by Keith Knapp
Rachel didn’t expect to see Brett come out of the remaining smoke wall, but she hoped. She kept on looking at it as it pulsed and rippled, wondering if that was a sign of his return. He could walk, run, stumble out any second—that would be just how he’d roll. But he didn’t, and somehow Rachel knew he wouldn’t. His back had been broken, his neck twisted just like Scott Franklin’s. Brett was dead. Or more dead than he was before. She couldn’t get the image of Brett twisted up like a pretzel in the back of the convenience store out of her mind. She felt she’d never be rid of it. There was a growing grocery list of things she’d never forget.
“Oh, Bretty,” Rachel whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Roscoe gave a small pant-bark in Rachel’s direction—he was sorry, too.
“Brett’s dead,” Mike said. “Or gone. Or…wh-whatever.”
“I know,” was Rachel’s reply. Then she looked at Mike. “I heard you. In there. You told me-”
“-none of this is real,” Sophia finished for her.
Mike smirked. “Pretty wild, huh?”
They looked at him. Wild wasn’t the word any of them were thinking of. Crazy, insane and terrifying were more apt words to describe the situation.
“Alison,” Mike said. “She got through to me, she’s been trying to get through to me since we got here, I think. She…opened up a doorway for me somehow, so I could talk to you. Guess it worked.” He rubbed his chin, adjusted his baseball cap and looked at Rachel. “I couldn’t get through to Brett in time.”
“I know,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
And she did know. She could still feel part of Mike’s mind inside of her— maybe they all could. Residual effects of his little telepathy trick. She could tell the guy was upset for not being able to get them all back…but relieved to have gotten three of them.
“You guys think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Mike asked.
After what I just saw, I’m thinking we’re all crazy, thought Rachel.
Holy shit, it’s still on, thought Mike.
“I can still hear you,” Rachel said and pointed to her head.
“So can I,” said Jody.
Mike closed his eyes again and seemed to push. That was the best way Rachel could think of to put it. He was trying to tell them what Alison had shared, and he was half-way succeeding. She picked up images, little bits and pieces of things:
Sophia and Jody, standing as they were now, then disappearing.
Two gravestones floating up into a cloudy, hazy sky.
The Bug Man they’d all come to know and love, hammering away on some wood, building part of the town.
A giant black mansion drenched in shadows.
Rachel shook her head and was able to get the images to go away. It hurt a little, being pushed at like that.
“Dude, it’s not working,” she said. “Use your words.”
Sophia walked up to him, almost accusatory. “You know what he wants.”
“Yes.”
“So spill it, mechanic,” Rachel said. “I can’t pick it up in your mumbo-jumbo of a head.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll give it a whirl. This isn’t Hell. Or it is, but Ali called it something else, it was a little confusing, like a different language. And this place, this is only a part of it. Like a rest stop. His rest stop, this Bug Man. And he collects things.”
“People,” Sophia offered.
“In a way, yes.”
“Souls,” Rachel said.
Mike nodded.
“Why?” Rachel asked.
“I think he gets strength from it, like it’s his food or something,” said Mike.
“What about Jody and me? What was all that about?” Sophia asked.
“She said that it wasn’t your time.”
“Time for what?”
“All this, I guess. Being dead.”
They let the words roll over in their brains, soaking them in. Mike’s images now had meaning, or at least three of them did.
Sophia asked, “What about that mansion?”
But before Mike could explain, the words
SUFFER
FOREVER
OVER
AND
OVER
were heard from all around.
Everyone jumped. Even Roscoe moved back from Sophia and looked around for the source of whoever had spoken (or thought, the words were in their minds and not in their ears).
The wall of smoke slammed back to the ground with a thud. It shouldn’t have made any sound at all, but it did. A loud one.
From it came three more walls. They encircled the group, quickly forming another barrier they’d surely be hard-pressed to get through.
