"Wait!" He hurried after her. "What –?"
She didn't stop walking. "I can't wait any longer." She looked over her shoulder. She was smiling. Her face was sad, worried, afraid. But the smile was real, and some of the things waiting to embrace her moved back a half-step, as if afraid of the genuine goodness of the emotion. "Thank you, Ralph," she said. "Thank you so much. But my family needs me."
He ran after her. Caught her arm. "How are you even going to do it?" He expected that to give her pause. You couldn't just burn a body to nothing, not unless you had a crematorium in your hip pocket.
Alyssa didn't even blink. She just responded, and her words carried the weight of a winning lottery ticket, of a heart rupture predicted and avoided. The weight of fate. "My husband works at some places that use flammable materials and explosives. I'll take the remains there."
"Do you know where to look for the remains?"
He was still holding her arm. She nodded and he again saw nothing real, but felt that echo. A moment of trapped fury –
(Who are they to do this to ME? To ME?)
– followed by fear –
(… way out, way out, where is the –)
– followed by pain.
(Burrrrrrniiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnng!)
Alyssa nodded. "I think I know where to look. I hope so." Now she was the one holding him. "Can you… can you come with me? Help me?"
Ralph looked beyond her. At the things reaching out. Not just for her, but for both of them. "I've helped enough. And I'm not getting any closer to what's going on than I already have." Alyssa's expression fell. So did Ralph's. That sense of fate was still there. He knew how she was going to respond before he said the next words. He said them anyway. He had to. Had to try. Maybe she'd surprise him.
"It'll find you. It'll kill you before you get close to its remains."
Fate was the winner. It always was. Fate was a prick that way. Alyssa shook her head. "I have try," she said.
Ralph couldn't be sure whether he was witnessing amazing bravery, perfect love, or gross stupidity. Perhaps all three. Maybe this was what mothers were supposed to be like.
He wouldn't know.
He let go of her, but gestured for her to stay. Then ran back to the gravestone with the scattered Scrabble tiles. The one next to it still held his pack and he ripped it open. After a moment he found what he was looking for inside. He brought it back and held it out. Something he had carried with him for his entire life, had never once gone without.
Now he would give it to her. It was time someone else hold it. That was the weight of fate.
Alyssa took the lighter from his palm, looking at him quizzically. A simple Zippo, steel and sturdy. Something made for lighting a lifetime's worth of cigarettes. Or sterilizing a body's worth of needles.
"I won't come, but maybe this'll help you start the fire at least," said Ralph
She turned again. This time she didn't walk, she ran. The wraiths opened like a second gate as she left. One that only allowed passage in one direction.
He shouted after her as she passed through the cemetery entrance. The final line between safety and danger.
"Hey! Some ghosts are stupid – all they want is the evil crap they wanted in life. But some get craftier, more powerful, more twisted. They make plans." She was disappearing in the night. In a moment she'd be out of sight. "Watch your back!" he screamed.
And then she was gone.
The dead followed. A few looked at him as they left. But for now they were not interested in a man – a boy – who cowered in a cemetery. They were only aware of a woman who fled toward something darker than any of them might ever hope to be.
Ralph thought he might be able to leave.
But he didn't.
He gathered his Scrabble pieces and sat alone in the dark. The only light he always carried with him – a Zippo lighter he'd swiped off his mother's nightstand when he left for no reason at all, just because it seemed right – was gone.
Seemed appropriate.
SIX:
FINAL EXPOSURE
Many know that Memento Mori is an appropriate title on several levels: both for its subject matter and the fact that Dr. Charles M. Silver died soon after finishing the manuscript. It is fitting, then, that this book end with the words, found written at the scene of Dr. Silver's death (the details of which have been gone over in disgusting detail by the news media and shall not be repeated herein). As with so many of the words he spent his last months with, these are a quote from the "work notes" of Matthew Hollis, Sr., recently revealed to be one of the 19th century's most prolific mass murders and, more importantly, one of its most gifted photographers:
I dont no if I kin do this much mor. I dont no if I kin evr stop. I seen things no one else nevr seen, and they will stay with me forevr, even beyond the grave. All the smiles and kisses of the childrun will be with me alway. My boy is one of them, but they are all my boys, all my gurls.
They ar mine forever. And I guess that makes me theres, to. God rest my soul.
- Silver, Charles M.,
(afterword by Dr. Charlotte Bongiovi)
(2003) Berkeley, California,
Memento Mori, Notes of a Dead Man,
Western University Press, Inc.
INTO THE UNDER
The door opened before Alyssa touched it. But the motion didn't strike her as haunted, it struck her as hungry. Still, she walked in. Prey that had not only sought its predator, but had pried open its jaws and insisted on being eaten.
She passed into the place that had been a home. And as she did she understood that it had ceased to be such a long time ago. Not with Blake's possession – if that was what it was. Not with her children's disappearance. Not even with the centipedes.
