The Mark of the Damned

by Daniel Willcocks

  “Doc, if you just let me call him, you’ll see. He’ll tell you…”

  “Call him all you want,” the doctor said, working his digging thumbs around the elbow now. “It won’t make any difference. This is undoubtedly just a tattoo. However you think you got it, it’s got all the hallmarks of a fine piece of craftsmanship…”

  His voice trailed away as his fingers found the pentagram on Quinton’s forearm. The doctor’s eyes locked into the center of the void. Quinton bent his head and looked into the doctor’s eyes, alarmed to see that they’d grown glassy.

  “Doc?” He asked uncertainly.

  No answer.

  He repeated himself, louder this time. “Doc?”

  Doctor Ribbik’s eyes snapped back to attention. He carried on as if nothing much had happened at all.

  “Yep, that’s a healthy tattoo, alright.” He slid his chair backwards, snapped off his gloves and tossed them in the waste disposal. “No signs of infection, no scarring, no wounded tissue. Wherever you say that thing came from, it’s in perfect health.” His eyes darted back to the pentagram. “Interesting choice of decoration, but who am I too judge?”

  Deciding there was nothing more for it, Quinton thanked the doctor for his time. The doctor made a point of shaking his hand, his fingers tenuously close to the tattoo. Quinton held back instinctively, remembering the small shock he had received from Sarah the night before when their skin had touched.

  “You’re kidding?” Gabe grinned, placing his pint loudly on the wooden bar. “Three times?”

  Quinton nodded. “It would’ve been number four this morning if I hadn’t have torn away from her. Honestly, I don’t know what’s come over her.”

  ‘The Lantern’ was modestly busy. One of their favorite evening haunts, the bar had everything that they could want. Alcohol, comfortable seating, several pretty barmaids with smiles that sucked tips from patrons, and a music volume level that gave them the chance to converse and catch up. They had joked about it only a few months ago, how they had traded in the clubs for the bars and had finally turned into the type of men who would rather chinwag and pint-sip than get blasted by DJs and grind on randos at Kings Nightclub.

  A table of older gentlemen in suits accommodated a booth in the back corner, their laughter deep and booming. Not too far from where Quinton and Gabe sat a couple held hands and stared into each other’s eyes. Across from them, another couple sat staring at their phones. Over in the corner a man with a long rat-tail and ripped sleeved t-shirt pummeled the buttons on the gambit machine.

  “You act like that’s a bad thing,” Gabe laughed, punching Quinton affectionately in the arm. “Make the most of it while you can. You know it never lasts long—though that’s usually your fault, eh?”

  Quinton smirked, his mind whirling on memories of last night. Even though he had been tired he had still gone along with Sarah’s affections, the memories stuck in a sleepy haze of writhing and moans.

  “Seriously, though. Have you guys… y’know?”

  “What?” Quinton asked.

  Gabe looked awkwardly at his pint, then back to Quinton, clearly unsure how to say what he wanted to say.

  “You know you can ask me anything,” he encouraged.

  A moderately attractive woman in a pencil skirt and light blue shirt passed behind them, adding a quick hello to Gabe. He waved back and said hi, waiting for her to pass before asking, “Have you guys done it since… well… since it all happened?”

  “Since my dad died?” Quinton said rather bluntly.

  Gabe reeled backwards, hands up in defense. “No, not that. Though… I can understand if you didn’t… well… what I meant was…” He paused, took a deep breath, then added, “I meant have you guys done it since the appointment?”

  Quinton felt the words like a low blow to his stomach. In all of the events which had unfolded over the last couple of months he had completely pushed it all from his mind.

  The doctors.

  The tests.

  The results.

  A flashing memory of a man in a white overcoat and a clipboard sat behind a large walnut desk telling Quinton and Sarah that there was the very real possibility that they might never have children.

  They hadn’t even been seeking to get pregnant at the time. A rogue drunken night had led to a certain level of relaxation of standards in the sexual protection department, and soon they had found themselves in the throes of romance. The night was nothing more than a fuzzy blur that neither of them remembered clearly the next morning.

  Weeks passed and Sarah felt something had been wrong. The pregnancy test confirmed it. A wild and terrified Quinton had paced, hands laced in his hair, wondering how it could have been. What they were going to do. Where it had all gone wrong.

  How were they supposed to save to move when they had an infant on the way?

  Neither of them would abort the baby, of course. It wasn’t that they were pro-lifers, but they just couldn’t imagine doing something like that to their own flesh and blood. They had resolved to raise the baby. To bring it into a world and make the best of the situation. For a while, things had looked good.

  “Quin? Something’s wrong.”

  The voice had come from the gloom, the darkened haze of the bedroom, but he could tell by the urgency in her voice that something was indeed wrong.

  Flashing ambulance lights.

  Blood that would never wash out of the cottons.

  An evening of diagnostics and IV drips to strengthen the woman who looked to have expelled an entire bucketful of her own blood.

  Tiny human included.

  They had been devastated beyond their own belief. How they had come to love something that had never even been on the cards seemed impossible. They hadn’t even told their families yet, wanting to keep the whole thing a surprise until that safe barrier of twenty weeks in which the doctors had told them the chances of survival were near enough certain.

