by Sara Clancy
His chest swelled with the scream he couldn’t bring to life. It ignited within his ribcage like wildfire, scorching him from the inside out, boiling and blistering the tender flesh of his lungs while it charred his bones. The horseman loomed over him, its dark hand appearing within the corner of Benton’s blurring vision. The first touch burned like dry ice, freezing his skin, making it as frail as frost. The whispers came back, battling the fire within him for dominance over his mind.
A beam of blinding light streaked across the body of the horseman. Its hand pulled back and it whirled around, revealing Nicole to Benton’s wavering gaze. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she tilted her face up. The terror that surged into her gaze made it clear that the horseman had decided to reveal itself to her. She was, for the first time, seeing it in all of its grotesque glory. But instead of running, Nicole clenched her jaw and struck out towards it with the long gold chain she held tightly in her hands.
The connected gold chains were thin and sliced across the horseman’s chest like a blade, releasing a blazing light as the gold itself began to glow. Benton heard Dorothy before he saw her. The constable stormed across the room, gun trained on the horseman, her conviction narrowing, her eyes steady while fear tightened the lines of her face. But she didn’t have a clear shot when Nicole struck out again. The whip loosened with the blow, just enough to allow a thin trail of air to slip down his throat.
Benton snapped himself up, yanking the whip loose, coaxing the small hunks of bone out of the ridges they had imprinted into his skin. The horseman turned back instantly. It rushed towards him, needing only one hand to pin Benton down against the cold slab. Unable to fight against the bulk, twice the size of his own, he continued to rip at the whip, keeping the end from the horseman’s seeking grasp. Finally, the whip went lax enough that he was able to breathe in heaving gasps of air through his battered, aching throat. The horseman gave up on trying to grab the whip back, and instead clamped his hand around Benton’s neck in a crushing grip, making the bones dig into his throat.
Nicole was just as unrelenting in her own attacks, lashing at its back with the golden chain, each strike making the horseman shatter and break apart. Thin trails of damage wrapped around its torso and light poured from the wounds like solar flares. Squinting against the blinding blaze that cut across the horseman’s stomach, Benton reached out with trembling fingers, clawing over the raw slabs of meat of the horseman’s clothes. His fingertips found the thin chain of gold and he seized it. Nicole pulled at the other end and the chain cut into both his fingers and the horseman.
Dorothy shot twice. The sudden shooting sound rolled and echoed over itself, spurred on by the hollow metal that lined the walls. The horseman flinched back with both of the shots, but it wasn’t enough to make it retreat. It used its grip to slam Benton down against the metal slab. Benton's vision blurred. His face grew hot and swollen. The unheard scream ripped apart his insides as the horseman clenched his throat. Benton yanked the chain, forcing it deeper into the horseman’s body. Hunks of cold, damp flesh ripped free from the horseman and dropped down onto his skin, slicking a path across over his body as they dripped to the floor.
The small links of the chain wrapped around his hand began to glow with a gilded radiance. It outshone the breaks forming within the horseman and warmed his skin where it touched. With the triple assault, the horseman couldn’t keep its stone-like hold on Benton, and he was able to choke down a breath again. He latched his hands on both the whip and the chain, drawing the horseman closer as he opened his mouth. The volcano that had filled his body erupted out in an air cracking shriek.
The metal doors of the morgue's freezers were torn from their hinges, the windows shattered, the overhead lights exploded like a hailstorm of fractured glass and fiery sparks. The horseman rattled. The gold chain cut into him like a pristine blade, slicing him apart, splitting him like wood. Broken hunks of flesh fell apart like wet rubble. With a last shudder, the horseman burst, raining rancid blood and oozing organs over every inch of the room.
Benton gagged and wrenched as the sludge filled his mouth. Rolling onto his side, he spat the substance out onto the already slick table top. The blood soaked into every inch of his thin clothes, creating a chilled, chunky blanket over him as he hurled the contents of his stomach onto the hunks of flesh by his face.
“Benton!” Nicole shrieked, as she rushed to his side.
He could feel her gently untangling the gold chain from his hand. The soft touch combined with her constant calling of his name worked to ease his nerves. As his adrenaline seeped away, the pain of his hand rushed forward to fill the gap. He whimpered and pulled at the spinal whip from around his neck with desperate yanks. She didn’t help him, but instead settled for a comforting rub on his arm.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. I think the Dullahan is dead.”
Benton coughed out another mouthful of blood as he finally managed to pull the whip free and toss it weakly across the room.
“What the hell is a Dullahan?” he rasped.
She rubbed his back as he tumbled into a coughing fit, trying to clear his abused windpipe.
“I looked it up on mom’s phone on the way over,” Nicole said with far more pride than Benton could handle right now. But his laugh only resulted in another series of ragged coughs. “Its intolerance to gold was the last bit I needed to find it, well, as near as I could figure. It’s from an Irish legend. They have some screwed up legends when you think about it.”
He tried to catch his breath, but all he could smell was the blood that was smoldering the room. A sharp cry came out of him as he pressed his hand against the slab and forced himself up. It would have been near impossible to actually get up if Nicole and Dorothy hadn’t come to his aid. With his vision blurred, he winced when he finally caught sight of them both, covered in the slop of entrails and blood.
