Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

“Absinthe?” Patrick asked.

Edgar grinned. “Sort of. It’s a Blind Eye Moon special. We call it Blind Eye Moonshine.”

He put the tray down and took a glass of his own, then turned to the room. “To the mind! To the power of the intellect! To imagination!”

“To imagination!” everyone shouted back.

Patrick looked at his friends. “To imagination!”

They smiled and slammed their shots, along with everyone else. The Blind Eye Moonshine was sweet and tart at the same time, and hellaciously strong. It burned on the way down and then seemed to instantly heat Patrick from the inside out like a supernova in his gut.

“Holy shit!” Ciara said, looking at her empty glass.

Torsten blew air out and Simone said, “Phew!”

“That was quite something,” Patrick muttered. His vision swam a little.

“You like it?” Edgar asked. “This is the only place in the world you can get it.”

Patrick’s lips felt numb, his tongue swollen. “It’s quite something,” he said again, lost for any other words.

Edgar leaned over behind where Shirley had been sitting and came up with an acoustic guitar. He sat on the arm of the sofa, put the guitar on his knee, and began to play. He picked out a haunting melody that immediately insinuated its way into Patrick’s blood. Then he began chords and started to sing in a strange language. It was similar to Gaelic, which Patrick spoke, but not quite the same. He listened hard, almost understood phrases, then they slipped away again.

A clean, lilting melody came over the top and Patrick saw Clarke had found a guitar too, playing along in harmony. Shirley came and stood behind a nearby armchair, using her palms to play a soft beat against its leather back. Howard, short of a bass guitar presumably, picked up the tray of shots and went around the room again. Everyone held their glasses up and Edgar paused briefly and said, “To imagination!” then continued his song.

“To imagination,” the others in the room said and downed their shots once more.

The heat grew in Patrick, spreading through his body like ink dripped in water. He decided maybe he wouldn’t have any more if he was offered, it seemed like more than simple alcohol, however strong. He liked it a lot, and that’s what gave him pause. He liked it too much.

The night grew late, the band playing quiet and powerful acoustic songs. Howard even came up with an acoustic bass and played a hypnotic solo that seemed to stretch sound like rubber.

Despite his earlier decision, Patrick had a third shot of Blind Eye Moonshine and time stretched then as well. He and his friends talked with other partygoers, they talked with the band between songs, they drank more still, but bourbon now, and Bundaberg rum. The strange green liqueur wasn’t offered again, for which Patrick was vaguely thankful, though he missed it too.

He found himself staring out the front bay window of the large room, across a well-manicured lawn and old, established shrubs. The view dropped away after the garden and he realised he saw a faint pale smudge in the distance and a soft horizon. He was looking at the ocean, far away over the roofs of the Gulp, and dawn had begun to lighten the sky.

The room had fallen to silence and Patrick tore his gaze away from the view to see why. As he did so, Edgar began to sing. That same strange almost-Gaelic language as the first song, but no guitar now, no accompaniment. Just Edgar’s voice, pure and soft, as pitch-perfect with the lilting melody as it had been belting out heavy metal anthems. This melody had something of the lullaby about it. As that thought occurred to Patrick, his eyelids became heavy. He managed to think, He’s putting me to sleep , and a swift, icy rill of panic went through him, then his eyes closed and darkness swept in like the tide.

Patrick dreamed.

The house was dark and still, a cold breeze rippled his hair. Ice rimed every surface, glittering softly in moonlight that leaked through the windows. He took a step forward and something sucked at his shoe. He looked down. He stood in a massive pool of blood, almost black in the darkness. He tried to call out Ciara’s name, but his voice was a whistling wheeze. His throat tightened. His heart began to race, breath short and shallow. He ran to the front window, wet footprints in his wake, and looked out. The moon hung full and heavy over the ocean far away. Then clouds rolled in, roiling dark black and purple. Lightning forked and the surface of the ocean heaved as rain fell. Then the sky split, deep red like a wound, and creatures fell from the clouds. All manner of shapes, long and gangly, short and squat, limbs writhing as they tumbled to the waves. Only tiny silhouettes in the distance, he had no idea what they were, people or something different. A sound forced the hairs on his neck to stand up, a howl, but not animal. Not exactly. Like a person trying to howl like a wolf.

Pounding feet on floorboards, rushing up behind him. He spun around, but no one was there. He tried to call Ciara’s name again, but only croaked a cloud of condensed breath. A shadow passed the door, out in the hallway, a tall, sinewy figure loping by.

He ran to the door, looked out. No one there. More ice over everything in the hallway, the side tables, portraits, coat rack. A frozen draught came in through the open front door. He went to it, looked out over the opulent entrance, stone steps leading down to the gravel driveway. The dark roiling clouds churned above, a wind blew, cold and carrying the salt scent of the ocean, and something less pleasant. Something rotten.

A long, bony hand with blood red fingernails came down on his shoulder. He cried out, though it was barely a sound, as the hand turned him. The arm was as long and thin as the fingers, attached to a hunched body over seven feet tall, skeletal, with fish-belly pale skin. Except around the eyes, where the flesh was blackened, cobwebs of black veins spreading out over the cheekbones, up over the forehead. The eyes were glowing deep, dark red. The other hand rose in front of his face, the overlong fingers weaving hypnotising patterns in the air. Those deep red eyes stared hard into his as the creature leaned forward, face to face. Its breath was a marine stench.

He sensed it drawing something from him, sucking something out, some essence. Something important. Whatever it was taking, he needed it, couldn’t spare it. He tried to scream no, but his breath was a whisper. His legs numb, face slack, darkness lay gently over him.

Patrick awoke with a pounding in his head and a mouth like the bottom of a birdcage. He groaned and rolled over, and fell off the couch onto the rug with a thump. He grunted and turned into a sitting position.

“Yeah, it’s a bit like that.”

He looked up to see Ciara smiling at him from an armchair, where she sat curled up, knees to her chest, eyes narrow. “You too?”

She grimaced. “Haven’t had a headache like this in a while.”

“We haven’t drunk like that in a while.”

“Truth.”

Patrick looked around the room, saw most of the previous night’s revellers were gone, but four or five remained. Torsten and Simone were spooned on a couch perpendicular to the one he’d just fallen from, both still sleeping. “We all just passed out last night?” he asked.

“Guess so. I don’t remember.”

“Can I smell bacon?”

Ciara nodded, then winced. “Coffee too.”

“Gods be praised.”

“Careful who you pray to in this town, hey.”

They turned to see Howard, the bass player, carrying a tray piled with bread rolls and that enticing smell of bacon. He leaned down and let them take one each.

“Get these into ya,” Howard said. His voice was gravelly, but kind. “They’ll cure what ails ya.”