James Baldwin - Stained Glass

I strained against the illusion, popping my teeth. The taste of blood flooded my mouth. My fingers hit something small and hard. They were shaking so bad that I slipped across the light switch before I caught it and flipped it up. Light flooded the room – and a cloud of black motes, finer than flies but larger than dust – burst from the hanged man’s mouth and flew straight at my face as two shambling figures lurched from the unnaturally thick shadows and began to limp towards me.

I threw the knife up as the cloud swarmed me and staggered forwards, trying to break through the cloud and away. Pinhead-sized bugs landed on my exposed skin and began to drill and dig, shrieking like rusty machinery. I covered my face with my arms and tripped into the dresser beside the bed, spinning crazily, and burst through the door in the bedroom into an ensuite bathroom, clawing and scraping at my cheeks and scalp. The knife drew cold lines through my own flesh: it was all that kept the black screeching motes from boring in all the way.

The bugs fled from the touch of the blade with the deafening flicker of metallic wings, coming back to jab at my eyes, my nose, my lips. The things were gathering at my mouth, trying to prise it open. Clawing and fighting the urge to cry out, I hit something at knee-height, tumbled, and fell heavily into a bathtub. A flailing hand struck something. The faucet?

I fumbled for it again, blind, flesh burning as things began to wriggle under the skin of my scalp. A flood of water struck me in the face, washing away blood and a crowd of screaming, furious insects. The water turned hot, and the wail built to an ear-shattering pitch as they pulled themselves free from my head and withdrew like angry hornets.

The stench of a slaughterhouse broke through the rushing water: the reek of rotten meat and the clinging odor of chlorine mingled into a violet smell so powerful that my vision pulsed with the color, nauseating and unnatural and dead . Sputtering, I forced my eyes open and flushed them with hot water, turning blindly towards the door on instinct. Through the fog and mist, a pig’s head swam into view. It was slack-jawed and flopped weirdly to one side, the liquefying remains of its eyes streaked down its sagging, rotten jowls. The head was roughly stitched to the swollen, mutilated corpse of a child rendered sexless by a thick line of stitches from collarbone to crotch. A wave of toxic air blew into the bathroom in its wake.

Jesus fucking Christ. I retched, choking on bile and pressing back against the wall as lizard brain took the wheel. In one smooth motion, I pulled the pistol from my sopping jacket, aimed, and plugged three rounds into the nightmare before it reached the tub. It careened into the bathroom sink, scattering toiletries and chintzy statuettes to the floor. Bottles and cans rolled towards the bathtub, drowned out by the bark of the silenced rounds as I fired two more shots through the spray. Gelatinous, rotten blood blew backwards from the corpse, splattering the wall and a second ghoul crowding in behind it, this one with the head of a goat. The second dead child reached for me with skeletal hands turned to claws as it tripped over its brother and righted itself on the way forward.

The cloud of insects was still in here. They swarmed for the splattered mess on the mirror, congregating on it like wasps on honey as Goathead swiped at me through the water. The claws missed my groin by an inch as I scrambled to one side and emptied the clip point-blank into its skull. Six bullets were enough to blow it back and put it down, thrashing and jerking on the floor, but it they didn’t kill it. Tumorous masses bubbled up from the entry and exit wounds. They fleshed out and then erupted into more black bugs.

They were some kind of Morphorde. DOGs, demons. Shit. Shit shit shit, I’d used the gun!

Pighead was struggling to sit up as I dropped the pistol and got out of the bath, went to the window and smashed it with the end of my knife, shattering it and admitted a blast of cold, sweet air. The sound drew the attention of the DOG-bugs. They broke away from their meal with an angry screech, a dark arrow of spined bodies that flew at my face through the cooling water.

I swept off the counter beside me and threw whatever came to hand, cursing myself all the while. I’d forgotten that DOGs were vulnerable to eggs. EGGS. I’d forgotten to bring the one stupid thing that would save my life, and it was going to be my last and only mistake.

The enlarged swarm passed around everything hurled and sprayed at it. Soap, shampoo, a can of hairspray. I picked up a featureless brown bottle and pulled the cork out, intending to throw it and whatever was inside of it. A sharp green odor cut through the putrefaction of the air, and the swarm turned away with a scream of fury, wings slicing at the skin of my guarding forearm as they curved around and then started back towards me.

It was peppermint oil. I swigged a mouthful of it and spat it as a mist as the spear of bodies closed in a second time. The DOGs screeched like a rusty drill burrowing through sheet metal. The flock symmetry of the swarm dissolved as tiny bodies tumbled against my face like gravel and bounced lifelessly to the floor. The stuff burned my nose and eyes, but I spat again, sputtering and coughing, and sure enough, they continued to fall. The bugs whirled in the air like sparrows and blew through the en suite door, fleeing to the fetid safety of the bedroom.

Pighead took me at waist height, charging like a bull. It slammed into me with heedless strength, bouncing me off the wall. Black peg teeth sunk into my belly and gripped skin, worrying at me while I stabbed down at its head. The knife punched its rot-softened skull like soggy cardboard. It didn’t slow in the slightest, squealing and thrashing until I poured the oil into the wounds. The teeth released as the dead thing reeled away. Its entire head collapsed into reeking black sludge.

I shoved it away and it toppled backwards, limbs jerking as nameless slime oozed across the floor. The smell burned the air and dulled the light and I threw up, right there on the spot. There was nothing in my stomach but acid and peppermint oil, and it burned my already-inflamed mouth like fire. Through a film of tears, I saw Goathead trying to get to its feet. The bullets had blown its head back, exposing the severed human neck underneath, but it hadn’t killed it.

Coughing, choking on fumes and struggling against the retching, I dumped the rest of the bottle onto it as it staggered at me. There wasn’t much peppermint oil left. It kept on coming for a few seconds, while I kicked it away and stomped, crushing it underfoot until the spastic limbs fell still.

GOD, what else could I use in here? I scanned the clutter on the counter for anything else I had to destroy the DOGs, the insects. My scalp was still crawling and stinging, and my brain couldn’t help but associate the sensation with larvae pulsing under my skin. I searched through bottles with my nose, keeping one eye on the bathroom door and my knife in hand. Yellow smells, sharp and muddy smells… I found a pump bottle of tea-tree oil in a small first aid kit. It had a similar sharp green smell as the peppermint, so I dumped the lot of it over my head, rubbing it over the burning wounds. I didn’t even feel the pain, too desperate to care. Nothing crawled out and plopped onto the counter. I leaned in to stare in the broken mirror, clawing at my face, my scalp and mouth until I was sure nothing had burrowed in or reproduced in my body. The wounds were angry and bleeding, but they didn’t bulge or wriggle.

I stumbled along the wall, holding my breath, and only gasped for air once I was out beyond the reach of the fetid stench from the bathroom. The bedroom stunk like an abandoned abattoir, but it was leagues better than the stench of those… things? Zombies? I had no fucking idea what they were. All I knew is that children had been murdered to create them. My stomach trembled, my throat hurt, and my breath wheezed as I fought for composure, for insight, for anything other than visions of dead children. Dripping water and tea-tree oil and blood, I stared around the room, and really saw it for the first time.