by Barry Napier
Matt drove his elbow repeatedly into the man’s back. He heard a crunch on the third blow as something in the man’s back gave way. Still his attacker advanced, blinded by the evil and likely not even feeling the pain. Matt grabbed the man by the head and pushed him away hard. It allowed Matt only a single second to step away from the place where he had been pinned between the man and the bookcase.
It was then that Matt saw the bookend. It was wedged between Chaucer and a thin empty space along the case. Matt grabbed it, amazed that these simple metal bookends were still being used in a day and age when microfilm was being digitally filed into databases. Matt gripped the metal bookend by its back, pointing the lip of it out. When the man sprang at him again, Matt swung the bookend wildly, as if it were a dagger.
The metal lip tore into the man’s face. There was a wet splat as most of the flesh from the man’s right cheek splattered against the wall, covering most of a poster that demanded that all cell phones be turned off. Somewhere farther off, a woman screamed, and the noise was like a bomb in the library.
The man bellowed and came at Matt again. Matt hunkered down and waited for the blow to come. He timed it just right, lifting the bookend up in uppercut form. The lip of the bookend caught the man in the soft spot between his neck and jaw.
The man fell to the ground in a convulsion. His hand grabbed for the bookend, still embedded in his neck. Before he could grab it, Matt stomped his foot down on it. There was a grisly click as the lip of the bookend was pushed through the man’s neck and hit the floor on the other side.
The man let out a single cry that was mostly a gurgling of blood and rot that seeped from his lacerated neck in a black ooze. Matt took a deep breath, his body still not quite accepting the fact that he had just killed a man with an old metal bookend. Coupled with the almost maniacal gasping and weeping of a few of the others in attendance at the library, it was a truly maddening situation.
Overhead, the lights flickered again. The sound of machinery coming back to life filled the library. It sounded eerily loud over the muted whimpers of the library’s bystanders.
He glanced around the library. There were eight people, including the librarian, all staring at him with dazed looks. Matt then became very aware of the blood and gore on his hands and pants. This would obviously not look good in the eyes of the local police. He’d been caught up in violence yesterday, and now a man was dead at his hands.
An older man approached him, eyeing the corpse at Matt’s feet with muted wonder. “Are you okay, son?” the man asked.
“Yes. I had to… he wasn’t stopping.”
“What set him off?”
What had set him off? The rot in his face said it was evil, the same kind of evil that Mr. Dark could spread by a touch, or that humans could grow deep inside themselves.
But that answer led to a bigger question: What had set off the other people who’d gone mad in this town? What had set off that mob of would-be murderers? What had made Bill’s friend’s poker buddy try to slash a man to death and then kill himself? If it wasn’t the evil that showed up as rot, what could it be?
“I don’t know,” Matt said. But that wasn’t true. The pieces were beginning to fit together.
He heard sirens in the distance, closing in. He eyed the corpse at his feet and readied himself for the questions that were sure to come and the lies that he would have to tell.
13
It was nearly dusk when Matt returned to his motel room that evening. The cops had taken him from the library to a small police station, where the questions went on most of the afternoon. The coincidence that an out-of-towner had been involved in both a fatal skirmish and a mob scene had not been lost on them. While they didn’t accuse him of anything after hearing from the eyewitnesses in the library, Matt got the idea that the police force would be beyond pleased if he were no longer in Steeple the following morning.
At the motel, Matt washed the remainder of the dried gore from his hands and wolfed down a quick dinner of chips and a soda from the vending machine. Wasting no time, he then slung his canvas bag over his shoulder. The weight of the ax inside felt good. It was the first time since entering Steeple that he actually felt comfortable.
Within five minutes after he left the motel, three cop cars went blazing by, their sirens wailing.
He had more information now, and while recent events in town were still hazy to him, Mr. Dark’s appearance in the dream, coupled with the rot-eaten man in the library, now at least gave him a better idea of what he was up against.
As the town fell into night, he toyed with the idea of heading back to the home and introducing himself to Ophelia Ransom, assuming that Missy had gotten her friend into town safely. He decided against this, though. There was information he needed first. He checked the batteries in the flashlight he kept in his duffel and, satisfied that they were working, headed out in search of the Varner House.
He reached the edge of town unnoticed. He saw two more police cars blasting down the street as well as several people who seemed to be in a hurry. One of these, a tall man in his late forties, had a large gash along his forehead. Most of his face was covered in blood. In the early stages of night, it shone black as it ran down his face.
Finding the small dirt track that led to the house was easier than he had expected. He walked in a westerly direction, past the rear of Steeple Assisted Living’s property. Several blocks away from the home, the town began to thin out, allowing more space for houses and their lush front yards. These were the sorts of blocks and neighborhoods that were perfect for teaching kids to ride their bikes or for enjoying a Saturday barbecue with your neighbors. The streets were bordered with oaks and elms that hung like skeletal fingers towards the road, prepared to snatch up any travelers.
Two streets farther down, the houses came to an abrupt stop. Matt began to wonder if he had somehow gone the wrong way. He peered ahead in the darkness and saw a small break in the trees by the side of the road. He walked forward and saw an old forgotten pathway disappearing into the woods. If he hadn’t been specifically looking for the dirt road, he never would have noticed it.
