by Alan Spencer
The moment Gibbs lifted his head up and spoke to him, Mark wasn't hearing what the man was actually saying. A different voice had dubbed over the man's voice, and this one was younger, one of virile contempt and deceitful pleasure. "You're saving no one, Mark. Go ahead, try and kill me!"
Then Gibbs was himself again, though not completely. The man had no control over his limbs. Swimming through the tide of books that kept growing, Mark could only watch the man sink into the pile and slowly vanish.
Gibbs shouted for his life, in terror. Then Mark heard nothing else. He attempted to shove aside the books to reveal a section of Gibbs's body, but he wasn't to be found. Only more and more books materialized. Hundreds had amassed into thousands. So many, the rafters on the floor began to give to the weight. The walls were breaking. Several splinters that led up the ceiling forked into arterial patterns. The books were taking over. All Mark could do was steal the double barreled shotgun and race from the house right back into the harrowing darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
In total darkness, no way of knowing which way he was heading, Mark kept moving and thinking he'd hear Gibbs cry out for help at any moment. But nothing. No cries. Nothing from Gibbs. Mark was alone in this fight. He considered shouting for help, to find out if anyone was near him, when his right leg smacked into something solid. He traced the edge of it. It was a vehicle. The side was dented with numerous dings and dents. The metal was shredded in sections in talon swipe fashion. He touched an open door, then broken shards of glass. He winced as his fingertips were cut. The vinyl inside was torn apart, the tuffs of cushioning spread about like cottony guts.
A plastic bag crinkled. He touched what sounded like a bag of chips and an empty bag of beef jerky. This was The Blue Beast. The driver and passenger were missing. The man who smashed the trees had caught up with them. The double barreled shotgun he had was meaningless against the powerful man in the woods. His heart raced, imagining his friends murdered in such a brutal fashion.
They could be alive. You don't know.
Mark's hand jangled a set of keys that were hanging from the ignition. Mark decided to try and start the truck. After the first three tries, the truck didn't start. The engine reacted, but it just didn't want to turn over. He wasn't getting very far on foot, and so he continued turning the key. "Come on, come on. Start, or I'm screwed."
It still didn't start.
After minutes in the dark silence, he attempted to start the truck once again.
No luck.
Why won't this fucking truck fucking start?
He stepped out of the cab. Mark traced his way around the vehicle to where his double barreled shotgun was propped. He'd have to walk in the darkness and find his friends on foot.
Mark looked on at the pitch black stretch. He had no depth perception. Only his ears could serve as a warning if anything came after him.
This was not a good situation.
Mark returned to the truck and tried the ignition one more time.
A stroke of luck!
The engine kicked over, though it was labored and weak. The headlights allowed him to view out a matter of ten to fifteen yards out because of their busted up condition. He could see how the seats were torn up. No signs of blood or murder.
He prayed his friends were unharmed.
I'm not saving anyone by sitting here with my thumb up my ass.
Mark drove slowly, staying under thirty-five miles an hour. The wheels started to shake, and the engine stammered if he sped up any faster. As far as he could tell, the woods carried on forever. There was no light beyond the truck's. No shape of houses, or residential areas, or town. Mark did all he could do and kept driving until he finally found something of interest.
Mark grew tense as the right headlight flickered and went out only to tick back on minutes later. The lights were like a candle on a wick burning fast to the end. What choice did he have except to check it out? He was low on gas. The tank was barely a quarter full. He was spending gas thinking too long.
Punching open the glove box, he discovered a heavy duty flashlight with a metal casing. He twisted the top to turn it on. The purplish-blue light came on strength.
Then he caught the flickers of light again. Two more flickers, as if someone was using a lighter. What did it indicate? S.O.S.? Maybe stay the hell away?
It flickered two more times. He caught the outline of a shack. Mark didn't see who was in the window signaling him. Mark was convinced if he didn't check everything out, he'd be driving aimlessly down a road until the truck ran out of gas. Then what, huff it on foot?
