by A. P. Wayne
“Um ...”
“Um? What?”
“I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble if I tell you.”
“That’s silly. Why would you get in trouble?”
“Because sometimes we have to do bad things. I don’t know.”
“Look, I promise I won’t tell anyone, okay? If you tell me how you play with people, then I’ll tell you a secret, okay?”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
He reached his hand back and she shook it.
“Okay. So you promised to tell me.”
“Okay, but it’s kind of gross.”
“Shoot. I mean, tell me.”
He could practically see Linda wrinkling her nose when she said, “Sometimes we have to eat people.”
“Oh,” Walker said. “That’s not so bad. And this lets you play with people?”
“For a pretty long time. I don’t have to eat the whole person. We all share. Mommy says we need to eat a person a month if we want to keep playing. She said if we don’t, then we can’t play, and then we might die except we’re already dead and if we die then there’s no place else to go so everything’s just ... black.”
“So what’s it like?”
“Eating people?”
“Playing with their dreams.”
“Well, after our feast, it’s really easy. I can pretty much just close my eyes and do it anywhere. But it gets harder and harder.”
“So what’s it like?”
She didn’t say anything for a while. There was only the sound of his feet on the road and his breath and heartbeat in his ears.
“Have you ever painted a room?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said without stopping to think if he ever actually had or not.
“It’s kind of like that. Like I close my eyes and open a door and there’s an all white room and I make it pretty and funny. I don’t have paintbrushes or paint or anything. Just my imagination and ...”
“Memories?”
“Are those like things that have happened to you?”
“Yeah. You know, when you say you remember something, those things you’re remembering are called memories.”
“Oh. Yes. Only when you’re painting a room, you can only see what you’re making. When I’m playing with people, I can feel what my imagination and memories are making them feel. That’s why I like to imagine pretty and funny things. Because I don’t like to feel bad.”
“And some people do like to feel bad?”
“I guess. Or maybe they just can’t help it. You’ll have to try it sometime.”
“Maybe.”
They continued walking along and Walker thought about what she said. It seemed so chaotic. These spirits locked in this other world, living off humans that someone brought to them and, in turn, infiltrating the living’s sleeping thoughts when their resistance was the lowest. But why? And who brought them the corpses?
“So why do you do this?”
“Because it’s fun to play.”
“I know that. But ... why do you play with people’s dreams? Aren’t there other kids to play with and stuff?”
“There are but ... I wish mommy were around. She could tell you so much better.”
“What would she say? What does she tell you?”
“She says it’s how we stay in touch with the living.”
“Maybe it’s how you remember being alive?”
“Maybe.”
“And the people you eat? Who brings them to you?”
She laughed. “People like you.”
Then he laughed, again forced. “And what do you mean by that?”
“I know what you are. Not now, but sometimes.”
“And what’s that?”
She growled. “A monster.”
“A monster?”
“Sometimes. I know. I can tell. You’re not good at it yet, but you will be. You can make people like you or you can make them dead. And when you make them dead, we get them.”
“I see.”
“So now tell me your secret.”
Walker took a deep breath. Where to begin, he thought. “Well, I’ve eaten people too. My parents.”
She playfully smacked him on the back of the head. “That’s bad.”
“But it was an accident. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“That’s okay. Maybe they’re here.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe they’re friends with Mommy.”
“Maybe.”
Walker was glad she didn’t ask him any more questions. He didn’t like talking about it.
“Linda?”
“Yeeees?”
“When you eat people, where do you go?”
“Where do we eat them?”
“Yeah. You said it was like a feast.”
“We go to the church. That was weird at first because eating people seemed so evil.”
“Could I go there now?”
“There wouldn’t be anybody there. Besides, you’re helping me look for Mommy.”
They entered the graveyard and Walker felt a sense of complete hopelessness wash over him. Aside from the girl on his back, he felt burdened. Why was he here? What was he doing? Where was the girl’s mom? Where was Ilya? Jordan? He needed to get back.
“You like it here?” Linda asked.
“I guess it’s okay.”
“Would you like to stay here all the time?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“You could. You could make it so we could all be together.”
“Yeah? What do you mean?”
“I mean you could make it so me and Mommy could live with Daddy and Pete again. You could do it. I know you could. We’ve all been told about you. We’ve all been told about you.”
Walker started to get a bad feeling about the girl on his back. He stopped and stood up straighter.
“Linda? I need you to get off now.”
“Okay.” She hopped off and, even though she wasn’t that big, the relief was great.
She moved to his side and said, “Aren’t they beautiful?”
He looked toward the woods. A number of grayish blue glowing figures came toward him. The number increased.
“Linda, I need to get back.”