He took out his flashlight, clicked it on, and shot the beam into the woods. The thin track wound into the forest, growing a bit more pronounced the farther back it went.
He started walking up the dirt road, and almost right away he noticed just how tightly the woods clung to its borders. That, along with the fact that the entrance was almost invisible from the main road, made Matt feel as if the town itself was trying to hide the road and the location to which it led.
Or as if the road was trying to hide itself.
Sirens blared in the distance, punctuated with a faint scream. Whatever was going on in Steeple was coming to a head. Matt broke into a mild sprint as he followed the beam of his flashlight. The light traced the edges of the barely there road in a ghost-like way.
After a while, the road widened, but the overhang of trees still kept out any light from the moon or stars. Matt might as well have been walking through a cave. He kept his flashlight beam low to the ground. He thought of Missy Crowder and her elderly friends of the fourth floor. He wondered where he might currently be in relation to the view outside that fourth-floor window.
After he had walked nearly half a mile, the forest dropped away on both sides as the road led out into a dirt field. He cut the flashlight off. The moon was bright enough to see by, and he’d just as soon not be seen by anyone else.
The ground rose upward slightly and then leveled off. Matt could make out the shape of the Varner House in the darkness ahead of him. More than that, when he looked to the right, he realized that he was literally walking within the confines of his own dream. Several yards away from him, he could see the portion of the forest from where he had spied the girls in his dream.
He looked towards the yard in front of the Varner House, almost expecting to see the five girls standing there. Of course, the yard was empty except for the falling white fence
and weak moonlight. He strode across the yard and walked up the porch stairs without hesitation.
He took his ax from his bag and nudged at the front door. Unsurprisingly, it did not budge. He walked across the porch and came to a single window that looked in onto what appeared to be a deserted den. He jabbed his ax at the glass, shattering it. He reached inside the pane, unlatched the lock, and raised the window from outside. With his ax in one hand and the flashlight in the other, he crept in through the window.
Inside, the house was eerily quiet. He thought he could still hear the jingling of the breaking window in the silence in crystalline echo. He stood motionless for a moment, scanning his surroundings with his flashlight. The room he stood in was in decent shape: The floorboards were warped in a few areas and the wallpaper was mildewed and cracked.
He knew there was no sense in doing a thorough investigation of the place. All he could see from where he stood were dust bunnies and spiderwebs. Instinct told him there was only one place he needed to check out: the upstairs room from which a dark figure had peered down onto the five little girls in his dreams.
Matt exited the empty den and found himself in a hallway. Here, the darkness seemed nearly impenetrable. His flashlight beam was dwarfed by the blackness but was just strong enough to reveal a staircase at the end of the hall. Matt walked up the stairs and onto the second floor. Here, the state of the house was much worse. There were holes in the floor and large chunks of plaster missing from the walls. Mold and mildew were everywhere, coating the walls in large patches in some areas.
The second floor held four rooms, but Matt made a straight shot to the end of the hallway and to the first room on the right. He swept the flashlight around the room and instantly saw where a large portion of the floorboards had rotted away. He looked to the window and saw that it was broken, the frame shattered and rotted away and the glass remnants hanging down like fangs.
He walked across the room to the window. Matt looked down into the yard and for the briefest of moments thought he could see the small shapes of five girls at play in the nighttime shadows. He pictured Tara falling to the ground, and his stomach seemed to flutter away from him for a moment.
As he turned away from the window and back to the room, he caught movement in the shadows directly across from him. As if knowing they had been seen, the shadows seemed to bulge out. Appearing like smoke from an extinguished candle, a girl stepped out of the shadows, as if she had been birthed by them. She looked at him with wide eyes and reached for him like a drowning victim.
Matt dropped the flashlight and used his free hand to choke up on the ax. Logic told him that this was nothing more than an illusion brought on by shadows and his fear, but experience told him that this was wishful thinking.
It was undeniable: There was a girl standing in the far corner of the room. Her neck was twisted at an impossible angle, making it seem as if she was forever giving an inquisitive look. Her eyes were frozen in fear, and her lips looked to have been gummed together with a massive amount of dried blood. The hands she reached out towards him were nothing more than a black-and-red mess of tissue and bone. Her entire chest looked to be caved in and hollow.
“Hello, Tara,” Matt said.
The girl’s eyes widened even more. She nodded her skewed head and opened her mouth. Matt could hear the crackling noise of the dried blood breaking apart from her pale lips.
“You can see me?” she asked in a voice that made Matt think of a dried creek bed.
Matt nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m so glad,” she said. “No one ever sees me. Except that bad, nasty man. He’s been coming to visit me a lot lately.”
“Who?” Matt asked. “Who has been coming to see you?”
Tara pointed into the far corner, which looked to have been painted in darkness. Matt looked in that direction and watched as a figure stepped out.
“That would be me,” said Mr. Dark.
“What are you doing here?” Matt asked. But he knew all to well—the rot on the man in the library had finally given him the proof he’d needed that Mr. Dark was involved in whatever was happening in Steeple.
