Ray stepped into the echoy, near empty bedroom. Moved to the gun quietly, though he knew it knew he was near. The Magnum lay at his feet; he could see the bullets’ single-nostriled noses in the cage of the cylinder.
He dipped, expecting a bomb to be triggered when he touched it.
Paul reached his fingers into his back pocket where he had stuffed Abby’s cigarette lighter. Tar-Fiend was worming his way through the barrels for him, gurgling up more vomit to launch, but Paul remained where he was. The smell of lacquer thinner soaking his clothing was strong. The monster must not be found when people came, which would be soon now.
Paul wasn’t going to survive to twelve, the building wasn’t going to survive, but the monster must not survive to go out into the world and kill more innocent people. That was all that mattered. He no long retched or ran or cried. Half smile—of bitter determination and resignation. Paul thumbed the lighter in his fist.
No bomb went off. Ray rose with the heavy pistol in his fist. He took one tentative half step, after a beat of hesitation moved forward toward the huddled shape. He thought he saw the back of the hooded head perk up ever so slightly at his approach. Ray thumbed back the hammer of the pistol with a click, came to a stop just a few steps from the black form, pointing the gun down at the head in one hand, an executioner now, axe poised.
He knew now it was no trap. The hooded head began to turn to gaze over its shoulder up at him. He was Rasputin, Abdul, the wizard…the monster. Now the executioner. It feared him. The last black monk peered up at him in pathetic, pale resignation. The eyes were red-rimmed and moist from silent crying. Ray nearly dropped the gun, nearly turned to flee at this final horror, but he had known that this last confrontation would be the greatest horror, and he wasn’t even really all that surprised.
No, not all that surprised at the crooked left eye.
The eyes pleaded to die. Ray could only look into them a moment before he pointed the Magnum between them and pulled the trigger. Once.
Just once. Clap of thunder. The gun dropped heavy to the floorboards.
Paul stood up from behind the barrels, straight, grinning, his shirt on fire. He roared at Tar-Fiend in triumph over the madness and pain, all fear gone, turned to flame, as Tar-Fiend launched his plastic vomit blindly.
The vomit splashed Paul, drowning his roar, but for a moment he maintained his stance against its blast…
A hand pushed his shoulder. With a start, Paul opened his eyes, which had felt glued shut, and looked up into his mother’s face. “What?” he grumbled, irritated at being jarred from such a deep sleep, as if his mother had shut off a movie he’d been watching.
“Rim Corp is on fire—a very bad one,” his mother said, breathless, nervous. “We heard something like thunder or an explosion and then your father heard it on the scanner. It’s terrible; the house across the street caught on fire, too. There were people still in there. All we could think of was thank God you didn’t go in tonight—it’s like a miracle.” Paul could see his mother was close to tears.
He blinked, sat upright as reality finally clicked in place. The bed squealed. “There were people inside? What time is it?”
“Midnight. But your father said on the scanner they said there were still some cars in the parking lot.”
“What…wait a minute.” Paul glared intensely around his cluttered bedroom, at the digital clock in his VCR. “How long was I asleep?”
“All night. I thought you went to work—I heard you leave, but your father came through to get the mail in the hall and he saw you asleep. We thought you called in sick.” Paul had called in sick to work many times…had been fired twice for it, though twice allowed to return.
“I didn’t call in,” Paul said, hearing distant sirens. “I woke up when you brought my food in, and then I went back to sleep. I can’t believe I slept all day.”
“I could have sworn you were up and left. I said bye to you—I remember!”
“I guess I was up but went back to sleep; I don’t remember,” Paul said impatiently as he started putting his shoes on. “Can Dad drive me down there?”
“I’ll go tell him. I’m so glad you’re safe,” his mother added shyly, embarrassed, touching his shoulder before shuffling from his room in her worn slippers.
««—»»
The police would let him in closer to the hellish chaos when they found out who he was. It wasn’t until the next day, however, that he learned the entire list of people who had been trapped inside the inferno.
His entire masking crew had been killed. The remains of all but Donna were identified, chiefly by dental records. Nothing was ever identified amidst the debris as being part of Donna.
But stranger revelations would come. When they could discuss such things, Abby’s husband and Jean’s boyfriend told him they had talked with him at work that fateful night, in each other’s company no less. He didn’t remember this. Later, his boss Ted and Mr. Ed in the deli across from work insisted that he had gone to work that day. He didn’t remember.
His bike was home in the garage.
The best theory Paul could work up was that he had indeed gone to work, and at some point had come back home (sick, probably) and gone back to sleep. He did seem to remember, now, having been at work, talking to people (he was profoundly surprised to see that smirking kid with the beer belly from post-ops was still alive; for some reason he had expected to hear that the kid would be found in exploded fragments inside, but he had been sent home early for lack of work). Paul couldn’t imagine what had really caused his amnesia.
His cousin Ray would offer him an interesting theory of his own. That Paul, who believed he had psychic ability, had known through precognition that the explosion would occur and had come home in a somnambulistic state to save himself. Such things happened—people changed their minds about plane flights inexplicably, to find out later that the planes had crashed. Also, Ray told Paul about the true story of a French police detective who was investigating the unmotivated killing of a vacationing man on a beach at night. The only clues were the murderer’s footprints in the sand. The detective discovered that the prints were his own—he had been investigating a murder he had committed for no rational reason while sleepwalking. He turned himself in, but after a trial was found innocent due to the peculiar circumstances, his unconscious state of mind.
