by Bolz, Stefan
Young Kasey came closer, each step bridging the gap between them.
“You slept with him. You had sex with him. Your mother told you not to see him anymore and you did it anyway. You sneaked out of the apartment and drove away in his car and you did it in his car, you dirty little filth. And you came back home two hours later and sneaked back into your bed like a dog.”
As she got closer Kasey saw that her hair wasn’t blond. At least not like a few minutes ago. It was darker now, as if she hadn’t washed it in a long time.
“And what about this boy,” she continued, pointing toward Jack. “He’s no better than Richie. You know that. You think he won’t break your heart, too? What happened after that night when you gave away your virginity? When you became a whore and a filth. Huh? What happened? You were all whiny, ‘but I love him!’. You wrote in your little diary. ‘I love him so much!’ blah, blah, blah. It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic.”
Young Kasey licked her lips in enjoyment.
“Whores never get the good guys,” she said. “You must know that by now. Never get the good guys. The good guys stay with good girls. You get scum.”
Kasey felt shame creep up inside her. She didn’t want to believe her but she did.
“I want my amulet back and you’ll give it to me or I’ll kill him which will make you a whore and a murderer, for this will be on you.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jack said.
“Yeah, don’t listen to her,” Jennifer said. She stood ten feet away, the rifle pointed at young Kasey. “She’s talking complete nonsense.”
“Jennifer Wang,” young Kasey said. “When this is over, you will be but another casualty. Nothing more. A foot soldier sacrificed by someone who doesn’t give a damn.”
She looked straight at Kasey.
“What do you want me to do?” Kasey asked.
“What I want you to do is give me what’s mine. Put in on the ground right in front of you and leave. Take Jack with you. You can both tell each other how wrong I was in my assessment of you while deep down you know that what I told you is the truth. But you can go and continue with your pathetic little lives.”
“Why do you want it?” Kasey asked.
For the last few seconds, beneath the shame that was festering in her mind, she was aware of something else. She couldn’t pinpoint it. A presence. And with that, the faint wish for freedom, the longing for open fields and wide vast grasslands. Help us, it seemed to whisper.
“Why do you want it?” Kasey asked again.
“It belongs to me. It was meant for me. Not for you.”
Kasey realized that the thing that stood across from her had spoken the truth. At least from its perspective. It wasn’t her younger self who demanded it back. It was whatever that thing was that looked like her. The man who gave Kasey the amulet ten years ago, it had seemed as if he’d come specifically to her. There weren’t many people out on the beach that morning. A few runners perhaps. But the fact that he came straight to her told her that it was intended for her and that she wasn’t just some random person he’d handed it to.
“What does it matter—”
“That does not concern you!” it screamed.
The thing began to pull at its hair and ripped out a chunk, but got itself under control a few moments later.
“She will give it to me,” it said in a suppressed voice.
“Or what?” Kasey said. She knew she was in way over her head. She had no plan of action, no idea where to go from here. Whatever she did was sheer instinct.
“It’s dark in here, don’t you think?” it said. “Let’s light up the place, shall we?”
As the windows above became more transparent, the light increased. The darkness that had covered the riders until now dissipated.
“Oh shit!” Kasey heard Blair behind her.
Help us, something whispered inside her.
“She will give it to me or her friends will suffer,” it said. “Aarika, sweet Aarika, he’ll go first, I’m guessing. He’s just not cut out for this. Do you know that he had thought several times about running to your car and driving away? He’ll be the first. And once I tell Blaire Singleton that his wife died in the plane crash… oops.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jennifer said.
“I’ve had enough of you!” it screamed.
It moved with incredible speed. All Kasey saw was a blur. Then it stood in front of Jennifer who, out of sheer reflex, pulled the trigger on the rifle. The bullets hit its body several times. The last one was a headshot. The Young Kasey thing didn’t flinch. It grabbed the rifle and wrested it from Jennifer’s hands. Then it grabbed Jennifer by the throat and hair, pulling her to the ground. It put her foot onto Jennifer’s throat while holding on to her hair. Jennifer winced in pain.
“You don’t understand the severity of the situation!” it said.
“If you do hurt her, I won’t give you anything,” Kasey announced defiantly.
The Young Kasey thing looked at Kasey. She smiled. Then she pulled Jennifer’s head off her torso. Kasey let out a scream. The Young Kasey thing screamed as well — in the same voice as Kasey while holding Jennifer’s head up in the air. At the same time, the engines of the motorcycles started to roar and chaos buried them under its insane premise.
“You are not in control!” it screamed at Kasey and over the cacophonous screeching. “She will give it to me or he will be next!” it pointed at Jack.
Kasey couldn’t think. She was frozen in her own scream. Something in her registered that there was no blood, that Jennifer’s head and neck didn’t bleed. Her eyes found the thing’s eyes. Kasey nodded in defeat. The thing smiled. The cacophonous noise stopped. All that was left was the low gurgling sound of the engines. For a moment, it sounded like hooves running on the ground.