She giggled again. “We all need to get back, Walker.”
Forty-three
Hunter felt out of options. After charging out of Melanie’s house, he realized it wasn’t a good idea to go running down the street so he ducked behind the house next door. He thought maybe running through people’s yards was even worse. Growing up in the middle of nowhere could give a false sense of security about the ease of trying to find a place to hide. Until lately, he hadn’t really had that need. Now it seemed like he was hiding from everyone.
He wished he had his phone.
Forty-four
Ilya didn’t have time to take Melanie’s car. She knew that would cause problems further down the road. She probably should have killed Jordan when she had the chance. Ilya had no idea who could have alerted the ambulance to Jordan’s condition. Actually, she had an idea but it seemed absurd.
Jenkins.
Had he followed her? She dismissed that thought almost before it had formed in its entirety. He was too stupid and lazy for that and he didn’t have a car or a phone. But she was sure there were phones in Melanie’s house. But why would he call emergency to go to Walker’s house? It seemed pretty random. Unless he had more of the gift than she thought he did. She had bitten him as a slight precaution against this. She thought it would make him just disoriented enough to throw whatever it was that had led him to write that book out of balance. She mainly assumed he would lie around in a fog and wonder why he felt so strange.
Since she was close to the other house, she decided to go there. It would give her strength and focus. It wasn’t hard to move through the woods unseen.
She made it to the house in a few minutes.
There was no sign of Walker anywhere and that was
exactly as it should have been. He would be in Neverly right now. And he would be there until she joined him. He now had the ability to move back and forth between worlds. She’d given him that ability because it was something she needed. And he needed to be there alive. She could easily have sent him there dead like she had so many people but that wouldn’t have benefitted her at all. In order to bring Neverly to Lawrence, Walker would have to die there. And after he died, they would take his body to the church and devour it.
She wondered what she should do.
She could keep Melanie’s body, but it was possible people would be looking for her after they ran the plates on the cars at Walker’s. And then they would notice there was a girl with a badly mauled neck and two missing people. The body was also a hindrance. She wanted Jordan dead. Maybe it was stupid and vindictive, but she wanted it to happen.
She sat and thought. Tried to clear everything else out of her head.
There were options, but they were getting fewer and fewer.
Forty-five
Walker turned to run, but Linda grabbed his hand and took him down. The others were upon him in a second. They were no longer so ghostly. They had gained substance. They lifted him up. He considered struggling but didn’t see what the point of it was.
He felt panic but he tried to force it out of his head. He didn’t know what good panicking would do. They were walking him back in the same direction he’d come from.
He tried to think of what the possibilities were.
Maybe he wasn’t actually here at all. Maybe it was just a vision. That didn’t necessarily mean it was any less dangerous but if his actual body was still back in that creepy house, then it was possible he could will his conscious mind or spirit self or whatever the hell it was back into his body.
Another possibility was that he belonged here. True, he was, at this point, being kept here against his will, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t here to do something. When he and Jordan had been stuck on the farm, that was entirely against their will but, by being there, they had prevented a far greater catastrophe.
So maybe he should just go along with it. These people probably knew way more about what they were doing than he did. He’d spent a few minutes with Linda and she didn’t seem super evil. Of course, she had told him they eat people. But she hadn’t said they eat people like him. She had said people like him brought the feasts here.
And that meant he didn’t belong here, right?
In order to bring the living to them, he would have to be in the real world, wouldn’t he?
They were now through the cemetery and headed back into town.
“Linda?” he said quietly, trying to crane his head around to see if he could see her. He didn’t. He listened for her but, besides the sound of his breath and their shuffling footsteps, it was eerily quiet. He turned his head up to look at the blank night sky. He imagined himself sitting back in that old house. He imagined Melanie. Imagined biting her shoulder. That was when it had started.
Maybe this was just a nightmare brought on by guilt.
He tasted Melanie’s blood on his tongue.
An unexpected vision popped into his head.
He saw Melanie in the old house, slumped against the same wall he’d passed out against.
He noted the rising and falling of her chest.
If she were not dead, then she shouldn’t have been here. This was a place for the dead and the Fangs, sometimes both.
He reminded himself that it was just his imagination, just a vision, just something he was seeing in his head, but he forced that away.
He let himself move closer and closer to the sleeping Melanie.
He drifted toward her forehead, looking for an expanse of smooth skin. Closer and closer until he didn’t think he could go any farther.
It made him think of a door.
If he went through the door, he would either be in a room or outside. He wanted to explore either alternative. To explore inferred some form of control.
He imagined opening the door.
If this was a room, it was not a serene white room like Linda had said she encountered.
Walker immediately felt poisoned.