  And then a few weeks later, the follow-up test results. The doctor’s words coming as if from underwater.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Thompson…”

  “We’re not married.” Sarah. A pointless contribution.

  And then the news.

  “I didn’t mean to bring it up, it’s just…” Gabe continued.

  Quinton turned his attention to his own pint. Half-drained and flat. The head nothing more than a few skirts of white foam dredged around the rim of the glass.

  “It’s fine,” he said unconvincingly.

  Man. What a year…

  “No, we hadn’t,” he continued. “It was the first time in months. She hadn’t even looked at me in that way since that night we got pregnant, I guess.”

  Gabe told Quinton that he understood, but the truth was that no one could. Not really.

  They drained their drinks, Gabe making great strides as usual in diverting the conversation back to something a bit cheerier. Pretty soon he had Quinton chatting to a set of friends that Gabe knew from his time working at the packing plant during his college summer vacation. It was nice to think about other things and talk to new people. It diverted his mind away from his troubles. He even forgot entirely about his tattoo, for a while.

  It was after the third drink, when Quinton felt himself growing slightly light-headed, that he bade his goodbyes to Gabe, left him with his amigos and headed out the door.

  His house was a short walk away from The Lantern. The crisp air soothed his head and sharpened his senses as he walked. He passed by neighbors he had known since he was a child, waved but continued walking quickly to save the trouble of talking to them. Soon enough, his key was in the door, and the familiar smell of home hit him square in the face.

  He tossed his shoes against the rack and threw his coat on the hooks on the wall. His mother was in the living room, sat in his father’s chair. Wrapped up in his father’s thick woolen dressing gown with her legs curled up beneath her. A cigarette in her mouth sending a ribbon of white curls into the already hazy ceiling.
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  “Hey Mom.”

  Her hand flicked up in acknowledgement, though her eyes fixed on the TV. There was a newscaster standing in front of a pile of rubble. A small headline reading: tibetan earthquake rescue effort now critical.

  Quinton moved closer, collecting the filthy, stained mugs of coffee from the side table. Cigarettes and ash had been deposited inside the cups, joining with the dregs to make an ashen sludge. “I really wish you hadn’t started that again,” Quinton murmured, loud enough for her to hear. He crumpled snack packets which littered the side table into the cups and stood. “You know Dad always hated when you smoked.”

  His mother continued to stare at the TV, not paying the least bit of attention.

  Quinton shook his head and turned away from the painful sight of the shell his mother had become.

  As his hands reached into the scalding hot sink, bubbles wrapping around his wrist, his mind jumped back to the tableau of his mother, once a lithe and good-humored woman, now sitting miserably in the same chair she had spent the last few weeks.

  He let a small tear form in the corner of his eye, thinking about how life could only get better from here. Would only get better from here.

  It would be later that night that he would be proven both right and wrong, and when everything that Quinton thought that he knew would change.

  4

  In the dark scape of dreams and visions he sleeps on, in the land where wants and desires are warped like some great amorphous thing.

  He is there and She is here. A great being of flame and fire. The tongues of a colossal beast kissing the whispers of flame as they swirl in the soot and ash created by their monstrous movements. The fornication of the ancients. The crimson glow of heat washing over them both in roiling waves of a thousand tiny embers.

  She is hungry. She is lonely. She sleeps in the depths of the abyss from which no mortal shall tread. Cowering in the dark recesses of the abominated land and held prisoner. Her tormentor as old as time itself, cracking the whip and leaving the bitch to starve. Licking dry, cracked, burning lips. Eyes which could swallow cars and devour houses in their cavernous depths. Pupils fixed on him and him alone. Teasing her with the cusp of freedom, a bone china cup long gone dry of the nourishing fluids within.

  The man can feel her. Inside of him. Outside of him. All around him like the presence of some suffocating effigy. His heart rate quickens to match hers as his eyelids flicker rapidly, the two becoming intertwined. A hummingbird’s wing covering the orbs through which perception becomes reality and the impossible is left far behind. Sweat staining the sheets as he tosses and turns, basking in the monstrous heat of the titanic thing which begs and barks and yaps and yowls. Calling, ever calling. Its claws, as large and sharp as scythes, clicking against obsidian rock as it prowls impatiently, eyes staring into the rolling black clouds.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Waiting…

  And yet still he does not wake.

  He shuffles, clawing the sheets and drawing them towards him. His body falling fetal. Wrapping himself in a cocoon of protection while the eyes of hell watch and study. All of this in a state through which memory and recollection will fade in the state of waking like blood picked clean off the carcass.

  She is hungry.

  She is ready.

  She beckons the man through the ink which binds, and he responds.

  The first thing Quinton knew was the prickling sensation running along his arm.

  An uncomfortable, but not unpleasant feeling. Many times, he has awoken with pins and needles from having slept too heavily on his arm, but this felt different somehow. Like something small had crawled beneath his skin and was passionately nibbling in an effort to wake him up.

  Quinton rolled over, the sheets damp against his skin. He kicked them away and stared into the dark, trying to calibrate his senses.

  I am at home.