Mr. Dark only shrugged. From behind Matt, he heard Tara Idleson whimper. Although he knew it would be of no use against Mr. Dark, Matt tightened his grip on the ax.
Mr. Dark smiled at him and looked out the window, down into the yard. From elsewhere in Steeple, a new batch of police sirens blasted. A series of pulsing blue and red lights could just barely be seen through the dark shapes of the forest beyond the broken window.
“I’ve come to Steeple for the same reason as you,” Mr. Dark said. “For the vibrant social life.”
Matt turned towards Tara and saw that she had slumped to the floor. She was huddled in the corner and weeping. “Just… you have to help them,” she said. “Please, help them.”
And then, just as quickly as she had appeared, Tara Idleson was gone. She vanished into the wall, leaving behind only a fading sniffle and a sob.
“Don’t you just hate it when they do that?” Mr. Dark asked.
Then, with a mocking little wave, he vanished just as Tara Idleson had moments ago.
“Son of a bitch,” Matt said, slamming the axhead down hard on the floor. The board he struck splintered and cracked beneath him. Mildew came up in tufts in a black cloud. Matt watched the dust and grime of it settle to the floor in the flashlight beam, not liking the looks of it.
Help them…
Matt rushed back downstairs and left through the window he had broken. He then made his way back through the forest toward the screaming sirens that still filled Steeple.
Before he reached the main road, the gunshots had started.
14
Even before Matt could make it back into the central area of town, he got the impression that Steeple might not make it through the night. In the ten minutes it took him to sprint from the exit of the small woodland road to the outskirts of Main Street, Matt had heard gunfire on three occasions, a small explosion, and a series of new police, ambulance, and fire department sirens.
He didn’t know how long he had been in the Varner House—surely no more than an hour—but the night seemed to be moving incredibly fast. When he got back into the center of Steeple, the digital revolving clock outside the bank told him that it was shortly after nine o’clock. As he read the time, he saw three men outside the bank, looking for a way in. One of them had a brick in his hand and was eyeing the glass front door.
Matt headed off in the direction of Steeple Assisted Living. Almost right away, he passed two men ruthlessly beating another. The victim was on the ground curled in the fetal position as his two attackers delivered swift, savage kicks. Unable to allow the beating to continue, Matt stepped in.
He had placed his ax back in his bag so as to not draw any attention to himself, and he instantly regretted it. Acting as quickly as he could, he threw a hard punch that connected with the face of one of the attackers. The moment this man fell to the ground, the beaten man on the street rolled over and drew a gun. He smiled at Matt and his attackers with a grin that was half-in and half-out of his mouth. His lips were split, his jaw clearly broken.
The attacker standing next to Matt screamed as one of the bullets tore into his thigh. Matt hit the ground and scrambled away, taking cover behind the closest building. He heard someone scream from nearby as he ran quickly down a small alleyway and more gunfire sounded. He knew he was no longer heading in the direction of the home but didn’t care. Right now, he just wanted to survive.
He stuck to alleys and side streets, trying to stay in the light. He passed several domestic disturbances and even what looked like a makeshift version of Fight Club on someone’s front lawn.
He managed to make it to the retirement home without further incident. He walked up to its gates right around quarter after ten. As he walked by the gates and the fountain, two men stepped out of the shadows. They were both carrying guns, but one of them seemed to recognize Matt. Matt breat
hed a sigh of relief when he saw that it was Bill.
“Matt,” Bill said. “What in the hell are you doing out here?”
“I need to get in. Please… it’s urgent.”
Bill thought about this while giving his partner a furtive glance. “Fine,” he said finally. “But make it quick.”
“Bill, what the hell happened tonight?”
“No idea. Now, go on and get inside. It’s safer in there.”
Matt walked through the double doors and into the darkened front lobby. He dashed through the doors that led to the first-floor common area and called the elevator at the end of the hallway. Even as he rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, Matt could hear sirens and commotion from outside of the building, muted by the walls.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. He stepped out into the large lounge area and wasn’t at all surprised to see Missy Crowder sitting at the picture window. Beside her, Iris Spencer sat in her wheelchair. Gloria Clark was sitting listlessly on the couch behind them, staring blankly at the window. Next to her, perched on the arm of the couch, was a woman Matt had never seen before—Ophelia Ransom, he assumed. All four of them looked out the window and into the catastrophic night.
They all turned towards him. Missy and Ophelia looked rather pleased to see him. In fact, Ophelia Ransom regarded Matt as one might ogle a celebrity one had randomly run into on the street.
“My God, it’s him,” she said. The look on her face was a mixture of fear and excitement. “The man in the trees. He’s actually here?”
Before Matt could ask her what in the hell she was talking about, Ophelia was walking to him. He could tell she was slightly afraid of him, but she smiled at him regardless.
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said. “I’m O—”
“Ophelia Ransom,” Matt said, cutting her off. “I know.”
Ophelia chuckled at this. It was not a particularly pleasant sound. Her age showed clearly and the cackle-like laughter made her sound even older than she was.
