TORMENT - A Novel of Dark Horror

by Jeremy Bishop

  “Try stepping on the outside of the stairs,” she whispered. “The wood won’t bend near the joint.”

  He stepped again, this time in silence. “Good trick.”

  “I grew up in an old house. Came in handy as a teenager when I came home at three in the morning.” Mentioning the old house she grew up in reminded her of the home she and Matt had bought. The stairs there squeaked even worse. Getting up them without making a noise had been impossible. She’d thought about that just before screwing Matt’s best friend. If her mom or Margo had come to visit and let themselves in she’d have heard them long before they reached the top stair. She’d locked the bedroom door, too, just in case. But every second gained would give him time to slip out onto the back porch and into the backyard where he could continue doing the yard work he’d come over to do. The memory chased away her thoughts of a future with Austin. She followed him up the stairs.

  Austin stopped at the door, listening. When he heard nothing, he twisted the rough metal handle and gave the door a push. It swung open with a light squeak. The space beyond was a short hallway that led to either side. The dropped ceiling above was brown with water stains and the white walls were peeling, but nothing else seemed out of the ordinary.

  Light streamed into the hallway from both sides and a gentle, stale breeze tickled their noses.

  “Which way?” Austin asked.

  “Up,” she said, pointing to the staircase to their left that led to the second floor.

  They took the stairs quickly and repeated the process until they reached the fourth floor. Mia felt herself relax a little, knowing that four flights of squeaky stairs separated them from the killers.

  After exiting the last flight of stairs, Austin turned right and moved slowly down the hall, pausing when it opened up into the next room. The space beyond was huge. The floor and ceiling were constructed of huge pieces of timber, the kind that were plentiful when the mill had been built, but that people had paid a fortune for before civilization came to an abrupt end.

  Large holes covered the floor where bolts had once secured heavy machinery. Aside from random pieces of junk, the space stood empty. Twelve-foot tall windows lined the left side of the room. Most were shattered. Glass covered the floor beneath them.

  “Watch where you step,” he said.

  For a moment, his concern moved her. Then she realized he wasn’t worried about her cutting herself. He just didn’t want her to make any noise. And neither did she. They took a circuitous route through the room, avoiding the windows and broken glass by hugging the back wall.

  They found a large metal door on rollers at the other side of the room. It led to a small, twenty by twenty space, perhaps for storage. An identical sliding door was on the other side of the room, this one closed and locked by a large metal latch. After entering the room, Austin gave the open door a shove and it rolled quietly. When the door was closed, he twisted the lock into place.

  “Seems like a good place to rest and figure out a game plan,” he said.

  She nodded. The brick walls looked sturdy and the she doubted the killers could break down the metal doors. Four stories separated them from the world and provided a modicum of safety.

  She looked out the room’s single, large window, watching the heat lightning silently cut through the orange clouds. “It’s kind of beautiful.”

  He stood next to her. “I remember nights like this. In the summer. Seems like a dream now.”

  A sharp scream reached up to them from below. Mia took a step toward it.

  “Get down,” Austin urged, heading toward the window in a crouch before lowering himself to his stomach and sliding over the shards of broken glass. Mia followed his lead and slid across the floor, moving slowly in an effort to stay quiet.

  At first all they could see was the red brick apartment buildings across the street and the ruins of a few pint sized skyscrapers beyond. But when they shifted closer to the edge and were able to see straight down, they froze.

  Hundreds of killers stood around the building. They swayed and murmured, displaying a behavior neither Austin nor Mia had seen before—stillness. That might not normally have bothered them. The killers not killing made them look human again. The problem was that every single killer below stood facing the mill.

  Hundreds of eyes scoured the building.

  Mia slid away from the window, her chest rising and falling quickly. “They’re looking for us.”

  Austin moved back. “But they’re not coming in.”

  She turned to him. “They’re waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For us to a make run for it.”

  He frowned. “Or for us to die.”

  Mia agreed. Without food or water, it wouldn’t be long. Maybe another day at the most. If the horde lost its patience and stormed the building, probably a lot less.

  49

  “You still don’t think this is Hell?” Mia asked. She and Austin had retreated to the back wall of the sealed room and sat on the floor.

  “That what you and Garbarino decided?” He traced his finger through the thick dust on the floor. “That this was Hell?”

  Mia stayed quiet. The tone of Austin’s voice made her feel stupid for bringing it up.

  “As a metaphor, sure, this is hell. But the Hell? Things don’t add up.” He rubbed a ball of dust between his index finger and thumb. “I went to Sunday school and I don’t see a pit of fire. I don’t see demons. People have changed, sure. Become monsters. But I’m sure there is a scientific explanation for it. We doused the world in radiation, exposed humanity to forces beyond our comprehension. This is the result.”

  Part of Mia agreed with him. She’d never believed in God before and knew she’d only started considering the possibility because she felt afraid to die. That’s not all, she told herself, remembering the fates of their fallen friends. “What about Paul and Mark? What about Chang, and White, and Vanderwarf, and Collins?”

  “And Elizabeth,” he said, his voice full of regret for not saving them.