“Are you okay?” Nicole asked. “I mean, as much as you can be right now. How’s your hand? Are you still high?”
“Nicole,” his desperate whine came out with a graveled edged, broken and rough and painful to force out. It was quickly met with another fit of coughs.
“Right, we’ll talk later. Just focus on breathing,” Nicole said, once again rubbing his back in soothing but ineffectual circles.
Not able to meet Dorothy’s shell-shocked expression, he glanced around the blood-soaked room. “People would have heard the shots,” he whispered carefully. “How are we going to clean this up?”
The women looked at each other before surveying the room themselves.
“What is he talking about?” Dorothy asked.
“He’s a creature of Irish mythology, not deaf,” Nicole whispered back before she turned to Benton, “but she does have a point, buddy.”
Benton sputtered before he could answer, “The blood.”
Again, the Riders exchanged a confused glance, hunks of flesh dripping from their hair.
“What blood?” they asked in unison.
***
Benton was still marveling at Dorothy’s powers of persuasion when the morning began to turn the sky pink. Caught in the moment, the best lie he could think of was that he became disorientated after a nightmare. After all, he had just stumbled across a pit full of dead people and was too traumatized to even remember how he had burnt his hand. It was flimsy at best, but as soon as Constable Dorothy Rider took hold of it, she managed to work it into something that sounded completely reasonable. He didn’t know how she managed to explain away the gunshots. That was a conversation held far away from any prying ears and teenagers. For his part, the hardest thing had been trying to keep from vomiting. The entrails had clung to him, dripped from him, and he had stopped himself from begging for a shower.
His parents had just been happy that he wasn’t a suspect. Their reaction had been swift and along the lines that Benton had expected. The stream of questions had easily shifted to warnings and then to complete denial. He had nodded along and said what they nee
ded to hear. At first he had resented when they had decided that the waiting room, or their more comfortable home, was now out of the question and had set up camp in his hospital room. But, as midnight had crept closer and he still wasn’t able to sleep, the situation was growing on him. They had both fallen asleep, and the steady undertone of their breathing was relaxing. It wasn’t uncommon for them to circle the wagon and try to separate him from the outside world. But tonight, for some reason that he couldn’t place, their presence didn’t feel suffocating. He actually felt protected. Snuggled down under the sheets, with a pillow cradled against his chest and his arms propped up above him, Benton had drifted on a haze of painkillers and contentment. Right up until the moment Nicole popped up in his window.
At first, he had been sure that she was just a figment of his imagination. After all, she had spent a great deal of time waving her arms about, with a really weird amount of energy. He wasn’t sure how long he had just stared at her in confusion before he had realized that she was beckoning him over. Sluggish and slow, he tiptoed out of the bed as quietly as possible. The distance between the bed and the window didn’t look that far, but it felt like a mile as he slowly edged his way across it. With every step, he was sure that his parents would wake up and start on a new series of questions that he didn’t know the answers to now. But they hadn’t, much to his bafflement, and he had finally completed his journey without incident. He didn’t have time to feel proud of himself as Nicole had practically pulled him outside. From there it had been a short shuffle to Dorothy’s waiting car. He had been vaguely aware that it should have felt like a very long trip, but time wasn’t exactly moving at a steady, predictable pace anymore.
Sitting in the backseat, he blinked owlishly until he was able to focus. Still, Dorothy’s voice sounded weird and distorted, and he was confused as to why he could taste the stench that wafted off the woman. She fell silent, staring at him as the horseman’s congealed blood dripped from her chin. After a long silence and a meaningful glare from the Constable, Benton’s eyebrows inched up his forehead.
“You said something, didn’t you?” he asked. The rough scratch of his voice startled him as the painful scrape of the words made him wince.
Dorothy scowled. “Yes. I did. I asked you a direct question.”
He blinked slowly. “Did I answer?”
“He’s on painkillers, mom,” Nicole cut in.
Benton jerked to the side. While he remembered following Nicole and her climbing in the car behind him, he had honestly forgotten that she was there. Although her blood-drenched presence did explain why the stench was so bad.
Nicole didn’t take her eyes off her mother. “Can’t this wait until the morning?”
“I’ve got a basement full of dead bodies, you were almost killed, and I just shot a man who didn’t have a head but was still alive. No, this can’t wait.”
“What was the question?” Benton asked as he struggled to keep his head up.
Dorothy spoke again and he watched her mouth with the sum total of his focus.
“Okay,” he said. “One more time, but stop making your voice do that echo thingy.”
Dorothy clenched her jaw but finally spoke clearly, “What happened to your attacker?”
Benton pressed his knuckles together before arching his hands in opposite directions, twirling his fingers as he mimicked the sound of an explosion. He thought he was amazingly accurate, but Dorothy didn’t look impressed.
“It exploded?” the woman asked.
“That’s right, officer. It went boom.” After another long string of coughs, he croaked out a request that someone crack a window open.
Nicole did and he shuffled a little further from her.
