Дж. Хатчинс - Personal Effects - Dark Art

“ Grip. Get. A. Grip. Zach.”

The air from the dashboard vents blasted hot, drying my eyes. I blinked, savoring the cascading warmth. The Doberman behind me growled, as if suddenly understanding.

“You’re not real,” I said. “You’re a psychic virus. A transmythssion. A figment.”

The thing’s jaws snapped now, hollow fangs clicking in a vibraslap staccato. The sound of skulls.

“That’s right. Drake was patient zero, brainwashing us with his CIA training, spreading his sickness. But you’re paranoia. You’re delusion. You’re… not… real.”

An awful sound hailed from behind me—the sound of slop dumped from a bucket. The heater still blasted, but my body jolted uncontrollably, wracked with shivers. The thick splash hadn’t come from below. It came from above.

It was on the ceiling.

“Not real,” I whispered.

My hair stood on end. Icy spider legs swirled across my arms, my neck, my face.

Jesus Christ, it’s on the ceiling and it’s sagging now, the sound, dear God, milkshake sucked through a straw, no, not real, colder, getting colder in here, Antarctic wind, no, not

“…real,” I hissed. “Not.”

Loud, by my ear: TKTKTK.

I screamed.

The cell phone in my hip pocket sang “Birdhouse In Your Soul.”

Rachael. I pulled out the phone, hit “talk,” smiling, relieved and grateful—so goddamned grateful.

“What kind of macho bullshit is this?” she snapped. “‘… So I’m going north, to pull its gaze away from all us… to just one of us.’ What’s gotten into you, Z? You don’t just do this, you can’t just up and leave without telling us. We waited for you. Waited for more than an—”

“Baby, I’m sorry,” I said. The gooseflesh relinquished its hold on my skin. “I couldn’t, just couldn’t. You and Luc are all I have. I—”

“What”

“You guys are it, babe, all I’ve got. You were nearly killed tonight. If this thing’s real, I won’t let it—”

“—eaking up,” Rachael’s voice said. “—amn it, Z, we’re suppos—”

I gripped the wheel. No. Goddamned cell phone reception failure, not now.

“Rache, listen. I’m the bait, it’s the only way. I wouldn’t be able to live…”

My voice trailed off, distracted. The car was warm again. No, the car was hot again. No feeling of being watched, no slither sounds, no bucket of Black sloshing in the backseat.

Flash-bulb memory: Drake’s last word to me yesterday, as I ran from Room 507.

Pray. Or prey.

“Oh no,” I said.

“—ach, you’re…—ouble here…—ow… no…—earn—”

“No,” I said. I stared at the midnight wilderness before me. “Don’t you dare, not her, you fucker. No, oh no, no-no-no—”

“—help—”

The line went dead.

The dashboard vents whirred merrily, filling the interior with white noise and hot air. My fists pounded the steering wheel as I wailed, sweat suddenly streaming from my pores. The phone was worthless. I threw it into the passenger seat, snarling, sick at heart.

Tears made the yellow line ahead blur and shimmer, a nighttime mirage.

You’ve damned her. Damned them all.

The wheel’s leather grip moaned as I squeezed tighter. I hated myself. Hated Drake. Hated the inky thing hunting us.

Uncle Henry’s voice: Sometimes you find the path …

Too late. Too late to turn back.

My foot punched the accelerator. Eighty. Ninety. Past ninety.

“Come and get me, you cold-hearted son of a bitch,” I growled to the Dark Man. “I’m heading to your home. Come and get me.”

I drove, alone.

Daniel Drake’s house rose out of the blackness like a theater proscenium, blasted bright by the Saturn’s headlights. The thing reminded me of a rotten tooth, mottled with decay, covered in filth and splinters. The one-story building felt taller than it had yesterday morning. Impossible, I knew; a trick of the light. But it loomed and leered at me, its darkened windows now eye sockets.

Watching, like tot-lot ghouls.

I killed the engine and the headlights. I slung my satchel onto my shoulder and stepped out into the chilly midnight air. I clicked on the Maglite. My eyes adjusted to the stark contrast of bright and darkness. Above me, the moon was fat, nearly full.

I was grateful for the flashlight: it wasn’t enough. I felt my nyctophobia pumping fear into my brains, my veins—but for this moment, the emotion was far away, glimmering like a lighthouse beacon. There were other emotions throbbing in my mind—anger, determination, concern. What overpowered them all was the flat sensation of sleepwalking… of arrival without travel… of inevitability.

Daniel’s blue pickup was gone. I peered at the building, listening. Music rose and fell from the living room, muffled by the walls. I walked through the muddy front yard to the porch. The house remained lightless, lifeless.

The music was clearer now. “Night On Bald Mountain.”

My knuckles rapped against the cracked front door. No answer. I knocked louder, calling Daniel’s name. I pounded. I yelled. My voice echoed in the night. I thought of Bethany Walch, the woman who’d befriended Richard Drake and his son ten years ago. The one who’d been threshed right along with the hay.

We heard her screams three miles away.

No answer.

I stepped from the porch, skulking to the side of the house, comforted by the heft of the Maglite in my hand.

Its bulb did not flicker, didn’t strobe as I’d seen a dozen times in the past few days. The Dark Man didn’t want to warn me this time. The bulb inside blasted ultra-bright for a moment—far too short a time for me to realize what was happening until after it’d happened—and then it shattered, the tiny shrapnel shards tinkling against the lens glass.

I stopped, glancing first at the dead weight in my hand and then to the sky, looking for the spotlight above. My fear of the dark surged like a wave, cold oil on my clammy skin, as a cloud swept over the moon.

Black. The whole world had gone black.

I doubled over, dropping the flashlight, clutching my arms, my stomach, gasps hissing from between my teeth. The fear… was a swarm.

My mind flickered, on-off-on-off, just like the Brinkvale hallways, Room 507, the hellshow, a horror strobe light. Bile, sweet and sickening, gushed against my tongue, filling my mouth.

Nonsense filled my head. I seethed, breath screeching as I hyperventilated, thick spit oozing from my lips, and this is how it ends Zach, alone in the dark, gobbled by black flies, shoo fly shoo, shoes, pinned me down to my six-month-old-Vans, pinned like a lepidopterist pins a-mazing Grace how sweetthesoundthatsavedawretchlikeme

My knees buckled. I fell. The phobia was my blood, my air, the pillow pressed to my face. And my God, the faces came now, all painted black, eyes and teeth frightfully white: Emilio ( Vuhvammpire, he said) and Drake ( Be sure to breathe, Mr. Taylor ) and Henry ( mercenary, a thing summoned from the ) and oh God, there was Mom, pupil-less, blood bubbling from her mouth, singing me a nightmare lullaby. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

My cheek pressed into the cold mud. Black vacuum. Airless. Soundless.

A century passed. An eon. And then, finally, the cloud’s tendrils swept past the moon. The world around me brightened slightly. Air rushed into my lungs.

I stood, body quaking, eyes blinking. I remained still, waited for the lights in my brain to come back on. I didn’t move until I was certain I wouldn’t piss myself.