One might almost think that the place had become a ghost town overnight, a city ruled by the dead and controlled by shadow. Even when the snowfall began around ten that morning, the sun had still not shown its face except as a murky glow on the horizon. By eleven, even that was gone, clouded over so completely that it seemed like night had never ended.
Karesh watched out the window of his hotel suite, laughing to himself.
Indeed. Night has not ended, nor will it ever, my little friends. He had been in exceptionally high humor, even more so than Taeda or Manderly had been used to seeing, ever since the previous day. He had nothing left to fear now. He held all the cards.
His only regret was that he hadn’t been there to see the look on Drakanis’s face. Even more unfortunate, he had missed seeing Woods broken and humbled by the identity of his foe. It had been a special gift from the talu`shar, a soul it had once known that would send the Disciple into trembling grief, rendering him useless and ineffective in any further conflict. A safety measure, his master had called it. It had worked wonderfully, from what Karesh had heard; Taeda claimed that Woods had been tear-streaked and pallid, any trace of will yanked from him. He had screamed since, oh yes, but never with much force and always begging, never demanding, never attempting to do something about his captivity, just begging.
Damien had been silent for most of the last hour though. He was just sitting in his chair and staring at the front of the room. He hadn’t moved for most of that time either. Karesh glanced over his shoulder at the plush purple easy chair, arching a brow at his guest, and shook his head.
“It’s so easy to break people like yourself, Damien. Why is that? A little thing gets in your way, some little detail that you should have figured out by now and yet haven’t, and out go the lights. Truly unfortunate.”
“Perhaps he needs to be shown the way, Master.” Taeda’s voice was dripping with adoration as she crossed the bedroom floor to stand in front of Damien and glower over him. She had ditched her uniform in favor of a robe made of some thick fabric—Damien wasn’t sure, but thought it might be velvet—that rustled when she moved. It was left hanging open in the front, and she either hadn’t bothered or hadn’t wanted to wear anything underneath. The red stitching running along the hems of the dark fabric seemed to glow, the shapes it made writhing as she moved, seeming to write out blasphemous messages.
Damien realized he was quite likely hallucinating, but he had reached a point where he no longer cared. After being captured—and so easily—by Taeda and having had to listen to Karim—or Karesh or Lintar or whatever other name he felt like using at the moment—explain to him just how he’d been wrong, there wasn’t much left in him anymore.
“Perhaps you need to remember who the master is, Taeda. Did I not tell you that you should be careful of walking in unannounced? Have you any concept what would have happened if the talu`shar had been open when you came in?” Lintar spoke with genuine fury in his voice, gesturing toward the painting hanging on the wall. The colors and shapes within it were swirling in hypnotic patterns and shifting through the spectrum. They grew brighter when Lintar raised his voice, the motion looking angry and frenzied. As his face calmed, so did the surface of the painting.
Taeda bowed her head. “Sorry. But why do we have to keep him alive, anyway?” She glared down at Woods, her face a memory of the prom queen she might have been, staring down the geek who might have tried to ask her on a date. Woods didn’t even raise his eyes.
Lintar laughed, shaking his head. “Because I enjoy watching him like this. Broken, shattered, he can’t bear what he has brought about. I want to make sure he witnesses every last second of it. Besides, he’s helpless anyway. Even if he hadn’t fled into his mind—and don’t tell me you aren’t in there, Damien, because I can smell you scurrying about and trying to shut down, and I won’t let you—his power is gone. Isn’t that right, Damien?”
Damien continued to sit still, as if he hadn’t heard. He’d been staying that way, allowing Karesh to think he was broken, playing the good role, for an hour, and would do it for hours more if he had to. He was just waiting for an opening, or some indication of what had happened to the others. He’d seen Taeda shoot Parker; he was sure of that much. As for what had happened to the other two, he couldn’t say. He had felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck and then didn’t remember anything until coming to, sitting in this chair, with Karesh standing over him and smiling.
He wasn’t sure whether to buy into Karesh’s line of shit—according to him, the talu`shar had been pulling his strings the whole time, setting him up to play backup if Karesh failed. Damien considered pointing out that Karesh had failed, had in fact been killed by his possible replacement, and then thought better of it, but he had let him keep talking and continued playing the part of the distraught pawn. The more Karesh babbled, the better shot Damien thought he had at getting something out of it, something he could use.
“Yes, fine. Sit and stare at me like you can’t see me, Damien. It’s what you do so well, isn’t it? Pretending there’s nothing wrong?” Karesh smiled and shook his head. “Enjoy the view, then. I’ll be back.”
He strode out of the room, Taeda pausing only long enough to spit in Damien’s face before following him. Once they were gone, he wiped the spit away and glanced toward the painting.
He could tell it was getting closer; the canvas seemed to be bulging out of the frame, and the colors were moving much more rapidly. He still didn’t know for sure what would happen when it was opened, but he was equally certain that it was still a bad thing. Whether or not he’d been its unwitting servant for the last several years, he had a responsibility to make sure it didn’t get opened—a responsibility, ironically enough, that had been given to him by the very thing that he meant to destroy, if he could.