  “And Liz,” she said. “Why did some of them come back and some of them stay dead?” She leaned her head against the hard brick wall behind her. The grout dug into her skin, but the pain kept her alert. “Mark clearly believed. And he didn’t come back. Elizabeth was a child. The pastor knew she wouldn’t come back.”

  “And Collins? You really think the person responsible for turning the world to hell would get a jail pass? He ends up in hell, has a change of heart and is what, forgiven for bringing about Armageddon?”

  She hit her head against the wall in frustration, hardly noticing the sting of splitting skin. “Then what? Why did some of them come back as...as one of them and the others not come back at all? And why aren’t there any children?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it has something to do with genetics. Some people are susceptible to whatever change has taken place. Something in the atmosphere. Something we’re breathing. And maybe there are no children because of their size. Maybe whatever changed the adults, killed all the children?” He traced his finger along the floor, adding a curved line to his drawing in the dust. “Maybe the zombie movies are right and it’s a mutated disease.”

  A thought struck Mia hard. “Or something we ate.” She looked at Austin. “Elizabeth only ate the food we brought with us. I didn’t see Mark eat anything local either. What about Collins?”

  “I didn’t notice,” he said. “I haven’t eaten anything but what we brought. You?”

  Mia knew the answer to that question as soon as she’d thought about food. “Cheez-Its. At the church. I shared a pack with Garbarino. Took another for Liz, but she never got to eat it.”

  “Then maybe it’s the food.”

  Mia stared at the floor.

  He gave her a pat on the knee. “But I doubt it.”

  She smiled at his kindness. “It was worth it, anyway. They were so good.”

  Austin chuckled. “You see? I can’t believe this is hell when we can st
ill laugh. How could hope exist in hell?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Hell seems the perfect place for false hope.” She sighed and added, “You still think we can escape? Find survivors up north?”

  “It’s less likely now that we’re surrounded, but yeah, I think there are other survivors out there. We just need to find them.”

  It seemed a fantasy to Mia. How could people survive in this world? But she and Austin had. And if they could figure out a way past the killers outside and leave the city behind, maybe they would find survivors. “Canadians,” she said.

  “What?”

  “They’ll probably be Canadians.” She looked at him. “The other survivors.”

  He smiled. “French Canadians,” he said with mock disdain.

  She smiled. “My mom’s parents were French Canadians.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Mia nearly let out a loud laugh, but contained it. Despite her fear, the hunger gnawing at her belly, and the still fresh sadness of losing Elizabeth, she thought Austin was right. There still was hope. And that was something, wasn’t it? If this were Hell, how could hope exist? “Assuming this isn’t the actual Hell, what about God?”

  “What about God?”

  “Does He exist?”

  “If he does, he’s a sadist. The world was bad enough before. Believe me. Collins trusted me. I heard a lot about what goes on in the world that the general public never knows. It was a sick, sick place. And now? What kind of creator lets his creation go to shit? I’m not perfect. I’ve done bad things in my life, but I couldn’t let a perfect stranger die, let alone be tortured for eternity. We’re supposed to be God’s children, right? How can someone who lets this happen to their children be good? Never mind worthy of worship.”

  Garbarino’s words came back to her. “It’s a choice.”

  “What?”

  The memory of Garbarino’s sacrifice filled her thoughts. He had no fear of death when he sacrificed himself to save them. And she envied that confidence as much as she longed for Austin’s hope. “That’s what Garbarino thought. It’s a choice.”

  “Free will?”

  “I guess.”

  Austin stood and rubbed his hands on his pants, leaving streaks of dust. “That’s an excuse that people who believe in God use to excuse the inaction of a creator who doesn’t care enough to save his creation.”

  She looked to where Austin sat and saw a smiley face drawn in the dust. How could he be so optimistic in the face of death? After all the people they’d lost already?

  Austin approached the window slowly, hugging the brick wall on the left side of the room. He appreciated the conversation. It provided a welcome distraction from the fact that they were surrounded by enemies. But they needed a plan and they needed one soon. If they were going to survive this, and he believed that they would, they would have to move before they got too weak from hunger and thirst. If they could navigate the city, maybe find an abandoned grocery store, he thought they could resupply and keep moving.

  The killers below hadn’t moved yet. They just stood still, staring at the building.

  “What are they doing?” Mia asked.

  Austin stepped away from the window and leaned against the brick sidewall. “Waiting, I think.”

  Mia started toward him, walking slowly, careful not to step on any glass. “Waiting,” she said, stepping over a floor board that looked loose. “For what?”

  The wall behind Austin shook from an impact and bent inward.

  Mia scrambled further away from it. “Is the building coming down?”

  Austin never got a chance to answer.

  Before he could realize what was happening, the wall exploded. Austin raised his hands to block his face as bricks burst into the room.

  One of the bricks struck Mia’s shoulder and knocked her to the floor. She winced as she pulled herself back up. A jolt of pain shot down her arm, but she forgot it a moment later when she saw a large hand reach through the hole in the wall and wrap around Austin’s head.

