In Sickness and in Hell: A Collection of Unusual Stories

by Stefan Barkow

  I asked them those same questions in those same words.

  Dawn’s name musta snapped them outta the moment ‘cause the other guy jabbed Andy in the shoulder like what-gives-man-we-got-a-job-to-do, and Andy let go of my hand and asked if they could come inside.

  When I told them that Dawn was sick, they nodded like they was expecting to hear that. When I said that the doctor was with her, they flipped their shit.

  They both started talking at once: “Carpenter, you’ve got to let us in right now or it’ll be too late for her,” Andy said in a violent whisper while his buddy asked, “How long has it been alone with her?”

  I said, “Fuck if I know, five minutes? What’s going—”

  “Let us in, Carpenter!” Andy hissed. His eyes was looking over my shoulder like he thought someone other than me was gonna hear him.

  Something in my head told me I shouldn’t, but I ignored it and invited them into the house. I got pushed against the wall in their rush to get inside and the front door got slammed into my shoulder.

  “Where is the bastard?” Andy’s friend said, his burning eyes grazing me as he scanned the dirty living room for someone he musta hated, ‘cause you don’t get that crazy look in your eyes about someone you don’t know. He reached inside his jacket and pulled a goddamn silver cane of a revolver out of it.

  “Whoa, man, what’s the prob—” I began, but Andy cut me off:

  “Carpenter!” He grabbed me by the shirt front and shook me. “That’s not a doctor! That’s why we’re here!”

  My eyes snapped to the bedroom door; down the hall to my left, at right angles to the kitchen. Following my eyes, the second man crossed the living room and was down the hall before I could speak.

  He didn’t try the door knob, just used some sorta kung-fuckin’-fu kick to break the door free. I saw him bringing the gun down level as his momentum carried him forward into the room.

  From where I was standing, too shocked to swear, still with my shirt in Andy’s fist, I watched the pistol’s Coke-can of a cylinder rotate in slow motion.

  I was all kinds of hopped up on adrenaline now, I could tell; everything around me was moving slow, like a bad trip where you start thinking fuck, man, this is it, this is it, and you wanna just crash. You start watching the clock but the hands are pointing at you and laughing, and you’re going nuts inside your head because you just want to cover your eyes and make everything go away but your arms are made of goddamn lead.

  My eyes hadn’t moved yet. I hadn’t moved yet. I watched the hammer rear back. Then, at last, a single thought lit up my brain like lightning over a lake:

  Dawn’s gonna fuckin’ die.

  I didn’t doubt what Andy or his butcherous buddy had told me, didn’t stop to think about how little I knew of what was going on. I was in way over my head—I musta been aware of that somewhere in the back of my skull—but there wasn’t nothing as important to me right now as the sick girl in the bedroom.

  I shoved Andy back and ran down the hallway, bouncing off the walls, my arms flailing, trying to stay balanced. Picture frames crashed to the ground around me, knocked off their nails. I heard the frames strike the tiles and the glass inside shatter, coating the floor. Andy was on my heels, crunching up the glass fragments almost as fast as I could make ‘em. Ahead of me, the trigger clicked into place and I saw the hammer strike home.

  The entire house shuddered. Dust jumped off the walls and hung in the air. Forget bullets, the ball of fire that came outta the end of that pistol hadta’ve fried the perv, I thought. But no, now Andy’s friend was going into the room, and his trigger finger was already tensing for round two.

  My right shoulder was still throbbing from when Andy had slammed the front door into me, so I really felt it when I hit the shattered door frame in my rush to reach Dawn.

  I got just one peek inside before Andy caught up with me in a flying tackle that sent us both crashing through the bead curtain and into the kitchen.

  That one look was just enough to remind me that I had no idea what the hell was happening in my cramped little house.

  The sheets had been thrown on the floor beside the bed, along with the t-shirt I had given Dawn justa few minutes ago. She was on the bed, naked and unmoving, her green eyes unnaturally wide. And there were things placed around and on her body; creepy looking crap that I didn’t getta good enough look at to describe. The doc musta been standing over her on the bed when he was interrupted, ‘cause by the time I saw him his body was in free fall, just about to make contact with the carpet on the far side of the room. Since I had last seen him, Doc Mayline had gained two holes the size of my fists through his chest. Going by the oval-shaped splatters of gore on the wall, the slugs had picked him up and thrown him before they punched all the way through.