He decided to take a chance.
Mark clutched the flashlight as a weapon. The truck's engine droned on, the sound slowly growing fainter with each step deeper into the trees. The shack was near his position. He crept to the window to take a peak when hands reached out to claim him, forcing him through the glass-less window. Before he could register the seizure, he was against the floor under two standing figures. One leaned down to him, a man, who whispered in a scolding tone, "Why did you come here? It could've followed you. Did you see it? Did you see anything?"
It was Jackson speaking, a dim version of himself viewable in the darkness. Aimee Scott was standing at the window, her eyes scanning the distance scrutinizing every detail and sound.
Whispering to Jackson, Mark asked, "What was I suppose to see?"
Aimee's voice was ragged with raw emotions. Fear. "No, don't tell him. If he doesn't know already."
Mark posed an easier question. "Are you guys hurt? Did that thing out there get you?"
"No, not yet." Jackson moved to the window and bickered. "You could've led it to us. Damn it."
Mark wanted to throw Jackson up against the wall and demand the truth. What were they withholding? He had been treated this way the moment he arrived in Meadow Woods, and he was damn sick of it.
"Listen, I don't know what's going on. That's the problem. Why did everything go dark? Something smashed up a bunch of trees and came after me. It was a person, I know that much. Someone with impossible strength."
Jackson closed in on him, twisting his arm behind his back and throwing him up against the wall. "You tell me what it was, or I force your arm out of the socket."
Aimee was whimpering, "It's coming back. It's coming soon."
Such rushes of pain radiated up and down Mark's back as if the man had already separated his shoulder from the socket, so Mark said everything he thought Jackson wanted to hear to end the agony.
"A man...somebody after me...after a woman...maybe he was after Cassie...he bashed the trees to pieces...beat up the truck...ran up the road...gone now...it's gone...it's all I saw...what did you see?"
Jackson let up his hold, apologized, and then directed Mark to the twin sized cot. Mark sat down, rotating his shoulder.
"You didn't see what Aimee was talking about. You must've seen something else. Something else out there was destroying the trees." Jackson drew Aimee into his arms. "It's not coming back. It's gone. It went back into the water. We're safe, Aimee."
"But it's not an ocean anymore. It turned back into a lake again." Aimee sounded like a child. "It's a lake again. It found us. Our child found us."
"It's not our child! Our child died before it was born. I drowned it. It was a premature baby. I made sure it was dead. I killed it. I saw it dead in my own hands."
"Say what it really was. It was a fucking abortion!" Aimee lashed out, pounding Jackson's chest with her fists. "Our child! It wasn't stillborn. You aborted it! You killed it! You fucking drowned it. But it's not dead! It's not dead! I know it's out there coming for us."
Her surge of concern had depleted whatever energies she had left. Aimee went limp in Jackson's arms. She kept crying softly, "Our child isn't dead."
Jackson set her on the bed and motioned for Mark to join him beside the window. The man confided in him.
"This situation isn't easy. It was better before this, when everything changed for the better f
or everyone. She'd watch the ocean, as if apologizing to it. I've never told anyone this, but Aimee and I were together when she was in high school. Maybe it was wrong what I did. I loved her, and for whatever reason, I couldn't get enough of her. She was happy being with me too. But she got pregnant, and she didn't tell me until she was so far along. We were out in these woods, where we always came to be together. She started to go into labor one night out here in the woods. The child was way too premature, or Aimee was too stressed, and her body couldn't take nurturing a child in the womb, and she lost it. The poor child was stillborn. I did what I thought was best, and I cleaned her up and I, I tied a rock to the child's body so it wouldn't float to the surface of the lake, and I sunk it to the bottom. I, I was so scared. I was young, and stupid, and what I did was wrong. I know that."
His upper lip quivered. "The moment everything went from red to black, our baby swam up to shore. The child came after us. It's a deformity. It's turned into a hideous creature."