I just wish I knew what the hell they did with Drak and Sheila. He didn’t think they’d been brought there—not alive at least, though it hurt to admit that—because he couldn’t sense either one of them. That didn’t necessarily mean much though. Taeda and Karesh—and probably Manderly as well—were putting off so much static that it was nigh impossible to tell what was around, let alone even try to tap in. He’d have risked the headache for it, but he didn’t think it would make a difference. They were too strong, and with the painting right in front of him, it wouldn’t matter anyway. All he would get out of it was the chance to die quickly, if he prodded too hard and the talu`shar noticed.
That left him without a lot to do. He could sit in the chair and continue to play dumb, hoping for that opportunity to come up. He could try to force the issue, but he figured they’d left him in there unguarded just to see if he’d try something stupid. The talu`shar was wakeful enough to notice its surroundings, so he doubted that he’d have very long to get anything done if he tried.
“Don’t look so depressed, Damien. Eats years off of your life, frowning like that.”
The voice came from behind him, probably the bedroom door if he had the layout right in his head. It was followed by a giggle that sounded hollow and rotten inside. Nothing alive or sane could laugh like that.
“Sheila.”
He heard her footsteps on the floor, squishing and cracking as she walked around the chair to face him. She dropped to her knees to put herself at eye level. The smell coming off of her had abated, but the cost had been more of her looks. Apparently, whatever decomposition was happening in the body, it was running a lot faster than it should have been. The bullet he had put through her head probably hadn’t helped matters much either; that side of her face was rotting away even faster. He thought if he looked long enough, he could watch it happening.
He wondered how it was possible that she could be here like this. It wasn’t the corpse that had been lying on his table in the basement on that day, he was sure of that—if nothing else, this girl looked like she had been a little heftier than Sheila, an
d the hair color was wrong—but it was still Sheila inside, somehow. But none of the others had looked like her either, and all of them had been her on the inside. Was possessing a corpse different? He didn’t know. He just stared at her.
The Sheila-thing shook her head, clicking her tongue against the side of her mouth, a process he could watch through the hole in her cheek if he felt like it. Doing so made him feel slightly nauseous, so he looked away.
“Don’t you love me anymore, Damien? Must I always drag you back to me the hard way?” The voice had that same rotted tone underneath, like sewage caught in a grate, even though the tone on top sounded almost jovial. “I suppose I must.”
He forced himself to look at her again, to stare into the cloudy lenses that the thing called eyes. “What did you do with the others?”
She laughed again. She got up and strutted around the room, running the fingers of her good hand over the furniture. Damien noticed that everything she touched developed a coating of something green and putrid. That, when combined with the squishing sounds she made when she moved, made him wonder just how much actual meat there was in that body, as opposed to just pus and guts. Not much, he guessed, judging by the sound.
She cocked her head at him and reached up with her other had to brush the hair from her face. For a moment, he was so wrapped up in the gesture—a classic Sheila pose—that he forgot he was talking to someone else’s murdered corpse, animated by a spirit that meant him no good at all. Then she bared her teeth at him, which were covered in moss and with maggots squirming on the gums, and any momentary lapse faded.
“I saw her. Is that the company you keep these days? Since I died, you truck with sluts like that? Since you killed me, since you made me into this?” She shook her head, making little tsk-tsk noises. “You should be thanking me. Thanking us.”
“For what? Killing my friends?” he goaded her, hoping she would tell him that they weren’t dead… yet. After all, isn’t that how the villains always talk? Perhaps, but apparently not in this piece; the Sheila-thing’s only response was more laughter.
“You always did tend to be a pessimist. Keep thinking like that. It’ll make life easier for you.” She ran a rotted hand down the side of his face, her fingers leaving bloody trails on his cheek. He thought he could feel maggots squirming in the mess. “Though, it isn’t much like you to refer to anyone as your friends, Damien.” She arched one part of her face—the eyebrow was half gone—and smirked at him. “Are you slipping, hmmmm?”
“Go to hell.” He jerked his head away from her, focused his eyes on the floor, and studied the patterns he saw there. It was one of those horrid carpets that only seem to appear in casinos and shitty hotels, the ones that look nice and fancy until you really look at them and see how natty they are, how repetitive the patterns are.
“You forget, sugarpie.” She twisted her fingers into his hair and yanked his head back up to face her, the muscles in her forearm giving way from the strain and sloughing off the bone, hitting the floor with a sickening plop. Despite that, her grip was strong and unforgiving, locking him in place as easily as a vice. “Been there, done that. And you’re the one that put me there.”
Damien decided that he had had enough—enough of the accusations, enough of the bullshit, and enough with sitting in this goddamn fucking piece of shit uncomfortable chair. He pulled everything he could, sinking his mental fingers as far deep into himself as they would go and tearing at himself. He felt something inside his brain break, felt pain like he had never known could have existed—worse, even, than when he had tried to dispose of Karim—and saw a flash of light in front of his eyes. He let it loose, the only intent to send Sheila back to wherever she was supposed to be. He could feel the power pouring out of him, coming out not as light or telekinetic force, but as a wave of sound that rumbled up through his throat and burst his vocal chords as it came.