The four walls around them began to bend and bubble. The walls breathed, sucking in air from the enclosure then releasing it back onto the four of them (five including Roscoe). The air that came back had a foul, bitter odor. It encased the group in a stench that Mike could only compare to a liver meal Alison had once charred to a crisp while trying to teach herself to cook. The smell was of burnt, rotted meat, overcooked beyond any hope of salvation.
The gurgling walls began to close in around them. From each one came an arm, just like before. The arms slowly moved toward the group, forcing them into a closed-nit circle.
It would be just like last time. The smoke-arms would grab each of them and hurl them back in time to the vile memories of their pasts. Maybe the same memories, maybe different ones. But in the end it wouldn’t matter. They were in a rest stop on their way to Hell, and Mike was now convinced that Hell was reliving these moments over and over again. Like the voice had said: they would suffer forever.
Or maybe the rest stop was just for the reliving of bad memories. Maybe when they actually got to Hell things would get much, much worse. Maybe that’s when the real suffering began.
The arm that was coming for Mike touched his chest and his heart stuttered in fright. The smoke whirled around, hugging him. He tried to push it away but his hands went right through it. No shocker there.
Behind him, Sophia and Jody were almost completely sheathed in the murky stuff. Jody tried to hold her breath—the stench was overpowering. Sophia didn’t have as much luck keeping her mouth closed. A plume of smoke went into her lungs. She coughed violently then vomited. She tried to raise a hand to wipe her mouth but found her palm pushed back down between her legs by the smoke.
“Take my hands,” Mike said.
Sophia locked her fingers around his, then Jody took her mother’s hand in her own. Sophia made sure Roscoe’s leash was tight around her wrist.
“Stick together and don’t let go,” ordered Mike.
Seizing his other hand and gripping tight, Rachel joined the group. If they held together, if none of them lost their hold on one another, perhaps the smoke-thing couldn’t pull them apart.
Mike’s feet began to drag toward one of the walls. “His” wall if he had his bearings right. He secured his feet in the dirt as best he could, imagining he had legs of concrete, that three-foot long steel nails had been driven through his toes to keep him in place. Sophia and Rachel held on tight, keeping Mike on the ground, when something grabbed Mike’s attention out of the corner of his eye. Just to the right and above. A fifth arm over his head. As it came swooping his way, three more smoke-arms appeared, one from each of the remaining walls. They floated in the air for the briefest of seconds, then went about attacking their prey: one flew toward Rachel, the other toward Sophia and Jody.
A ceiling of smoke materialized above them and yet another arm protruded from it. Nine in total, coming their way and fast. It was widening itself, now no longer an arm but a giant hand, filling the gap of air above them.
It came down, closer and closer, until they could see nothing at all.
45.
Sophia’s eyes felt like they were on fire. She shook her head violently, trying to put the flames out. But the pain didn’t go away, the fire didn’t quell. If any
thing, it got worse.
She tried holding her breath as long as she could but her body ached for oxygen. Even though she was dead, her body still wanted to breathe. She opened her mouth to gulp the precious air that her lungs craved and got a mouthful of smoke. Now her lungs were on fire.
Forcing her eyes open (holy hell that burned), all she saw was the black-gray of the smoke around her. She couldn’t feel Jody next to her, couldn’t tell if her daughter was still holding onto her hand or not. She made fists, hoping to feel Jody clutch back. Then there it was—Jody squeezed, cracking Sophia’s knuckles.
“Push through!” yelled Mike, tightly squeezing her other hand.
Sophia’s arm was tugged as Mike took a step forward deeper into the town. She followed his lead, praying he knew what he was doing, keeping Jody’s hand in hers.
“Keep going, and PUSH THROUGH!” Mike screamed.
Two steps. Then three. They were doing it. Sophia didn’t know where they were going or what they would do once they got there, but they were moving and doing so because they wanted to, not because the smoke-thing or the town or the Bug Man wanted them to.