  This is my bed.

  It is late.

  Quinton closed his eyes and took a deep breath, remembering the events of the past two days. The impossible tattoo, the things which followed. He rubbed his marked arm and sat at the edge of the bed, staring through the crack in the curtains and out into the world beyond. The pain was irritating but manageable. Not enough that he could fall asleep again if he tried, but bearable that he wouldn’t be crying out in pain anymore.

  Or at least he—

  —the door was now in front of him. Solid oak and slightly ajar.

  Quinton took a sudden, sharp breath in. He had no recollection of standing up, of making his way through the hallway and yet here he was.

  The prickling sensation had lessened. At least that was something. Yet, even if it had enflamed and began hurting once again, Quinton was still sure that his attention would be elsewhere. Focused instead on the door in front of him.

  The door to his father’s office.

  He couldn’t recount the number of times he had wanted to knock on this door growing up. To see inside of his father’s workspace and to understand exactly what it was that his father did for a living. Whenever he had asked, it was always met with generalities. One-liners practiced again and again, designed to sate the curious mind and divert away the interested.

  ‘Important work, son,’ his father had said on one such evening after Quinton had come home from school. The three of them sat around the kitchen table, tucking into his mother’s famous beef lasagna. Quinton still dressed in his school uniform as his legs kicked beneath his chair, toes not quite yet able to reach the floor.

  ‘What kind of important work?’

  His question hadn’t been real at the time. He was too young to care. His mind only half on his father’s smiling response and half on the fact that Jonny Dubrovnik had brought a yo-yo into school that day and showed off his tricks. Not just any yo-yo, either, but a Hasbro Lightning 2000X – the red one that Quinton had lusted over on the TV adverts and put on his birthday list.

  Jonny had whirled the yo-yo around, letting it gyrate in endless circles on the end of the string, before tossing it around the world and rocking it in a cradle and walking the dog and—

  ‘Just important work.’ His father leaned forward, a fork laden with sheets of pasta and minced beef pointing in his direction. ‘Work that means that we’ll never have to worry. All of this,’ he signaled to the four walls they sat between, ‘and everything we could ever need is taken care of by your dad’s job. So, don’t you worry about it, eh?’

  Quinton nodded; eyebrows raised as he chomped on his dinner.

  If he had only been a little bit older at the time, he might have noticed the bags resting beneath his father’s eyes. Like hefty black refuse sacks left to melt in the sun. He might have noticed his mother’s back stiffen a touch, her eyes pinned to her own food as she silently ate and did her best to ignore the subject. He may have noticed the frost that passed between the pair in those moments.

  What he would never have noticed would be the small scratches covering his father’s arms beneath the thick cloth of his shirt…

  Quinton gently nudged the door, expecting to hear a creak of the hinge, or a protestation from the wood. But the door opened silently. His breath caught in his throat, curiosity now overpowering sense as his breathing quickened, and the room came into view.

  Whatever Quinton had been expecting, it hadn’t been this.

  He took a tentative step inside, one hand clasping the edge of the door as though he were about to enter madness and the door was his only life raft. The sight making no sense to him as the light from the hallway cast an eerie glow ahead.

  The room was bare. Rich, dark wood encased every inch, stretching across all four walls, the floor, the ceiling. There wasn’t a single item of furniture. No desk, no computer, no potted plants. No telephone lines, no cables, no wall sockets. No windows, no curtains, no light on the ceiling.

  But that’s impossible, isn’t it?

  Quinton closed his eyes, remembering the view of the house fro
m the outside. His father’s office overlooked the small crop of well-maintained garden at the back of the house. He was sure of it. He could count on one hand the amount of times he had seen his father waving out of the window as Quinton kicked a ball around the lawn or set up camp in the garden with his friends.

  So where is it then?

  As all mortals do when met with the impossible, Quinton’s tired brain began to work on the rational. The reasoning behind it all. Impossibilities were, well, impossible, and there was no way that his father could have spent decades cooped up in this room by himself and still have made enough money to keep the Thompson’s afloat by himself.

  Mom must have come in here over the last few weeks while I’ve been at work and cleared the place out. Yeah, that has to be it. The memories too painful to keep in the house.

  But several things niggled away at his newfound certainty. Threatened to shatter the glass of his illusion.

  For one thing, his mother had been in no fit state to do anything these past few weeks. Every time Quinton had come home, she was to be found in exactly the same location, the TV on exactly the same channel as it had been hours before. When would she have found the energy to sort out the entire office?

  More than that, the rest of his father’s items remained untouched. His shirts still hung bodiless inside the wardrobe. His shoes nestled crookedly in the shoe rack by the door.

  There were even some of his beard shavings still sprinkled around the basin in his mother’s en-suite.

  Not only that, but this room had always been locked tight. His father was the only one in the whole house who had access to the key. On the day that Quinton and his friends had tried to sneak in and get a peek inside, he had been caught out by his mother. A tired, resigned expression on her face as she explained to the kids the importance of his father’s work, and how he was to remain undisturbed.

  ‘Important work, boys. Very important work,’ she said, exasperation in her voice as she led them back downstairs and served them all ice-cream.