Дж. Хатчинс - Personal Effects - Dark Art

He glanced down, at the stained throw rug beneath his feet. His mouth curved into a toothy, meat cleaver smile.

“Well. Almost all of ’em.”

“Daniel, put the hatchet down,” I said, still holding the grill lighter between us. “I’m here because your dad sent me. He wants me to find something here, in this house, something that can help him. Maybe it’s you, the things you’ve read. You’ve gotta come back with me, come back to The Brink. Your father needs you. Your… your family needs you.”

The walls seemed to rattle as the man laughed. The hatchet’s thick blade shimmered in his hands. He leaned in. The fire’s reflection burned bright in his eyes, turning them coal-red.

“ME” he cried. “Sounds like he needs you more than he ever needed me. You, the stranger, the meddler, the gravedigger, diggin’ it all out, bringin’ it all back, filled with worms and bugs…”

Tktktk.

“…and you wanna fix ’im, cure ’im, so he can see. And then what, gravedigger? I’ll tell you what. More. More killin’, more dyin’. No. That can’t happen. He’s earned this. He deserves this. He’s the walking dead. And you… . You. ”

He puckered his lips and blew. The lighter’s flame vanished.

“You’re just dead.”

I heaved my body to the right, away from the stove, as the darkness spiraled upon us. An instant later, the room filled with the splinter-blast of axe blade meeting Formica. The lighter slipped from my hand, clattering into the ink.

“No, Daniel!” I screamed, but the man’s raspy breath devolved into another grunt, and I scuttled further, nearing the sink and window above it.

The hatchet was a thunderclap, shredding the dish cabinet where my head had been. The blade gave a shrill, throaty squeak as Daniel yanked it from the wood. I stumbled on, hands smacking against the booze bottles in the sink. I stole a half second to look down, using the moonlight from the window as a spotlight. I grabbed a bottle, held it like a club.

The man chuckled in the darkness. A hand fired from the black, clapping hard against my chest. I snatched at something—anything—to keep from falling. Miraculously, my fingers gripped the sink’s faucet. I used it for leverage, staying upright, gasping in dread as the metal began to bend. Bottles clinked cheerfully as my forearm clashed against them.

“Gotcha,” Daniel hissed.

The hatchet roared downward again, destroying the bottles in the sink, missing my hand by an inch. I felt the bee sting of glass slicing my skin. Daniel wrenched the axe wildly upward. Its blade blew through the kitchen window, scattering thick shards across the countertop. They tinkled like knives nested together in a drawer.

I found my footing, madly swinging the bottle in my hand. It detonated against the axe handle, spraying razor-edged jewels that sparkled in the dim light from the window. Daniel roared. He dropped the weapon, hands pressed against his face.

I lunged toward the floor, intent on grabbing the axe. A steeltoed work boot bashed into my stomach, blowing the air from my lungs in a surprised scream. I slid, nearly fell… but Daniel’s hands snatched my shirt, yanking me skyward.

I felt my feet leave the ground. Zero-G.

He slammed my back into another cabinet, leaning close, his grinning, blood-soaked face glowing bright in the moonlight. Glass shards glittered in his cheeks, his chin. One flashed from his gums, bathing his teeth in a gushing stream of blood.

He shoved again, sending my back into the cabinet. The dishes inside clattered, cheering for more destruction.

“ KILL YOU ,” Daniel roared.

And then I was airborne, heaved in a one-eighty, a boneless scarecrow in free fall… and now, my body collided with the kitchen table, smashing through it, finally impacting on the floor. Plates and beer cans shattered and clanked around my face. The skillet bonged, bouncing across the linoleum, landing near my arm.

Stars filled the room. Blood filled my mouth.

Daniel was relentless. He crouched low. His fist smashed against my face. I cried out, asking him to stop, no, I didn’t want to die in the dark. The world rocked as he punched me again.

My hand groped in the darkness, searching for the skillet. Daniel saw this and kicked it away. It clanged against a wall, out of reach.

My fingers still crawled forward, grasping nothing…

The wet crunch of knuckle blasted through my skull.

…grasping air…

Daniel was wheezing. The shadows on the ceiling were laughing in the dimness. Tktktk.

…grasping the hatchet’s handle.

I let loose a war cry and swung the thing. It was unbalanced and heavy in my hand. The blade whooshed in the darkness for a breathless eternity, and then sank home in Daniel Drake’s shin. The room filled with a nasty thock sound.

He staggered, his back striking the sink cabinet. I heard him tug the axe from his leg—the sound of tearing wet lettuce—and he was screaming now, screaming loud and long, like a child.

“You want… want to… KNOW MY FATHER” he shrieked.

His hands were tugging at something beside me—the frayed, filthy throw rug.

“HUH, gravedigger?! HUH? You want to KNOW him?! Go JOIN him!”

I stared dumbly as his finger snaked around a metal ring in the floor. I tried not to choke on my own blood, not to hear the skitter-scratches screaming in my ears.

Daniel opened the trapdoor.

“Be BURIED with him!” he screamed.

His boot crushed my side. He swung his fist. Another lightning bolt blasted across my eyes.

I felt my body being dragged slowly toward the hole in the floor. I struggled. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

I fell. The door slammed shut.

And the dark… began to speak.

The lizard part of my brain—the part hardwired for instinct and survival—ran the numbers and grunted a deduction. Cold ground beneath me. The overpowering, stale aroma of earth, dust, rat shit. Boards creaking less than two feet above my prone, bleeding body. Crawl space.

And that was my last rational thought for a while.

Blind. Blind like Richard Drake. Eyes open now, staring into the abyss, and yes, yes, it stared back at me, an ancient thing, a thing from before before, and I was sinking into its planet-sized onyx pupil, drowning in its inky aqueous humor, feeling my body pull into itself, crushed by the absence of light, warmth, sound, everything.

Everything… but the fear.

Fingers like rail spikes ripped at me, impossibly cold, burning my skin. Shrieks fell short in my throat; there was no air in which they could be heard. But my mind was alive with sounds: the marching of spider’s legs, the rising drone of locusts, the swirling scattering of autumn leaves— tktktkt —the roar of rockslides stones rattling in a clothes dryer, she tumbles and tumbles and now the soul-rending sound of a chuckle, the noise thunderclouds make as they collide and devour one another, growing fat and black for the storm to end all storms.

The Dark Man breathed. Panted, like a hungry dog. I imagined its forked tongue slick with crude-oil drool. It was omniscient. Omnipresent.

“Not… real,” I muttered.

But the shadow-chill slid over me, wrapped tight like a wetsuit, and I could feel the black, January lake water seeping through the membrane of my skin, full-body inoculation, a cure for life —life, the disease, the virus, the thing that must not be. It spoke back to me in its non-voice, a liquid language, sloshing affirmation in my inner ear: oh-so-real, tktktk, oh-so-mine … .