by Kate Danley
"Four score and seven years ago!" Abraham Lincoln shouted. No one was paying attention. "Four score and seven years ago!" he said again.
Matt almost didn't blame him for what happened next. Almost.
The tour guide drew a saber out of his cane. "I said be respectful!" He knocked the phone out of the father's hand. "Of the sacred space," he continued as he slashed the blade across the man's throat. The father fell to his knees, the blood spewing from his neck like a fountain as he clawed at his windpipe, trying to breathe. "Of one of the bloodiest battlefields…" He skewered the couple next, their arms and legs too intertwined to run. His sword went through them both. "Of the Civil War!" He yanked it out and they clutched their wounds, screaming. But not for long. He began hacking at them with the joyful glee of a kid with a piñata.
Matt threw his duffel bag onto the ground as the rest of the group ran. A chunk of the couple's flesh hit Matt in the shoulder as the tour guide continued swinging. The zipper slipped out of Matt's fingers. Abraham Lincoln stopped. His shoulders slumped and he sighed, as if at once terribly bored. He turned, his glowing yellow eyes falling on Matt.
"I don't think you are being respectful," the tour guide said, the joy returning to his face. He raised the sword over his head. His voice changed. It became low, rumbled out of his chest. It roared. "You will obey my commands!"
Matt grabbed his ax and stood. "I was always more of a George Washington man."
He lifted his ax, blocking Abe's downward blow with the handle. Abe sawed his sword forward, trying to catch Matt with a thrust. Matt dropped the head of his ax, grabbing the handle with two hands, and swung it at Lincoln.
"Be respectful of the ancestors!" Lincoln shouted as ax and sword met, again and again, as they parried across the graveyard.
Lincoln sure was spry for an old guy, Matt thought, leaning back as the sword swung by his ear. He was slipping, though, Matt noticed, as if he couldn't understand why Matt wasn't just lying down to die.
Matt ran behind the base of a large marble obelisk and waited.
"Let me free you from this life," hissed Abraham.
Matt stood with his back against the marble and waited, watching both sides to see which way Honest Abe would sneak up on him. It was on the left. As the sword slowly appeared, Matt swung, catching the sword in the crook of his ax, where the metal met the wood. He gave it a yank and tore the blade out of the tour guide's hands, disarming him.
Lincoln backed away, his old face looking pitiful and confused, as if he didn't understand what was going on. He cringed. "What sort of monster are you? I don't…I don't understand…What have you done? I'm unarmed! Please! Let me live!"
But the tour guide's eyes were still glowing.
Matt tried to puzzle it out. Did the glow keep them in thrall only for a certain amount of time? Were they aware of their actions? Was the free man trapped inside able to fight? Able to regain control?
Matt started to lower his ax.
And that was when the tour guide made a diving run to pickup up his sword.
Matt didn't give him a chance.
He raised his ax and brought it across the man's neck like an executioner. And it was done.
Abraham Lincoln's head went rolling across the Gettysburg battlefield.
Matt walked over and turned it to face him, lifting the lids. The glow was gone. "Not free, just tricky, huh?" he said. The skull did not answer.
Applause and cheers made Matt look over his shoulder. All the other members of the tour group had been watching. They were crying and snapping pictures, shouting thank-yous and hugging one another.
"Great," he muttered, cleaning the edge of his ax in the grass before grabbing his duffel bag and walking back to his car. He didn't want to be here when the cops showed up. They always asked questions he couldn't answer.
The good news was that these new glowing-eyed minions could be killed just like the rotting ones. But Matt couldn't help wonder as he slid into his seat what new evil Mr. Dark had unleashed upon the world, and why.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Gulf Coast Resort, South of the Border
The phone buzzed, cutting into her dream. She peeled her eyes open. Palm trees. There were palm trees above her. The smell of chlorine. Her head pounded. Her mouth was cotton. Tanis raised her sunglasses and stared at the phone, wondering if it was worth the energy to roll over and answer. A waiter with a rotting face walked by, looking at her strangely. Two kids ran past her squealing with delight, their hateful fat feet slapping on the concrete deck. They jumped into the pool, giggling like it was the greatest thing in the world, splashing and carrying on.
