“Trent and Susan Hawkins!” came a booming voice from the front lawn. “Come out now, hands in the air!”
A series of thuds sounded from the roof, staccato, rhythmic, and Trent’s heart raced for a moment before he realized it was SWAT, not the monster. They had the house surrounded. Trent slammed the bathroom door shut, leaving the lights on just in case, and went down the stairs.
Susan and Celia were waiting in the living room, the teenager wrapped up in his wife’s arms, her tears dry, eyes wide and bloodshot. The young girl looked devastated, her expression dead and trance-like.
The voice from outside bellowed orders again, demanding that they surrender.
Trent stopped with his back to the smashed pile of picture frames and the bloodstain on the wall. He peered through the waving blinds of the broken window. Cop cars were everywhere, with officers crouched behind the doors, guns drawn. The neighborhood was deathly silent, save the sound of wintry winds moaning all around.
Susan looked at Trent with sadness plastered across her face. “It’s gonna be okay, honey,” she said. “We’re gonna be okay.”
Trent met her gaze and forced a smile. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Trent turned away and faced forward again. He reached out and opened the front door and let it swing inward, his hands raised above his head, a man defeated.
Susan watched him take his first step toward the door as tears ran down her cheeks. She could hardly believe it had come to this. And then she noticed the strange movement behind him, amidst the pile of broken frames.
Among the ruined photos there lay a framed mirror, cracked into irregular shards, some scattered in pieces on the floor. A blackness was seeping out of them, like a climber pulling himself from a pit. First came the long, pointed legs, then chunks of body that fused as the mass grew larger, until the black spider had formed fully. It looked weak, mostly translucent, but it stood, legs wavering. Susan let go of Celia and opened her mouth to scream, even as the creature shifted its weight in order to propel itself forward, toward Trent’s retreating back.
“No!” she screamed, and took off across the living room, as fast as her legs could carry her.
Trent, confused by the sudden scream, whirled around and saw the spider in mid-leap, lunging for him. His brain reeled. He’d killed it! Goddamn it, it was supposed to dead! He stumbled backwards a step and blinked. His chest ached with such an intense and sudden pain that he thought that maybe one of the cops had shot him. Susan came charging out of his periphery and all three of them–Trent, Susan and spider–collapsed together into a heap on the home’s front steps. Trent watched in horror as the black shape diminished and formed into a smoky black stream and then slipped down into the shadows between them.
He could feel its presence, so close to him, seeking him, and knew in that moment that it had never come for Celia. It had been hunting him. He was filled with dread. He looked into Susan’s panicked face and stared deep into her sky-blue eyes.
“God, I’m so sorry, baby,” he said. He could feel the spider clawing in their combined shadow, could feel it like a web anchored to his skin, pulling, pinching, and aching with every infinitesimal tug. He pleaded with her, “Please tell them it wasn’t me. I didn’t–”
He stopped and watched as Susan’s eyes filled with black. She blinked several times in rapid succession. She looked dazed.
“What?” For a moment, Trent was confused, and then he realized what had happened. “No!” He grabbed Susan and pulled her close. “Not her! No! God, please no! You want me dammit!”
But the spider had taken her. It had made a mistake; had found the wrong shadow at the last moment and now it reared up out of the black.
“Open fire!” yelled the cop with the megaphone.
For Trent, everything suddenly seemed to move in slow motion. A series of metallic clicks as triggers were pulled, followed by flashes and pops and the sounds of bullets whizzing past him. He smelled gunpowder and ash on the cold wind. He looked up at the cops in astonishment.
It wasn’t us, he thought. It wasn’t us.
But still they kept firing, and with every muzzle flash the creature before him shrieked. Trent watched in a sort of confused paralysis as bullets zipped through the creature’s flesh, tearing off coils of black smoke. And then a bullet thwacked through the mostly limp body in his arms, sending out a spray of blood. Susan shuddered then, her back tensing within Trent’s grip. Her mouth dropped open. Another bullet passed through her shoulder, splattering Trent’s neck with warmth.
