Erica Spindler - Dead Run

She moved her gaze over the beautiful, silent garden, vividly reminded of that night. Of finding Tara. Her beautiful face drawn into a death grimace. Blood staining the ground around her. The sound of her own screams.

Stephen caught her hand and Liz jumped, startled back to the moment. She saw that he had relocked the gate. To keep others out? she wondered. Or to keep her from escaping?

He pointed to the opposite side of the garden. The shadow of the parsonage fell across the grounds. She saw that a single light burned in the dwelling and she wondered if Pastor Tim was up. She wondered if he would hear her if she screamed.

As if reading her mind, Stephen once again brought a finger to his lips. Keeping to the perimeter, they made their way around the garden and past the parsonage.

Then she saw it: a small building adjunct to the parsonage, not much bigger than an equipment shed.

Stephen’s quarters, she realized, a chill washing over her. Why had he brought her here? Her mind ran rampant with possibilities-none of them reassuring.

They had to leave the shadows to enter the building. Stephen glanced furtively around, and motioned her forward.

“No,” she whispered, hanging back.

He shook his head in the affirmative. When she still held back, he pulled on her arm.

Liz hesitated a moment more, then took a deep breath and followed Stephen into his quarters.

Basic would be the best way to describe the interior. It consisted of one room and a kitchenette. The battered furniture was a mishmash of styles, and Liz suspected all had been charitable donations. No pictures hung on the walls, no knickknacks or personal treasures adorned the shelves.

An obviously well-loved teddy bear sat on the neatly made bed, his one button eye seeming to stare at her. In a sad way, the toy reminded her of Stephen-battered but sweet. Sympathy for this man-child welled inside her. She ached for the life he had, but more, for the one he lost.

He led her to the very back of the dwelling to a door to what she assumed was a closet. Not a closet, she realized as Stephen opened it. A small room, big enough for a single cot.

Mark sat huddled on it, knees drawn up to his chest. He lifted his face as the door opened. He looked as if he had aged five years since she had seen him last.

“Mark!” she cried. “Thank God!”

“Liz!” He scrambled off the cot and they hugged.

“I was so frightened,” she said, alarmed at the way he trembled. “I was sure you were dead.”

He shuddered, tears welling in his eyes. “I thought I was.” He shifted his gaze to the other man, hovering in the doorway behind her. “Stephen found me.”

“Stephen?” she repeated. She glanced over her shoulder only to find that the other man was gone.

“He’s standing guard,” Mark murmured. “I owe him my life.”

She frowned. “Where did he find you?”

“Here. In the walled garden.” He lowered his voice to a choked whisper. “On the spot…where Tara-”

He couldn’t finish but he didn’t need to. On the spot where Tara had been found murdered.

The hair on her arms stood up.

“I was unconscious. I don’t remember anything after…”

His words trailed off. He looked ill.

“After what?” she asked. “Mark, what happened?”

He brought a shaking hand to his head. “I don’t feel so good.”

Liz caught his elbow and ordered him to sit. He did, heavily, and dropped his head into his hands. He breathed deeply and slowly, using his breath, she knew, to help steady himself.

She sat beside him, at the edge of the cot. She had so many questions for him, ones about Tara and Rachel, about the Horned Flower and what they had done to him, where he had been and whether he had recognized anyone. But she held back, seeing how easily he could be overwhelmed.

Seconds ticked past. They became minutes. Finally he lifted his head and looked at her. “The night I called you, I met a girl named Sarah at Southernmost Beach. She blindfolded me and gave me a drug-”

“What kind?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was a pill. It relaxed me to the point where I was no longer aware of what was real. Like I was in a bubble, floating. Removed from the physical world. Above it.”

A depressant, probably. Maybe Xanax or Librium.

“Go on.”

“I don’t know where they took me. It didn’t seem like I’d been in the car long, but it could have been hours.” He paused as if using the time to prepare himself for what he was about to say next. He clasped his hands in his lap, gaze averted.

“I was aware of many people gathered around. They gave me something else to drink. From a metal cup, like a communion chalice.”

“What did it taste like?”

“Nothing I recognized. It was room temperature. Not unpleasant but weird.”

“It wasn’t alcohol?” He shook his head. “Was it drugged?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think it was because my memory is totally scrambled from that point.” He balled his hands into fists. “How can I help Tara when I can’t even remember what happened that night!”

Liz reached over and covered his hands, even as disappointment washed over her. She had hoped he would learn something substantive about Tara’s murder and Rachel’s disappearance. “I’ll help you put it together, Mark. We can do this. Tell me what you do remember. Something that doesn’t make sense to you may make perfect sense to me.”

He swallowed audibly and began again, tentatively. “After I…drank from the chalice, they began to chant.”

“What did they say?”

“I don’t-” he pressed his fingertips to his temples “-something about heat and the flower and the light. Then they…took off my blindfold.”

Liz straightened. “And? Did you recognize any of them?”

“Creatures,” he said. “They weren’t human. Birds and tigers and the walking…dead.” On the last his voice grew thick, and he cleared his throat. “I had this sense they…”

She leaned toward him. “You sensed what, Mark?”

“That they meant to devour me, spirit and all.”

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. She shook her head. “They were probably masked.”

“Yes,” he repeated hollowly. “Of course. Masked.”

“So you couldn’t recognize them.”

“I guess not.”

That he didn’t sound convinced concerned her. She wondered again at the drugs he had been given. Some sort of hallucinogenic, for sure. As a mental health care professional, she was well versed in the effects and side effects of drugs of abuse. These days, sadly, she wouldn’t be able to perform her job if she wasn’t.

“They began to tear at me. As if feasting on my flesh. But they…it was sexual.”

He lowered his voice to a thready whisper she had to strain to hear. He told her about their hands and mouths, about his being laid upon an altar and of floating above it, enraptured. He described his all-but-continual orgasm.

Ecstasy or cocaine might explain the intense sexual aspects of Mark’s experience. Mescaline or peyote could account for the visual hallucinations. LSD for hallucinations paired with the impaired depth and time perception.

Liz swallowed against the dryness of her throat. Her heart had begun to beat faster

“Then my head…exploded.” He began to tremble. “It was like the most brilliant light in the universe flashed before my eyes, blindingly white. Then it went black.” He looked at her; she went cold at the terror in his eyes. “That’s when I saw it, Liz.”

“It?”

“The Beast.”

For the full count of five, Liz sat silent, motionless. She couldn’t find her voice.

He dropped his face in his hands once more. “I’m so ashamed.”