by Isaac Thorne
He tried to scramble back inside the stream of consciousness he had shared with his son for a time, to protect himself from the pain of the impact and whatever injuries the physical body might incur, but he found that he could not. Now that there was only a single consciousness occupying Graham’s physical body, there was no one behind him that he could shove forward. By grabbing the reigns of Graham’s body after dispatching with his consciousness, he had trapped himself in that body. As long as it was alive, he would feel its pain and suffer the consequences of whatever he did.
The impact when he hit the hardened earth of the cellar floor was both bloody and brutal. Lee Gordon smashed into the floor head-first, completely missing any of the remaining standing structure of the cellar stairs on his flight down. He felt the anvil hardness of the floor as it caved in the top of his skull, exploding fragments of bone shrapnel that lodged themselves in the soft flesh of his brain. The angle of his fall along with gravity’s tug at his flailing legs snapped his neck, causing the back of his head to touch his shoulder blades as the rest of his son’s—his—body crashed to the floor. He caught a brief glimpse of the light of outdoors in the distance, through the secret crawl space door. That vision was then replaced by darkness and a horrible pop sound as his head rolled onto a rusted old nail that was protruding from one of the broken treads of the cellar stairs that lay on the floor beneath him. It punctured his right eyeball and became stuck there. He could feel the gel within his eye oozing out of the socket and onto his cheek.
Lee tried to scream. He tried to cry. He tried to call for help: from the black girl, from her cuckold, from the old bat, from the sheriff, from his long dead and gone mother who might be the only person in the world to have ever loved him, from anyone. He was no longer able to make a sound.
When the dust settled, Lee found that he was still at least partially sighted in his left eye. He could not move his head to look around himself, but he was able to perceive two sad human eyes staring back at him from just outside the hole in the wall that led into the crawl space. The dog with the constantly transforming face was seated there, staring at him, watching him leave the world. It seemed to be getting taller as he looked at it. Then there were two of it, or maybe three. Shadows of figures began to pour out of the creature’s back, head, and chest. They rose to varied heights, but they all appeared to have a vaguely human shape that became more so as the shadows first transitioned to black mists, and then to swirling masses of matter that eventually congealed into entities. There were six of them in all, including the dog, which appeared to now be just a dog. It was an English bulldog—a black one, in fact—just like Graham’s pet Butch who had pissed all over Lee’s hardwood floors. It sat there with its tongue lolling out and a stupid dog grin on its face, just as it always had in life.
To the left of the mutt, with her hand gently scratching it behind the ears, knelt the figure of Lee’s dead wife and Graham’s mother Anna Gordon. He felt a surge of his former love for her when the recognition dawned on him. He tried to speak to her, but could not grab air and could no longer work the muscles in his mouth. She did not acknowledge him except to stare at his one remaining eye. She stared without any kind of hint of satisfaction over the circumstances that had befallen him, but also without affection and without pity.
Beside his dead wife stood the large-breasted blonde woman from Bombshell’s, the one who had spurned his advances in her off-duty hours and whom he’d had to kill for her slight. She looked satisfied enough for both herself and his wife. She glared at him with what he used to call a “shit-eating grin” spread across the lower half of her face and a “gotcha” look in her eyes. It was the kind of disrespectful look he would have killed her for if he hadn’t already killed her in decades prior.
Next to the stripper stood the stoic figure of Grace Afton. She was holding hands with Darek, her dead husband and Lee’s former carbon plant coworker that he had murdered and left propped against the obelisk in the middle of Lost Hollow’s town square. Grace looked sad, just as she had while she’d been the face of the dog. Darek somehow managed to look angry, ecstatic, and vengeful all at the same time. With his free hand, he flipped the bird at what was about to be Lee Gordon’s second body to have died as a result of tumbling into the cellar of his own house. The gesture enraged Lee, but no one would have been able to tell because he could no longer manage facial expressions. The body he had stolen from his son was paralyzed, entirely without willful muscle stimulation and motor control.
