by A. R. Wise
“My children want to eat your friend,” said The Skeleton Man, his voice reverberating in her mind like a thousand echoes.
“Who are you?” asked Alma.
“Who is who?” asked the woman at the door.
Alma let go of Rachel and clasped her hands over her ears to drown out the sounds that threatened to quiet the voice in her head. The chattering teeth got louder and she saw the man in the fog approaching from behind the van. His long arm wrapped around the corner of the van and he tapped on the side as the mist hid his features. He was tall and lanky, a corpse draped in clothes, and when the mist cleared enough to reveal any detail he shied away, drawing back as if unwilling to be seen.
“Who are you?” Alma screamed at the shade.
The air above them swirled, as if the eye of a storm had descended upon the building, trapping everything around it in a maelstrom of fog and lightning. Time seemed to flow differently for the others, and Alma was trapped in a world that The Skeleton Man controlled. She felt linked to him, blessed by his attention, and damned by it all at once. He laughed at her, and she tried to move forward but discovered that her body was caught in the same slowed movements as the world around her. Only The Skeleton Man seemed unfazed, and he tapped his fingers on the side of the van with the same cadence as he had when time flowed normally for all of them. His chattering teeth never slowed, and his laughter wavered in her mind as if affected by the beat of her own heart; swooshing in and out like waves on a beach.
“I will guide you, Alma Harper,” said the demonic voice. “I have waited so long to have you with me. Together, you and I will help Ben get free.”
Alma tried to speak, but felt the muscles in her throat react slowly to her wishes. What she had planned to say was lost by her inability to speak, so she stared at The Skeleton Man and tried to communicate with her thoughts instead.
‘Leave my friends alone.’
The demon didn’t respond. He just continued to linger in the fog, tapping on the side of the van as his minions took slow steps toward Stephen. Alma could see the muscles of the children tense as their feet propelled them with each step, but they didn’t move any faster than the swirling mist, or Rachel’s grasping hands. All of them were caught in the flow of time, a trap that The Skeleton Man was free of.
“You have to help me save Ben,” said The Skeleton Man. “Ignore the liars, and save your brother.”
A woman’s shrill cry drowned out the demon’s voice. It was a sound unfettered by the restraint of the slowed flow of time, resounding at the same bone-chilling depth that The Skeleton Man’s chattering teeth did. He tensed, his fingers settling on the side of the van, and Alma saw that he was frightened.
“She’s found us,” said The Skeleton Man. “I have to leave.” He looked directly at her and Alma saw his skeletal face revealed as a flash of green electricity skipped across his arm. “Alma, run!” Then he retreated and the mist seemed to swallow him as time returned to normal.
“Stephen!” Rachel screamed to her husband as the demonic children overtook him. They leapt through the mist and it moved to accommodate them, happy to hold onto their victim until the creatures got to him.
“Run!” said Stephen as the demons started to bite into him. The dog-like creatures clamped their jaws on his exposed flesh and then shook their heads back and forth, tearing the skin like a starved hound. Blood cascaded down his body, but he couldn’t fight them off as the tendrils of fog held him still.
“Christ!” said the woman that had been smoking at the front door. “What’s going on?”
“Nancy,” said another woman from inside the building. “Get in here!”
Aubrey tried to hold Rachel, but the strawberry blonde reporter was too devoted to her husband. She writhed free and ran into the mass of undulating flesh that had swarmed over Stephen. She gripped one of the children by the neck and threw it aside, but then they turned on her.
The mist engulfed her, as if pulling her in for an embrace, and dragged her closer to Stephen. She slapped into her husband’s wet body, the blood splashing away from her as she did, and then her cries were silenced as the demons tore her to pieces.
“Rachel!” Alma was horrified to see her friends die, but knew there was nothing that could be done to save them. Only fear of pain convinced her to even fight for her own life. She was cursed with a sense of inevitability to this entire nightmare, as if she already knew they were doomed.
“Someone call 9-1-1,” said Aubrey as she grabbed Alma and pulled her into the building.
