by Keith Knapp
Whatever Mike had done it hadn’t been enough. As the smoke swirled around him, Mike knew all he had been successful in doing was pissing this guy off.
46.
The smoke swam out through the door, encasing the group in seconds. The high-pitched screeching was still going on, and now they were blind inside the smoke again.
Something was happening to Rachel. Something bad, because her scream was deafening. God how Sophia wished she could see. On second thought, whatever was happening to Rachel might not be something she wanted to witness.
A second yell broke through the first. Another woman. The sound of it was familiar. She’d heard it before. Yes, when the smoke-wall had first appeared, they had heard the dim cry of a woman when the arms reached out for them. And again just before Mike had run into the building—this was the same voice, the same woman.
Someone else was in the smoke with them. She could feel the presence of others. Not just Jody and Rachel.
Her body was tossed to the side like a rag doll. First to the left, then to the right. Again left, then right. Sophia didn’t hit anything, but something was pushing and pulling her back and forth and if this kept up much longer her spine was sure to snap. It was a wonder it hadn’t already. As she heard a third voice cry out—this one male—Sophia was thrown clear of the smoke and began to soar away from the dark mansion.
* * *
Just like when he had fallen off the freeway, Mike’s face was painted with a look of complete confusion as a puff of smoke hurtled him backwards and out of the room.
Through the hallway that never seemed to end.
Down the stairs.
Through the doorway.
And back outside all the way to the intersection.
The flying lasted only a few seconds. His ass hit the ground and he skidded a few feet. In front of him the smoke-thing twisted and turned, coiling around the mansion. Did it growl? Yes, Mike thought he heard the smoke growl and it was a sound he did not like at all.
Speaking of sounds to not like, the cries from inside the dark mansion slowly began to become decipherable. Two women and one man. No more were they merely yelling a vocal cry, but a word was starting to form. Mike strained to make it out, concentrating above the cacophony of the swirling smoke. But he was doing it wrong. He didn’t need to point an ear toward the smoke.
He needed to point his mind.
Run.
Alison. No mistake about it. He squinted at the smoke-thing, trying to make something out amongst all the mayhem. And up on the second floor, in the room where he’d left his wedding ring, he saw her.
It was just a glimpse. For a short second, Alison’s face floated in the window. She was in there. No longer just a part of his memory, Alison Randal was inside the mansion, inside the smoke-monster.
Then arms shot out from the window. Nine of them, made of smoke and fog and, Mike was pretty sure, evil.
The arms came straight for him.
* * *
Run.
Rachel heard Brett’s voice loud and clear. She was away from the mansion now, she hadn’t even realized it, and as she got to her feet to do just what Brett had suggested, she saw him float up outside the building and seize one of the arms. He was back to the Brett she knew and loved; his arms no longer broken, his head no longer on backwards, his body no longer a pretzel.
Let me show you how I roll, she heard him think.
Brett pushed on either side of the smoke-arm with his hands, trying to crush it, smash it. Rachel didn’t think that would work—the smoke-thing seemed to be able to become solid or soft at the drop of a hat. But apparently not for Brett because he wasn’t like Rachel anymore. He was more like the smoke-thing; his form whisked in and out of sharpness. It didn’t matter what the smoke tried or where it moved, Brett was able to keep his hold on it.
One of the arms flew toward her, and that’s when Rachel caught a glimpse of the woman they’d seen in the pizza place.
Alison flew out of the window and down to the hand connected to the arm. She wrapped her own hands around it but it quickly broke free and tried to move past her. She darted in front of it lightning-fast, faster than Rachel was able to keep up with and blocked its path. Before Rachel knew what had happened, Alison had a hold of it again.
The arms were having a real bitch of a time getting to their prey.
And then more smoke followed the nine arms out of the windows, out through the front door, in between the cracks of the walls and foundation.
The smoke, the Bug Man, the town, was coming after them in a very big way.