“She will give it to me?” the thing asked.
“Yes.”
It dropped Jennifer’s head. It didn’t fall to the ground. The illusion of the separated head simply ceased to exist. Kasey watched in disbelief as Jennifer, her head fully attached, moved to the side, coughing several times and holding her throat.
“But you have to let Jack go,” Kasey said. “If you want me to give you the amulet, you have to let Jack go. And my friends.”
The thing stood there, rocking back and forth. There was drool dripping from her mouth. Her teeth were no longer white but had taken on a dark yellow tone.
“Cut him loose,” she said.
From behind her, one of the men who had taken Jack approached him. He cut the ties on his wrists and took away the pole behind his knees. Jack fell to the ground. Kasey knelt next to him and held him as best as she could.
“I’m gonna give it to her,” she whispered into Jack’s ear.
“Don’t do it.”
“I have to.”
“No. You don’t. She can’t touch you now. Leave me here and go.”
“Time’s up!” it said.
Kasey kissed Jack very gently on the mouth. The gurgling sound of the engines spoke to her of the wind moving through vast grasslands; of the unbound steppe and a sun setting in the free air.
“Get ready,” she said as she got up.
What Kasey intended to do next was not a fleshed out plan. Not even close. Rather it was the desperate act of someone pushed toward the edge of a cliff by a pack of wolves. She stopped thinking about Jack and the others. She stopped thinking about herself, her life or her death. She was utterly and completely rooted in this very moment of existence.
“I need to tell you something,” she mumbled while looking at the thing. Its appearance was slowly deteriorating. Areas of bloody, pale and raw skin were visible through her hair. Thin black veins appeared across her face and arms. She was twitching. Her whole body was in constant motion.
“I need to tell you something,” Kasey whispered again. “Something you need to know before I give it to you.”
“She will lay it on the floor, yes she will.”
“
I will put it on the floor.”
“Do it. She will do it now.”
Slowly, Kasey went down on one knee. She lifted up her hands to her neck and at the same time bowed her head.
All through high school, she was one of the members of the track and field team. That and softball were her two favorite school sports. This last year, she had trained for the sixty-yard sprint. Her fastest time, just three weeks ago, had been 7.0 seconds. She was faster than any of the kids in her grade, including boys.
The thing rocked back and forth, from one side to the other. For Kasey, she was a moving target. When she put her fingers on the clasp of the necklace, she knew she had the thing’s full attention.
Without any indication of her intentions, Kasey pushed herself off the ground and jumped forward and toward the thing, which didn’t react. It didn’t even lift its arms. It didn’t feel fear. It was in utter and complete control. Or so it thought. Kasey rammed into it and wrapped her arms around its body, pulling it toward her and holding it tight.
The screams seemed to come from the depth of the earth, like a thunderous wave of sound crashing against Kasey’s mind. There was no bracing against that. All she could think was to not let go.
“Run!” she shouted. She didn’t see the others. In fact, she didn’t see anything. There was an abyss, and at its bottom lay her mother — eyes open in death but reaching for her, telling Kasey to join her.
The sound of the engines increased a hundredfold. To Kasey, it sounded like the panicked whinnying of horses. And then it was as if the distance between her and them, the barrier that had held them apart, collapsed. The screams of the horses overwhelmed her. The sheer pain of their existence — prisoners of an evil will — fueled Kasey’s determination.
“Be free,” she thought. “Be free!”
And while the thing convulsed in her arms, trying desperately to get away from the amulet but half paralyzed by it, something inside Kasey stepped forward, through the curtain beyond time and space, and into her mind. And for one single moment, Kasey could feel the being’s power, its vast consciousness was her own. It flowed through her and from her through the thing and into the riders.
“Be free!” she thought one last time.
The horses lunged forward, against the curse that held them in darkness. Their screams filled the space completely. It was joined by the unearthly and guttural scream of the demon.
“Run!” Kasey shouted. “Run!”
And she meant the horses and she meant her friends and she meant Jack. But whatever it was that she had commanded to her was not inclined to stay. Maybe it was Kasey herself who closed the doors to her mind when the vastness of this being was about to obliterate who she was. I’m not ready, was all she could think. And with that, it left.
Kasey let go of the thing. Staggering, dizziness washing over her, she took a few steps. She saw the riders, and for a fleeting moment she saw not who they were, but who they had been before they had fallen. But she could not have foreseen the nightmarish sight of the ones on whose backs they rode. The horses, fueled by whatever it was Kasey had brought to them, fled their prison. They came close to freedom. But it wasn’t enough, for only parts of them were freed. Their heads and necks and, with some, their front hooves, were flesh. But the rest of them was still machine. And being only half of each, they began to die in ways only the deepest nightmares can bestow upon the dreamer.
Kasey saw it. She didn’t want to look away. She wanted to be there for them, to hold them, lessen their pain, and accompany them into the deep and festering crevasses that existed between the dead and the living. She knew she had failed. She knew she was too weak. Part of her wanted to sit down and sink into the sweet, dark gulf of oblivion.
