by Sara Clancy
She looked at him from the corner of her eyes. “Then what?”
Aleksandr’s shoulders tensed up and she knew she had his attention. A part of her longed to keep the conversation going. She needed it. As crazy as it was to have a casual conversation with a killer, in this moment, it was the closest thing she had to sanity. Aleksandr took a step forward. She reached out to stop him, but her hand never made contact. As if not wanting to risk the touch, he stopped dead in his tracks.
“I want my knife,” he said.
“How about that big gun you had before? That might be nice, too.”
He shrugged, the motion making the piled-up confetti topple off of his shoulder. “I’d prefer my knife.”
“Okay.” Her stomach twisted into a hard, cold knot as she readied herself for what she was about to do. She didn’t want to go in. But she was going to anyway. “I’ll get the gun.”
Chapter 9
Before this day, Aleksandr thought he knew every level of fear intimately. This one was new. He told himself that they were just decorations. Nothing to worry about. And that was also a first. He’d never actively tried to lie to himself. Comfort with thin promises or distractions with kinder, alternative scenarios. But he had never crossed the line into actually forcing himself to believe it.
Movement seen from the corner of his eye made him flinch. He couldn’t understand why Evelyn was still here. He had thought she'd make a break for the door the second they got out. Now she was standing far too close to him, pouncing on her toes, and rolling her shoulders. People stick to the lesser of two evils, he thought.
“Ivan?”
“Alek.” The weak whimper drifted from beyond the wall of colors.
He sprinted forward, smashing through the barrier of decorations. It was like diving into a kaleidoscopic ocean. Smudges of light consumed him, flooding his vision until it was impossible to see where he was going or where he had been. Shadows circled him, moving too fast to be anything more than a flickering stain across the balloons.
“Ivan!”
Aleksandr’s heart became a crushing force in his chest. His breaths turned into broken pants and his vision blurred. A few feet was all it took for him to lose his bearings. The basement wasn’t a massive space. He should have hit a wall by now.
“Ivan!”
“Alek, help me.”
The sobbed words ripped him apart. Every turn came with an element of pain, his body protesting its treatment over the last few days. The decorations caught on his blood and sweat. Heat pulsated around him like a furnace. Everything seemed to melt and blur together.
“Alek!” Ivan wailed. “Where are you? Help me!”
The voice propelled him forward even as a new voice tried to draw him back.
“Wait! This is obviously a trick!”
Aleksandr ignored Evelyn as he pushed himself deeper into the crush. Odds were that he was running headfirst towards his own death. So be it! Because there was the slightest chance that it was his brother, and that was enough. I won’t lose another one.
Shoving through the pliable wall of adornments, he finally lumbered into a tiny clearing. It was barely wide enough to accommodate his shoulders and stretched out in front of him for only a few feet. Ivan stood at the far end, still and emotionless, like he had been waiting for him. Dark shadows swarmed around Ivan's thin body. Aleksandr caught sight of the ebony smears a dozen times, but they moved too fast through the balloons for him to ever get a decent look at them. Aleksandr didn’t care what they were. All that mattered was getting his brother out of this hellhole. Ivan stood still as Aleksandr stalked towards him, dropped down to one knee, and engulfed his brother in a tight hug.
“Are you hurt?” Aleksandr whispered.
The words died in his throat. Something was off. These moments of fearful reunion had become commonplace in their lives. They had a ritual to them. A process that they went through without thought or comment. Ivan would always hug him back, his small hands clutching his shirt, arms shaking slightly with both desperation and relief. All of that raw need was missing now. Slowly, Ivan reached up and loosely looped his arms around Aleksandr’s neck. The touch was light, barely there, and made his skin crawl.
Aleksandr pulled back to stare into Ivan’s eyes. He knew his little brother. He could recognize him on a level that he didn't even apply to himself. The thing in his arms was a perfect replica, but it wasn't his brother. Instinct rose up inside his chest, hissing and snarling like a startled animal, raging against logic and sanity to prove one simple fact. Whatever he was holding wasn’t human.
“What’s wrong, Alek?” Its voice was Ivan’s, but somehow both flat and taunting at once.
Aleksandr shook his head, “What are you?”
Little giggles gurgled out of the boy. They started soft but snowballed and distorted into a shrill cackle. Aleksandr lurched back. The boy’s hands gripped harder, nails growing as they slid down Aleksandr’s shoulders, drawing blood until they managed to get a firm grip on his arms. With a strength that the tiny hands shouldn’t rightfully possess, the boy held him in place. Struggling only forced Aleksandr off of his feet. The monster dragged him closer as its head flipped back, laughing at the ceiling. Its laughter was wild and unhinged, as the top of its head peeled back from its lower jaw, widening until the skin started to rip. Blood oozed from the tears at the edges of its mouth. One wet, thick crack, and its head broke in two like an open bear trap.
Aleksandr’s eyes bulged from his skull when he saw thin, deformed arms emerge from its throat. They squirmed and thrashed as they stretched up towards the ceiling. As he watched in horror, spikes pushed free from the leathery skin. All the while, the laughter continued. Loud and manic and still with an undercurrent of his brother’s voice.
