Cracked Lenses

by L J McIntyre

  I bring the crowbar in front of me with both hands, like a samurai about to attack. He’ll be here soon. I’d planned on burning the pub down, or the cabin, or the motel in an act of vengeance. But now my only plan is to hurt this bastard. He represents everything I hate about this town. There’s nothing after that, just anger. The flames grow hotter and longer and curl around the top of the car through the broken window.

  The front door of the house across the street swings open and the skinhead steps out, his eyes wide and teeth bare with rage. He pulls a long knife from his jacket and lets out a scream, not a high-pitch scream, not a low shout, but this awful cackling release of sounds that only pent up fury burrowing its way out can make. And just then the car pops. It pops again.

  I take another few steps back, stand with my feet shoulder-width apart. Please, dad, if you’ve passed on to me the red-faced monster, let it come out now when I finally need it.

  The car explodes and sends out an awesome ball of heat. Fragments of glass hit my face and land in my hair.

  “You set my fucking car on fire.” The skinhead shouts and starts running down the steps. He’s sprinting so furiously I don’t know what to do, how to stop him. He doesn’t even look like he can stop himself. He bolts over the grass toward me.

  I raise the crowbar like I’m holding a baseball bat.

  He slows down and shows me the knife. “This is going in you,” he threatens.

  I keep my mouth shut, try to focus on him, watch for any sign he’s ready to lunge at me. We circle each other, his eyes wild, his mouth stretched open. I’ve never seen a person ready to kill another before, but I recognise it now.

  He lunges forward quickly, leads with the knife, slashes the air. I stumble backwards, swing the wrench. Neither of us makes contact, and there’s no sound either, no added effects that you hear in movies, no swishing of the air, no grunts or groans. It’s silent and real and one of us is going to die.

  “You’re dead,” He says. “Fucking dead.”

  He tries to catch me off guard, comes at me and thrusts the knife at my chest. This time the crowbar makes contact, hits the knife away from me, and he glares with the fury of a man whose only release from that fury is devasting pain inflicted on someone else.

  He jumps forward again, slashing back and forth at my chest, and with every ounce of strength I have, I swing the wrench and hear a crunching sound as it hits against something. The knife falls to the ground, my attacker holds his arm and looks at me. He screams once more and throws himself at me, his hands going for my throat.

  His nose crunches as the crowbar comes down on his face and he falls back to the ground. I throw the crowbar to the ground and jump on top of him. I reign punch upon punch down on him, most skimming his squirming head, some cracking against hard bone. He wrestles with my arms, tries to push me to one side. I look down at his bloodied face, one tooth cracked in half and hit him full force on the nose. He stops fighting and holds his face.

  I climb off him, take the crowbar again, stand over him and raise the weapon over my head. I try to let the monster free, let it do what it’s always wanted to do.

  I scream, “You fucking prick. You deserve to die.”

  The crowbar is frozen mid-motion as the man looks up at me with that same anger and hatred, blood cascading down his lips and chin, eyes now red and teary.

  I scream a wordless scream until my throat is coarse. I step away from him, lower the crowbar to my side. He sees weakness, seizes it with both hands, launches himself at my legs, drags me to the ground. I drop the crowbar just as his hands engulf my throat. I grab each of his wrists and try to pull them away.

  He’s strong.

  I can’t breathe.

  I punch at him but the adrenaline protects him from pain. Blood is dripping from his nose onto my face.

  “Die. Just fucking die,” he screams at me.

  I fight him with my entire body, kicking, thrashing.

  Suddenly his expression changes, goes form anger to surprise, and his grip loosens.

  I fight free from his hands, choke in as much air as I can, roll away from him, stagger to my feet while looking for my weapon.

  In front of me is my attacker, his eyes, still wild but losing their intensity, and wrapped around his neck is the massive forearm of the lumberjack man, the town farmer.