Through the open window, a hand of dripping wet flesh and exposed sinew and twisted networks of veins and arteries encased in a film of a greasy Vaseline-like substance shot through the window and latched onto Jackson's head. With such power, it acted as a clamping vice. Its amphibious fingers squeezing through his flesh, breaking his skull—and what God-awful cracking sounds it made!—and squishing his brains between its fingers.
The beast shrieked from water-logged lungs, "Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch!"
Jackson's body gave a spasm death jerk. The mashed up head of ruined features sank to the floor along with the rest of him. Aimee hurled scream after scream. She was terrified of the indescribable thing in the window. The creature was a swollen human turned inside out, its skin flipped over to reveal its processes.
Mark lifted her up off the bed and forced her through the front door.
"Run! You have to run!"
Mark's hand squeezed her arm so hard, she jerked awake and finally heard what he was saying. Face wet with tears, face cringing in horror, Aimee obeyed him. Forcing her forward by the arm, they retreated into the woods. Mark forced her to match his running speed. Guiding her to the truck, the broken up headlights a beacon, he suddenly remembered the double barreled shotgun he left in the front cab.
He grabbed the gun, set her down in the passenger side, and before he could run around to sit in the driver's side, the tires peeled out.
Aimee abandoned him.
He chased after her in the road shouting for her to come back, don't leave him, the thing hadn't reached them yet, please come back, they were still safe, but there was no stopping her.
Mark was alone with the monster.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Standing in pure darkness with no way of seeing forwards or backwards, Mark poised the double barreled shotgun in front of him. Heir trigger, heir gut reaction, he knew the moment anything advanced upon him they would be cut in half.
Then the voice rang from the sky as if giant was looking down upon him, "IT'S ALL UP TO ME! I CONTROL EVERYTHING! I'M ENJOYING EVERY SECOND OF YOUR SUFFERING!"
Projecting so deep, the rumble causing the earth the shift like a weak earthquake, the words were ominous as they were powerful, brimming with contrition and morbid passion.
"Who are you? Mark shouted up at the sky. "Show yourself! What do you want from me?"
Speaking as if fighting off a fit of laughter, "You're the only one that can stop me. I have nothing to fear. You're insignificant. You'll be dead like the rest of them. It's all up to me nowwhat happens in this town."
Then it went quiet.
Then it was not quiet.
"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch!"
The thing plundered out of the woods. Aimee's child. Not a single shred of light available, he could only hear it, not see it. He had no concept of where it was coming or going. It could be a breath away from squeezing his head into pulp like he'd done to Jackson.
He decided the best plan of action.
Run.
Mark kept sprinting long after his body told him to quit. So entrenched in the darkness, it startled him to catch the flickers of fire burning ahead in the road. He charged towards it, kicking aside pieces of The Blue Beast on the way there. A bumper. A cracked side mirror. The crumpled hood. A burning tire. The wreckage was strewn about as if a great fist had come down and smashed the truck from the sky. The tree smasher was responsible. Among the flaming wreckage, a blackened crisp of a corpse still clutching the steering wheel connected to the dashboard appeared.
Aimee's corpse.
Hearing the corpse crackle and pop, he steeled himself so as not to get sick. She was featureless. Burned beyond recognition.
Mark shook his head in denial. Maybe it was death catching up to Meadow Woods. Taking revenge for postponing what should've happened a long time ago. They all had cancer. They should've died. Thinking like that, he re-considered the bleeding man in the woods and his request.
He was supposed to save everyone.
I can't even save myself.
Booming from the sky, "YOU'LL NEVER STOPME!"
Animosity and terror combined and clashed to create a concoction of fucked up determination. If only to find answers to the mysteries of Meadow Woods, Mark kept moving up the road, carrying the double barreled shotgun ready to open fire on anything that challenged him.
