The room was so thickly covered with web, if he didn’t know any better, he might have thought this was some kind of nest.
Or was it a nursery?
White everywhere. Looks like a winter wonderland. He was scanning frantically through the shadows for Kavi. Where the hell was he? Could feel his pulse pounding in his neck. She was here somewhere, he knew. Hiding, waiting for the right moment to…
But so was Kavi and he could hear his voice, low and muffled as though something where in his son’s mouth, preventing him from calling out.
A clump of bed sheets caught his eye. Tyson fixed the beam of his flashlight on that spot in the corner. The pile was trembling, ever so slightly. And the shape was oddly human. Tyson cut across the room.
But those weren’t bed sheets covering Kavi. His son’s arms were splayed with that same heavy filament that now covered the entire cabin. Another bunch was covering Kavi’s eyes and mouth. Tyson tore at the webs and gasped. His son’s eyes were bulging with terror. That cherubic little face that used to look up at him with such adoration, now looked drawn and gaunt.
An image of that cadaverous look on Dr. Hunter’s tired face before he died flashed before his eyes. It wasn’t blood she was after. She was draining their life force.
“Daddy?”
Kavi’s voice sounded dry and brittle.
“Hold still, son, I’m getting you out of here.”
Kavi shook his head. “She won’t let us leave Daddy…”
Tyson put the speargun on the ground and began tearing wildly at the sticky webbing. “The hell she won’t.”
The strands coupling Kavi’s arms to either wall were particularly strong. Just then, Tyson heard Kavi’s sharp intake of air. He could see the terror in the boy’s eyes as he peered at something over his shoulder. The angle of his gaze was steep. Which meant it was either very tall or…
Tyson was turning when he felt the hot needle pierce his left shoulder. Then a moment of blinding pain before he was lifted up off his feet and thrown against the far wall. He landed in a burst of agony. Across from him, at the other end of the room, now lay the flash light and, more importantly, the speargun. The beam from the light was pointing in his direction, casting a sick glow, making whatever was standing before it all the more gargantuan and grotesque. Tyson stumbled to his feet. His hand found the hole in his shoulder. Around the wound, his shirt was torn and saturated with blood. The creature was coming toward him now. On its head was a patch of long brown hair and he knew right then that this wasn’t some new nightmare. This was his mother. Not the young version that had been masquerading as Judy Stahl. No, this was the real her. Who she was on the inside.
Her legs were long and chitinous, bowing out widely until they touched the floor where they came to narrow points. Her belly was bloated and covered in giant pustules. She was staggering toward him and he could hear the sick sound her new feet made as they bore deep gashes into the floorboards.
She stopped, not ten feet from him and for the first time he could see her face and the sight sent a paralyzing chill coursing through his body. Her head looked like an inflated school yard kickball, except this ball was covered with eyes, short bristly hairs and a tiny mouth filled with sharpened teeth. Below he could see her dark glistening belly undulating.
“Mommy’s pregnant again, honey,” she said and even in the dim light he could see the corners of her vile mouth turned up into a smile. “I’ve waited so very long for another chance to have a family. You’re going to have brothers. Lots and lots of brothers. I love you so much. But after everything I’ve done I’m sure you already know that, don’t you?”
“You’re a liar! You don’t love me.”
The Brenda thing recoiled, as if in pain.
“Of course I do,” she said pleadingly, drawing out the words into a hiss.
“I’ve learned a thing or two along the way and I know that just as you gave birth to me, I gave birth to you.” The blinding pain in his shoulder was making Tyson’s vision go blurry and he squeezed his eyes opened and closed, fighting to stay conscious. “That monster inside you that I knew as a child became a part of the new and improved Brenda and when I cut you off from your physical body, well, the real you just started showing up in spades, didn’t it? And now you’ve become on the outside what you always were on the inside.”
He could see her eyes, all six of them, blinking.
To Tyson’s immediate right was a block of cutting knives. If he could prevent her from seeing what he was up to, he might just be able to slide one of the blades free.
