by Lukens, Mark
The footsteps stopped.
Three loud knocks on the front door.
Cole glanced at Stella. “Who is it?” he whispered.
Stella shook her head no, indicating that she didn’t know who it was.
“Frank?” Cole whispered.
This time Stella shook her head no – her eyes said that it wasn’t Frank.
Jose set the bottle of whiskey down on the edge of the counter; he almost let it tip over and fall to the floor, but he slid it back slowly from the edge so it wouldn’t fall, he did all of this without looking at the bottle, still staring at the front door the whole time. Jose didn’t go for his gun. He didn’t move towards the door either. He was frozen with fear; he just stared at the front door with wide eyes.
Needles squirmed against the wall, trying to squirm his way closer to the recliner, he was almost behind the recliner now, trying to hide behind it, but he still peeked at the door from behind the piece of furniture. He was whimpering.
Three more knocks at the door. The door seemed to shake in its frame from the knocks.
“You have to untie me, Cole,” Needles hissed. “You can’t leave me like this.”
Cole ignored Needles; he took a step towards the door and pulled his gun out from the waistband of his pants.
“Cole, please …” Needles begged, beginning to cry.
The door handle rattled like whoever was on the other side was trying to turn the locked handle, trying to get in.
Cole took another step towards the door, his gun ready. He was close to the door now, about to reach out and open the door. The jiggling of the door handle stopped – only silence from the other side of the door for a moment.
“Cole, wait,” Jose said with a tremor running through his voice. Jose still hadn’t moved from his spot by the kitchen counter.
Then Cole heard the person speak from behind the door. “Cole,” the person said. The voice was deep and guttural, yet Cole still recognized the voice, it was the voice of his little brother – Trevor’s voice.
Trevor was out there. But that couldn’t be. Trevor was dead, he’d seen it, he’d seen the pieces of his body, his decapitated head sitting in the middle of the porch like a trophy.
“Help me, Cole,” Trevor whispered from the other side of the door.
Maybe he hadn’t really seen the pieces of Trevor’s body, his mind whispered. Maybe it hadn’t been real. Maybe all of this is some kind of nightmare that he can’t wake up from.
Cole rushed to the door and unlocked the deadbolt and then he unlocked the door handle. He grabbed the door handle which wasn’t rattling anymore, like the person (Trevor) on the other side, was waiting for him to open it, waiting for Cole to invite him in.
“Cole …” Stella whispered.
But Cole didn’t hear her.
Cole opened the door and screamed without realizing it when he saw what stood on the front porch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Trevor stood on the front porch; the pieces of his body had been put back together, the pieces stacked back up into what resembled a human body again, but the pieces were not fitting back together too well, the pieces didn’t quite line up with each other anymore. In the deep lines where the pieces met each other, tatters of bloody clothing hung in ragged strips.
Trevor’s head sat on his neck at a strange, cocked angle, a little like Frank’s head. His face was slack, his eyes glassy, his skin pale. His yawning mouth moved, and his muscles creaked as he tried to work his mouth closed and then open again, trying to speak, trying to utter out words through vocal chords that must have been severed.
“Give him what he wants, Cole,” the monstrosity that used to be Cole’s brother grunted out.
Cole had screamed when he’d first seen this thing that used to be his brother. But now he stood only a few feet away from this impossibility and he couldn’t move for a moment, frozen with fear, with awe, with confusion. His mind reeled and everything faded away around him for a moment. He had been aware for a few seconds that Needles was screaming from behind him somewhere. And Jose was shouting something at him, maybe to shut the door or shoot, Cole wasn’t sure what he said because everything was fading away into darkness all around him.
And the darkness was closing in – he could feel his mind slowing, his chest heaving, his muscles weakening.
He was very close to passing out.
Trevor took a step forward and the pieces of his legs that had been stuck back together shifted and moved, and there was not only the creaking sound of stiff muscles trying to work together, but the wet pulpy sound of meat squishing against meat.
This isn’t possible, Cole’s mind whispered. There’s no way this thing should be able to move.
Trevor’s mouth hung open impossibly wide like the jaw had been dislocated and then shoved back into his face, and now it was off-center. His mouth opened and then snapped shut again and then opened once more, like he was trying to say something else. “Cole …”
Cole couldn’t listen to anything else this thing had to say.
This wasn’t his brother anymore.
This wasn’t Trevor.
This thing that used to be his brother stumbled forward and reached for Cole.
Cole aimed his gun at the monstrosity and he pulled the trigger over and over again; five shots into the head and torso of this thing. The bullets knocked the reanimated thing back a few steps and tore large chunks out of what used to be Trevor.
Cole screamed again as he kicked the door shut and lunged for the door; he locked the door handle with trembling fingers, and then the deadbolt. He backed away from the door, staring at it.
Needles was still screaming. “It can get inside! It can get inside anytime it wants to! It can do anything it wants to us!”
Cole turned and stared at Needles with dead eyes – eyes that had seen too much horror and now those eyes were dead calm. “Shut up,” he told Needles in a soft voice.