Rachel lost Brett in all of the mayhem, but in his place she thought she saw the broad shoulders of…Jimmy? Yes, there he was, and like Brett and Alison he was wrestling with one of the arms, kicking and screaming, yelling and shouting and punching and howling and really letting the f-bombs fly.
Then someone’s hand took hers.
Mike pulled Rachel to her feet in a kind of zig-zag pattern. He was trying to avoid a set of hands intent on capturing him when the arm Jimmy was wrestling with took hold of Jody.
* * *
A fourth body broke through. Sophia was able to spot a flash of flannel as the shimmering image of Jillian shot from one end of the monster to the other. The trucker was no longer chewed up and bloody or showed any signs of scars from the vicious attack of the hounds back at the hotel—she was just as Sophia had first saw her, and full of fight.
The ghosts—that’s what Sophia was seeing, ghosts—were doing their damndest to give the group enough time to get away.
But it wasn’t enough.
Sophia leapt to her feet and reached for Jody. Barking and growling, Roscoe jumped up to bite the arm that now held his new mistress’ child. His teeth clamped down on nothing but air with a snap—the smoke had gone soft where Roscoe had been aiming—and his jaws collided shut, cracking one of his teeth.
The whirling dust momentarily blinded Sophia again as she fell onto her chest. Her hands flailed about the smoke madly, her fingers grasping for where she last saw Jody. The sound of her daughter’s scream echoed in all of their ears, but Sophia’s the most.
Another flash of Jillian’s flannel, then Jody’s fingers were in Sophia’s hand. They gripped each other tightly. The two of them were pulled back into the smoke-thing. Sophia’s nails dragged on the ground. Three of them broke.
A pair of hands clutched her ankles. Before too many images of Jack pulling her away from the Glock in their bedroom could fill her mind, Sophia realized it was Rachel behind her, a real flesh-and-blood being (for lack of a better term), her hands locked around her ankles, her heels pushing against the ground. Rachel was pulling with all her might.
But it wasn’t enough.
Jody’s head disappeared behind the wall of smoke. Her cries were cut short as the smoke-thing engulfed her.
Sophia lost her grip on her daughter once again.
* * *
Jody could hardly breathe. Visibility was next to nothing. Images and shadows of others in there with her zoomed in front of her face but she couldn’t make out any of them. Then the faces came closer as they danced and fought and she was able to start seeing those that were helping them.
Brett, the nice kid who had liked the red stripe in her hair, pushed on her left foot. Another man, this one with a crew-cut, shoved on her other. Then a woman (wearing flannel? Yes, flannel) was right next to her, their faces touching…and for a brief second, their faces intertwined. Jody could see into this woman’s mind, and at once knew that her name was Jillian Elizabeth Hadley and that she was a truck driver who loved Elvis Presley music.
Jillian pulled her face away and now Jody saw another: the woman they had all seen in the pizza joint. The woman smiled at her. Then her and Jillian hefted Jody up by the shoulders, assisted by yet another ethereal form, that of an old woman. Together, the five of them threw Jody clear of the smoke.
The last thing she saw before returning to the town was Jillian and Alison turn ar
ound to face the onslaught of arms as all nine came their way.
* * *
Sophia took her daughter by the arm and would not be letting go this time. She had the feeling she’d never let Jody out of her sight ever again. They ran away from the smoke-thing as the ghosts inside it held it in place. An arm reached out for Jody, then was quickly pulled back in.
Keeping up with Sophia and Jody was ever-loyal Roscoe. The dog could have easily outrun the both of them, but Roscoe wouldn’t be letting either of these two out of his sight for a very long time, either.
Mike and Rachel took up the rear as the smoke-thing pulsed with light behind them as the battle inside escalated. The wind picked up and a gust blew through the town, the breeze boisterous and loud. Underneath it all Mike heard Alison cry out in pain. He stopped and twisted around, moving to go back in to help her. He didn’t have a ring to shove into the thing’s head—shit, it didn’t even have a head—but he had to do something.
