James Daniels - Ring of Knives

Tiptoes, heels. Tiptoes, heels. Tiptoes, heels.

What was Jesse doing?

Tiptoes…Tiptoes…

Suddenly, Jesse’s toes left the floor.

Matt gasped, eyes glued, as Jesse slid up the wall.

Stayed there…three feet above the floor. Still clutching his throat. Still screaming.

Then he slid- fast -horizontally, into the corner, where he crashed into the center wall.

Matt backed up, holding his hands out in front of him, as if to ward off the sight of Jesse sliding up, faster now, to crash into the ceiling, then roll onto it, his back and arms and legs spread-eagled against it, and then and only then did the TV’s sound kick in, just for a second, blaring way too loud Jesse’s scream of terror “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”…as he slid across the ceiling on his back, straight into the camera The screen went black.

“Oh…my… God.”

Matt’s panic increased as he suddenly smelled something overpowering, like a body left out in the heat for a week.

Sudden knowledge: he wasn’t alone in the room. He was sure of it.

Matt spun around, his heart pounding triple time.

No one there.

At least, no one he could see. But where was that awful smell coming from? Mr. Dark? Or just a whiff of his own sweat?

He turned back to the TV/VCR. He banged the “eject” button, pulled out the video gingerly, like it was radioactive, and dropped it into his rucksack. His knees felt weak. How the hell was he supposed to deal with something that could do that? He didn’t have a chance. Had no idea what he was dealing with.

His heart was lunging in his chest; his hands shook as bad as Dindren’s.

Dindren…

Ten seconds later he had shoved his rucksack in a closet, grabbed a mop, and was out the door making a beeline for Module Two.

Dindren looked up as Matt entered his cell, and licked his chapped lips. “In the interest of full disclosure: I can’t promise you that I don’t have any blood-borne pathogens.”

“Cut it out.” Matt shut the door behind him.

“Also, as a courtesy, if you could use an aloe-based exfoliant on your right hand, it’ll go better for both of us in the long run.”

“Listen to me, Doc.” Matt knelt in front of Dindren and gripped him by his rickety arm. “I’m not gonna stick my fist in your mouth, so forget that shit. But I will do my best to spring you from this placeif you can help me understand what I’m up against.”

Dindren stared at him, searching Matt’s eyes for sincerity. Found it. His queer act fell away, and the bee-stung lips, gray teeth, and bloody eye rearranged themselves in an approximation of cautious attention.

“Proceed,” he said quietly.

“All right. You’ve heard my story. And you treated someone like me for years. So give it to me straight: these things I’ve seen-Mr. Dark and his rotting touch-are they real? Or am I…” He took a shaky breath. “Am I nuts?”

Dindren pursed his chapped lips and closed his eyes. “You might be nuts, Matt.” He opened them. “But not for seeing Mr. Dark. He’s real-as is Rotting Jack. Whether they are identical-that I don’t know. But it’s safe to say, if nothing else, that they are different manifestations of the same creature.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Matt’s skin crawled at the thought of what he’d just seen. “But…what is it?”

“I’m not sure of that, either. But I have a theory. Both you and Jesse spent a long time underground. And both of you returned with something-a parasite-that you picked up on your journey. Something that feeds on suffering; that hungers for sorrow, loss, despair, and death. And this isn’t new: if memory serves, there have been references to such a creature in myth and folklore throughout history. Many cultures told stories of a night hunter that drove its prey mad before devouring it. The Greeks called it Pan. The Irish had the banshee. The Ojibwe, windigo. I suspect that whatever you call it, it is the spirit of hunger you’ve awakened; the god, if you will, of starvation. And it seems to have a never-ending thirst for chaos, madness, bloodshed, and massacre. A spirit that literally feeds off of carnage.”

It seemed plausible to Matt. But then, this was coming from a guy who had been willing to suck his fist just a minute before. He shook his head. “Look, assuming you’re right…why me?”

Dindren shrugged. “Usually, a spirit like this needs an invitation to take up residence.”

Matt let out a cough of disgust. “I can guarantee you that I never invited Mr. Dark to set up shop in my neighborhood.”

“Maybe you did but don’t remember.”

Matt shrugged. “Whatever. That’s not the real issue anyway. The real issue is”-and here he leaned toward Dindren, palms up-“how do I kill the Spirit of Starvation?”

“Good question. Jesse certainly never figured that out. But then, he was stuck in here.” Dindren clacked his gray teeth together thoughtfully. “But…if it truly does feed off bloodshed and carnage, then if you could prevent the destruction of innocent lives-deprive it of its prey, in other words-it might be possible to starve it to death.”

The very idea of shriveling his parasitic ghost into nothingness appealed to Matt. But: consider the source. Dindren was clearly crazy. Still, if there were any way to exorcise Mr. Dark…He shook his head at the enormity of the thought. “But how? How do I stop it? How do I find out where it’s going to strike next?”

Dindren blinked. “I thought that would be obvious. Just look around. It has attached itself to you. It will go where you go.”

Matt felt a creeping prickle along the back of his neck.

“Are you saying that my presence is what unleashes it on people? By me just being around them?” Matt looked away, gritting his jaw. If it were true, where did that leave him? Alone. Forever. With no hope of ever settling down again, or spending time with the people he loved.

He balled his hands into fists. “I guess that leads us to the million-dollar question.”

Dindren raised an eyebrow. Going to make him say it.

Matt took a deep breath.

“If this-spirit, creature, whatever you call it-really has attached itself to me, and is going to follow me wherever I go, wouldn’t the problem be solved if I just offed myself?”

“Well, that depends.” Dindren seemed in no hurry to complete the thought.

“On…?”

“On whether you are the spirit’s host-or its locus.”

Matt stared at him. “Um, in English?”

“Right: if this spirit is inhabiting you physically-like a parasite in a host-and has no way of inhabiting another, then your suicide would indeed solve the problem.”

“Great.”

“But…if it has the ability to move on to another person, and you are simply its preferred locus, or location-like a vulture’s favorite tree-then killing yourself will accomplish nothing. Another way to look at it is that the spirit is either serving you -because it’s a part of you-or serving itself.”

Matt nodded, relieved. “Makes sense. So: how do I find out which?”

Dindren gave a little shrug. “You could always ask.”

“Ask?” Matt couldn’t believe his ears. “That’s your advice? That I fucking ask it who it serves?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Why the hell would it answer? How would I know if it told the truth?”

“Because that’s the way these things work. The Otherworld, Matt, has rules like ours. Under special circumstances, its citizens are required to answer truthfully.”

Matt gave him a skeptical look. “So there’s, like, some user’s manual for the supernatural?”

“In this matter there is, if you know where to look. Are you familiar with the legend of the Holy Grail?”