“Even if it did,” Dorothy said. “Why can’t we see the remains?”
He shrugged and tried not to get distracted by how weird one of his hands looked. “Don’t know. Still trying to figure out why you can’t feel it.”
“Feel it?” Nicole asked.
He looked her over, his lip curling in disgust as he gagged.
“I’m covered in Dullahan goo?” Nicole whirled to face her mother. “Can we go home? I need a shower.”
“This is more important,” Dorothy snapped.
“Is it, though?” Benton didn’t mean to bark back, but Dorothy's rough voice didn’t give him much option. “I’m still going to be a banshee once you’re clean. It seems like you’re angry enough without having to clean up my vomit. Nicole still goes on about it.”
Dorothy narrowed her gaze on him, but he wasn’t sure how he had made her angry. If anything, he had been going out of his way to keep her happy.
“Nicole told me that you weren’t involved with the bodies in the basement.”
“True,” Benton winced as he swallowed. “I dreamt about some of them, but I didn’t kill ‘em. Did I?” He contemplated it for a moment. “No. I didn’t. Definitely didn’t.”
“And the … what did you call it?”
“Leanan Sidhe,” Nicole offered.
“Oh, she killed it,” he jabbed a thumb towards Nicole. Rolling his head to lean it against the chair, he blinked at her, his brow furrowing. “Should I not have said that? It feels like I shouldn’t have.”
Nicole smiled and reached out to pat his knee. “It’s fine.”
“Good,” he mumbled. “Please, don’t touch me with those gross, bloody hands.”
Nicole whirled to her mother, but Dorothy still wouldn’t hear her. Instead, she kept her attention focused on Benton.
“How did you make that noise?”
“Banshee.” He tried to click his fingers and instantly regretted it when the pain in his hand blazed again. After hissing in pain, he settled for finger guns that for some reason sounded like lasers. “And, before you ask, that’s about all I know.”
“Well, I still have more questions.”
“So do I. I suggest asking Nicole. She’s really into this sort of stuff. Oh, I have a question,” Benton met the officer’s gaze as he leaned forward. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m still deciding,” Dorothy snapped.
Benton shrugged and slumped back. “Better make your choice soon.”
“Don’t test me, Benton. I’m still not convinced that you two aren’t delusional.”
“Living dead guy wasn’t enough for you?” Benton snorted.
Nicole lifted her hand to silence him as she spoke to her mother, “What do you need?”
“Real, physical, tangible proof,” was the instant response.
“You have his scream on tape,” Nicole said in a shrill pitch.
“So he made a weird noise.”
Benton laughed, the sound breaking into a painful cough that he didn’t quite regret.
Nicole huffed almost petulantly. “Fine. How about the remains of a mythical creature?”
“The horseman exploded,” Dorothy said.
“The Leanan Sidhe didn’t,” Nicole said. “I’ll take you to its corpse. Just let me get Benton back inside.”
“No, he’s coming with us.”
Benton felt their eyes on him and shrugged. “Sure, why not? Road trip!”
“Fine,” Nicole said as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “But you’re letting me have a shower first. That’s non-negotiable.”
***
When Benton came back to his senses, the rising sun was giving the horizon a gilded edge. A blanket of low clouds crossed the sky in soft wisps of purple and pink. He blinked at it as the pain in his hand fought back the remaining haze of the painkillers.
“Why are we at the Leanan Sidhe’s grave?” he asked.
He could barely get his tongue to move, and his voice sounded like a deep growl. Each syllable hurt as much as his hand. Blinking again, he realized that he was slumped against the back door of the police cruiser. And he was pretty sure he was drooling. Pushing himself up, he wiped a knuckle over the corner of his mouth and turned his head to Nicole. She quirked her eyebrows.
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“We went over this. Twice.”
He slummed back against the seat and instantly regretted it. The lingering stench of rotted flesh still lingered over her skin and had long since filled the car. He leaned back towards the open window.
“Can you stop hanging your head out the window like a dog?” she asked.
“You stink.”
“I bathed!” Nicole said indigently. “With lavender and rose bath salts and sweet grass scented soap. I smell amazing.”
“You smell like road kill on a desert highway in the middle of summer,” he mumbled.
“That’s very specific,” she said before adding nervously, “but I’m not covered in it anymore, right?”
He looked over at her. “Right.”
“Good. And we’re here because mom wanted to see the Sidhe for herself. She dug it up about two hours ago. She’s still staring at it.”
Leaning slightly to the side, he looked between the front seats. Dorothy was crouched next to the open grave, staring at the disrupted earth with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“She’s not taking it well,” Nicole said softly.
“I don’t suppose she'll tell us what she’s going to do,” he croaked.
“I think we’re okay,” Nicole said. “I mean, she’s told everyone about the basement, but also that we found it. So I guess that will explain why our DNA is everywhere. I don’t think she’s going to tell anyone about this, though. Or about you.”
Benton managed to nod once before he slumped back against the seat.
After a moment of silence, Nicole spoke again, “Thank you, Benton.” He could hear a small giggle in her voice. “For saving me. I actually heard your scream while you were in the Dullahan.”