Nothing challenged him for at least an hour. The darkness seemed to stop time. It was impossible to know how long he'd been traveling on foot. His newfound determination had simmered down from earlier. Exhaustion swiftly took its place. His midsection swelled as every muscle in his torso was cramping.
What he experienced with his pancreatic cancer.
The cancer was coming back.
Laughter billowed in the sky, brewing up like storm clouds. The noise wasn't just directed at Mark.
The sky was changing.
A real storm was coming.
A soft light glowed in the sky. The faintest inklings of dawn. He could see again, though it was still very dark.
The voice in the sky had plans, and those plans required light.
Reyna Hawkins had been painting a beautiful set of doves flying in the air with her brush. She simply lifted her brush up to the sky, imagined it, and then they appeared. There was no ends to her imagination. The beauty of art. The impression of a message conveyed through creativity and the medium of color. Such beauty made her shudder. Colors were flesh. Flesh was her imagination. The vector her brush.
Reyna painted a man. He was naked. Standing afar in the woods, proud in his nakedness. She imagined him to be an Adam, and Reyna would be the eve. Reyna would tempt him into sex. He'd abide, and the love they'd make would be worthy of the canvas.
Bright blue eyes. Hazel brown hair. Hard chiseled body. Friendly, genuine smile. A smile that was for Reyna. She soaked it all in. They embraced, sharing hot kisses. His hands peeled off her clothing article by article until they were naked body to body. She moaned as he teased his tongue between her legs. He moved his tongue just the way she liked it. He knew the right moves to get her off. To extend the release, to tease, and to get her worked up for his cock.
She was panting, and stifling orgasms. They were grinding against each other, pelvis to pelvis. So warm, so hot, so potent, then his body was ice cold. Dripping maggots from his rheumy dead eyes, her face was spattered in the writhing creatures. The man's necrotic tissue stank. Parts of him broke free as rancid putty, as she shoved her lover away from her body.
The rot spread on the grass, where every insect and plant life shriveled into black husks and soon died. The lake in her view dried up, every fish a set of dried out bones.
Reyna heard screams off in the distance. She saw a row of houses, the edge of the residential neighborhood. Flesh, body parts, muscle tissue, and blood were flying between the houses, crashing through windows. People were being switched out of their body parts, turning them into hideous hulking monsters. As if these people, her neighbors, were hideous balls of
living fucked up clay.
She covered her eyes, her hands covered in blood, and she ran for the hills in terror.
Nothing could stop her imagination turned killing machine.
* * *
Velma Codstock was at the Howard Milton Library, along with a good percentage of Meadow Woods' female population. Velma had issued out books, and women were enjoying them in their own private corners. Today, Velma was being interrogated by an F.B.I. agent for smuggling dope into the United States. The interrogator, a handsome man who resembled her husband when he was in his early thirties and in the best shape of his life, had her chained to a chair. He kept removing article of clothing after article of clothing until she was naked.
"Where do we go from here, Nancy Young?" Nancy Young was the character's name in the book. "If you won't tell me what you know, what can I do to loosen up those lips of yours?"
Emma Harper from across the library screamed. Her head was put into a guillotine. Townspeople from medieval times cheered as she was beheaded.
Velma turned to the F.B.I. agent when the man asked, "What...do...we...do...with...you?"
This wasn't right. This wasn't a romantic scenario.
Emma Harper's neck stump continued to spit blood into the basket her head had rolled into after being cut off.
Helena Richards's limbs were tied to four horses. A man dressed in a black hood whipped the horses, each running in a different direction, and her body was torn in twain.
Velma started to scream.
The interrogator liked this, how his once cute eyes were now zealous with an unlocked sadism. "Oh, the things I can do to make you confess. I'll have you tearing the paint off the walls with your screams. Your suffering is only the beginning to a greater spectacle of insanity."
Dressed in a leather BDSM outfit, splayed on a bed, Regina Heffert was taking whip lashes to her body so hard they dismembered body parts.
The interrogator, "What will I do to get you to tell me about the drugs, you bitch?"