Tanis looked to see if she had any smokes left. The pack was empty.
So she picked up the phone. It was her brother. There weren't many things left in this world that could get a smile out of her anymore, but this was one of them. She pressed "talk." "Brett! You know I'm too far away to bail you out…"
She was met with silence.
"Brett?" she asked. She heard a choked inhalation of breath. She pushed herself up in the deck chair, her hand slipping through the plastic rungs, causing her to scrape her arm. She rubbed it on her belly to get rid of the sting. "Brett? Are you there?"
There was another pause, and then Brett started talking in hushed tones, as if he was scared someone might be listening. "Tanis…Tanis, you gotta get back here."
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"It's Mom…," he said. She heard a strangled sob.
"What's wrong with Mom?" asked Tanis, getting out of her chair. She tried to bend down to put on her shoes, but it hurt so bad, her teeth ached. She squinted and slid them on with her toes. She couldn't find her room key. Something was wrong with her mom, and she couldn't find her goddamned room key. It hurt too much to think.
"You gotta get back here," he said. "She's gone crazy. I think…she's…"
"What, Brett?" Tanis asked. There was silence on the line.
"I think she's trying to kill me."
"What?" Tanis felt like someone had punched her. "That doesn't make any sense—"
"I know, Tanis! I know how insane this sounds. I know…I can't talk," he said. "There is something really, really wrong. Please, come home, Tanis," he pleaded. "Please."
Tanis felt like the entire world was crashing around her ears. Her brother didn't freak out. Her brother wasn't the guy who imagined things. Her brother was the man who held their family together. Always. If Brett said that their mom had gone crazy and was trying to kill him…She didn't even want to complete that thought…
Tanis started a slow jog back towards her room, as fast as her hurting body would let her. "I'm on my way, Brett. I'll be there in just a couple hours!"
"I'm scared, Tanis," he replied. His voice cracked.
This was her big brother, the football quarterback who never cried. She ran faster. "I'm on my way," she repeated. "Just…get somewhere safe. I'm on my way!"
She turned off her phone. She passed by the happy families in the lobby checking into the resort, their protective bubble of paradise about to begin. She hated them. She hated them to her core. And wanted, desperately, to be them.
He’d warned her, though, she thought as she quickened her pace. Matt Cahill had warned her that it was going to get worse. The thing he said that caused the rot…that man…what was his name…? That Mr. Dark person who killed all of Matt's friends…She stopped. It wasn't real. The hallucinations weren't real. This wasn't about her. She wasn't the center of some evil conspiracy. She was just a twenty-five-year-old woman with a mom who’d snapped.
But that was when she heard a good ol' boy's southern drawl chuckle, "Git it, girl!"
There was something about that voice that cut through her panic. Something very, very wrong. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. There was another cluster of laughs, cruel and nasty. They were coming from behind a door marked "Security Room." The door was ajar.
She stood in the center of that paisley carpet in the mid
dle of that hallway, closed doors stretching before her and behind her, all except for that one. The entire world slowed to a crawl as the universe demanded her choice.
She could leave now. She could just walk to her room and grab Jared and take care of her mom and that would be that.
Or she could find out what was behind that door.
She did not want to see what they were doing. She didn't want to know.
She wished she had a choice.
She walked over, hoping no one would hear her. She pressed her head against the door and peered inside. Four guards were in the room. Three of them looked normal…but the fourth…The smell of decaying flesh, built up in the small quarters, made her gag. She held her fingers under her nose to block it out. She told herself it was all in her imagination. But like every other time, it didn't make it go away.
They were watching a television set. There were monitors on every wall with live feeds of all the public areas, but what they were watching in the center monitor was a recording. Her blood froze like ice in her veins.
They were watching her.
They were watching her that day on the beach. She watched as the top string of her bikini came undone. As she set down her drink. As she started having sex with Dr. Jared.
Except Dr. Jared wasn't there. It was just her, topless, writhing around with her bikini bottom pulled to one side. She didn't understand.
