by Chad Huskins
Shcherbakov continued his search. There was a case in the back that looked fit to carry a rifle, and it was empty. A few remaining shotgun shells told the rest of the story. Armed with something powerful, with a wide spread. That would determine how he dealt with his opponent if there was an exchange of fire. If he played this right, though, it shouldn’t come to that.
The Grey Wolf jogged over to the chain-link fence, following the footprints. He removed his coat, threw it over the razor wire and climbed over. When he tried to pull his jacket down, though, it wouldn’t come. It was too hung up in the twisted razor wire. So be it. He turned and moved slowly down the hill. The tracks left in the snow were deep. This was almost too easy.
He took out his phone, hit the speed dial. “Yes?” Zverev said seconds later.
“The docks. He’s here. Send back up. I’ll stall him here if he tries to leave.”
Kaley had witnessed unconscionable acts before, and it wasn’t getting any easier seeing more. As a matter of fact, it was getting harder.
The oldest of the girls looked Kaley’s age, maybe a little older. She felt the truth roiling off of them immediately. She knew what they were, and why they were here. Fear, of course, dominated all, but that was only the cumulative effect. The foundation of that fear began with dashed hopes and broken promises. Then came the loss of innocence, which led to feeling as if they had deserved this, and then, inevitably, to hopeless resignation. Resignation, because they held no hope of anyone coming for them. They weren’t cared for, they didn’t have the…the…the roots of love. The seeds hadn’t been planted by any caring adult, and they therefore had nothing better to compare their lives to. They didn’t know the world could be any better than this. For others, perhaps, but never for them.
Four girls and one boy, all of them so young. A couple of them battered. The living space they occupied wasn’t unlike what had been set up for Kaley and her sister in Dmitry’s basement. A shower, a toilet with only a curtain around it, a wooden table with four Naugahyde chairs, a small refrigerator, a sink, a small dresser with clothes hanging out of the top drawer, and three beds barely big enough to fit any of them.
They looked at her, three of them doe-eyed, as they had just woken up from their pallets on the floor. The boy and one of the girls had mismatched cards in their hands, Apples to Apples and Uno cards, and had pushed away from the table in surprise when she entered. The boy gasped, the girl screeched, and the other three girls had leapt up in alarm. The girl at the table had a swollen lip, and one of the girls who jumped out of bed had a black eye. The boy had bruises up and down his arms where someone had squeezed.
Runaways. Strays. Plucked off the streets, maybe lured by some promise of food and shelter, maybe a new boyfriend acting as a savior but was secretly a pimp, or possibly just straight up snatched the way me and Shan were.
Doubtless, whichever scenario had brought them here, most of them had been selected because no one was coming to search for them. Not really search. Probably each of them was from an impoverished neighborhood, where nobody really investigated cases of missing children. In those kinds of places—like the Bluff—kids that went missing were just fucking gone.
That such a culture could exist that not only allowed, but propagate the handling of children like this was enough to boggle the mind. The world and ethos that these traffickers created and wallowed in…It would make a pig puke.
The hopelessness in the little room was such that Kaley staggered back. Her eyes watered, not out of sadness, but as an instinctive reaction to malodorous emotions. So powerful and oppressive. It would be easy to just sit down here, join in their sorrow. Misery loves company, she thought. It’s so much easier…so much easier to just sit down and join them. Better that than go back out into the world with hope, only to find that there is no way out.
So potent, despair. The most potent of all emotions, she was finding. And if not for the man running up the stairs behind her, Kaley might have lay down and quit moving forever.
A hammering at the door. “Hey! You in there, little girl?”
The water churned angrily around her. Kaley was aware on some level that she was doing this. The things that were swimming about, they knew it, too.
“We may not need him, after all,” said the Prisoner. “Something’s happening. Can you see it? She’s opening it wider for us.”