“We are 9-1-1,” said the woman that had been smoking outside when they arrived.
“Then fucking do something!” Aubrey pulled the door shut once they were all in.
There was a large, older woman in the building. Her blue eyes were wide as she stared out the window. She didn’t look away as she screamed at another person in the building with them. “Darryl, did you get anyone?”
“I can’t get through,” said a man’s voice from somewhere within the maze of fabric dividers that housed each desk of the call center. “The station’s lines are all busy.”
“That’s just fucking great,” said Aubrey. “What are you supposed to do when even the 9-1-1 operators can’t get through to the police?”
“It’s okay, darling,” said the older woman, although her quaking tone revealed the falseness of her calm. “We’re linked to their system. They know we need them. They know we need help. I’m sure they’ll be here any minute.”
“No they won’t,” said Aubrey. “Because this is happening all over. Because this is 1996, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
“Yes!” The smoker screamed out at Aubrey, her nerves frayed. “Why do you people keep asking what year it is?”
“Because everyone in this fucking cursed town dies today.” Aubrey’s face turned red as she screamed. “Every single one of you!”
“What are you talking about?” asked the older woman.
Alma saw a man rise up from between the fabric dividers in the call center. He had a headset on and his mouth was agape. He was overweight, with no discernible chin if not for the way he trimmed his beard, and his neck was jiggling as if he were trying to speak. “Help,” he finally managed to say. Then he seemed to shrink a foot and jerked forward. His face shook as if he was in pain, and then he lifted his hands to reveal that they were covered in blood. He said again, “Help,” but his voice was weaker than before.
“Darryl?” asked the older woman as she started to head toward the man’s desk.
“Claire, don’t,” said her coworker.
Claire reached the aisle where Darryl’s desk was and then let out a high pitched cry as she stared at him. The rest of them rushed to see what had frightened her and were stopped in their tracks. The middle-aged man had sunk partially into his own desk, his belly fused to the table and keyboard, like some sort of grotesque magic trick.
“Help,” he said again as he dug his fingers into his stomach in an attempt to free himself. He tugged at his skin, but it ripped away from the top of the desk and blood seeped out. It looked as if he had grown into the inanimate object and only his flesh could move, but every time it did he was ripping himself to apart.
That’s when they saw a woman’s arm reach out from the desk and grasp Darryl’s shirt. She clawed at him, like a drowning victim reaching out to be saved, and with every tug she pulled his body further into the desk. He choked as she pulled at him, and then vomited blood. The gore spewed from his mouth, at first just liquid, but then fleshy strips began to fly out. His face smashed into the top of his computer monitor as if he was suffering a seizure, and more of the strands of flesh slipped away from between his open lips. He gripped the sides of his cubicle and tried to pull himself up as his head continued to shake. They heard his bones breaking, but he continued to pull as his body separated.
The woman’s hands tugged at him until her face was revealed within the desk itself. Her eyes bulged and were only white, with no pupil or iris in
either of them. Her skin was badly burned, and her cheekbone was revealed as if her skin had melted away. The specter’s teeth were mostly gone, and the ones left were loose and bleeding as her mouth gaped open. It looked as if someone had been trying to pry her teeth out.
Aubrey gasped and covered her mouth.
The specter’s formerly milky eyes rotated, revealing two irises that had been rolled back in her head. She focused on Alma, and then jerked on Darryl’s body to pull herself further out of the furniture.
Flesh dripped from her face as if made of a slimy, crimson liquid. Her mouth gaped, and then snapped shut on her bulbous, purple tongue. The creature screamed, “Alma Harper!”
“Holy fuck!” Aubrey fell back against the wall in fright.
“Look what you did!” The specter dragged herself out of the table as if emerging from a secret door. She pushed against Darryl’s writhing body until she was able to fall to the floor. Her body splashed, covered with red and white ooze, and then she coughed up a mixture of foam and bile that hung in strands from her lips. “Look what you did!” Her words were accented by the wet flapping of her shredded, bleeding lips.