Aleksandr threw himself back, barely noticing the pain as the clawed fingers shredded his skin. His feet skidded over the concrete as he twisted sharply, but he couldn't shake the grip. Each of the tentacles arched and swayed, like rattlesnakes preparing to strike. Their focus solely on him.
The first strike was just a blur. Flinching back, Aleksandr readied himself for the spike of pain. It came from his arms, but nowhere else. It took a second for his brain to catch up. The attack hadn't come from Ivan's imposter, but from the teen standing beside him. Her first kick had snapped against the boy’s neck. The second collided with the junction of the dislocated mouth. Fresh blood spurted free, and the serpentine limbs whipped around. They cracked like whips, forcing Evelyn back. Quick and agile, she barely managed to avoid the attacks and hit at it again, making it reel back.
The laughter grew louder, breathless, as Evelyn grabbed Aleksandr’s arm and wrenched him from the boy’s grip. Not hesitating when fresh blood rushed free of the wounds. Not caring about the damage.
“Get up!” Evelyn screamed.
Her command broke him free of his shock. His feet were back under him before he knew what he was doing. They ran. The decorations clustered together, blocking their path, melting into each other to create a firmer wall. It smelled like rot and fell apart under his fingers like decaying flesh. Glancing over his shoulder, he couldn't see the monster through the crush.
But the laughter remained. Gleeful. Mocking. Crazed.
Even when he collided with the edge of the staircase, all that met his eyes was decomposing rubber and tousling paper. Air rushed from his lungs at the blow, and he hunched forward with a pained grunt. Fear kept him moving. Evelyn was little more than tuffs of dark, crinkly hair in the gaudy haze. He followed her up the staircase, pushing her back, coaxing her to go faster and clear the way.
Over the unstable, tittering laughter, Aleksandr caught a new sound. Footsteps. Light and fast and closing in behind them. The sound of a child running.
“Go!” Aleksandr bellowed as he shoved Evelyn forcefully.
He wanted to pick her up and toss her, needing her to move faster, to get to the top of the stairs before the monster closed in from behind. They burst through the t
hreshold and were abruptly hurled back into reality. Everything was bright. Normal. Mounds of sand and harsh, glaring sunlight. The rapid shift was nauseating. He stumbled, knocking Evelyn to the ground but managing to keep his footing. Awkwardly, he twisted, grabbed the door, and slammed it shut. Instantly, the handle turned. Aleksandr pressed his shoulder against the door, braced his feet, and pushed with everything he had.
It wasn’t enough.
The laughing monstrosity smacked against the other side of the wood. Over and over. Every impact widening the gap a little more. Balloons and confetti spewed out through the crack as the spiked tendrils scraped against the wood. Struggling to keep the pressure, his free hand fumbled with the locks. For all his efforts, the door was only ever flush in the frame for a few seconds at a time. He was never quick enough to engage the bolts. Sweat dripped from his forehead. His muscles burned. Blood smeared across the wood. All the while, the monster kept laughing. Aleksandr knew it was a trick, something to twist him up and lure him in. That knowledge didn’t dampen his natural instinct. It raged and screamed against his logical mind. Get Ivan! Save him! Help him!
“Shift your leg!”
He looked down to see Evelyn on her back where she had fallen, propped up on her elbows, knees pulled to her chest. There was barely time to move his leg before her feet stomped down against the edge of the door. The blow was sharp and well-timed, landing a split second after the creature’s attack. The door crashed back into the frame and Aleksandr rushed to slide the locks into place. One after the other. The door rattled and shook. Laughter grew. Nails scraped frantically against the wood. For one, terrifying moment, Aleksandr was sure it would claw its way through. The last lock clicked into place. Then everything stopped.
The world was silent. Calm.
Relief, shock, and pain pulsed through Aleksandr’s veins, leaving him dizzy. Between one blink to the next, he crumpled to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. Chest heaving, he thumped the back of his head to the floor and tried to catch his breath. It took longer than it should for him to remember that he wasn't alone. Considering recent events, a loose victim didn't seem all that important.
Using the back of his hand, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. It came away with a layer of festering, confetti-speckled sludge. He stared at his arm, at the proof that coated it. This wasn’t a moment of madness or an illusion in the desert. It was real. Some part of him knew that this revelation should have affected him more. Cut deeper. Made him suspect that he was honestly losing his mind. But every time he reached for that panic, the only reaction he could muster was a sense of inevitability. His parents boasted that they were the apex predators. Aleksandr had never truly believed it. There was always something worse. And now it was here.
They’ll come for you. I unleash the Furies upon you. They'll kill you all. You'll die screaming. His last victim’s words echoed in his head as he stared at the brownish muck. At the time, it had seemed like a dim fantasy. One that he had longed for. How is this possible? he thought. What the hell are Furies?
“Do you think your parents are still down there?” Evelyn asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
He spared a few moments to catch his breath before bothering to reply. “None of these buildings are structurally sound.”
“So what?” She pushed her hair back off of her furrowed brows. “The earthquake hits, they think the building’s going to fall, and they run off instead of saving their son?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kidding?”
“The footage backs up to the cloud. They’d have no reason to stay.”