  His bicep bulges as he increases the pressure, lifts the man’s feet off the ground slightly. My attacker tries to push away the arm, wiggle his body, but his eyes are rolling back into his head. As if put under a spell, the sleeper-hold spell, the crazed man flops loose and hangs in the farmer’s arms like a child.

  The farmer releases his grip a little and drags his victim away, around the street and out of view.

  Chapter Fifty Three

  I retrieve the crowbar and run back to the motel room because where else can I go? I can’t attack all of them. I drag the bed, heave it, jump to the other side, push with my whole body, and ram it against the door, barricade myself in. Even as I’m doing this I understand the futility, since to the side of the door is a flimsy window they can come through at any time.

  But they don’t need to. Not yet, anyway. They need me to go to the cabin, and there’s still time for me to make that decision before they make it for me.

  I grab the bottle of whisky and the plastic bag containing the food and drink, and lock myself in the bathroom, crawl into the bathtub. I stand up again and draw the shower curtain around the bath.

  There I lie, exhausted, breathless, confused. I twist the cap off the whisky bottle, slam a mouthful down, take the edge off, start coughing at the burn.

  This is where it ends for me.

  No, no it isn’t. Not in this room.

  I have to see my captors, see them come for me, even if I’m powerless to stop them. I climb out the bath, plastic bag in hand, open the bathroom door, peer out. I grab a pillow from the floor, turn out all the lights, close the curtains fully, and hide under the desk, pillow at my back.

  I swig the whisky, mouthful after mouthful until my throat is raw, and my body demands water. I open a bottle from the bag, down it in one go, and toss the bottle across the room.

  I check my watch. 7:12 pm. Most people around the world would be at home watching T.V. at this time. Few, if any, are hiding under a desk in a motel room, waiting to be sacrificed.

  This isn’t how it was supposed to end.

  The farmer, he’ll be the one to pull me out this room. He won’t need backup.

  I reach up over the desk and take my laptop. I open the screen, dim the brightness all the way down, and check the internet. Nothing. Wi-Fi‘s still dead.

  They’ve got my phone, too.

  I spy the phone on the bedside table near the bathroom. I run over to it and snatch the receiver only to be greeted by silence, no dial tone. I throw the receiver down and burrow back under the desk, take the penknife out my pocket, cradle it like a baby.

  I’m not going to that cabin of my own accord. I’ve decided that much. They can take me, but I won’t hand myself to them on a plate. And I promise I’ll take this knife and do damage to anyone who comes near me.

  “You hear that, Nesgrove?” I shout out loud. “I’ve got a knife in here and I will cut anyone who comes through that door.”

  I flick the penknife open for the first time. Fuck. Jesus fuck. There’s no blade. It’s been snapped in half. This whole fucking time I’ve been carrying around a prop. I toss it across the room.

  Oh Jesus, what is happening? What the hell is waiting in that cabin? A demon, released by mining too deeply, who has cursed the town. The man in black? Is he the demon? And me going to this cabin, confronting this demon; somehow that will fix everything.

  And who the hell came here in spring? The Marksons? Some sort of gipsy Victorians offering magical Rebirth. And what about the town? The way they all behave with the staring and snarling. Where does that fit into all of this?

  And ghosts. Fucking ghosts. I still can’t b
elieve it.

  The most frightening question of all is, what happens to me at midnight? Am I to be sacrificed on a table in the pub or dragged to the cabin in the forest and served up alive to the demon?

  And in the cabin, what will happen to me then? Will I die? Or will I become possessed by the demon like the old mayor was? Pass my days sitting in that rotten room, singing gibberish, shitting and pissing on the floor until some poor angels walk by.

  Perhaps I’ll be confronted by my greatest fear, come face to face with my dad, evil personified.

  My head is spinning. There is no answer to this, or none that I will find until I cross through that door.