“You’re in control now, just like when Alexander and I were young.” He could see those leathery things she called lips quivering and he knew he had her, if only for a moment. His hand closed around the knife handle. He tried to nudge it out, but it wouldn’t move. The angle was making it difficult. He remembered those two dead policemen and the bullet holes in the wall. Unless he could get the drop on her, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Killing Kavi and me. None of it will undo what you’ve become now and that’s the second chance you were really after, wasn’t it? Now you’re nothing more than a bloated dust mite. I’ll bet this wasn’t how you thought things would play out when you tricked me into cutting your life support, was it?” Tyson started laughing hysterically.
She didn’t like that, not one bit and she was coming toward him now—a great looming bulk with clawed hands and a mouth full of razor blades.
The knife was still stuck.
She was so close he could smell her now. The odor was pungent, like a butcher’s shop on a sweltering summer day.
The edges of her forearm were serrated like the sharp side of a whale harpoon. It would slice through his flesh nice and easy, but when she pulled it out his insides would spill out onto the floor in a hot mess. She skittered toward him on her two insectile legs, her arm poised for the killing blow and suddenly Tyson knew what he must do.
“I love you.”
She hesitated. It couldn’t have lasted more than a second, but it was enough. Out came the kitchen knife and Tyson swung it through the air, cleaving Brenda’s forearm in two. She looked down in disbelief as a foul black liquid pumped from the severed stump.
She shrieked, giving Tyson just enough time to swing back around and plunge the knife into her fattened belly. The blade made a wet sound as it broke her skin and tore at whatever monstrosity lay inside her. Tyson’s hand with the knife was buried deep in her abdomen when Brenda swung her mangled stump into his chest and sent him flying across the room. The knife clattered onto the floor as Tyson hit the wall. The impact shook the entire cottage.
“Daddy? Daddy, are you okay? Please get up. Please!”
Tyson shook the fog loose in his head. He could hear the Brenda thing coming at him. Her breathing was labored and wheezy and he was vaguely aware that she was badly hurt, but hurt wasn’t dead and dead was the only way they would be safe.
Kavi started screaming.
Lying not a foot away was the loaded speargun and the quiver of bolts. Tyson picked it up and fired. The spear brushed the side of her head, ripping a handful of matted brown hair out before the bolt thudded into the wall behind her.
Nine feet away.
Tyson scrambled to reload. His hands shook as he fidgeted out another spear and set it in place. He swung onto his back and held the end in place while he drew the wire back.
Five feet.
He raised the gun and fired. The spear made a squishing sound as it punctured her chest, right between what might once have been a pair of sagging breasts. Brenda staggered back, wobbled, her feet cutting great holes into the ground as she tried to stabilize herself. Tyson was sure she was going to topple over. Any second now Brenda would fall face forward and be dead, but she didn’t. She was still coming.
Three feet.
There wasn’t enough time to load another bolt. His hands fumbled with the quiver. It was pointless. There wasn’t enough goddamn time. Brenda cocked her
good arm. It looked as though she was going to ram the needle point of her arm right down his throat.
Kavi was quiet. The boy could see what was about to happen and the terror of it had robbed him of his voice.
That smile was back on Brenda’s face as though she were admiring a fine piece of art hanging on the wall and in that freeze frame of time what a tableau they would have made. Tyson on his ass, arms stretched out before him. Kavi, his body encased except for the small of his face. And the bloated thing before them that was once Brenda, but which now looked less human than ever before. In slow motion she thrust her arm at Tyson’s forehead.
There was a swooshing sound, followed by what sounded to Tyson like a ripe fruit being whacked against the wall. The Brenda thing let out a deep sigh. She shifted the bulk of her monstrous weight and turned.