The windows of the room trembled, vibrating with the sound. They shattered, exploding outward in a shower of glass with the Sheila-thing caught in the middle of it. Her voice was raised in a scream, but it couldn’t compete with the sound Damien was making. Somehow, it seemed to enhance it, instead. The colors in the painting began to swirl faster, and Damien turned his face in that direction briefly. The sound hit the talu`shar full force and knocked it from the wall, leaving a ragged hole in the plaster behind it. The floor began to fray and tear, seeming to unweave itself like a movie played in reverse. Then the full force of all of it hit Sheila.
What he was feeling was unbearable; he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was going to do to her. He found he didn’t particularly care one way or the other, and this surprised him. After spending so long supposedly trying to find a way to take it back, to turn back the clock and set it right, he discovered there wasn’t much room for sympathy in his heart—just the pain and the rage that he was turning on her in full force. He could feel his innards fighting him even as they collapsed, strip-mined for the life force they contained, and knew this time really would be the end. He’d gotten a day pass on the last shot because they had still wanted to play with him, but this time, there’d be no coming back. This was for keeps.
The Sheila-thing was undergoing much the same change as the rug, or seemed to be at first glance. After a moment, he realized the opposite was happening to her. Everything around him was running backward—hell, maybe he was, too—but the Sheila-thing looked like someone had put her on fast-forward. Flesh, muscle, pus, and maggots were falling off of her in copious amounts, piling on the floor and turning even more putrid before going black and useless. The bone structure underneath was changing in color from ivory to a jaundiced yellow, developing cracks and erosion as it started to fall apart.
He felt the skin at his fingertips begin to split and peel back, leaving raw muscle and exposed nerves to scream with him. The further Sheila’s decomposition went, the more of his own flesh went to fuel it, until he more closely resembled an anatomy chart than a human being and she was little more than a shrieking skull sitting atop her own remains.
Trying to shut it off was impossible; Damien knew this and accepted it even as whatever the process was began to cannibalize his eyes and tongue. Still, the sound poured from him, the room around them reverting to shag carpet and freshly installed windows, the television replaced by a stereo, and the air-conditioning unit fading from view with an old paddle fan taking its place a moment later.
Fighting for every ounce of movement left in him, Damien managed to rise, ignoring the shrieks of pain and protest from every part of his body. He lifted his left boot, an action he had taken millions of times in his life that now seemed to require Herculean effort, and brought it down against the stolen skull from which Sheila still screamed.
Should have done that in the first place, he thought as he died. He almost welcomed it, seeing no real reason to fear. His part in the play was finally over. But as final darkness overtook him and he felt his last breath tear through what remained of his lungs, as his body tottered and then fell atop Sheila’s remains, he heard the laughter of the Beast and knew where he was headed.
Chapter 37
9:30 am, December 25, 1996
Drakanis’s eyes opened, and at first, he thought he must be dreaming. While he expected to see the blasted metal walls of the morgue’s freezer, given a best-case scenario, he appeared to be back in his own bedroom at home. After casting his gaze around for a moment, he realized that it wasn’t even the bedroom as he had last seen it, but rather the bedroom as it had been before everything went so wrong. The sheets were the ones Gina’s mother had given them before she had died, and the orchids were in the vase on the left side of the bed, as they always had been during their marriage.
The fact that the left side of the bed was rumpled and still radiating a small amount of body warmth registered with him next, alongside the fact that he could smell something cooking.
T
his isn’t right, and you know it; you haven’t slept in this room since . . . well . . . since before. And the orchids haven’t been in place either. As for the warmth in the bed and the smell of breakfast, just a dream. One of those things bit you, and you’re lying on the floor, in shock, and daydreaming.
His mind seemed to think this was the proper explanation, but his body pulled itself out of the bed on its own, forcing him to look down. He saw no injuries, no scars—not even the ones on his left arm where he’d put his fist through a window three days after the murders. When he took a moment to flex his left hand and take a look at it, he noticed there was no missing pinky either, just his watch, proclaiming the date as December 25, 1996.
What in the . . . ? He was now certain that his mind was playing tricks on him; there was no way this could be real. Nobody dreamed three years of living in hell, maybe a night or two, hell, maybe a week, but not three years.
He reached down and pinched himself, trying to make the vision go away, trying to get back to the morgue, to where Woods needed him, to where everyone needed him. Nothing. He was still standing in his bedroom, smelling bacon and breakfast cereal wafting up from downstairs.
Maybe you should check that out, some deep part of his brain told him. Maybe. Or maybe not. Then his stomach rumbled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten anything since two days prior—three, if you believed the first part of the date on his watch—and that decided him. He began creeping down the stairs, honestly expecting his surroundings to evaporate at any moment.
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