Ray’s theory seemed the only possible answer. But Paul always felt a restlessness about the incident—almost a guilt. More than once he would wonder, bearing in mind Ray‘s story, if he had somehow set that fire either accidentally or out of resentment toward work, and was too guilty to remember it. Ray was the only one to whom he confessed this fear, and Ray advised him to mention it to no one. Paul nervously expected the police, someone, to come question him along these lines. They never did.
His mother told him it was not unusual for survivors of a tragedy to feel guilty that they, too, had not been killed along with the others. He shunned Abby’s husband, Jean’s boyfriend, as if they would resent him for having survived—but they didn’t.
But there were nightmares. In one, a little boy, a ghost maybe, was lost in the maze of Rim Corp’s charred black ruins, sobbing, and Paul woke up sobbing out loud.
A few years later Paul’s artwork started getting published in a variety of witchcraft publications. A poem, later, then a short story about Halloween, and a cover for a Salem newsletter in rapid succession. By this time, also, he was married to a sweet and pretty young woman who was interested in his artwork and his witchcraft. The nightmares eventu-ally dwindled to a shadow.
But right now Paul’s father came into his room, pulling on his VFW
jacket, telling Paul he was ready to take him down to see if any of his friends had been hurt. Paul’s father went out to start the car a moment later, lighting a cigarette. Paul stepped out into the banshee-filled night and looked up at the black sky in a vague sort of surprise.
It was snowing.
««—»»
It was cool, the sun coming up, a thick band of orange behind the jagged black treetops. Dawn at last, calm and quiet, a lonely time, but sometimes loneliness can be beautiful in a romantic, melancholy way.
He sat on the back door stoop. He stared into his dark and empty yard, a coffee in his hand in lieu of the cigarette he, a nonsmoker, strangely craved. Empty yard. Vaguely he told himself that he must get a new dog.
There had been glass to sweep away before he could sit on the stoop.
There were empty guns lying throughout the big house behind him, and bullet holes in walls. Nunchakus, a broken baseball bat. There was no blood. No bodies. Near his stove on the linoleum lay a screwdriver. As much as he could, he understood what had happened. Understanding is important. The first step for an alcoholic is the admittance. Ray would finish his coffee, take a walk afterwards, perhaps, come back to sleep for a while (maybe it would have to be in the car, out in this new sunlight, at first) before he set about sweeping up more glass, putting away guns, plastering up and painting over bullet holes. His cousin Paul would be the only one to hear his story. Paul was a witch and would understand what had happened…as much as he could.
Yes, a lot to clean up in there. He’d drive out to pick up what he needed to patch and hide the holes. Maybe a mall, so he could look into finding himself that dog.
But right now Ray rested his forehead down on his knees, and cried softly, numbly, out of guilt and shame and self-disgust. Heidi…poor, poor Heidi. Yet things would change, and while the self-disgust would never leave him entirely, being so much a part of him, it would soon enough fade from its current blackness to a lighter gray stain he could live with.
««—»»
Heidi’s mother and kid brother had mounted the wooden back patio to find the sliding glass door smashed. They called the police from the neighbor’s house before entering.
In the upstairs part of the house they found nothing amiss. They went down into the basement, the policeman’s hand on his gun butt. There was something on the floor near the billiards table.
Heidi appeared on the steps, startling the policeman and her mother.
She descended to join them, having just returned from seeing Tim. She asked what had happened.
The policeman and her mother stood near two blankets on the cellar floor, one atop the other. Besides a piece of rope on the floor and another knotted around an overhead pipe in the washroom, these were the things they could find out of place in the house. There was nothing under the blankets.
Heidi shivered, hugged her arms. She had her suspicions about the mysterious crime, but she never mentioned them to anybody—and it was just as well, since there was never another disturbance.
But she always held those suspicions, and she regretted her involvement…though she couldn’t retract her fondness entirely, and even felt partly responsible for this. His name, when she chose to remember it, or couldn’t keep herself from remembering it, would always inspire pity in her.
And fear.
About the Author
Jeffrey Thomas is the author of such novels as Deadstock, Blue War, Health Agent, Monstrocity, Everybody Scream! , Letters from Hades, Boneland and A Nightmare on ElmStreet: The Dream Dealers. His short story collections include Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with Scott Thomas), Voices from Punktown, Voices from Hades, Doomsdays, Aaaiiieee!!! , Unholy Dimensions and Thirteen Specimens. He is the brother of author Scott Thomas. They have both lived—and worked—in New England all their lives.
Dark Regions Press
Dark Regions Press is an independent specialty publisher of horror, dark fiction, fantasy and science fiction, specializing in horror and dark fiction and in business since 1985. We have gained recognition around the world for our creative works in genre fiction and were awarded the Horror Writers Association 2010 Specialty Press Award and the Italian 2012 The Black Spot award for Excellence in a Foreign Publisher. We produce premium signed hardcover editions for collectors as well as trade paperbacks and ebook editions for more casual readers. We have published hundreds of authors, artists and poets such as Kevin J. Anderson, Bentley Little, Michael D. Resnick, Rick Hautala, Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, W.H. Pugmire, Simon Strantzas, Jeffrey Thomas, Charlee Jacob, Richard Gavin, Tim Waggoner and hundreds more. Dark Regions Press has been creating specialty books and creative projects for over twenty-seven years.
The press has staff throughout the country working virtually but also has a localized office in Ashland, Oregon from where we ship our orders and maintain the primary components of the business.
Dark Regions Press staff, authors, artists and products have been interviewed/mentioned/listed in Rue Morgue Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist Online, LA Times, The Sunday Chicago Tribune, The Examiner, Playboy, Comic-Con, Wired, The Huffington Post, Horror World, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Sony Reader store and many other publications and vendors.
Visit us at: http://www.darkregions.com
Thought Forms Page 33