  Damn.

  Andy and I landed in a heap, him on top, on the black and white laminate. I started yelling for Dawn: “Baby, can you hear me? You okay? I’m coming to help you, babe, just hold on!”

  “Sam!” Andy was yelling at me. He was braced over me, his hands placed just below my biceps so I couldn’t get any leverage on him. I kept trying to throw him off anyway. I could feel the strain in every tendon of my body as I tried to twist out of his grip. “Sam, control yourself, man! It’s alright, Thomas’ll finish him. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we do, man!”

  It didn’t matter what he was saying, I was beyond words now. I wanted to destroy anything that stood between me and making sure Dawn was okay. Especially Andy and this other guy. I woulda killed Andy right then and there—was trying to, really—but he outweighed me by thirty and already had me pinned.

  From the bedroom I heard a sudden inhalation of air, like as if someone was drowning and had just broken into the sunlight again.

  Then the breath cut off, and I heard Dawn’s voice begin to scream. Her voice, but somehow I knew it wasn’t Dawn. Something else was using her voice, and it was pissed off beyond all reason.

  I started yelling again too, because I felt the same way. I was hoping that Dawn could hear me, hoping she would understand that I was still fighting, that I hadn’t abandoned her.

  “Andy!” the man named Thomas called from the bedroom, “I need some help in here! This demon is fucking strong!”

  “Damn it!” Andy spat, still fighting to keep me on my back. “I’m coming, hold on, Tom!” Andy looked down at me. “Sorry, man, but this is for your own good. We can’t let you in there until she’s stable.” He let go of my right arm just long enough to grab me by the hair and slam the back of my head into the floor.

  I’ve been knocked out before, but this time it didn’t go dark.

  I don’t know if it’s even possible to dream while unconscious, but I did. I was still on the floor, still lying there staring at the cobwebs and fingerprints on the underside of our kitchen table, and I could hear everything that was going on in the other room: snarling, yelling, moaning, and the wet sound of soft flesh and sharp steel. But I couldn’t move. And I was being crushed by this feeling of guilt like I’ve never felt before, because it was me that let them all inside. That was important, I knew it was, but I couldn’t figure out why. And now I was just lying here, doing nothing while Dawn was in danger. There was more: I became aware that it was all my fault. Not just today, but the fights and the flu and all the rest. I had done this. I had made all of this happen. But I still didn’t know what the fuck “all of this” was.

  When I came to, Thomas was kneeling at my left side, looking at my eyes with a worried expression. His face shifted just slightly towards relief when I moved my eyes to look at him. His hand relaxed its grip on that goliath pistol. It hadn’t been pointed at me, but it also hadn't not been pointed at me, you follow? Someone had put an ice pack under my head like a pillow. I started to struggle to my feet but Thomas put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down. “Whoa, there, take a second and collect yourself,” he told me. I was too weak to do anything but take his advice.

  My min
d started seeing details again. I saw that Tom’s clothing was singed and his hair looked dry and frail. His goatee and eyebrows were burnt too.

  “Dawn,” I said.

  “She’s okay,” he assured me, “for now. But she’s not out of danger yet.”

  “The Doc?”

  “That host is dead. We cut off all of its senses.” Tom smiled cruelly. “You don’t need to worry about him anymore.” Tom’s face turned grave. “But we need you on your feet, Sam. We need your help if we’re going to save Dawn. Have you got yourself under control?”

  I said, “Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Help me up. Where’s Andy?”

  “He’s still in there with her. We’ve got her stable, but we can’t get that bastard out of her without you.”

  I didn't waste my breath asking what that was supposed to mean. I tried to take a step towards the bedroom and stumbled. Tom caught me under the arms and held me up. “Sam, I know that this is all happening fast for you, but you have to trust us for the next couple of minutes, okay? Andy and I need you to go in there and talk to Dawn—not to the body on the bed, but to Dawn, okay? Does that make any sense?”