It happened when Blake stopped being a father. Stopped being a husband. When his concern for the bills and the business outweighed his concern for her and for the children. When his fear of the future outweighed any chance he had to enjoy the present.
His father had beaten him. Blake had never passed the favor on to them. But his fear of the event had paralyzed him over time. Had pulled him away from his family and his business and eventually turned him into the victim he had fought so hard not to be.
Blake's father had reached out from his grave long before Matthew Hollis Sr. ever had the chance to do so. And maybe that was why the old murderer finally had the strength to rise again. Maybe the dying of the last embers of their home allowed him to come close, like a beast in the night who would only attack when the campfire has dimmed.
All of it was academic. She wasn't here to figure out the whys. She was here to end it. To destroy the bastard who was taking her family.
Whoever that might be.
She stepped through the door. Shivered. It was cold in the house. Not just because the heater wasn't working, but a bone-cold chill of deep places, of a longtime grave unhallowed by tears or time.
It was dark. She flipped the switch by the front door. The light in the entry should have turned on, but nothing happened. She knew that would happen, but she wasn't about to be one of those idiots who goes into the darkness without at least trying for light.
So you tried. Now get going.
She moved down the hall. Expected to see the clock and the music box. But of course they wouldn't be here. Not out in the open. No, they would be hidden. In their places where they counted down the last moments of existence and made music as the images of the dead were burnt into forever.
She flitted her way to the bedroom. To Mal's room, to Hollis's room. The place where this would have to end.
She reached for the doorknob. Steeling herself for anything.
The door flew open. And Alyssa bit back a scream as someone barreled through the darkness at her.
But even as her body recoiled in terror, she also reached out. Because it wasn't a threat. It wasn't anything she had expected to find… at least, not so easily.
"Mal!"
Her boy was holding Ruthi
e. The grasp was awkward, but he knew to keep one arm behind her head so her head didn't loll forward. Still, the little girl was crying and Alyssa instantly started to look for places she might be injured, ways the carry might have hurt her.
It wasn't the carry, though. Her onesie was bright red, and as Alyssa watched her little body began twitching in the same seizure motions Alyssa had seen in the hospital.
And as bad as that was, it wasn't her priority.
Mal's eyes were wild, like he was somewhere else. "Where's Daddy?" she said. She had to shake him to get his eyes focused on her.
His head thrashed from side to side. "I don't know. We were in there, and I closed my eyes, and when I opened them the door was unlocked and he was just gone."
Ruthie's body unlocked, then went rigid again. Her pain-sounds grew.
Alyssa felt torn. She wanted to do the right and good and normal thing. But doing so would leave a doorway open that had to be slammed shut. Nailed shut and the door burned down.
She couldn't help her daughter. Not the way most mothers would.
"Mal, I need you to be a super-big boy." He managed a wide-eyed nod. "Take Ruthie to the Thayers next door and tell them to call 911."
"What about you?"
"I'll be right behind you."
He didn't move. Bouncing Ruthie the way –
(Blake did, the way a Daddy would do)
– someone much older would do. "You have to stop it, don't you?" he whispered. "The thing in Daddy? You have to kill it or he won't go away."
Alyssa tried to smile. Little boys should stay little boys forever. They shouldn't have to learn about death or violence or sex or leaving home or killing murderous ghosts that wanted to destroy them.
She failed at a smile. Had to settle for a kiss on her son's head. She stifled a wild urge to offer him a cookie for being so good.
"I'll be right behind you, honey."
She watched him go. The stairs. Passing the open space that led to the living room. She tensed, waiting for something to erupt from there, to grab him and Ruthie and drag them screaming into a nothing-night that would last forever.
It didn’t happen.
Mal left. He closed the front door behind him and Ruthie's screams faded away.
Alyssa turned back to her son's room. The door was already open. She just had to go in.
She did.
This time there was no fade in from the reality that was now to the history that had once been. Past had fully usurped present, and Matthew Hollis Sr. ruled in this place. The room bore no resemblance to the place her son had slept and played and laughed and sometimes cried. The window and bed and toys were gone. In their place: walls with old paint, kerosene lamps with flamelight that crawled on every surface.
A clock.
A music box.
A chair. It was covered with that black pall, uneven and strange.
The room was empty of anyone. She didn't know if she expected to see Blake or Hollis himself. Perhaps there was no difference at this point. She thought that was probably the case.
In the space where her boy slept, a crack marred the wood floor. The edges jagged angrily around a dark hole, and now she knew that the door to the room was not the mouth of this house. No, this hole was the maw, the splintered wood its teeth. The crawlspace below was a long gut, and any who entered would fade and disappear.
Matthew Jr. – dead.
Matthew Sr. – dead.
Come in, come in.
The void seemed to call her, and that scared her so badly that she couldn't move. But the paralysis only lasted a moment. Hollis wasn't here, but how long would he be gone? How many minutes would she have to find his bones and take them away and destroy them?
Was there time to save her family?
She moved. She was a wife, a mother. Momma Bear's family was threatened, and she wouldn't let anything get them.