The gunshots had terrified the five kids, all of whom ran to the other side of the stinking room. Kaley didn’t move. For whatever reason, the sound of Spencer’s shotgun blowing off the hinges of the door didn’t upset her. How can someone do this? she thought, even as the door behind her was kicked open and passed through her. Spencer entered, walked straight through her, aiming his shotgun around at the kids like he suspected them of some trap. He suspects everyone.
The children just stood there. They don’t run, she mused. Indeed, the children all stood up straight, awaiting their fate. The gunshots had stunned them, as had Spencer walking straight through her. Before that, their entire lives had been one rude awakening after another. Shocked? Sure. But they’re used to it, and they get over it quickly. Plus, they’re children. They accept impossible things far faster than adults.
And what about the man with the shotgun? For all they know, just another tormentor here to move them from one place to another, just like Peter had seen done to the girl in the basement where he was kept, and just as he himself had been shuffled around.
“Kaley,” Ms. Hurgess was saying. “You know I don’t like seeing you shade with your fingers. Don’t smear the lead, learn how to shade naturally. Let me show you how I hold the pencil when I want to do gradients.”
“Yes ma’am,” she said numbly, handing over her pencil.
“What did you say?” Spencer said. He looked at her, then made a face. “Oh, right, talkin’ to someone else. Anyways, we gotta get outta here.”
“We’re taking them with us.”
“What, sweetie?” said Ms. Burgess.
“The shit you say,” Spencer protested.
To Ms. Hurgess, Kaley replied, “I said I’m taking my time with this.”
“Oh.” She looked a little befuddled. “Well, that’s fine. You’ve still got three more days before you have to turn this project in.”
“That SUV may be built for a family,” Spencer informed her. “But I ain’t interested in gatherin’ no family. I ain’t taking these little shits with us. You can forget that right now.”
Ms. Hurgess had taken Kaley’s Utrecht pencil, putting it delicately between thumb and forefinger, and, ever so lightly, she shaded the fruit in the bowl. There were two apples, a banana, a bundle of grapes and one very unremarkable orange in the collection. Ms. Hurgess was talking, going on about lightness and hardness of touch making the difference. Kaley looked away a moment to rummage through her book bag, and whispered to Spencer, “We’re not leaving this place without them.”
“Oh, ho-ho, yes we are,” Spencer argued.
“No, we’re not. Not without them.” She added, “You can’t make me.”
A flash of white-hot anger shot out from Spencer’s midsection and permeated her every cell. Spencer’s face never flinched, never betrayed anything wrong. Kaley stared up at that scraggily face, the beard growing slowly over that ruined cheek. His mind was moving…things swimming beneath the surface of that glacier-like mind. “Have you taken a look around you? Do you even know what’s goin’ on?”
Kaley started to say something, but stopped. Something in her periphery caught her attention. A long, flapping, skinless thing was hanging from the far wall behind the children. It wasn’t fading in and out of existence like the tentacles, it was there. At least, it was to her. And it was hanging directly over Spencer’s head, licking at him, tasting him.
Inside the art room, something had slid up around Ms. Hurgess’s legs and waist. It was throbbing and black and slightly translucent. Kaley could see into parts of it, saw pulsating muscles and other tissues. She turned around, saw
the same sort of tentacles slipping up around the other tables. One of them had gone down Travis Turner’s shirt, another licking Laquanda’s right ear.
Ms. Hurgess was still talking about the intricacies of proper shading. Kaley bent back over, rummaged through her book bag again, and whispered, “I don’t think they know that I can see them.”
“I don’t think they care,” Spencer said. “It’s not like you can stop ’em.”
“I can stop them. Shannon and me can—”
“I wouldn’t call your sister in to help on this one.”
“Why not? She and I can—”
“Just trust me on this one.”
“I’m not leaving this place,” she said, returning to her original point.
Then, Spencer pointed his gun at one of the girls, a tall one with braids in her hair, wearing a One Direction shirt.
Kaley shook her head. “Do that, and I’ll stay right here. Just to spite you.”
“And the boy? Peter? He’s still waiting on us. I’ll hurt him so badly—”
“No.”