  I shook my head no. Tom sighed.

  “I keep forgetting, you’re new to all of this, that’s why you didn’t give us more trouble earlier. Okay, it’s not your fault, you just don’t know. And with that other demon here we didn’t get a chance to tell you what’s happening. Well, let me put it as simply as possible for you: Dawn’s possessed.”

  “Fuck you,” I snarled.

  “Sam, I know how you feel, but this isn’t the time. She’s still in danger. We’ve only got one chance to save her, and we need you there. I promise we’ll explain everything as soon as we get a chance. But we have to get that demon out of her first, alright?”

  I’ve always been kind of a superstitious guy. I didn’t doubt that God and angels and demons and who knows what else existed, but it was a big jump from “they might” to “they do, and they’re in your bedroom fuckin’ up each other’s shit as we speak.”

  I still hadn’t been given a minute to figure out what was happening around me, but since it didn’t look like I was going to get that minute any time soon I was gonna have to trust somebody. At least these guys were promising to do the only thing that I cared about doing at the moment: saving Dawn.

  “Alright,” I agreed, “Just tell me what to do.” Tom helped me across the hall. Splintered wood and shattered glass crackled under our feet.

  In the room, Andy was sitting on the bed holding Dawn’s hand. He was talking to her in a slow, soothing voice. Dawn’s eyes was still wide open, staring at the ceiling without seeing it. The window shades had been ripped from the wall and sunlight was streaming into the room onto the bed. Someone had put the white sheets back over Dawn even though there was blood stains on them now. All of the evil things I had seen around her before were gone, thrown off the bed away from her. The room smelled like there had been a fire or something, but there was no sign of it that I could see.

  Tom helped me sit down on the edge of the bed. I caught sight of Doc Mayline in the corner where he’d landed. It hadn’t really meant anything to me when Tom had told me that they had “cut off all its senses,” but it came back to me when I saw what they had done to the body. Ears, eyes, nose, and—going by the blood trickling down his chin and onto his shirt—tongue, had all been hastily and rather messily removed.

  But I was finally with Dawn and nothing, not even the mutilated corpse behind me, could distract me from my girl. When I picked up her hand and tucked it into my own rough palm, I saw that her skin was pink and hot against the damp sheets. She was sweating more than before, and there was literally steam rising off her body.

  “Sam,” Andy said quietly, “now’s the time, man. Tell her everything. Say you love her. Let her know all the things you ever wanted to say but never did. It might be your last chance.” He let go of her hand and got off the bed. “We’ll be right back.”

  I lay down on the bed beside Dawn and pulled her towards me, laying her head on my chest the way we always used to sleep together before we was sick. I wrapped my arms around her and I felt her body shudder, a long tremor running down to her toes. I tried to brush her hair back but it was so wet that it clung to my skin and caught in my fingers. “Dawn,” I whispered, looking in her eyes. “Dawn, I need you.”

  Andy and Tom came back in with armfuls of pictures from around the house: her parents. My cat. Dawn and me on vacation. He put them all around us on the bed. I kept talking to her, telling her that I loved her, telling her that she was the only girl I’d ever been in love with. “And I know this ain’t the right time for this kinda thing, but I want you to know that I wanna marry you.”

  I saw Tom and Andy exchange a look over us. I ignored it. I knew I sounded fuckin’ stupid, but I didn't care anymore. I needed Dawn to hear me, needed her to know that I was done finding excuses.

  “Don’t be mad,” I said to Dawn, “I’m not proposing now, I know you’d be pissed if I did something that stupid. I just want you to know that I’m ready. I wasn’t before, I was putting it off, I was coasting along, but I’m not gonna do that any longer. I don’t ever wanna lose you, Dawn.”

  She began to convulse in my arms. She screamed. It was a single cry that went on forever, filled with pain and terror and rage.

  “Hold her!” Tom yelled, “Don’t you dare let her go, Carpenter!” He and Andy were scrambling around the room, trying to keep all the things they had put around us from falling off of the bed.

  “What’s happening?” I yelled over Dawn’s scream—and I could tell it was actually Dawn now, not whatever else I’d heard using her voice before.