Someone else was in the cottage with them, but Brenda was distracted and for Tyson that was all that mattered. He grabbed a bolt, slammed it into place and pulled back on the wire until it cut deep lines into his hands. Brenda was about to strike her new attacker when Tyson took aim and fired. The bolt tore through the air and sliced through the back of Brenda’s skull and out her forehead. She turned and he watched in amazement as all six of her eyes seemed to roll up to whites at the same time. Then she collapsed onto Tyson, her sick torso convulsing as the tip of the bolt tore a long, ragged gash into the wall as she fell. The horrible black blood pumping from her severed arm was gushing out all over him.
Tyson rolled her body off of him and suddenly became aware of two things. The first was that the kitchen knife he had pried free was now sticking out from the back of Brenda’s neck. That one surprised him. The next one shocked him.
Chapter 45
“Well, Tyson, aren’t you going to say hello?”
“Ruma?”
From behind him. “Mommy Mommy Mommy!”
“Yes honey,” she said, stepping past Tyson. “It’s going to be all right.” She was pulling at the steel like webbing that covered Kavi. But she didn’t need to pull very hard. Already white wispy ghosts were raining down all around them and Tyson knew before long all of this, including Brenda, would begin to fade and then disappear completely.
“But I saw you…in the morgue.”
She giggled softly and that hauntingly familiar sound brought tears to his eyes.
“You always were one to miss the point even when it was staring you flat in the face,” she said. He could hear her Bengali accent coming through loud and clear.
Kavi was free and he leapt into Ruma’s arms sobbing. They were hugging for some time before Ruma gently coaxed his arms from around her neck.
“I’m so sorry,” Tyson said. “For everything.”
She looked at him lovingly.
He felt a wave of emotion about to sweep him out to sea. “I never got a chance to tell you that. I was stupid. I was too wrapped up in my own bubble to see how much I was hurting the two of you. Can we start again? Wipe the slate clean like none of this ever happened?”
She smiled.
He pulled Kavi and then Ruma close to him and held them tight. He wanted nothing more than for this moment to last forever, but even now he could feel his throat begin to tighten. His lungs were closing up on him and he reached into his pocket for his asthma pump. He was almost out with it when Ruma’s hand closed over his.
She knew him better than anyone else, didn’t she? He let the pump fall to the floor, but not before noticing Ruma’s hand.
“You’re wearing your wedding ring.”
She looked at him as if he had suddenly lost his mind. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
And suddenly Tyson knew and the realization felt like a giant boulder had come crashing down on his chest, snapping his rib cage in two and squashing his heart flat. Surely he should have realized it before. The resemblance was uncanny, she felt so incredibly warm and alive, but this wasn’t the real Ruma. He suddenly remembered leaving Sunnybrook and that woman in the parking lot he thought was Ruma. How quickly he had dismissed the idea. No, this Ruma was from that rosy little room in his mind where the ones he loved were kept safe and sound and timeless. Here the last eight months of his life was little more than a vague dream. It was from there that she must have crossed over when he lost consciousness in Sunnybrook, only moments before his mother had stopped breathing for good.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Tyson held both of them for a long time, wishing when he opened his eyes again that she would still be there.
Chapter 46
Nine months later
Tyson was stoking the fire when Kavi came in from outside, thick wet snow caked onto his jacket and pants. He looked like the world’s smallest Yeti.
“Cold out there, Buzz?”
“Yeah, Dad, it’s sick.”
Tyson raised an eyebrow. “Sick?”
“You know, Dad.”
“So I take it you had fun playing? How’s Billy from next door?”
A wide smile grew on Kavi’s face and even now after all these months Tyson could still see shadowy lines under his son’s eyes. “We’re building a snow fort,” Kavi said.
“Oh, sounds like fun. It’s nice and toasty by the fire.” Tyson went and helped Kavi out of his snowsuit. A teardrop of snot hung on Kavi’s upper lip. He sneezed and half of it landed on Tyson’s jeans. They both burst out laughing. Tyson pulled some Kleenex from his back pocket and wiped his son’s nose and then the smear on his jeans.