Needles snapped his mouth shut as he stared at Cole from the side of the recliner where he cowered.
Jose still stood right next to the counter, he hadn’t moved an inch the whole time. He watched Cole. “That wasn’t Trevor anymore, Cole.”
Cole walked towards Jose with slow, deliberate steps.
“You know that, right, Cole? That wasn’t Trevor anymore, just like that’s not Frank anymore out there.”
Cole walked right up to Jose, his gun still gripped in his right hand.
“Cole, put the gun away,” Jose said in a low voice. He reached behind him and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from off the counter. He handed the bottle to Cole with a trembling hand. “Here, take a sip, man.”
Cole stood very still for a second, his eyes still dead, his breathing still shallow, his face slack with shock. Then he shoved his gun down into his waistband and took the bottle of whiskey from Jose. He took two long swallows of the fiery liquid.
Jose glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall, and then he looked back at Cole who still gripped the whiskey bottle by the neck. “It’s getting late. Maybe only a few hours before sundown.”
Cole just nodded – Jose didn’t need to explain what he meant. They only had a short amount of time to decide what they were going to do. He glanced over at Stella and David who sat on the couch, both sitting up ramrod straight, like they might bolt any second. But where would they go? Where could they go?
Stella stared at Cole, and she slowly nodded her head. “It will keep coming back,” she said in a low voice.
Cole took one more swig of the whiskey, and then screwed the lid back on. He handed the bottle back to Jose as he stared at Stella. “I want you and David to go into Tom Gordon’s bedroom. I don’t want David out here when we do this.”
Needles pushed himself away from the recliner, his eyes were bugging out. He shook his head no, his arms struggling behind his back, trying to wriggle out of his bonds, but they were tied too tightly.
“No, Cole, please.”
Cole ignored
Needles. He’d made his decision. It had to be Needles. He’d killed the old man at the bank which was the reason they were here. And he’d tried to kill David. If they had to take someone’s eyeballs, then it had to be Needles.
Needles kicked his legs wildly on the floor, beginning to cry and scream. “Please, Cole. We don’t have to do this! We can think of something else!”
Cole didn’t look at Needles. He looked at Stella and David and nodded at them, gesturing at them to go to the bedroom.
Stella stood up and took David’s hand. David had the notebook tucked under his arm. They walked across the living room and gave Needles a wide berth. Stella glanced at Needles who had thrashed his way away from the recliner and more towards the middle of the living room, onto the Native American rug that he stared at for such long periods of time. His face was wet with tears, his skin red from the exertion of thrashing, his eyes wild with fear as he looked around at the cabin like this would be the last thing in the world that he’d ever see.
Stella and David walked to the bedroom. They would be alone in the bedroom and this was going to be her chance to talk to David about what she’d seen in his notebook.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Cole checked the windows of Tom Gordon’s bedroom as Stella and David made themselves comfortable on the lumpy, unmade bed. The windows were still locked and Cole didn’t see anything moving out there in the snow. But he wanted to check. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Stella and David by themselves in the bedroom, but he didn’t want David in the living room watching him and Jose take out Needles’ eyeballs.
And Cole had a feeling that nothing was going to happen to any of them as long as they were following the instructions, as long as they were giving it what it wanted.
Cole couldn’t dwell on the idea of what was out there making them do this for too long or that darkness would begin to creep in from all around him, that darkness that invited him to just close his eyes and float away from all of this.
“We’ll be okay,” Stella said as she stared at Cole. “It won’t come for us right now,” she told him, confirming what he had just been thinking.
“I don’t know how long this will take,” he told her. “We have to find some rope or tape and get him … get him ready.”
“As long as it’s done by sundown,” Stella reminded him.
Cole nodded as a wave of nausea wormed its way through his guts. He could feel bile at the back of his throat. This couldn’t be happening, he thought. But it was happening and they needed to hurry.
He left the room in a hurry. He closed the door and Stella could hear him stomping down the hall.
Stella turned to David who watched the door for a moment, clutching his spiral notebook which had become a little tattered at the edges now from him sleeping with it and protecting it the whole time.
But Stella had seen what he’d been drawing, and she needed to confront him about it.
“David,” she said in a soft voice.
David turned to her and looked at her with his dark eyes.
“What have you been drawing in your notebook?” she asked him, seeing if he would just tell her.
He stared at her for a long moment, and then he spoke. “You said we could run. You said it wouldn’t follow us. You said it wouldn’t find us. You promised.”
Stella felt a pang of guilt twist through her. “David, I know I told you that. And I tried.” She could feel tears threatening.
David just stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m doing the best I can.”
Finally, he nodded and gave her a small smile.
“When we found you at the dig site, David, you had blood all over you. But you weren’t hurt.”
David only nodded, staring at her with his dark eyes.
“It wasn’t your blood.”
He shook his head no slowly.
“Was the blood from your parents?”
David didn’t answer; he didn’t nod or shake his head no.
“Did that thing out there kill your parents? Did it kill your family?”
David looked away and now Stella could see tears beginning to well up in his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about it, she could tell. He didn’t want to remember.