"I always liked a girl with some imagination in bed," laughed one of the men.
Tanis could not help the little gasp that fell out of her mouth as she saw the chair drop back without her touching it. As somehow she rolled from top to bottom on the chair and then as her body rocked back and forth, legs up, knees around her ears, her business out for everyone to see.
One of the security guards looked back at the door, catching Tanis' eye. She could not move. He put his hand on his boss's shoulder.
His boss turned around. He licked the pus and sores weeping on his bottom lip. "Well, lookie here. Looks like we got ourselves a girl who likes to watch herself almost as much as us."
She backed away. "You better turn that off. You better turn that off and destroy it or else I'm going to tell your supervisor," she said as he rose from his chair.
He began walking towards her. "I am the supervisor," he said. "If you're so hard up, girlie, I'd be happy to give you a hand," he said, unbuckling his pants and unzipping his fly. "I swear to god this meat'll be sweeter in that cooch than the air you're humpin'." Maggots crawled out of his tighty whities like overgrown pubes.
Tanis slammed the door. She heard them laughing as she ran. Heard their laughter chasing after her. The door to her room was ahead, open, as if waiting for her.
Dr. Jared was sitting in a chair by the sliding glass doors of the patio. The sun shone through his blond hair, like a halo. A lollipop hung out of his mouth and he was scraping his teeth on it. He was reading a magazine as a motherly-looking Latina maid reassembled the bed he and Tanis had torn apart last night. He looked up at Tanis with a smile.
"Who are you?" Tanis asked.
His face changed. Like she had struck him. "What?" he asked.
"I just the maid…," said the housekeeper, her eyes shifting nervously.
Jared rose with concern, coming towards her. "You know who I am…Are you feeling okay, Tanis?"
"No, I have no idea who you are!" she said, jerking out of the way and out of Jared's comforting reach.
"Lady, I just the maid…," repeated the housekeeper in confusion.
"Not you!" Tanis shouted.
"Don't do this, Tanis…"
She pointed at her boyfriend. "Him!"
There was a look in his eyes as she said this, a look that said everything was about to change. The face that brought her such comfort, such happiness, was gone. It was no longer the face of the man who stroked her hair and shared the same pillow after a night of lovemaking, the man who laughed with her as they made fun of the same people and who promised to protect her from the world.
No, the man before her was dangerous.
"It is only you and me, señorita," said the maid.
"Stop it, Tanis. Just stop now and everything can be as it was. Don't destroy this," Jared said.
Tanis turned to the maid and pointed back at Jared. "Do you see the man right there?"
She looked where Tanis was indicating and shook her head. She put the pillow down gently on the bed, half in sympathy, half in fear. "I get you the doctor. You maybe in the sun too long."
"Why can't she see you?" Tanis asked, her world ending. "Tell me! Who are you?"
Dr. Jared took the lollipop out of his mouth and said, "Guess."
Then he touched the maid.
The rot spread from that touch like fire through dry brush. The maid's skin began to boil as it spread, leaving behind it charred blisters. The maid just stood there, staring at Tanis as the rot multiplied, completely unaware that something terrible was happening.
Tanis let out a scream.
The decay crept up the woman's neck and then covered her face. That was when the change occurred. Her innocent confusion was replaced by a smoldering anger, a delighted cruelty. Her eyes never leaving Tanis, she slowly sauntered over to the chair where Dr. Jared had been sitting.
Tanis looked at him, tried to see what was real, willing herself to comprehend. When understanding came, the words fell out of her mouth. She didn't want them to be true. She wanted him to deny it. "You're the man Matt Cahill warned me about…You're…Mr. Dark…"
He clucked his tongue, watching as the maid slammed the chair again and again against the wall until the leg broke off as he answered Tanis. "Send Matt my regards, will you?"
And then the maid came straight for Tanis. She swung the leg and struck Tanis in the shoulder. Pain erupted like fire through her bones as she fell to the ground. The maid roared as she swung the leg down like a hatchet, trying to hit Tanis in the chest. Tanis rolled to the side and was able to scramble up.