“Mike, no,” Rachel said. She wasn’t yelling. Under normal shit-weather circumstances like this she would’ve had to yell to be heard. Her mouth moved and words came out, but Mike heard her in his head more than in his ears—she was using both her outside and inside voice. Some residual effects from his push earlier.
I have to, he thought at Rachel. He went to pull his cap back down on his head, but it was gone.
The nine arms danced a crazy dance, tentacles spiraling about in dazzling mad confusion, unsure if they should go after the ones running away or attack those fighting it from the inside. The confusion seemed to be really ticking it off.
Then:
The explosion was brighter than the sun. The town and everything around it was covered with a brilliant red light. The only sound to accompany the explosion was a giant liquid sucking sound.
Mike shielded his now closed eyes with a palm.
The smoke-thing collapsed inward, like film running backwards, as the light shot back into it. The wind howled, really picking up some steam now, the storm that had been threatening to hit finally emerging in all its wonderful glory.
The building nearest Mike, the horse shoe repair place, began to tremble. The windows on the front exploded outward. The wooden door cracked and was ripped off its hinges. It sailed over their heads toward the shrinking smoke-thing.
The horse shoe repair barn swayed back and forth as Mike felt the ground beneath him begin to give. Buildings shook. Even the dark mansion, now a black shadow a block behind him, throbbed in the ground. It was another earthquake.
Except much, much worse.
An outhouse soared from down the block and disappeared into the light. It was soon followed by the hotel sign.
“Get down!” yelled Mike.
They all hit the dirt as building after building loosened itself from the ground. Wood split. Glass shattered. There goes the KEYS MADE HERE sign, and right after it, look, one of the windmill vanes.
The building where Mike had first seen Alison dropped from the sky and landed in the light. None of them heard it hit the ground—it simply disappeared.
The town was ripping itself apart. The horse shoe repair place shot upward then rocketed down into the light, never to be seen again. There was a hole underneath all that crimson luminance, a hole that was sucking the town into it.
If they weren’t careful, they’d be sucked right down into wherever it was everything else was going. But Mike knew that wasn’t right. They were all able to move away from the weird sucking hole in the ground that could uproot buildings, and that should’ve been impossible to do. In fact, they should’ve been the first things down that hole. But they weren’t.
No, just the town was going.
The clock store was next. Rachel heard the dings of clock bells as the building rolled down the street and vanished into the growing light.
There were now more old west structures above them than sky. Buildings tumbled and rolled through the air. Those that weren’t airborne moved along the ground like giant square wheels, devastating everything in their paths.
It was one of these rolling buildings—the ice cream parlor—that caused alarm. More alarm than they were already experiencing, anyway. It bounced toward them and shot a straight path down the middle of the road, creating cracks and craters and divots in the earth.
“MOVE!” Mike yelled as he grabbed Rachel. He hugged her close to his chest and rolled the both of them out of the way of the oncoming building.
Across from them, Sophia had done the same maneuver with Jody. Roscoe jumped over the two, and just in time. The ice cream shop barreled past them, the sound of breaking wood and empty metal ice cream containers rattling around deafening in their ears.
There were no other buildings around to terrorize them with their eventual uprooting, but they all kept their heads down anyway. Where the smoke-thing once stood there was now a giant ball of bright red light. Buildings from the old west town corkscrewed in its center like a tornado.
One by one the structures dropped and vanished below the ground until they were no more. High above all this flew the mansion, not yet ripped apart but well on its way. It flung into the sky and blocked out the sun for a second, then began its return to earth. It spun and spun and spun then was sucked into the ground with the rest of the buildings.
The red light gave off a brilliant white flash, and then was just as gone as everything else.
47.