The creature was on her belly on the floor, ten feet from Alma. She clawed at the floor and dragged herself forward while screaming Alma’s name. Every inch she moved tore away bits of her flesh that were left behind on the Berber carpet like a snail’s trail.
“Let’s go, Alma!” Aubrey and the other two women had already fled, but Aubrey returned to pull Alma away. “What the hell are you standing there for?”
“Look what you did!” The woman on the floor screamed out again.
Alma turned to look back at Aubrey, lost for words, and then looked back down at the creature on the floor. To her horror, the specter was gone. Her trail of slime and gore was still there, as was Darryl’s writhing body, but the woman had vanished.
“Come on,” said Aubrey. “There’s a back entrance. We have to run!”
Alma nodded, the shock of what she’d seen still silencing her. The demon that had appeared and killed Darryl had known who Alma was, and for some reason Alma knew that she would. Alma was scared of the woman, but not because of what she’d just seen, but rather that she felt as if she’d been frightened of her for years. It was like a recurring nightmare had finally come true.
Aubrey led Alma to the back door that the other two employees had escaped through. The fog lurched around the corner of the building, and snuck over the roof, but it didn’t descend over them. Aubrey staggered as she saw the fold of mist lurking over the exit. She was aware of how it had captured Stephen minutes earlier.
“Should we just run?” asked Aubrey as she stared at the lingering mist.
“I don’t…” Alma was interrupted by the screaming specter that had killed Darryl.
“Alma! Look what you’ve done!” The ghost materialized in the wall behind them, her face at eye level, pushing through the white paint and causing blood to slide down across the surface. One of her teeth fell to the floor as she oozed through the wall. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and her fingers protruded from the wall, clawing as if she was desperate to pull herself free.
Aubrey screamed and took Alma’s hand as they ran out of the building. There was a small patio out of the back door and a sidewalk that led around the building to the parking lot where Jacker, Stephen, and Rachel had died. To the side of the walkway, away from the building, was a ditch that led up to a black wire fence, past which was another, similar office building. Aubrey pulled Alma along as she tried to escape.
“Come on, Alma!” Aubrey jerked at Alma’s arm to try and snap the girl out of her docility.
“We’re already dead,” said Alma.
“We will be if you don’t move your ass.” Aubrey tried to go left, toward the street, but Alma held her back. “Come on!”
“Don’t go that way,” said Alma and she pointed toward the rear of the building. “We need to try and go that way.”
“Why?” asked Aubrey.
Alma couldn’t explain herself, and just said, “Because we die that way.” She pointed at the street as if waiting to be proved right.
“What are you talking about?” asked Aubrey. “Okay, fuck it. I don’t care. Let’s just get out of here.”
Aubrey and Alma ran along the side of the building as the fog stayed above them, looming over the lip of the roof as if ready to descend, but kept at bay. Alma glanced back and saw that the white fog was sliding off the roof beside the exit, willing to cover their tracks as Aubrey guided them forward. Then the electricity popped within the cloud and coincided with an explosion somewhere on the street, now hidden by the mist.
Alma didn’t need to see the accident to know what happened. A truck had plowed into the cars parked on the side of the road, and that’s where Aubrey died once, pinned between the vehicles. Alma could see her pained expression as if a poignant memory had been revealed. She was reminded of how thoughts of her brother, Ben, had returned to her in the kitchen of the cabin when her mother had scrawled the symbol for pi on the floor.
Alma could hear the scrambling, bony hands of the children as they crawled across the roof of the Emergency Services building. The fog hid them as they scurried toward Aubrey, but they were revealed as menacing shadows when the green electricity sparked.
“Come on,” said Aubrey as she saw that Alma had slowed down. The fog rushed around the building and toward the young girl. The Skeleton Man’s hand came around the corner just as Alma was about to scream in warning. His fingers tapped, one by one, on the brick before he appeared. He spied on them like a devious child sneaking into his parent’s bedroom at night, his chattering teeth ever present in Alma’s head.