She heard Mr. Dark laughing as she dodged past the maid, over the bed.
"What did you do to my mom?" Tanis yelled.
Mr. Dark's head tilted in curiosity. "Absolutely nothing."
"Tell me what you did!" she screamed.
"I suppose I should go find out…," said Mr. Dark.
The maid grabbed her leg and struck her across the back of her calves, her thighs. Tanis shouted, "Get off me!" and started kicking. She caught the maid in the chest and managed to push her away. She grabbed at the lamp on the bedside table and missed. The maid struck her again.
Tanis was done. The rage, the anger, the fury, everything came boiling over. She grabbed on to the chair leg as the maid tried to bring it down on her once again. It stung her palms. She didn't care. She leaned forward and bit into the rotting slime of the maid's hands, feeling her teeth slide through the skin as if she were biting through Jell-O, stopping only when they scraped the bone.
Screaming, the maid let go and instinctively clutched her wound.
"You're not real!" Tanis shouted, spitting out the sludge. And then she swung and smashed the woman across the temple with her own chair leg. The maid fell to the ground with a sickening thud.
Tanis looked for Mr. Dark, ready to finish him off, too. He was gone. Tanis wiped her mouth and spat again. Her spit landed next to the housekeeper. If Matt Cahill wasn't lying, the maid was still alive. The rot was there. Tanis stood, the anger pouring through her veins, the kill-or-be-killed survival instinct welling up deep from her primordial brain.
Did she end this woman? Did she finish her off? Did she become like Matt?
Her heart pounded in her chest. Her hands started to shake.
She threw aside the chair leg.
Not today.
She grabbed her purse and a cover-up and ran out the door.
She had more important people to save.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dallas
The door to the town house was wide open. The lights were blazing. But
no one moved around inside. Tanis stood out front, jangling her keys nervously. No one had picked up when she tried calling from the airport. No one had responded to her texts. Brett hadn't been waiting for her when she arrived. And now the door to her house was just standing there, open, as if someone was in a hurry to get in…or get out…
"Please, just keep them safe from Mr. Dark," Tanis whispered to anything that might be listening. The spread of the corruption, the spidery lines of rot across the maid, the transformation as it grabbed hold of her mind…it repeated itself over and over again—the taste was still in Tanis' mouth. As she sat in the plane, willing it to go faster, the maid's face was replaced by her mother's. The rotting flesh, the evil, the cruelty…
"Please…," she whispered again.
She walked up the steps, her rubber sandals clicking with each step. A single car drove by, its occupants unaware. She wanted to wave them down, force them to come inside with her, to hold her hand just until she found out everything was going to be okay. But the taillights faded into the darkness. There was no one to make it better.
Tanis placed her hand on the doorframe and peered around the corner. "Hello?" she called. There was no response, no flurry of welcome, no sign anyone was even here. Only silence.
Something heavy dropped upstairs. And then the light in the stairwell went out.
Her heart leapt, pounding against her chest. "Mom?" she called again, knowing in her soul that something was very, very wrong.
She crept up the stairs, not sure whether to call out or try to sneak up on whoever was hiding.
The hallway was dark. The light in her mom's room crept out from under the door. She knew that was where her mom must be waiting for her. She steeled her courage. She placed her hand on the door and pushed it open.
At first, she couldn't comprehend what she was seeing. There were sprays of rust-colored wetness covering the walls. It dripped from the lamp. The taupe carpeting was covered with stains and handprints. Not just handprints. A hand. It was her mother's hand. Wearing her mother's ring. It wasn't attached to a body, though. The body was on the bed. But it wasn't really a body. It was some sort of red, pulpy mass. It spilled over the sides like someone had run meat through the propeller of a boat. But it didn't have a head, so there was no way of knowing if that was really her mom…or just some…joke…But then Tanis saw the face. Her mom's face was kicked under the corner of the bed, like someone had been playing soccer with it, but it got caught by the dust ruffle and spoiled the game. Tanis ran forward to pick it up, wanting to put the head where it should be, on the neck where it should be, but she couldn't figure out where the neck was.