At the farthest end of the spectral lineup stood the ghost of his son, Graham Gordon, the boy whose consciousness he had only moments before sliced apart with an Ethereal hunting knife and vanquished, banishing him from what had once been his own body. He wondered if that had been his mistake. Would the dog thing have leaped at him and pushed him over if it were possible that his son was still alive somewhere inside there? Lee didn’t think so. He thought it was because the dog thing somehow knew that Graham was no longer inside the body that had leaped at him. Had Graham been inside the dog thing at the end? He supposed it didn’t matter now. It had sure as hell looked that way. His dead son stared at his own soon-to-be empty shell with what appeared to be some combination of wonder and regret. There was loneliness there, too. Lee wondered if it was the same loneliness that was suddenly welling up inside him now as he was about to once again become ripped from the flesh. It was the loneliness he had felt over all those years as he wandered bodiless among the rooms and corridors of this old house, no one to talk to, no one with whom to share the experience. For the past twenty-four hours, he had at least been able to think at his son, and his son had been able to think back at him. Now there was a disconnect. Nothing. There was just a pair of eyes watching him die.
The world dimmed. The heart that beat in the chest of the man Lee Gordon had hoped to become thumped loudly one last time and was still. Before the last of the synapses in his brain fired and went out, Lee watched the dog, Butch, leap into the hole in the cinder block wall and disappear in the crawl space beyond. He was followed immediately by Anna, and her by the large-breasted woman from Bombshell’s, who Lee thought was a nice package even in death. Grace and Darek Afton climbed into the crawl space together, Darek with one arm around her waist as they did. Then, finally, it was Graham’s turn. He hesitated, seemed about to approach the dying body on the floor in front of him, but then changed his mind and climbed into the crawl space instead. He glanced back once before he faded from view. He looked like he was crying.
All alone on the floor of the cellar that had hidden his alcohol abuse, his murders, and his terrified beyond all rational thought young son those many years ago, Lee Gordon passed from earthly darkness and into the eternal void.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
There was a loud crash just out of sight. A cloud of dust rose from the maw of the cellar door into the lights thrown at it from Staff’s video setup. Then there was silence. Staff stared at the empty door frame for a minute, blinked, and then looked at Afia, who also gaped incredulously at the empty space left by the scene of Graham and Lee Gordon’s fall. Where Graham Gordon’s body had previously stood there was now only the blackness of the cellar beyond. With no one to call out to, no one to plead with to stop the nonsense and come away from the edge of the abyss, there seemed to be nothing left to say.
In the end, it had not been Graham who had taken his own life, anyway. As Staff and Afia had stood there pleading with him, the little black dog creature that was actually one part dog and at least three parts human had leaped into the light from the shadows just behind them. She had bound like a deer jumping a fence at the side of the road on a cold morning in early winter. She had bound as if her hind legs were made of springs. She had hit Graham Gordon in the dead center of his chest and sent him plummeting into the cellar. Staff had seen him fall, tumbling over headlong in the process. Grace Afton and the rest of the dog creature had vanished into thin air after the hit, just as if she’d never actually been ther
e.
“Should we check on him?” Afia asked, finally. She directed the question at Staff but did not look away from the cellar door, as if she expected the thick fingers of the man who’d just fallen to his death to crook themselves over the frame at any moment.
“No, I think you’d better let us do that,” said a voice from somewhere behind them. It startled them both.
Staff glanced around to discover a tall, stout man with a thick salt-and-pepper mustache that swept his upper lip. On his hip was a shiny black holster and on his chest was an even more brilliant Hollow County Sheriff’s Department badge. The man poked his head out the front door of the house and shouted “Come on, boys,” at which point two EMTs carrying an extension ladder and medical bags started in. One of them sported rolled-up sleeves and a smear of grime across his forehead.
“I’m going to need you two to get this shit out of our way,” the mustachioed man added, indicating the lights and news camera. “You’re not to film anything we do, understand? That’d be a HIPAA violation for sure. This is private property.”