And that made him think of drinking Melanie’s blood again.
A number of things flashed through his brain and he had to remind himself these thoughts were not in his brain. He was crawling through someone else’s brain now.
Melanie’s.
He saw himself towering above her down on her knees.
He felt himself inside of her, biting her.
He saw Jordan, bent over a table in front of him, a wine bottle shoved into her ass.
Then he saw another man. It was that guy he’d seen in the woods. The one who’d been shouting “Fuck” and chopping at trees. Then that guy was fucking her.
Through all of these encounters, he didn’t detect a note of pleasure.
There was ... something else.
Something different than just need even. He certainly understood need. This made him think of something more akin to playing a board game.
He started to see other things.
Even more disturbing things.
A fat man, eviscerated in the woods.
A wasted looking girl, drowning in a pool of her own blood. No, not a pool. She was on a bed and the bed was soaked with her blood.
Something like ripples of interference disrupted his vision.
Maybe this person was waking up.
He wasn’t sure what he should do.
If he stayed here, would he be able to control Melanie?
Only it didn’t seem like it was Melanie at all. He couldn’t imagine her doing those things, although she had admitted to leaving the offerings so maybe she was capable of more than he thought she was. A stabbing pain shot through him and everything went briefly black before he was fully aware of being in his body again.
He glanced to his side at the slouching buildings.
They’d entered town.
Forty-six
Hunter made it out of the suburb as quickly as possible. In Lawrence, things went from town to country pretty quickly. He crossed a country road and went into the cornfield on the side. He sat down heavily.
At first, he thought he was sweating like a pig and then he remembered that his clothes were wet when he put them on. Now they were damp and warm and heavy and maybe they were making him sweat like a pig.
His head swam around him.
He really didn’t feel good. He would have blamed the scotch but he was sure his tolerance was higher than that. Especially with the good stuff. He was mostly used to drinking shit out of plastic bottles.
He wondered why he’d made that phone call. He wondered what the outcome would be. If there wasn’t any truth behind the call, it was probably just another reason for the police to come looking for him. Only they’d probably be looking for whoever owned that house.
That made Hunter smile slightly.
But there had been a real moment of panic and concern when he was on the phone.
He thought about going to the hospital and finding out if they’d brought anyone in. If he had a phone, he could wait for a while and call. He imagined they would give him some vague amount of information.
From where he sat in the cornfield, he could still see the road. He thought about seeing Melanie pull past. Like she would pull past and instinctively know he was lurking there and then she’d stop the car and come and get him. He kind of liked her. He knew she was way too young for much to come of it, but he’d at least like to fuck her a couple more times. After all, the crime had already been committed.
He thought about going back to her house to wait for her but, if that call he’d made did turn out to be a prank, then he would surely get caught.
So that was out.
What was he doing?
Sitting here and wasting time again.
That was exactly what he told himself he wouldn’t do. His mind was still open. He
was still on the trail of the Fangs. So he needed to go forward with his ideas, even the bad ones.
The only idea he’d had so far was checking the hospital.
The nearest hospital was on the outskirts of Dayton. Way too far to walk.
He stood up and began wandering back to the neighborhood. Even a passing car would do. He was already incredibly disheveled and looked like he’d sweated through his clothes. He lowered his head and clutched his heart, walked like he was in a lot of pain.
He hoped all the police were preoccupied with the emergency he phoned in.
He kept thinking somebody better stop quickly or he would be a goner until he reminded himself that he wasn’t actually having a heart attack and, therefore, could walk around like this indefinitely.
His act must have been pretty good. The first car to pass him stopped. Hunter was hoping it would be Melanie, but it was just an old bald guy with a massive unibrow. He rolled down the passenger window and said, “Hey, chief, you okay?”
Hunter threw himself against the car, leaning his big, hairy head into the window. “I think I’m having a heart attack.” Some drool came out when he spoke. “Can you call someone?”
The man was suddenly all wide-eyed concern. “If it’s that bad, maybe I should just take you. Be quicker.”
Hunter was already in the car.
Forty-seven
Ilya awoke with a start. She felt like she’d been invaded. Maybe it was panic or maybe it was something she’d decided beforehand, but she left Melanie’s body as quickly as possible.
Suddenly, she floated over Lawrence, focusing on the ambulance in front of Walker’s house.
She lowered herself, hoping to find the atmosphere mournful.
Instead, the EMTs were frantically working to keep the girl alive.
A cop was there, talking on the radio. He seemed to be asking about the call that brought the ambulance there.
“He said his name was what?”
A brief pause while the operator answered him.
The cop repeated: “Balls Ballserson?”
Then the ambulance was pulling away and flying down the country road.