With each fraction of a second that passed, Trent felt that same pounding against his chest, that hammering against something deeper than his lungs, something way down, some deep part of his core. The aching slams felt like a creature trying to punch its way out of him, and each was punctuated by a bullet that screamed past, barely missing Trent’s flesh. He let go of Susan’s limp form and stood, staring down the assaulting police.
“He’s not going down!” screamed one of the officers, but to Trent’s ears it sounded like a record at half-speed.
The shadow-spider dropped to the ground, writhing with flashes of light from the guns and bullets that tore through its impossible corpus. Then, in a bid to protect itself, the thing gathered its remaining strength and hurled itself forward, toward the police. Some of the men screamed as it came on and descended amidst their jumble of cars and equipment and the falling snow. Guns stopped firing. The bullets passing Trent ceased.
Trent watched for a moment as the thing shredded through the police, as men began dropping to the ground, faces upturned, horrible, inhuman screams escaping their lips. Blood took to the air, staining the white snow on the sidewalk and lawn.
Another bloodcurdling shriek came from inside the house and Trent struggled to order the scene in his mind, to recount the players.
Celia’s scream.
He looked down at his wife’s unmoving form, shocked, unable to believe what had just happened. Susan’s pale blue eyes were still open, glittering with her final tears. He grimaced and let out a roar of agony and knew what he had to do.
He turned his back to the cops and the spider’s massacre and walked into the house. He looked at Celia, who had balled herself in the corner of the living room, fetal and rocking. No cops could help her now. The cops could not help anyone. If the shadow creature was Salvatore’s minion, if the old man had the power to summon such a thing, there was no way the police could protect Celia. Trent shook his head. Turning himself in now would be her death sentence, and his own.
He walked over to her and grabbed her hand and lifted her to her feet. She looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. “We’ve gotta go,” he said, grimly. “Out the back.”
They raced across the backyard, eager to put as much space between them and the shadow-thing as possible. The Cagills’ backyard was bordered on one side by a wooden privacy fence, but on the other by a lower, chain link hurricane fence. They reached it and climbed over awkwardly, then got to their feet again and ran.
As they sprinted through the suburban Las Vegas jungle of yellowed grass and unkempt dirt lots, Trent looked around desperately for a better means of transport. Cars lined the streets and filled the driveways, but Trent had no idea how to hotwire. And his concentration kept faltering. With every juddering step, thoughts of Susan tried to reassert themselves in his mind.
Why did she have to die? Why not me? I left her there, dead on the sidewalk.
The guilt threatened to send him to his knees, but then Celia’s tightening grip on his hand gave him strength. This was his task now, his sole mission to hold tight to, or Susan’s death would have no meaning at all.
He looked across the street as they passed through a backyard full of children’s toys and a jungle gym. He saw a man standing in the driveway, keys in hand, perplexed at the sight of Trent and Celia tearing through his neighbor’s backyard. Trent pulled up short and caught his foot against a tricycle’s wheel. He pitched over,
fell and cracked his head against the tricycle’s handlebars, but finally managed to kick the thing away and scrambled back to his feet. He yanked on Celia’s arm and yelled “This way!” and headed for the man watching them.
It seemed to take a moment for the guy to realize that the two fugitives were bearing down on him. When he did, his perplexed look turned to panic. He dropped his keys in the driveway and yelled and ran for the front door of his house. Trent and Celia reached the car, gasping for breath.
The teenager ran up to the driver’s side door and jammed her fingers against the handle. To Trent’s amazement, her fingers passed straight through, shattering the metal and causing a terrible screech from the car frame. Celia freaked out at the noise and yanked her hand back, leaving a ragged, ice-encrusted hole in the steel door where the lock should have been. The door creaked open on its own.
Trent grabbed the keys from the ground, shoved Celia in through the open door, and then threw himself inside. He turned the key and fired up the vehicle–a silver luxury sedan–and backed it out of the driveway. Seconds later, they were flying down the suburban streets toward a nearby avenue, desperate to escape the madness they had left behind.