“Don’t worry, Buzz, won’t be long now before this cold’ll work itself out of your system.”
Kavi went and sat by the fire sipping at a mug of hot chocolate.
Tyson stood looking at his son, thankful. For a while, the police had been swarming around him like flies on shit. He must have been interviewed a dozen times. In the end, they had pinned the whole thing on Dr. Hunter. And it was at about that time that Tyson had seen an ad on Craig’s List for a small country home on Lake Joseph. He didn’t really mind that it was in the Catskills. He had also finally come to understand—and not just suspect—that while the Noxil might have opened that doorway between worlds, it was Brenda who kept it from closing. Of course, since then he still had the odd unsettling dream or two about that night at Skip’s cottage. And yes, occasionally he woke up screaming, his hands grasping at imaginary spearguns, but it hadn’t been long after the incident that his life had started returning to normal. That is to say, his dreams, good and bad, were finally staying in his head where they belonged.
Kavi and he had both started seeing therapists soon after Ruma finally disappeared. She had woken in the middle of the night to get Kavi a glass of water and vanished on her way back to bed. Tyson had called out to her more than once before he understood what had happened. Lying alone, he had wept quietly until morning.
Kavi looked back at him and smiled.
Tyson winked. “How’s the hot chocolate, Buzz?”
“It’s great,” Kavi said through a foamy mustache.
On the mantle above the fireplace, two tiny action figures stood staring at both of them. One was missing his left arm and Tyson yawned, looking forward to sliding into his warm bed for a good night’s sleep.
An excerpt from Malice by Griffin Hayes. Now available for the Amazon Kindle.
Chapter 1
The stranger grinned and his sunken cheeks made his face look like a skull.
“Go on, Lysander,” his father, Glenn, scolded. “Shake the man’s hand.”
Lysander Shore’s family hadn’t been in Millingham longer than a week, but he was sure somehow he had met this man somewhere before. Maybe filling bags at the grocery store or delivering mail down the street? This was going to torture him the whole day.
Lysander stuffed his lunch into his knapsack and then slowly held out his hand. The cold palm that slid into his a second later made Lysander’s stomach turn. His father must have noticed the discomfort on Lysander’s face, because Glenn’s cheeks flushed with embarrass
ment. At least for once it wasn’t about Lysander’s black nail polish or matching combat boots.
“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Glenn said, clearing a place on the couch where the stranger could sit. “We’re still getting settled.”
A pin on the lapel of the man’s suit jacket read “Peter Hume” and below that “Zellermann’s.” He was probably an insurance guy, Lysander thought, here about the fire that had destroyed their old house in Hayward.
The two men spoke about how the house was a complete write-off, his father running through a list of things that were destroyed, when Peter Hume peered up at Lysander. The odd glint in his eye instantly made Lysander uneasy.
“Do you have any pictures?” Hume asked Glenn. “So we can take inventory of what you lost.”
“Yeah,” Glenn said, looking at his watch. “You need those now? I gotta leave for work.”
Hume smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid so.”
Glenn sighed, as he always did when asked to do something menial but necessary, and headed for the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”
“Earl Grey would be nice.”
“That’s the only tea we have,” Glenn said robotically. He seemed dazed. Or was he hypnotized? Lysander couldn’t tell which.
Hume’s eyes were shining. “Legend has it an old Chinese man gave Lord Grey the recipe for saving his son’s life, if you believe that sort of thing.”
His father shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen.
Now Lysander and Peter Hume were alone and the air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Slowly, the smile disappeared from Hume’s face.
“You were warned not to come here,” Hume said, his voice gravelly, almost hoarse. Lysander peered down at Hume’s scalp and saw the man’s translucent flesh squeezing the plates of his skull together.
Lysander’s breath caught in his throat.
“He knows, Lysander.” Hume’s voice was more forceful. Desperate. “Knows you’re here. He knew the minute you arrived. Felt you crossing the town line, just like I did…”
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