Covered from head to toe in dust, his jumpsuit now brown instead of blue, Mike stood and brushed himself off. It was a useless task. The dirt had caked into his clothes and was now a permanent fixture of the uniform. He moved on to his face and managed to wipe away some of the soot, but not much. It would take more than just his hands to clean himself off. He needed a shower. A nice, hot, week-long shower.
Just as grimy and filthy as Mike, Rachel got to her feet. There was more dirt in her hair than hair. She let out a cough and a puff of road grit exited her mouth.
Mike looked over to Sophia and Jody. “You guys okay?”
The two were already standing and coming his way. They both gave tired nods, and it was only Roscoe who seemed to have any energy left. His tail wagged as he escorted the grimy mother and daughter across the street.
And that’s all that was left: the street. Squares and rectangles sat on the ground where buildings used to be. Beyond the grid of the town was grass, the greenest grass any of them had ever laid eyes upon. The mountains still towered in the east, the forest still swayed in the west. Somewhere in the trees a bird chirped.
Rachel shuddered at the forest and the memory of the dog-things eating Jimmy. But the hounds were gone, too. She felt that. Hell, there were birds out there now. Or at least one. The hounds had left with the town. They were one and the same, though, weren’t they? The hounds, the town, the Bug Man, the smoke-thing, the three nurses; all part of the same connection of wires, one leading to another, a computer that had finally gotten its virus.
Rachel coughed more dust from her lungs. “I think we just survived a ride through Hell.”
They stood in silence for a minute. The quiet of the afternoon was louder than the chaos of the town being destroyed.
Mike shrugged. “Okay. So now what?”
“This isn’t Hell,” said a voice from behind them.
Alison Randal stepped out of the still-swirling dust at the end of the block. She floated more than walked toward the group. She caught Mike’s open-mouth stare and smiled. She looked as good as she did the day they got married. Better, even.
“Alison,” was all Mike could think of to say. He looked at the others, who were also staring at her. Good. They saw her, too.
Holding out her arms, she approached Mike in almost slow-motion. He reached for her awkwardly, as if her touch might cause an electric shock or she might suddenly change form into the smoke-thing and eat him alive. That would be par for the course for this place. Instead, Alison took Mike’s hands and embraced him. He buried his head in her hair and could s
mell the cinnamon conditioner she used to use.
She didn’t change into smoke or try to eat him.
Pulling away from her, he stared into her eyes. Her deep, green eyes. God how he had missed them. And here they were again, right in front of him, as real as anything else. There was nothing “off” about them, no sign of the presence that had taken her form before. This was the real deal.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he said.
“The feeling’s mutual.”
Mike hugged her again. He wouldn’t be letting go. Not now, not ever. They’d stay like this for all eternity—he was pretty sure that they could do that now.
“We can,” she said. Apparently she still had the ability to hear his thoughts. But Mike couldn’t hear hers. “In time you will,” she said. “But first thing’s first. We can’t stay here for long and these two gotta go.” She pulled away from him and turned to Sophia and Jody.
“This is a place between worlds, between life and death,” Alison said. “And it’s not your time to be on this side of it.”
“What are you talking about?” Sophia asked. “I’m dead. We all are. We were killed in that earthquake.”
“They were,” Alison said and thumbed behind her. Mike, Rachel, Brett and Roscoe stood at the edge of the hole where the town had disappeared. They had moved without Sophia even seeing them go. Jillian was by their side. Next to her was the man she saw in the smoke, the guy that moved like a football player and looked like a marine. Rachel put her arm around the guy and Sophia figured that must be the infamous dog-eaten Jimmy. Behind Jimmy was the old woman from the station wagon. Roscoe moved to her side and licked her hand.
Jody hugged her mother hard.
“They rest are moving on,” said Alison. “Your friends will be alright.”
“So then what is this place?” Jody asked.
“Sometimes souls get lost on their way. And some beings in the next world, Jody, want the souls all to themselves. Some indulge a bit more than they should. The one that created this town, for instance. He’s a real asshole. He likes to call himself a harvester of sorrow.”