“What about their son?”
Deciding that she wasn’t ever going to grasp the concept, he couldn’t see any reason to keep the conversation going. In the following silence, his brain quietened, and he finally noticed what had slipped his attention.
“It’s not trying to get out,” he muttered numbly.
It wasn’t more than a passing thought that made it to his lips. In his experience, trapped things tended to fight against their confinement for longer than that.
“It’s probably out already,” Evelyn hurled herself up to rest her forearms on her knees.
She was still catching her breath, and while she looked at the goo on her arms with disgust, she didn't seem to have enough energy to try and slop it off.
“There’s no other exit,” Aleksandr said.
“That thing is just messing with us. I saw it birth itself from the ceiling. I doubt it has a lot of trouble with walls.” She glanced at him and rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. We’re both long past any argument that this isn’t real.”
Aleksandr swallowed thickly. If it’s free, it can get to the twins. He lunged up onto his feet, tripping over the uneven sand that had gathered by the walls.
“Where are you going?” Evelyn was on her feet and following him before he fully got past her.
“To get my twins.”
“By just running out there?”
“Yes.”
A few quick steps and she jumped in front of him, shoving one arm out. He jerked to a halt just before she could make contact with his stomach. A snarl rattled in his chest as he glared at her outstretched limb.
“Not touching,” she assured. While she put both of her hands up like a hostage, she drifted to stand between him and the door. “Not touching. But I think we should think for a second.”
“Are you going to follow me everywhere?”
“Follow? There was no follow. I came back for you. I was already at the top of the stairs before you found … whatever that was.”
Aleksandr took one, slow step backwards, his brow furrowed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I felt a deep emotional bond with you and couldn’t leave without getting your number.”
Before Aleksandr could even begin to understand what was going on, she gestured behind her to the door.
“Why do you think? I realized that I have no idea where I am. Don’t know if you have a car. And, if you do, I have no clue where it is or where you keep the keys. So, my choices were either to run around aimlessly with monsters – which are apparently real now – and two serial killers who could have very big guns. Or, come back and ask you. One of those seemed smarter than the other.”
Each word shot out of her mouth at a rapid pace. A verbal tornado. She was able to put an entire conversation into the space of a sentence and it left Aleksandr off-center and grappling to keep up.
“There’s one road out,” he said at last. “Car’s in the shed. Out that door, to the right. Petya always keeps the keys on him so you’ll have to hotwire it.”
“Hotwire? Because that’s a thing most people know how to do.”
Isn’t it? Aleksandr decided not to voice the question. His education wasn’t exactly mainstream. When he tried to side-step her, she cut him off, arm still high. Now, only an inch separated her palm from his stomach. The proximity made him sick, and being essentially the same height, it was hard to avoid making eye contact. It took a concerted effort to keep himself from backing up.
“Quick question,” she said, still speaking with that disturbingly fast pace. “What is your plan here?”
“To get my twins.”
“Great. Solid plan. Not knocking it. But then what?”
He shook his head, trying to catch up with the jumble of words. “What?”
“Step one; get kids. What’s step two? Because that's important. Without step two, you’ve got two kids in the middle of a barren wasteland with, as mentioned earlier, monsters and serial killers. Seems like your end game is to prolong their agonizing deaths. If that’s not what you’re going for, maybe we should spitball a few other ideas.”
Aleksandr clenched his teeth and rolled his shoulders, showing every sign that he was ready to rip her apart. She wiggled her hands, drawing his attention back to the fact that she was in a submissive posture.
“I’m getting them out of here,” he hissed gruffly.
“And, why haven’t you done that before now?”
“Because it was safer to stay. That’s changed.”
“Very true. One thing though; if you didn’t stand a chance against your parents, how do you think you’ll go with parents and monsters?”
“I will hurt you.”
“Or,” she said, completely unconcerned. “We work together. Hear me out, we both want to leave and get the kids out–”
He pushed forward, spurred on by the heat of rage, “Why would you care about my twins?”
“Because you don’t blame kids for their parents.” For that one sentence, her easy, nonchalant charade slipped, and he caught sight of the pure core of her anger rearing up to meet his own. Just a glimpse, that was all he got before a small, carefree smile crept back onto her lips. “My plan? We go and get the car, pick up the kids, get the hell out of here, kill whatever tries to stop us.”
His brow furrowed. “Then what?”
“You drop me off at the nearest town, and we’ll never see each other again.”
A simple plan with one glaring problem.
“I have other siblings,” he said. “They love our parents. If they find out I helped you …”
“I’ll keep you and the twins out of my police statements. I never saw you. You don’t exist.”
“We get two days head start before you call anyone.”
“I can’t do that to my dad.”
Aleksandr went to step around her. When she cut him off again, he raised his fist. She raised hers, the other hand still outstretched to keep him at a distance. The gesture might have been threatening if he wasn't distracted by her footwork. Backing up over the uneven sand that smoothly took some skill.
“Counter offer. I call my dad but don’t make any police reports for two days.”
“You can pull that off?”
She scoffed. “I went through a traumatic event. No one would blame me for needing a few days of hysterical fits mixed in with a few bounds of catatonic staring.”