  I wonder where Annie is. If she’s feeding back information on me, or laughing at how dumb I was, or perhaps she’s just empty inside like all these Nesgrovians seem to be, another vessel. I hope she feels even just a morsel of guilt for lying to me because at least then some of it was real, the connection I felt, the kindness she gave me.

  I don’t know.

  I just don’t know.

  Was life really that good? Really worth fighting for? I wasn’t exactly happy. Never really been happy. I was scared of everything.

  Maybe this is the peace I’ve been craving. The simple life might only exist in death, because from my eyes, life has never been simple.

  So, what the hell am I worrying about?

  When they take me, at least I’ll have the answer to everything. I’ll know what all of this was about. I will have passed beyond the event horizon and stared the truth dead in the face.

  And maybe then, if a demon stands in front of me in that room of black, I’ll finally have something to be afraid of. I will have seen a real monster in the flesh.

  Chapter Fifty Four

  A real monster. Besides me.

  Oh, man, what the fuck is wrong with me? Monsters don’t exist, for Christ’s sake. Why can’t I get over that?

  Right now, under this desk, staring face-to-face with the end of everything, where it’s just me, me in the raw, me in the most stripped-down sense—nothing else—I still see myself as a fucking monster. Even after looking down at that bloodied man with a wrench in my hand, my life hanging by the swing of steel, the red-faced monster, my dad, didn’t rear his ugly face.

  As the minutes tick closer to the definitive deadline that most people never get, I owe it to myself to find some sort of peace in the world. I need it because I’ve never had it.

  Dr Randel was right. Paul was right.

  I’m not my dad.

  I’m not my arsehole of a dad.

  There may be evil people in the world, outside my door, even, but I’m not one of them. I’m not him. And if I die tonight, and god I hope I don’t, then I need to find it in myself to know that I’m a normal person.

  I’m not a monster.

  There are no monsters.

  Apart from here, in Nesgrove, the Nesgrovians waiting in the shadows to snatch me away.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  The first of them is here. The one-armed man is tapping at the window, looking through the gap between the curtains. I take a sip of whisky.

  Stop it, Jack. Calm down. Let’s think about this logically. Let’s toss out all of the supernatural bollocks. Let’s break free from this whisky-fused hysteria, see things differently, more unbiased, because clearly panicked thinking hasn’t worked for me.

  Okay. What do I know up until now?

  I know they’ve planned all of this, more or less every step. I know they believed in a curse or demon long before I arrived. Libby Lithglow made that clear. So that part of the story hasn’t been invented for me.

  I know they haven’t actually laid a hand on me, not a scratch. Granted, they’ve done some pretty horrific things, ruined my online life, more or less, but they haven’t hurt me, not physically. I mean, would evil creatures feed me, supply me with fresh water? Because I have a plastic bag on the floor here filled with snacks.

  I also know that Annie’s job was to manipulate me into following her directions. She also made a point of asking me not to hurt anyone. And when she saw that I’d cut myself, she was genuinely upset. I’m certain of that. I think she was charged with making sure I stayed safe. Probably because they need me in one piece for the final act, whatever that is.

  More important than any of this, I know that the past few days I’ve done what I always do: run away. How many times have I tried to escape? Four or Five? How many Nesgrovians have I actually confronted? Zero.

  Not one.

  But sitting here now, under this desk, what do I have to lose by confronting these creatures? What harm can it do that won’t already be done if I let them take me without a fight?

  I take a deep breath. Stand up from the floor. Face the pacing silhouette at the window.

  Before Nesgrove, the one time in my life I stood my ground was when I was attacked three years ago. Fighting back meant that I wasn’t the one who ended up being fed through a tube. If I’d lay down that day and let him hit me with a hammer, I’d be a vegetable right now, or worse. So why the fuck have I been lying down this entire time and letting Nesgrove hit me with their hammer? Why has it taken so long to learn that lesson?

  I pick the crowbar and whisky bottle up from the floor, unscrew the lid, take another sip. I look back at the silhouette.

  No more running away.