She tried a different approach – the notebook, she had to get back to the notebook. “David, what have you been drawing in your notebook?” she asked him again.
He stared at her for a long moment, like he was trying to decide if he should tell her or not. Finally, he just shook his head no and whispered to her. “I don’t know.”
“Can I see it?” she asked.
David hesitated; again he seemed unsure of what he should do.
“You can trust me,” Stella told David. “You know that. I’m the only one here you can trust.”
David nodded and he handed her his notebook.
Stella took the notebook and she smiled at him, trying to give him her warmest smile under the circumstances. “Thank you, David. I just want to take a look.”
David nodded and he watched her as she opened the notebook and flipped from one page to the next; she flipped through page after page until she stopped where David had stopped drawing. Nearly two-thirds of the notebook had been filled with David’s drawings. She looked at him with shock in her eyes.
“How did you learn how to do this?” she asked him.
David stared at her for a long moment, and then he shook his head no. “I don’t know,” he told her.
“Do you know what these things are that you’ve drawn?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said again.
Maybe he didn’t know what was in the notebook, Stella thought, but she knew what it was. And she began to get the first far-off glimpses of hope in her mind. The drawings in this notebook might be the answer, she dared to believe, a way to fight that thing out there.
*
Cole searched through the house for the things they would need while Jose kept and eye and a gun on Needles. Cole could hear Needles pleading with Jose, but Cole knew Jose wouldn’t give in. They were all way beyond that now. Maybe they would have time to think about it later, but right now there was something out there that was impossible to fight. And with the sun setting soon, they had no choice but to do what it wanted.
For a few moments Cole was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find anything to tie Needles up with and he would have to go out to the garage and look, but then he found a roll of duct tape and a length of rope in the kitchen underneath the cabinets.
Even if he had to go out to the garage, he believed that the thing out there wouldn’t kill him as long as he were doing what it wanted.
Maybe, his mind whispered. But how did he know?
What kind of being was out there? What kind of thing could bring the dead back to life? Hollow people out and put pieces of his brother back together and reanimate them, use their bodies like puppets?
Cole didn’t want to think about it right now. He needed to concentrate on this task.
But thinking of going out to the garage made him think of the snowmobile for a split second. Did the snowmobile even run? Even though the thing out there had ruined the pickup truck and Stella’s Suburban, had it somehow overlooked the snowmobile?
He pushed the thought of the snowmobile from his mind. Maybe this thing could read minds. Who knew how powerful it was? And if it could read minds, then he didn’t want to give away his one slim hope of getting away.
Stella had driven away from this thing down in New Mexico (if she was telling the truth, his mind whispered), if she and David had gotten away, then maybe he could too.
Cole placed the tape and the rope on the dining room table and he went into the kitchen to find some tools. There weren’t many tools in the cabin; he’d found a hammer, a screwdriver, some nails. He wasn’t going out to the garage to look for tools. Instead, he found some spoons and knives in the kitchen drawer, and they would have to do.
A little earlier Cole ha
d searched the cabin for some kind of pain killers, even aspirins, something to help dull the pain for Needles. But there was nothing in the kitchen or the bathroom. He’d found a bottle of Tylenol and a bottle of regular aspirins. But both of the bottles were empty. He wasn’t sure if Tom Gordon had left empty bottles behind in his cabinets, or if the bottles had been emptied somehow.
It doesn’t want Needles to be anesthetized, his mind whispered. It wants Needles to feel the pain, feel every bit of his eyes being pulled out of his face.
Cole pushed the thought away again as another wave of nausea washed over him.
Cole had wanted to force some whiskey down Needles’ throat to help ease the pain, but Jose didn’t want to do that; he said it was just a waste of time and they needed to hurry. Cole agreed that they needed to hurry, but he also suspected that Jose wanted to keep the whiskey for himself as a cushion of numbness in case he needed it when the end came.
But Jose was right – they needed to hurry.
Cole and Jose looked at Needles.
It was time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Needles was tied to one of the dining room table chairs with many lengths of rope, duct tape, and two more telephone cords. Jose tied the last of the bonds as Needles struggled and screamed in the chair; the chair’s wood creaked from his struggles, and it seemed like it might tip over, but it didn’t, and the bonds held.
Jose stood up and backed away from Needles. He glanced at Cole who looked miserable.
“I wish we could’ve given him something for the pain,” Cole muttered.
Jose’s expression had turned cold and hard; he was focused on what had to be done. “I told you, we don’t have enough time for that. We need to get this done before the sun goes down.”
Neither one of them had to look towards the windows in the kitchen or the living room to tell that the sun was setting. The waning afternoon light filtered in through the curtains that covered the window, casting a warm, yellowish light on the gruesome act that they were about to perform.
Needles struggled in his chair, but then he gave up as he breathed heavily – the bonds were too strong, and there were too many of them; there was no hope of him escaping and he realized that now. He looked around, his eyes wild with panic. He glanced at Jose, but he knew that there was no bargaining with Jose, his only chance would be with Cole.