Celia’s despondent moans were all that kept Trent from turning the car around and heading back to the house, back to Susan’s body, back to the police massacre and the creature that had just taken his whole life from him. But a part of him, the rational part, knew that he needed to be as far away from Las Vegas as possible. For her. For Celia.
He guided the sedan onto Sunset Road and headed at full speed for the Expressway, the car sliding in the ice with every sharp turn. For the most part, his brain felt as though it were filled with a dense fog and he had no idea of where they might go or for how long they would have to run to escape the monsters behind them. And then, in a moment of clarity, he glanced down at the dashboard and his heart sank.
The needle was nearly on ‘E.’
13
THE LUXOR LOOMED BEFORE HIM, a black monolith set against a gray sky, fronted by a replica of Egypt’s Sphinx. The drifting snow and gusts of wind stung Salvatore’s face as he stared up at the faux-ancient geometry, dark and unpleasant when juxtaposed against the foul weather, the guardian beast staring ahead, seemingly blind to the atrocities walking endlessly before it.
Salvatore wondered briefly what his wife might have thought upon seeing him here. Could she have ever believed her Sal standing before this artifice in the world’s capital of sin and greed? Would she have dared imagine the blood that now stained his hands, despite his every effort to wipe them clean?
He closed his eyes, rubbed his temples. A headache still lingered. His moment of quiet was startled suddenly by the wail of police sirens and he spun to watch three cars barrel in a line down The Strip past him, lights flashing, sirens squealing. The snow, the chaos, the blood. Salvatore hunched over involuntarily and stared at his hands again.
Something is very wrong.
The interior of the place in many ways did not mimic the exterior. While the building sought to convey an air of awe, even mystery, the interior left nothing to the imagination. It was blatantly clear what transpired here: unending collection of unknown debts, a reaping of souls, all pushed from the cliff into the great abyss below, where they lingered happily, joyously, damning themselves over and over and over.
Salvatore’s stomach turned at the sight of it, at the unholiness on permanent display. One of the bums in the tunnels had once joked with Salvatore that “gambling is just a tax on people who can’t do math.” But the old man saw it in much harsher terms. This was one of the Devil’s feast halls, and neither the servers nor the food paid heed to the sole diner, who hid in everything and nothing at once, slowly consuming them all. It was a secret abattoir, drenched in blood and sin, just like Salvatore’s fingers.
“Mr. Cortina!” The voice caused Salvatore to snap his head up in alarm, quickly shoving his stained hands into his coat pockets. He saw a skinny young man in a black suit and black tie approaching him. He could not have been much beyond his early-twenties, but had a confident swagger and wore his suit well. “Mr. Cortina,” he repeated as he came near. “Welcome back to the Luxor.”
Salvatore looked away, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, I have not been here before.”
The man’s disingenuous smile vanished quickly, becoming instead a frown. “Are you sure, Mr. Cortina?”
“Stop using my name!” Salvatore snapped. “Why do you know me?”
The young man stopped in his tracks and then, after a moment, took a step backwards as if sizing up the situation. “Umm...” he muttered, his normally rapid-fire greeting sequence suddenly broken. “Umm, hold on.” He turned his side to Salvatore and placed a finger to his ear with his head bowed slightly. “Yes,” he said. “Mr. Cortina is here but he doesn’t–” He looked up at Salvatore, but only held the gaze for a split second before turning away again. “Yes. No, he doesn’t know– Of course, I–” There was a long pause as the man listened to the earpiece. Finally, he said, “Okay, I will.” Then he turned back to Salvatore, the fake smile glowing once more.
“Certainly, sir. There must be some sort of mistake. A manager will be here shortly to answer any questions you might have.”