Go, she told herself. Go!
And without even knowing it at first, she took a few steps toward the exit. The screams of the thing were filled with rage and images of flesh ripped from bone. But it didn’t follow her. A few more steps brought her to the door. She passed through it, crossed the dark room and staggered into the sunlight.
Someone grabbed her.
“Come on!” Jennifer said. “The others are waiting at the car.”
Kasey stumbled but Jennifer caught her each time as they made their way through the sand pit and up the other side. When they passed the containers, Kasey saw the Jeep coming toward them. Blair was driving.
“Get in,” he shouted.
Kasey climbed into the back. Jennifer got in front, shut the door and Blair drove the Jeep toward the street. Kasey put her arms around Jack and began to cry.
The Long Night
From Poetry of the Apocalypse, Vol.1
by Douglas McNamara
When I want quietness
When I long to put my heart to rest
When I’m forsaken, forlorn, and far from home
When I reach the end of the road
And the bottom of the ocean floor
I think of you
When the sun’s warmth evades me
When the flowers have lost their scent
When emptiness calls me
To live in its house
To call it friend
I think of you
When my dreams fade to darkness
When I long for a distant star
In the hour before dawn
In the dark night
When love seems nothing but an ancient scar
I think of you
Sunday, 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.
Kasey didn’t want to let go of him. He was the anchor that kept her from drowning.
“You’re suffocating him,” Aarika said. “And that’s my way of saying thank you and whatever you did in there was crazy but it worked. And who was that lunatic chick-child lady?”
Kasey slowly let go of Jack.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you showed up,” Jack said, laboring over each word. “I thought it was over.”
“I’m so sorry it took us so long,” Kasey replied.
“What’s eighteen hours between friends at this point?” Jack said.
“We have to get you to a place where I can take a look at you,” Jennifer replied.
“Jack, this is Jennifer,” Kasey said. “She’s a doctor and a Marine. Blair is the one driving and next to you is Aarika.
“We’ve heard a lot about you,” Aarika said. “Only good things of course.”
“Of course,” Jack said. For a moment it got quiet in the car. “What happened in the last eighteen hours?” he asked.
“Well, for most of it, we were all blind,” Kasey replied.
“Blind?”
“Yes. You weren’t?”
“No. I could see more than I wanted to.”
“Blair, can you find your way to the ambulance?” Jennifer asked. “I’ve got supplies in there I could use. Jack needs antibiotics and possibly some stitches.”
“I’ll find it,” Blair said.
“You gotta take as many side roads as possible,” she cautioned. “By now they’ll have road blocks up on the major intersections.”
“Got it.”
“You weren’t blind because you had the amulet around your neck,” Kasey said.
“You think so?” Aarika replied.
“Yeah. That’s the only logical explanation. The guys who took you had this tattoo on their chests and they were able to see. So did the ones who tried to kill me. I can only assume that the amulet gave you some kind of protection against her. It. Whatever.”
“Are we listening to ourselves?” Blair said. He steered the Jeep onto a side street off of Commack Rd. “I mean, come on. This isn’t Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
“That was me in there,” Kasey replied.
“What do you mean?”
“That was me, myself, when I was eight. And, yes, I did steal from my parents and… the other thing… she knew everything about me.”
“And me,” Jack said.
Blair didn’t have a response.
“Something happened,” Kasey said quietly. “Something happened yesterday and it all started with the dolphins swimming to shore. Nothing since then has made any sense.”
She noticed that her voice was still shaky. “I think they wanted me,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Jack asked. He was hunched over, holding his ribs and breathing shallowly. He wasn’t in good shape.
“They couldn’t foresee that I had given you the amulet. I don’t think they knew what I looked like. They just wanted the carrier. Whoever had it.”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “She, it… told me that it was waiting for you to come to me and getting me was a way to get to you.”
“But why didn’t they take me to begin with?”
“I don’t know.”
“If this has some kind of a built-in supernatural GPS finder thingy, we’re screwed,” Aarika said.
“We have to keep moving,” Jennifer said.
“I think whatever that was in there needs time to recover,” Kasey continued.
“I can see why,” Jack said. “You hugged her pretty tight.”
“Ass.” Thank God he didn’t lose his smile, Kasey thought. She smiled briefly back at him, but the memory of the dying horses was too fresh in her mind. Jennifer and the others had left the warehouse before her and hadn’t seen what she saw, that the horses died, that each was a thing between, neither machine nor animal. It was this that had grabbed Kasey at her very core. She knew in her heart that this image would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“Where should we go?” she asked.
“I think we should try to get off the island,” Blair said.
“There’s no way off the island,” Jennifer replied. “I’m sure they shut down the bridges by now. We’re most likely cut off from Manhattan and the rest of the country.”
“I know a guy with a boat,” Blair said.
“A boat?” Aarika said.
“Yeah. It’s a twenty-four foot cruiser, can fit six people.”
“Where is it?” Kasey asked.