“How should we bleed her?” asked The Skeleton Man. His demonic horde scurried across the roof and Alma heard their steps slow down. The fog swirled at a lethargic pace, and Aubrey’s movements became caught in the mire of The Skeleton Man’s hold on time. The blonde bartender tried to scream, and perhaps in a different sliver of reality she could be heard, but Alma’s mind was trapped by the will of the demon that lingered in the fog.
“Should we be quick about it?” asked The Skeleton Man.
He stepped away from the wall, revealing his skull face, the bones held together by the fog itself as the green cloud slipped in and out of his features. A single eyeball sat within his left socket, lazily rolling in the bottom until the fog carried it up to focus on Alma. His jaw was wrapped in what appeared to be a strip of human flesh, stitched with wire that tied it to his cheekbone. His teeth chattered, and when he spoke his jaw didn’t move to accommodate the words, as if this demon wasn’t actually the one that Alma was hearing.
Alma wanted to scream, but her every movement was caught in the web of time; only her thoughts were free of the prison.
“Does she have pretty eyes? Do you like them?” asked The Skeleton Man. He reached up to his own, lonely, wobbling eye and plucked it out. He let it drop into the mist, and it hung there as if suspended in thick liquid, only slowly descending to the pavement.
“Alma, should we steal her eyes?” The Skeleton Man moved to stand behind Aubrey. “They’re such pretty eyes, don’t you think?”
The Skeleton Man grasped one of the hounds at his side. He took the child by the snout and then lifted the creature up as the mist swirled around it. He held the lower half of the monster’s jaw and ripped it apart. The fog pushed into the creature’s mouth and seemed to help mutilate the hound, tearing it apart until The Skeleton Man was left holding just the upper jaw, the teeth now dripping with fresh blood. The Skeleton Man plucked out one of the canines and tossed it into the mist where it floated away like the eyeball had moments earlier. He examined the mangled snout, with only one long canine still protruding from it like a jagged barb.
Alma was forced to watch as The Skeleton Man used the fleshy tool on Aubrey. He wrapped his arm around her neck and then stuck the only remaining canine of the upper jaw against her left tear duct. Then
he pressed the tooth in, causing Aubrey’s eye to bulge from its socket. He scooped the eyeball out, and Aubrey’s slow expression of pain and horror was torture to witness. Her eye protruded from her head as The Skeleton Man wormed the tip of the jaw into the socket.
“There we go,” said the demon as Aubrey’s eye flopped down into the curvature of the hound’s severed upper palate. It was still connected by the white optic nerve like a ball on a string. The Skeleton Man reached up and gripped the eyeball before jerking it out of Aubrey’s skull. When the white strand was pulled forth, a blob of pink matter came with it before snapping free.
“I love her eyes,” said The Skeleton Man as he put the eyeball into his own socket. It twirled as the fog positioned it, floating in the empty socket as the optic nerve spun behind it. “Don’t you?” he asked as he looked at Alma. “Let’s get the other one.”
“Look what you’ve done!” The tortured spirit screamed as her face sprung from the side of the building. She was unfettered by the slow progression of time, just like The Skeleton Man, and reached out in a desperate attempt to grasp the demon in the mist.
The fog receded, seemingly frightened by the woman in the wall, and The Skeleton Man fell apart as it went. The eyeball that he’d stolen from Aubrey fell to the pavement along with the jawbone that he’d ripped away from the hound. The Skeleton Man crumpled as the woman in the wall grasped at his form. She tore at his cloak and pulled it to her, revealing nothing but fog and bones within.
Aubrey cried out in pain and covered her eye as her movements returned to normal. The woman in the wall was attracted to Aubrey’s screams and grasped at her once The Skeleton Man had disappeared. She gripped Aubrey’s leg and dragged the girl down, causing her legs to sink into the cement walkway.
Aubrey struggled, but the woman continued to drag her down, just as she had done to Darryl at his desk. The spirit disappeared beneath the ground, and only her arms sprouted forth, fingers digging into Aubrey as the young woman cried out. Alma moved forward, intent on helping, but the spirit pulled Aubrey down until the bartender was waist deep in the cement, as if she’d succumbed to quicksand in the middle of the town.
