an unexpected voice sighed from ahead. “You guys really need a new hobby, you know that?”

  “Oh, thank god…” Casey breathed and went running ahead to where Ed had become visible as he limped into the circle of our light.

  Even from a distance, I could see he had come off from the previous fight worse than I realized. I noticed the bloody gauze wrapped around his forearm, and as Casey drew closer with the lantern I could also see a darkening bruise on the side of his face. More blood showed through the Panama hat he had pushed firmly down on his head.

  Since the rasp-click sound came at the same pace as his limp, I could only assume it had something to do with his artificial leg. It apparently still functioned, and Ed’s gait improved as usual once the ground became visible, but there had definitely been damage done in that area as well.

  The bandages and the damaged leg combined to make him seem uncomfortably frail, and I confess to a momentary twinge over the idea of him having been alone in the dark out there. Comforting presence or not, the man really was too old for this kind of crap. The fact he was disabled only made it worse.

  At the same time, I still knew I had made the right choice despite Casey’s current flirtation with craziness.

  At least now with Ed around, she would go back to pretending to be a human being. She launched into a quick explanation of what happened while he followed the tale with a sober look on his face. I didn’t detect any self-aggrandizing on her part, nor any vocal judgments on my actions, so I chose to let her talk uninterrupted. Besides, I had a more serious concern that I called to his attention as soon as she finished.

  “How bad is it?” I asked, nodding at the leg as I came up to him.

  This earned me another glare from the red-headed quadrant but I ignored it.

  “I’ll need to have it looked at in a day or two,” he shrugged. “But it will get me through the night.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. It’s the ankle joint. The worst it can do is freeze up, and I can walk on it like that too. On the other hand, it will be a lot more work for me if it does, so the long way is definitely out…at least for me.”

  “We stick together,” I answered automatically, and I could see Casey give a firm nod in agreement.

  “Then I guess we’re left with Casey’s short cut. I still don’t feel like risking Coventry Boulevard.”

  “So be it. At least we now have a course.”

  We started back down the street again, with me painfully aware of how much time had passed while we now retraced covered ground. And now coming off of the adrenaline caused by our recent encounter, I started to feel both the late hour and the recent exertion. The heavy atmosphere didn’t help matters either…

  “Does the air seem thicker to you guys?” I panted. “I mean even worse than before.”

  “Yeah,” Casey answered.

  “Definitely,” Ed agreed. “I remember thinking this must be how it feels in the Amazon, but now it’s like being at the bottom of the ocean.”

  Hearing those words, I realized that’s exactly how it felt. Obviously not in the purely physical sense of being underwater, but in other ways. The atmosphere weighed titanically down on us, making me feel like we were three tiny creatures walking along the dark floor of a vast ocean trench. The dim houses on each side made me think of mythical Atlantis, and how its streets lay equally still in the watery blackness.

  Even the glowing flowers had a certain oceanic feel to them as we passed. Now they made me think of luminescent tubules clinging to the walls of deep-water vents. And, come to think of it, I recalled the creature in the sewer flaring with light when it attacked as well.

  Wherever these creatures came from, the sun played little role in their lives.

  A flicker of lightning cast a carpet of shadows down through the limbs above, making me peer up into the darkness. That didn’t help much. I could only see the lantern light reflecting off the branches.

  What kind of sky existed up there now?

  It didn’t take long before we saw another glow ahead and to the left in the darkness. It turned out to be at the corner house where Culver Street met Monroe. Large sheets of a furry, moss-like substance hung like torn draperies from the eaves of the structure. Only this time, it wasn’t a single patch. As I looked north, up Monroe toward Coventry, I saw more of the stuff hanging down from the arching limbs of trees on both sides of the road. Some glowed blue, while others luminesced a neon green. It gave the street in that direction the appearance of a dim, seaweed choked cavern

  Thank Heavens we had chosen to go with Casey’s shortcut, because I damn sure didn’t intend to go up Monroe now. That luminous cave could lead nowhere good.

  A look back the way we had come revealed the patch of blue flowers had also grown. They now climbed the posts on the front porch of the house, and had spread to the neighbor’s yards as well.

  I felt once again we should have moved out sooner, because whatever the animals had sensed still continued to happen. Only now they were all gone, and we were being overtaken. Hell, we had already fallen behind. Now we were being submerged.

  “Okay,” I turned to see the other two also staring down the glowing tunnel. “South, it is. What’s the street called again, Casey?”

  “Chambers Circle,” she answered, shaking herself back to the present. “It’s a block down that way, and then we make a right.”

  “Then let’s move,” Ed suggested. “I don’t want to waste my time heading any other direction than west more than necessary.”

  Casey and I murmured assent and we turned our backs to the glowing tunnel…setting off into the blackness of the southern route.

  Once again, I measured progress by the cracks in the asphalt and dead vehicles parked at the curb that appeared out of the dark in front of us. Strange night calls accompanied the sounds of our breathing, and now we had the accompanying rasp-click of Ed’s damaged foot keeping time like a metronome as we moved.

  We paused once at the sound of a distant scream and listened. But when it didn’t come again we walked on.

  Might as well.

  It had come from at least two blocks over so we could do nothing anyway. And truthfully, that suited me just fine. Ed still carried the wounds from our last attempt at playing rescue. I would be perfectly happy if we had no more encounters with anything tonight…human or otherwise.

&nb
sp; But this wasn’t going to be my night.

  “Alright you three,” the voice snarled from the darkness ahead of us. “Y’all can stop right there.”

  ###

  We froze as a group, barely daring to breathe.

  It only took me a second to figure out the voice couldn’t be far ahead…maybe only ten or twenty feet beyond the reach of our lantern. But that meant he still stood out there at a range that would make something like a shotgun devastating. And the idea of confronting an armed Houstonian neighbor, who had already experienced God only knew what, didn’t exactly fill me with happy fun thoughts. Add in the fact we stood plainly visible in the lantern light and I could practically feel the target on my chest.

  “Sir?” Ed spoke up. “We aren’t looking for trouble. We’re only trying to get out of the neighborhood. If you’ll just let us by, we’ll be on our way.”

  The darkness seemed to consider this for a moment before answering.

  “Then you’re going the wrong way. Coventry Boulevard is behind you.”

  Ed and I glanced at each other over the top of Casey’s head. What did we tell this guy? What had he seen so far? He had to know something was wrong or he wouldn’t be acting like this. I’m sure he must have at least heard some of the distant screams. But if he hadn’t seen anything truly bizarre yet, then our tale of sewer monsters and flower wraiths would be awfully hard to swallow.

  “We know,” Ed replied. “But we think Coventry might be too dangerous, so we’re taking a slightly longer way.”

  “Dangerous? Dangerous how?”

  “I’m not sure. We heard some stuff, and it didn’t sound like anything I wanted to get closer too.”

  “Yeah? I heard some stuff too, mister. I heard gunshots, then a little later I see you three come strolling around the corner up there carrying tire irons and hatchets. You want to tell me about that?”

  Once again Ed and I shared a glance. I gave him a shrug meaning I would go with however he decided to handle this. He had the people skills, not me.

  “That was us,” Ed admitted. “We were attacked.”

  “Really? By what?”