  “Run!” he shouted, his voice muffled. “RU—”

  His voice was replaced by a sudden crack.

  Austin’s head burst. Skull fragments and brain matter oozed from between the oversized fingers. Austin’s body went limp as blood poured over it.

  Mia screamed like never before, wrapped in a blanket of primal fear, her mind retreated and terror was all that remained. She screamed again, but was cut short by the half face of Henry Masters, leaning in through the hole, his perpetual grin sending chills through her body.

  She stepped back, body shaking, voice trembling as she wept.

  As Masters watched her, she noticed his eyebrows were turned up instead of down. Despite his horrific state, his eyes revealed something other than the pure hate his body radiated. Sadness.

  “Peace,” Masters said, his voice a deep growl. The few sinews that held Austin’s body up finally snapped. His body dropped to the floor, oozing blood from his open neck. The thick red liquid drained into the cracks between the floor boards and rolled toward Mia like miniature rivers.

  She backed away, her shaking body making little progress.

  Masters watched her for a moment and then opened his clenched fist. A bloody chunk of flesh and bone fragments fell to the floor with a splat. He looked down at it. “Peace,” he said again.

  A small portion of Mia’s mind returned during that pause. She scrambled to her feet, ran to the opposite door and unlocked it.

  The loud metal clang of the lock snapped Masters’s head toward her. Eyebrows still knit with despair, he opened his mouth and let out a roar.

  Mia fell to her knees. The point blank range of the blast twisted her insides. She vomited hard. Over the sound of her retching she heard pounding and falling bricks. But she couldn’t stop her body from convulsing. Before she could even look up, a tight pressure wrapped around her body and squeezed.

  50

  Mia wasn’t crushed into oblivion. She felt no new pain as something lifted her off the ground and put onto her feet.

  “This way,” said a voice.

  A hard tug yanked her through the door she’d unlocked. She spilled into a dim hallway and through a blur of tears saw a man running ahead of her. She followed after him as the violent shaking behind her intensified.

  A second roar sent her to one knee, but her rescuer was there in an instant, pulling her back up and shoving her forward. “Keep moving!”

  Mia ran down the hallway, drunk with fear, stumbling and slipping, but somehow staying on her feet. When she reached an open side door, the man took her arm and pushed her in. A thin staircase led up.

  “It goes to the roof,” the man said.

  Mia climbed the stairs while the man waited below. She opened the door at the top and toppled onto the mill roof. Sheets of peeling, rough tar stretched to the edges. The roof’s uneven surface looked like waves, gently rising and falling where water and time had warped portions of it.

  She heard the door at the bottom of the stairs close. Footsteps pounded on the stairs as the man took them two at a time. Then her rescuer spilled into the light and fell to his hands and knees, catching his breath, head turned down. When he looked up at her, she was shocked into silence.

  Garbarino stood and reached out his hand. “C’mon,” he said. “I know a way out.”

  “Joe?” she said, climbing to her feet.

  The roof shook as something rumbled on the floor below them.

  “There isn’t much time,” he said.

  Mia squeezed him in a tight embrace. He squeezed her back, then pulled away. “Are you ready yet?”

  The question confused her, but then she remembered her earlier fears of death, Hell and eternity. With Austin, those concerns had been buried by hope, but now, with him dead, her confidence began to wane. “No,” she answered.

  “Then let’s move!” He ran to the far end of the mill, pulling her by the hand.

  “How did you escape?” she ask
ed as they ran.

  “They followed me for a little while, but were more interested in the two of you. I crossed the river using a pedestrian walkway that led to a park.”

  They stopped at the edge of the mill roof. The next mill building in line was ten feet away. Mia was about to point out that neither of them could make the jump, but Garbarino was already picking up a long thick floorboard from the roof.

  He saw her looking at the board. “This is how I got here.”

  “How did you know how to find us?”

  Garbarino lifted the board up and slowly lowered it so that it bridged the gap between buildings. “At first—” He grunted as the board’s weight strained his arms. He placed the board down. “I noticed the mobs had stopped chasing the runners and had all headed in a single direction.”

  As Garbarino adjusted the board so that each side had a foot overhanging the edge of a roof, she asked. “You followed them?”

  “Not at first. I thought I was home free. But then I figured out they were headed in your direction. I saw them focused on the mill and figured you were inside. When I saw Masters go in, I found a way around and came to get you out.”

  “But why didn’t they chase you?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “There were two of you.” He motioned to the board. “Go ahead.”

  The roof beneath them shook. A muffled roar rose up from below. Henry Masters was looking for them.

  Mia climbed onto the thick, eighteen inch wide board. It should have been easy to cross, but the height was dizzying. And she could see killers below, still focused on the walls and windows of the building. If they looked up...

  Mia pulled her arms and legs in close and crawled across the board. She moved quickly, holding her breath, and when she reached the other side, she stood and turned around. Garbarino was already half way across.

  The doorway at the center of the mill they’d fled exploded. Henry Masters stepped onto the roof. He looked away from them, searching, and then turned toward them. With Garbarino only a few feet from the roof, Masters howled.