The edges of the crack were just as rough as they looked. Simply running her fingers along them drew a half dozen splinters into the pads of her fingers. She tried to pull a few of the boards up, to widen the hole.
No go.
She looked into the darkness.
She couldn't see much. The darkness swallowed the lamplight only a few inches down. But the light was enough to see – sense – something down there. Many somethings. Teeming motion, masses of movement.
The centipedes. Soldiers defending their most important turf. What had started out as insects that hid in dark and damp places, feeding on smaller insects and perhaps on each other, had grown to be a part of the thing that held this house in sway. Bigger, stronger, in every way worse than they should be.
Alyssa went in. Pushing like a babe returning to the womb. Only there was no comfort to be found. Just darkness, pain.
The centipedes fell on her immediately. They dropped to her clothes, braided themselves into her hair. One twisted along the curve of her ear, and another felt its way into the hollow of her neck. A thick taste filled her mouth, acid burned her nostrils. She gagged. Vomit rose in her throat.
She didn't vomit, because the pain that came next constricted her esophagus.
The centipedes were biting her. Each bite felt like a bullet hitting her at point-blank range, and made all the worse because it happened in total darkness, preceded by nothing but disgust and terror. She thought she could feel a minute quiver before each bite came, as though the centipede was gathering strength, or perhaps experiencing a climax of pleasure as it delivered its venom.
The pain, the revulsion, should have stopped her.
My family.
She pushed forward. Eyes and nose burning, vomit rising and she biting it down, biting it down.
Mal.
No room for hands and feet.
Ruthie.
She had to push with her tiptoes.
Blake.
Reaching with fingers.
She pulled forward inch by inch in the dark. Didn't know how far she had gone, how far she would have to go. Forever forward, which also meant she would have to go forever back.
After long years of pain, though, she realized that the darkness was brightening. She thrilled with excitement, then with fear. Someone was coming! Hollis was here!
No. Neither was the case. It was just the light from the kerosene lamps in the room above, filtering down through the break in the floor and into the crawlspace. What had appeared perfect black now brightened to the last moments of sunset, the final seconds before nightfall, as her eyes adjusted.
She thought she had crawled miles. It had only been inches.
She pushed forward. And the trip was even worse now because she could actually see the centipedes that covered everything, that covered her. She plunged elbows down on them, her palms squashed them as she pulled forward. But as soon as she crushed them under her hands, those hands would disappear under a new carpet of the biting creatures.
She was slick with ichor. With her own blood from the bites.
Can't go on.
Have to.
Why?
The kids.
They're gone. Safe.
You know they're not.
Could be.
And Blake?
She felt forward. Sliding over slime. Trying not to scream in pain, but whimpering now as she slowly lost that fight.
She reached out again to pull herself forward, and this time felt something new. Not dirt, not writhing bodies.
Bones.
They were wrapped in bits of barely-there cloth. The charred remains of an outfit she had seen before, in a memory of a vision of a dream.
Her hands closed on the bones, and as they did the centipedes withdrew. She pulled the bones to her, and something fluttered out of one of the rags that bound them.
A photo.
She picked it up and brought it close to her. For a moment she barely noticed the burning in her flesh, her eyes, her throat.
The light down here was barely enough for her to make out what she was seeing. Barel
y.
It was another photo of Matthew Jr. Like the one that she had already found, the one in the book of the dead that the child's father had kept as a memento of his victims. But this one wasn't the same as the one that had found its way into that book. Not an exact copy. Something was different about it, though she couldn't tell what.
It made sense that there would be two pictures of Matthew Jr. – after all, this was the killer's son, a person that might matter more to him, a child whose image he might want to keep close at all times. But what was it about this picture that made Alyssa's stomach knot?
What was she seeing, but not understanding?
She brought the image closer. Looking hard, trying to understand, to know.
What is it?
And then she did see. She did know.
And the fear that came was worse than any that had come before.
UNSTOPPED MOTION
There is a place that once stood in time. Then it shared several times, and now it is a time apart.
The candles send dancing lights across the walls, over the ceiling. The lights grow frantic, frenetic. It seems they must blow themselves out.
Then, suddenly, they cease. The lights remain, but the motion ends. The lights become static. They hold themselves impossibly in place, painting unmoving abstracts across the clock, the music box, the black-covered chair… and the camera that has just appeared.
For a moment, nothing moves. The world hangs still on her axis, not a grain of sand falls through the hourglass of creation.
Then motion returns. The flames dance.
And the black cloth on the chair moves.
SELF REALIZED
Move.
Move.
Move.
MOVE.
But she couldn't.
Alyssa had bones in one hand, as many as she could hold tucked under an arm already cramped under her by the coffin confines of the crawlspace.
The other hand held the photograph. Matthew Jr., dead on a chair. His mouth closed and straight but a second smile below his chin that was wide enough to more than make up for the lack of one on his lips. Black blood from the wound stained his white collar. It colored his clothing, made his propped-open eyes seem dark with rage.
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