The gray mist in front of them began to thin and a fuzzy dark shape emerged. Closer and closer they got, each step making the shape more defined. A square. No, it was more rectangular. Its edges weren’t well defined and seemed to ebb and flow along with the smoke. And whatever it was, it was tall.
Onward they went, the arms behind them doing their best to seize them but not being able to. Holding hands and sticking together was working.
Out of the smoke they pressed and the mansion came into view. Tall and dark, it sat ten stories high and was a gloomy, evil contradiction to the Old West town. It didn’t look like it had been built so much as grown, the walls and pillars having no symmetrical cohesion at all. Windows sat at canted angles, rooms jutted out of the second floor, parts of the third floor were missing.
A staircase emerged in front of them, leading to the front door. The smoke remained behind them but did not give chase.
“What is it?” Rachel asked.
“I think it’s where he lives,” said Mike. “Ali said we had to get here. We have to destroy it. I think.”
“You think?” Sophia asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“Things got kinda weird and fuzzy at the end.”
Rachel looked at Mike with terrified eyes. “So you’re saying we made it here, and now we don’t know what to do.”
“We need to destroy it,” Mike said.
“How?” Rachel asked.
That’s when they heard a woman scream from inside the mansion.
“Ali!” Mike yelled. He released his hold on Sophia and Rachel and vaulted up the stairs.
“Mike, no!” hollered Sophia.
But Mike was already at the front door.
* * *
Two shoulder-punches later and Mike was inside. He stood in a giant foyer with stairs on either side leading up to the second floor. Everything was black in here, from the floor to the ceiling, from the stairs to the railing—even the windows had a black tint to them.
But it wasn’t the paint that was black, or the floor, or the windows. It was the air itself. Mike would get a glimpse of a wall and see that it was actually white, then a black shadow would move in and cover it up. A few brown tiles were at his feet, but they were quickly gobbled up by the swimming darkness. The chandelier in the foyer above him glistened in gold, then was drenched in a smoky black drape of a silhouette. Always moving, always hiding.
Then there was the scream again—her scream—coming from somewhere upstairs. Not thinking—he didn’t have to, he was on all-instinct now—Mike took the left staircase. The railing (first it was brown oak, now it was black) was cold to the touch and a chill ran through his body. It wasn’t just the railing that was cold, but the entire place. It was like being in the largest, creepiest meat-locker in the world. Little curls of breath came out of his mouth. Curls that started white but quickly turned black.
There was only one hallway at the top of the stairs, which surprised him. Outside, the building had the appearance of being the size of a mall. Inside it seemed only marginally larger than his old house on Hazeltine. There weren’t even stairs leading up to the third story, which the mansion certainly had. Maybe there were elevators somewhere.
Alison screamed again, beckoning Mike down the hallway.
* * *
“What’s he doing?” Sophia wanted to know as she watched Mike go out of sight and up the stairs.
“Trying to find a way to destroy it,” said Rachel.
“But how? How?” Jody asked, her voice shaking.
“I have no idea, but we should help him,” Rachel said.
Before Rachel could go in after Mike, following her own bit of instinct to help him, and before Sophia could grab her by the arm and tell her that might not be a staircase any of them wanted to go up, the front door slammed shut.
Shaking her arm loose from Sophia’s grip, Rachel shouldered the door, mimicking Mike’s move from earlier. Her bone cracked against the wood (at least she thought it was wood, most doors were but this one didn’t feel like it, it didn’t have the give of wood). She tried again. This time the door actually pushed back on her, sending her back down the three stairs and onto the ground.
The door was not made of wood.
Obviously someone didn’t want the rest of them in there.
Shrieking was heard in all of their ears.
Rachel heard Jimmy and Brett.
Sophia and Jody heard Jack.
And if Roscoe could speak, he would’ve told them he heard his previous mistress’ voice howling from somewhere deep inside the mansion.