“No?!” he exploded. That white-hot rage could not be contained within him anymore. He wasn’t used to being told no, and he wouldn’t accept it now. “No?! You think I won’t?! You think this is a fucking game, little girl?!”
“No, I mean, he’s not still waiting on us,” she said calmly. Kaley was now detecting many tremors in her monstrous web. “Someone else has him. He’s…he’s taken Peter, and now he’s coming here.”
“What? Who?” Spencer went back to the door, pressed his back against the wall and peeked out.
“Kaley? What are you saying?” It was Ms. Hurgess again.
She sighed. So difficult to keep track of everyone’s needs in each reality. “Nothing, Ms. Hurgess. I was just, uh…singing to myself. Just, uh, got this song in my head.”
Her teacher smiled, handing back the pencil. “Yeah? Which song?”
“Uh…” She had to think. While she did, she detected another monster, one just as emotionally vapid as Spencer. He was coming towards the dock house, and he had a mind of meddle. “That, uh, that old song ‘Tainted Love,’ or whatever it’s called.”
“Ooooo, good song. I’m a child of the eighties, you know.”
Kaley smiled. “Yes ma’am,” she said, not knowing what else to say. She turned back and looked at her drawing. Ms. Hurgess’s way is better, she thought. Kaley was also staring at the five children; five more victims of the kind of monsters that might very well put the Prisoner and his Others to shame. I’ve got to get them out of here.
Kaley started to move towards the children, to console them, if nothing else. But as soon as she did, she realized her mistake.
Just like in her dreams, moving when the Others were too close only alerted them. They had their own kind of web. They could feel things moving through the watery barrier, and they knew she was close. Now, all at once, the water all around her exploded, though no one else saw it. Kaley tried to scream, but her voice caught in her throat. From ceiling, floor and walls came…she didn’t even know what to call them.
One malformed limb at a time, they emerged. Long, bony black arms. Or were they legs? Whatever they were, they groped until they found purchase, and pulled themselves through. They gripped the flimsiest things, things that ought not to have been able to remain still, such as the table and chairs. They just need a grip on something real, in this world, in order to come through.
Runny oil fell from the limbs. Did the limbs belong to several separate creatures, or were they all from one monstrous thing, entering into their realm from all directions—ceiling, floor, and all four walls? Kaley couldn’t make sense out of it. Then came the bodies of the Others, or perhaps several different portions of the same Other.
Kaley watched it calmly, almost dumbly. “Uh, Spencer?” she whispered. At school, Lenny looked up at her.
“Who is it? Who’s comin’?” he said, still peeking around the doorframe. Spencer looked at her. “Talk to me, little girl!” Kaley pointed up at the ceiling. “What is it? What the fuck are you—” Then, he saw them. He must have, because his next reaction was to aim at the ceiling, fire two shots, and dart out of the room. The children screamed. They all saw it now. It came spilling into their universe unannounced, uninvited, and unimaginable.
Pandemonium erupted.
Shcherbakov ducked by reflex, though the shots didn’t sound close. They were coming from inside the dock house. He moved from cover to cover, advancing on the front door, and slipped and fell on the viscera that had spilled out of a man blown nearly in half by a shotgun from point-blank range.
The Grey Wolf bit back a curse, pushing himself away from the ruined corpse. But just as he scrambled back onto his feet, every window of the dock house exploded, sending shards of glass lancing out at him, as a low, angry moan was exhaled from within, along with a wind so foul he gagged.
Nothing made him gag. He had peeled open men’s stomachs while they were still alive and rolled their intestines out on a spit. He had cut a woman’s child out of her womb and kept her alive so she could watch him feed it to the dogs. Nothing made him gag. But now he could almost feel his stomach trying to force itself up into his mouth.