Staff wasn’t so sure, but after nodding approval from Afia, he began to tear down the camera anyway as the EMTs scurried past him, towing the extension ladder that he had dropped in the front yard. “He can leave the lights up if he wants to be helpful,” the one with the dirt-streaked forehead said over his shoulder. “There aren’t any on down there, and this switch on the wall inside the door doesn’t seem to do anything.”
The sheriff grimaced as if he hated to have to ask for any favors from those mainstream media liberal socialist elites at Channel 6 News, which was not a Fox News affiliate. He took off his hat, mopped his brow with his forearm, and then replaced it, grinning patronizingly at Staff. “Well?” he said. “Do you mind leaving the lights up then so our boys can see what they’re doing down there?”
Staff folded his arms. “Not my call,” he said, and tilted his head at Afia, making sure the sheriff knew that she was indeed the boss of this story. A part of him, in fact, regretted the frustration and anger that had led him to set all this up without Afia’s input and say-so. Another part of him was glad he had because, at long last, they had all the pieces of a story for the evening news. It wasn’t precisely what they’d been out to get—a Halloween fluff piece—but it was most definitely news.
The sheriff sighed, annoyed, and looked at Afia. There was recognition in his eyes. “We’d like to keep the lights on, Miss Afton,” he said, “so the boys can see what they’re doing when they bring him out. They’ll have to use flashlights while they’re down there, and that’s a lot to handle when you’re trying to save a life.”
“Be my guest, sheriff,” she replied. “We’ll wait outside until you’re done. I’d also like to talk with you about all this before we leave. This and a few other things from a few years ago. You know, for the story?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to have some questions for you, too. You know, for the police report? You’ll need to come down to the station for that, though. So just hold your horses on that leaving bit.” He formed air quotes around the word “leaving.” He started to turn his back to her, then stopped and grinned. “How was the foster care system, by the way? Looks like you took my advice and did better than your daddy, eh?”
Afia did not answer him.
The two EMTs lowered the extension ladder into the pit and climbed down, the second man waiting for the all clear from the first before he made the descent. Staff took the opportunity to move the LED light rigs closer to the cellar door, allowing more light to pour into the darkness beyond. From somewhere below, he heard a voice say, “Dear God.” Then there were the hurried sounds of medical bags being opened and tools being extracted.
“Abe?” a masculine voice called out from the darkness of the cellar. “Abe, you might want to get down here and bring your lamp. We’ve got a situation.”
The sheriff, looking caught off guard, strolled to the mouth of the cellar door and peered down, blocking much of the light that Staff had just shined on the situation. “That you, Ben? Thought you were checking out that crawl space the Blankenship woman told us about.”
“Yeah,” the voice called back. It was a young sounding masculine voice, and quavery with either nerves or excitement. “I am. It goes straight through to a big old hole in the cellar wall here. There are bones in there, Abe. Human bones. Old ones, from the look of it. I’ve counted at least two skulls and what looks like the fingers of a hand so far. It’s a tight fit in there, though. I’m going to need some help.”
Abe, the sheriff, shook his head. “Fat fucker needs to stop with the carb-heavy lunches,” he muttered. Then he grabbed the radio mic from his shoulder and pressed the Talk button. “Jer, it’s Abe. We’re going to need the coroner out here on the double.”
“Jesus, Chief, did he off himself?” came the reply after a burst of static.
One of the EMTs overheard the question and shouted up from beyond the cellar’s darkness. “Mr. Gordon is dead, sheriff. There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
“Stupid weakling shit,” Wickham muttered. “Never was anything like his dad.” He pressed the button on his mic. “Looks that way. But we’ve got a bigger problem than that. There’s more than one body. You call the coroner and then get Hoff to help you tape off the scene. I want the whole perimeter, front yard and all. No one else besides the coroner gets in, you got me?”
“Got it, chief.”