  “You’re doing fine, man, just fine. Stay with her!” Andy yelled back.

  “Dawn,” I said, “Dawn, it’s okay, I’m here. We’re gonna be okay, baby, we’re gonna be okay.” I clung to her and told her that over and over, ignoring my own head that was telling me to Shut up and stop lying to her. You know the truth; you know that after today, nothing is ever gonna be okay again. But I shoved that black thing down and held on to my girl and sweated it out as she screamed in my ear and beat the mattress with her fists, kicking at the air like a little girl throwing a goddamn apocalypse of a tantrum.

  And then all of that stopped and the scream cut off and she was crying, weeping, with her arms around me and her breasts and her legs pressed hard against me. “Sam,” she tried to say, but her voice was so hoarse I could barely hear her, “Ohmygod, Sam, I love you too. I love you too, Sam, I love you too…”

  Her voice trailed off, and I saw that she had fallen asleep.

  Her face was peaceful now, but I was still too afraid of what might happen next to let go of her. I kept my arms locked around her as tightly as I could for a full minute, but when nothing happened, I finally gave in and loosened my grip. I felt weak and sick. My muscles felt like jelly and it was all I could do to lay there breathing. I cradled Dawn in my arms and wished for the world to just leave us alone.

  I felt Andy’s hand on my shoulder. “Sam, get up. We have to talk, man. There’s some shit you need to hear.”

  “I wanna stay with her,” I said.

  “She’s okay, buddy, you did it. She’s saved. The bastard is gone. But now we have to clue you in on what’s happening. And Dawn’s going to sleep for a good long time, so her body can recover. I’ve seen it before. Come on, man.” Andy tugged at me. I shrugged his hand off but I got up and followed him into the kitchen anyway.

  We sat in the chairs and I looked at the two of them. For as happy as I guess we shoulda been, they both looked kinda upset about something.

  “So,” I began, “what the fuck?”

  They laid it all out for me, and I listened. Neat as you like, if you could believe any of it: all kinds of shit they was telling me. Complicated too, layers and layers of mistaken knowledge that us humans only thought we knew.

  “God, as you know him, does not exist,” was one of the most bas
ic facts.

  Well okay, if that was true then my working theory up to this point—that Tom and Andy was angels of some sort, sent to fight back the goddamn demon hordes—went down the shitter. Through all of this, I kept as quiet as I could, asking questions only when they totally lost me, 'cause I knew that if I tried to say all I wanted to, they'd never get to the end.

  And it was obvious from the way they was acting that they expected something from me.

  Partway through, Tom got up and went across the hall into the bedroom again. “Where's he going?” I interrupted; I didn't trust any of these characters to be alone with Dawn.

  Andy waved a hand at me. “Relax, man, he's just going to get the host's body from the bedroom.”

  I sat back, but I was still tense. Something in me just didn't like Tom all that much.

  “Anyway,” Andy went on, “like I was saying: no God. But that doesn’t mean there's nothing up there, just not the smiling old man you grew up praying to.” The rest was a bit much for me to follow clearly: there is a supernatural being, he said. Why shouldn’t there be one? But why, in a universe consisting almost entirely of forces at odds with our existence, had humans decided to believe that any “god” being would be benevolent? And listening to him, I couldn’t think of a reason against it that made a piss drop a sense. The one supernatural force he said they knew existed, if you really havta give it a name, is Satan.

  The fucked up face of Doc Mayline—twisted, bloody, and cut to shit—appeared through the bead-curtain to my left.

  I jumped nearly outta my skin at the sight of him there, but Andy was still sittin' at the table, pleasant as you please.

  “God damn fat-ass motherfucker,” Tom said from the hallway, and it was then I saw that his arms was around the corpse. Tom lost his grip and the Doc pitched forward; I'd call it a face-plant, 'cept he didn't have a face anymore. When the body hit the floor, it made a wet sound like the time Andy and I dropped some kid's jack-o-lantern off a parking garage in grade school.

  I picked my chair up off the floor. I could see that Tom and Andy was both enjoying my reaction, and that made me a little pissed. “Hey man, we're trying to have a conversation here,” Andy said, still chuckling.