Shcherbakov shut it all out, and with effort regained his composure. He stood with gun steady in hand, and then stepped over the guts of the fallen man. Ice and glass crunched underfoot. Then, he froze. The boards of the dock trembled, and all around him he heard loud, angry cracks in the ice. Then, silence. The wind finally returned, but it was coming from the open windows, and it was that same hot, pungent air that twisted his stomach. First, the air blew against him, rushing out over the frozen docks. But then it turned, and pulled back into the darkened building. In and out, in and out, like the building was breathing. The snowfall followed the air—now moving towards the dock house, now pushed away from it on wind so redolent he could not will himself to press forward. He considered going back and waiting for backup.
What the hell could Pelletier be doing in there?
Another gunshot. Now two more. Now a fourth! Definitely a shotgun. And child-like shrieks of pain. A fifth gunshot.
The ice cracked far below him, and then, unless his eyes deceived him, one of the dock house’s walls bent inwards, as if something was pulling it in. Or sucking it in.
The children ran, with only a second or two before the entire room collapsed in on itself. Spencer had flung himself backwards, rolling halfway down the steps before firing up at Kaley. Naturally, the Benelli’s shot, passed straight through her, but it tore through the arm of one of the girls, spinning her around as the thing came climbing out of the room.
“Spencer! Stop shooting!” Kaley screamed. But he hardly noticed her. He wasn’t aiming for the kids, obviously, he was aiming for it.
The thing had emerged from the walls, and from the air. Spencer had fired before leaping free. And now, it seemed to come from everywhere, with angles to its limbs that defied comprehension. His mind made no sense out of it; it rejected all of it outright. His survival instincts had kicked in. Whatever it was, it was alive and therefore it could be killed.
So he fired.
Halfway down the steps, the very air around him was rent apart as more limbs tore their way into his world. One snatched at him, reaching for his hair, his clothing, his face. It was still emerging from that other place, from whatever Deep Kaley Dupré perceived it to be from. It ripped through the air, and pores all along its limbs opened up to breathe. A fetid odor washed into his nostrils and assaulted him. It was unlike anything he’d smelled before. It made his head spin, and he tumbled down the rest of the steps. Nothing made sense. Another world’s physics were clashing with this world’s, and a creature that couldn’t have evolved according to this world’s Laws was forcing itself on this reality.
The odor stung his eyes, and he couldn’t see.
So he fired.
“Spencer!”
He landed hard at the foot of the stairs, stag
gered to his feet, growling and salivating. Limbs tore out at him from the air, and where they did, a disgusting froth spilled through these gaping holes and boiled like acid as they spread across the floor. One of the limbs was fighting to get through some sort of slimy, translucent bag, like an unborn child ripping through its amniotic sack. The limbs folded impossibly in on themselves, shrinking and then swelling, pulsating and quivering, and reaching out to him.
So he fired.
Screams. All around him, a cacophony was building. The limbs opened their pores again and gave off the same offensive emanation as before. A hot, heavy breath that smelled to Spencer like he’d shoved his head up the ass of a rotting elephant. His eyes were still watering. He could hardly see.
So he fired.
Angry and half mad, he staggered backwards as the thing came through from every direction. As it did, the physics of the world altered. Up became down. Quite literally. For a moment, Spencer was lifted off his feet and found himself falling towards the ceiling, but then the gravity of this world reasserted itself and he was slammed back to the hardwood floors.
“Spencer! Help us!”
Crates fell every which way. One slammed into him, knocking him sideways. He hit the floor sliding, and was then jerked suddenly off the ground as the creature’s limbs took another breath, and was pulled through the air towards one of those gaping, sludgy holes. The Benelli was still in hand, thankfully cocked. He pointed at the wicked limb fighting free of its amniotic sack, pulled the trigger. It recoiled with an ear-piercing screech as the limb suddenly changed shape, forming a tentacle and slapping him down to the ground.
Some kind of oil spilled from the tentacle’s wound, and it poured over Spencer. The substance had a life of its own. Moving and creeping around him, searching for ways through his clothing, then into his ears and into his mouth. He would not let them have the satisfaction of taking him, and he would not go back to prison. Any prison. Certainly not the Prisoner’s prison. Laughing, choking, dying, he put the Benelli to his mouth and pulled the trigger.