  No more seeing monsters where there are none.

  No more seeing my dad in me.

  My heart beats loudly in my ear canals.

  The silhouette stalks back and forth.

  It’s just me now. No Facebook Likes. No viral photos. No craving other people’s acceptance. It’s just me and this whisky bottle.

  Come on, Jack, just do it.

  I raise the bottle above my head, swing my arm and launch it at the window. There’s an ear-shattering bang, followed by a crack and the sound of heavy glass raining down on the concrete floor, and then the groan of a man.

  The curtains flail back and forth at the outside breeze. Flecks of glass continue to fall from the ancient wooden frame and clink on the carpet. A cold air rushes against me. Through the waving curtains I catch glimpses of the one-armed man holding his head. His eyes are wide and aimed at me.

  I sprint to the window and launch myself through, crashing against him, sending him sprawling to the ground.

  “Get off me,” the man screams.

  I jump up, level the crowbar at his head. “If you move, I’m going to smash your fucking brains in.”

  “Gerald,” the man shouts. “Gerald, this has gone too far.”

  “What’s gone too far?”

  “Gerald,” he shouts again.

  Someone appears on the street and looks up at the balcony. I flick my eyes from the one-armed man to the person down below who sprints away.

  “What the fuck is happening here?” I ask him, the crowbar positioned to cleave into his head.

  He’s trying to protect his face by holding up the elbow stump in front of him.

  “Gerald, bring his car. Now,” he screams.

  “Why would he bring the car?”

  The man eyes me. “Please, Jack. You’ll regret it if you hurt me. This isn’t what you think.”

  “Trust me, I won’t regret it.”

  I hear someone shout, “Jack.”

  I look back down to the road at Gerald who’s standing in the main street. “Your car is coming. Let Simon go.”

  “Get up,” I say to Simon.

  He clambers back to his feet. I hold the crowbar like a baseball bat.

  “Walk slowly down the balcony to the car park. Now,” I order him.

  We start moving, me behind with the tool aimed at the back of his head. I have to blink salty sweat out of my eyes. My grip is slipping over the warm metal. The sound of a car engine speeds up my heart rate. I switch my eyes to the road. Gerald’s gone. The engine gets louder. Betsy’s headlights stretch across the road before her rusty frame rolls into view.

  This must be a trap
. It can’t be this easy.

  Someone parks her in the road, leaves the engine running, opens the door and sprints out.

  “You can let me go now,” Simon says.

  I shove his back with the crowbar. He stumbles a few steps before regaining his balance.

  “Walk up to the car,” I say as we cross the car park.

  I look into the lit up reception room. It’s empty. We walk to Betsy while my eyes dart rapidly from shadowy corner to shadowy corner. At the passenger door, I glance around, regard the convenience store, café, police station, hunting shop across the road. Simon must have seen me looking away. He makes a run for it, sprints toward the pub.

  I stand in the middle of the road, slowly turn three hundred and sixty degrees. The town remains devoid of life and movement.

  Where is everyone?

  What is happening?

  It can’t be this simple.

  My voice shatters the silence, quiets the wind. “What do you want?” I shout out loud and open my arms. Nothing happens. No one responds.

  I consider going to the Devil’s Breath pub to confront anyone in there, but my mind is starting to gain a footing in reality, in the realness of Betsy waiting to take me back to civilisation. I’ve stood my ground, I’ve done what I needed to do, now it’s time to leave.

  I open the door and climb in. The car keys dangle from the ignition. I must have left them in there at the factory. I tap my jacket pocket to make sure I still have my passport. I engage the central locking, the doors click shut.

  Just as I go to lift my foot off the clutch, I check the rear-view mirror and see rows and rows of people in the road metres from the car, their expressionless faces lit up red by my brake lights. They all bare their teeth at me in one horrifying moment bathed in blood red.

  Then I hear it:

  “Yeep, yeep.”

  “Yeep, yeep.”