“And tell the Blankenship woman not to go anywhere. We’re going to need to talk to her, too.”
“Yes, sir. Understood. Over and out.”
Staff looked around at Afia, who motioned for him to follow her outside. From the front porch, they could see sheriff’s deputies dutifully unspooling crime scene tape. They were, indeed, enclosing the entire perimeter of the old house, including the area of dead-end road in which Graham Gordon’s Tacoma and the Channel 6 News S-10 were parked. Just outside the tape sat two Hollow County Sheriff’s Department patrol cars and something that looked a lot like the Ghostbusters car that Jeremy Beard had described to them that morning. Behind the wheel of that vehicle sat Beard himself, looking on the scene in amazement.
“Hey!” Staff called. “Hey! You’re blocking us in!”
“Sheriff’s orders,” a deputy who sounded like he was probably the “Jer” that Abe the sheriff had been communicating with over the radio called back. “Also procedure. No one new gets in and no one who was here when whatever this was happened gets out.”
“Great,” Staff said and looked at Afia. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
She shrugged. “File our story with the station, I guess. We have our equipment. No one’s said anything about gagging us just because we’re on this side of the tape.” A tear, from either mourning or exhaustion, crept from the corner of her eye, the underside of which had swollen significantly from where Lee Gordon had dealt his blow to that side of her face.
“You want to have the EMTs look at that?” Staff asked. He was examining the plump contusion that had formed on her cheek.
“Magic of makeup,” she replied. “I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s not the first time people will have seen television reporters who have become part of the story. Remember how all those cable news guys looked on 9/11? Some of them were literally covered in ashes and dust.”
Staff nodded. “Yeah. Are you going to be able to do this knowing that your mother was one of Gordon’s victims? Her bones might be in that crawl space.”
Afia pursed her lips together. “I’ll be fine, I think. I haven’t processed all this yet. All my life, I had assumed my mother had run out on us. That’s what my father said, anyway. I guess he was protecting me. Now that I know that my suspicions about Lee Gordon were right all this time and that my mother was also a victim...well, I don’t really know what I’m feeling right now. Part of me is relieved to know that I was right about that nasty old man. Another part of me is sad that my own father wasn’t honest with me about wha
t he must have known had happened to my mother. Then another part of me is just glad to see the beginning of some closure.” She turned to face him. “I mourned both of my parents years ago when I was still a child. I’ll always miss them, and I’ll always wish things hadn’t happened the way that they happened. But I also have it within my power as a journalist to be part of the force that finally brings them some closure, if not exactly justice. I need to do my part.”
Staff nodded. He understood.
A hand fell on his shoulder just then. He turned to face its owner. Patsy Blankenship had somehow made her way onto the front porch without either of them noticing she was there. Her enormous eyes were wet with tears behind those Coke-bottle glasses. Mascara had run from her lower lids and pooled in smeary black puddles where her glasses frames met her cheeks. Across her wrinkled forehead was a purplish, painful looking lump where her own iPhone had struck her during their first experience with the black dog that turned out to not be a dog at all.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” she said. “I’m sorry you two had to deal with all this and have nothing to show for it.”
“‘Had to’ would be the operative word there,” Staff replied. “Based on what we know now, I think we might have been meant to be here. Well, Afia anyway.
“Besides, we do have a story to report. It’s just not the Halloween fluff that we were sent here to get. It’s supernatural enough, though. All three of us got video of the black bi—uh, the spirit creature, didn’t we? I mean, it’s right here on our phones.” He plucked his iPhone from the hip of his cargo shorts as evidence.
“That’s what I mean, though,” Patsy said. “Remember how Mr. Beard told us that all the evidence on his phone disappeared? Well, I tried to show the video I took of the dog to both the sheriff and Mr. Beard when we pulled in here. When I went looking for it, nothing was there. Well, not nothing. There was video of us tracking her across the front of the house and around the corner, but the dog creature herself wasn’t in the shot. There’s just nothing there, even though we all saw it with our own eyes.”