No sooner had the young man finished the sentence when one of the nearby elevators slid open, revealing two nearly-identical men in gray suits. They both were tall, thin, with blond hair and mismatched blue/green eyes. They moved through the casino crowd like fish through water, never deviating far from their path, but shifting imperceptibly to avoid collisions with gamblers and pit bosses and scantily clad servers. It was as if the crowd itself flowed around them and Salvatore watched them, mesmerized, frozen in place by their piercing gaze that never left his, even as they reached out with subtle, gentle gestures to move human obstacles from their careful approach.
“Good day, Mr. Cortina,” said one of the blond men as he approached.
His companion followed up with, “I’m sure you have many questions. And we can surely answer them.” He glanced at his fellow.
“Please, sir,” he said, gesturing toward the elevators with a careful bow. “If you would accompany us, we will be happy to show you the truth of things.”
Salvatore stood mute, both in sound and motion. He did not know what to make of these two men. They fascinated him, even attracted him in some strange way, and he wanted desperately to follow them wherever they might lead. But a part of him rebelled at the notion. What would my wife have thought of this... this, den of iniquity? This place is not safe, not holy. He felt like a man on enemy turf and he momentarily revisited the terrified emotions that had stirred in him as a child when, during the War, his family had hid their anti-Hitler leanings from the Italian authorities; a stranger on his own soil, an enemy in his own world.
But then, he had come here for answers. He took a deep breath and let the cool sensation wash through him. He imagined the red stains on his fingers and his mind toyed with a collection of memories buried deep in the darkness, a mass that pulsed and snarled in the black, refusing access, pushing his thoughts away from their hiding place. He needed these answers, even if these men were about to turn him in for whatever crimes he had committed. He had to know. He had to face his punishment before the Almighty, whatever that might be.
Salvatore nodded, and followed.
The two blond men led Salvatore down a long corridor, somewhere near the top of the thirty-story pyramid. They stopped at a heavy wooden door, ornately carved with a gold handle. One of the men swiped a black plastic card through a reader next to the doorframe, and the light blinked green. They pushed the door open into the darkened space of the penthouse suite.
A soft glow came to life as the door swung open. Can lights embedded in the ceiling shone careful, dim spotlights down upon ornate furniture and Egypt-themed books and art objects. The carpeted entryway to the suite and the mottled-paint walls all radiated a deep, comforting, rich brown and
tan. As Salvatore and the two men stepped inside, more lights came to life ahead of them: table lamps, more cans in the ceiling, and point spotlights that brought paintings to life on the walls. None of the paintings were of things that Salvatore found pleasant or calming. One in particular caught his eye: an ash-black horse against a fiery backdrop, rearing up on its hind legs, nostrils flared. It reminded Salvatore of stories from the darker parts of the Bible and he immediately looked away. His gaze then fell on something far worse.
As the three of them stepped into the main living area of the suite, Salvatore leading, he spotted an incongruous table amidst the fancy furniture. Stainless steel, like a hospital gurney, but with special railings bearing black leather straps, the table gleamed in the dull light from the cans above. Next to it, on one of the ornate wooden end tables, sat a plastic tray covered in surgical tools. And upon the table, strapped down, was a boy, lying still, eyes and mouth and nose and ears all stitched shut, his hair matted in a thin pool of blood beneath his head.
Salvatore recoiled instantly at the sight. “No!” he shouted. “What is this? Why have you taken me here?” He turned to run but was caught instantly by one of the blond men, who gripped Salvatore with surprising strength.
“No?” asked the blond man. “You run from your own work?”
Salvatore shook his head, but a glimmer of doubt slid into his bones as the suite lighting played across his red-stained fingers. “No,” he repeated. “I do not remember this!”
“This is you,” said the other blond, stepping close. “This is your legacy, Zamagiel-horse.”
“Your fingers sewed the mouth,” said the blond holding him.
“And the nose–”
“And the eyes–”
“And cut out the tongue.” The other blond stepped up and placed his hands on Salvatore’s shoulders as he struggled. “This is your work, your greatest work. This is redemption for that which rides you.”
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