They all clasped their hands to their ears, barely able to move the screaming was so loud.
Whatever it was Mike was gonna do, he was gonna have to do it alone.
* * *
Down the hallway.
Running, running, running.
It seemed to go on forever.
Maybe this place was the size of a mall.
Maybe size didn’t matter here.
Passing doors on either side of him, dozens of black doors (the colors had stopped changing and now everything was simply black), Mike began to wonder if he would ever come to the source of the scream.
And then in a whisk of speed he was at the end of the hallway. He hadn’t run to the end—it had come to him. From the door to his right, Alison screeched again. She screamed his name and it sounded like she was in pain.
Mike readied his now sore shoulder to barge through yet another door, then halted. He wouldn’t need to pull an action hero stunt again as the door swung open on its own, its hinges creaking and squeaking in protest.
Like everything else in the mansion, the room was as black as night. Smoke drifted in and out of the windows through cracks in the floorboard and across the splintered ceiling. Slowly the smoke collected in the middle of the room, twirling about itself. That’s when Mike noticed the cockroaches and spiders on the floor, and they seemed to be the ones moving the smoke through their fervor of activity, creating the image of a man. The smoke and bugs coalesced into a man made of bugs.
A very big man.
The Bug Man put a hand to his ear (hear that?) as he stood before Mike Randal. Alison cried again. He had her in there, in His World. Alison had unfortunately once again been right: he had been able to see her, and now it seemed as though she was the Bug Man’s captive. No longer able to hide from this creature, she had given herself up in order to allow Mike the opportunity to…
…to what?
“Let go and her pain will go away, along with yours,” uttered the thing before him. “But like all things with great meaning, it must be a gift. You must give it to me, Mike Randal. You must give me your grief, heart and soul, give it to me freely, and I can make the pain and oh so much more go away.”
He didn’t think that was the part of Alison’s plan that he had missed when they had been so rude
ly interrupted, so Mike ignored the Bug Man’s idea. What had Alison been driving at before they’d been separated?
Mike placed his hands in his pockets. The normality of his cell phone glided along his fingers. As he caressed the device, not sure why he was doing it, his wedding band clicked against the phone.
He pulled out his hand and stared at the ring. Gently, he held it before him, the only bright thing in the room. But it wasn’t just bright.
It was glowing.
Alison screamed again.
The ring grew brighter, becoming hot in Mike’s hand.
He doesn’t like you in particular, Mike. He’s threatened by you. He doesn’t like what you and I have.
Mike looked down at the wedding band in the palm of his hand. It glowed white.
What we have goes on forever, Mikey.
Without a further thought, completely on instinct, Mike rushed forward, hand outstretched, and made a bee-line for the thing in the middle of the room. The ring connected with the Bug Man’s forehead, nestling itself nicely between two cockroaches. The Bug Man’s face grimaced in pain as it pulled away but it was too late, the damage had been done. As soon as the ring had touched him/it/them, the bugs began to catch fire and one by one they fell away, each one letting out a little cry in anguish.
Burying it in the Bug Man’s head, Mike forced it all the way to its brain, if it even had a brain. The further the ring went in, the more bugs fell away to the floor. As they fell they would cry outload and wrestle with the air, then with a little snap they would transform into smoke. If he wasn’t scared shitless out of his mind, Mike would’ve been amazed at the whole scene.
His hand was inside the thing’s head now. The Bug Man fell apart as Mike then ripped his hand away, leaving the ring inside. Cockroaches and spiders fell towards the ground, some of them changing into smoke before they hit. For those that didn’t, they need not be worried; once they hit the floor the smoke collected them and made them a part of it.
The room filled with smoke, and like outside, it was hard, near impossible, to even see. This wasn’t like the ever-moving smoke from when he had first entered, no. This was like the smoke outside. Angry, dark, bitter smoke. The Bug Man was gone, along with most of his Bug Parts, but not the smoke.
