Authors: Christopher Alan Ott
Saltar's Point (41 page)
The body of the demon caught fire emitting a piecing shriek and then the stench filled the chamber, rich and overpowering. Even Jack’s eyes began to water from the putrid odor.
NO! Finish her!
The last shrieks of the demon reverberated through Jack Darrow’s head. He brought the axe down again. The pointed end caught the left side of Abby’s neck making a disgusting sucking sound as he pulled it free. Massive amounts a blood began to pour from the wound. Abby tried to scream but all that erupted from her mouth was a thick sticky red bubble growing larger as the air escaped from her lungs before rupturing into a sprinkling of red mist that coated her face and clung to the strands of loose hair about her forehead.
Jack collapsed to the ground, dropping the axe and burying his head in his hands. He began to weep, morbid wailing sounds muffled by his fingertips. Grasping his knees he drew them up close to his body, rocking back and forth on his haunches and wailing like a small child who had lost his mother.
“What have I done? Abby, oh God Abby.”
He rolled Abby onto her back. Blood ran down the sides of her face, pooling at the base of her neck. Her eyesight began to cloud, and then shrink inward until only a small sliver of light remained. She was barely aware of Jack’s shrieks. A swirling tower of light erupted upwards through the ceiling and well above. It was peaceful, serene, and she felt herself drawn to it. Slowly the pain and decrepitude of her earthly body began to ebb and she found herself drifting upwards, floating above her corpse which lay broken and bleeding. Jack sat beside her, rocking back and forth. She couldn’t help but feel pity for him. He was nothing but a frightened child alone now with the world he hated so much. And then her vision shifted towards her friend. Brenda sat looking upwards behind the wall of white dancing flame, a small smile on her decayed and cracked lips.
Oh my God Brenda! She had forgotten about the little girl. Guilt and fear replaced the peaceful feeling and she struggled against the light pulling her upward. Abby felt herself racing forward to the ground once again, the wind whipping against the sides of her face with such force that it droned out all of the sound around her, until she felt herself slam into the hard cement floor driving the air from her lungs until...
She drew breath.
The pain was unbearable, her ravaged body screamed out in protest, begging her to leave, but Abby wouldn’t listen. Slowly she felt the tingling sensations in her fingertips as she began to claw her way towards the little girl.
Abby, what are you doing? It will close, the window will close and you’ll be trapped here, just like us!
But Abby didn’t listen, intent on saving her friend from the eternal emptiness of this God forsaken place. With each pull she felt the sting as she ripped her fingertips from their cuticles. With each heartbeat she felt more of her precious blood expunged from her body. The light above her began to fade, growing dimmer in thick air. Still she pressed onward, watching the fiery cage grow nearer and nearer. When she was just a few feet from it Brenda began to plead again.
No, Abby. Forget about me, the light is fading!
The little girl was crying now, thick wet tears ran down her cracked and disheveled face. With one last effort Abby pulled herself into the burning flames feeling the searing heat as it liquefied her flesh. A small opening began to form within the wall of fire. Abby looked up and pleaded to her friend with petrified eyes.
Now, Brenda. Go Now. Take your brother!
“But you’ll be trapped here.”
Her tears became larger.
GO NOW! DO NOT WORRY ABOUT ME!
Brenda hesitated a moment longer and then upon seeing Abby’s determination leapt forward, skirting the flames until she stood free beyond their grasp. Abby watched as another form began to take shape, materializing out of the smoke and gloom. A small boy no older than three looked out at her. He was dressed in sneakers and overalls, bright blue eyes peered out at her from a wall of charred flesh. He smiled at her and mouthed three simple words.
Thank you Abby.
The overhead light spread outward until it engulfed the two children. The charred flesh that surrounded their bodies began to fall away, replaced with soft pink tissue until two unscathed beautiful children stood before her. It was then that Abby Darrow was able to look upon her friend fully for the first time. Golden ringlets of blonde hair fell around the sides of her face, crystal blue eyes peered out from long dark lashes. A beautiful blue dress, white socks, and shiny black shoes completed the vision.
“Oh, Brenda you’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful.”
Abby’s words flowed from her lips and for the first time since her accident they seemed in a word, perfect.
She watched as the light grew brighter and the two children began to rise upward. Brenda stared down at her with a dazzling smile.
“Thank you Abby. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
And then the children disappeared into the light, and Abby cascaded into darkness.
Jack Darrow carried the broken body of his wife along the wooded path behind Myers Creek. Her arms and legs dangled and swayed as he walked, a constant lifeless reminder that she was dead. He had killed her, killed the only woman who had ever loved him. His heart was heavy, like a sack of rocks buried deep within his chest. His only solace came in the form of the birds that chirped their melodious songs along with each step that he took. Before Abby’s arrival the woods around Talcott Manor had been silent for nearly a century, but his loving and faithful wife had allowed them to sing once again. She was indeed a miraculous woman.
Darrow walked until he found a spot that would suit his needs, a small clearing just off the wooded path where he could dig a shallow grave. He laid Abby down on a bed of soft leaves and drove the front end of the shovel into the earth. It was not as he envisioned it. No longer was he digging a grave to conceal the remains of his wife from prying eyes, no longer was he digging a grave among the trees to leave her to rot, instead he dug the grave in a place where he felt at last that she could find peace, a peace that he was never able to give her.
The ground was hard. Chill winds blew in off of the ocean, telling of the foreboding winter. Darrow labored for nearly two hours until he had dug a trench long enough and deep enough to hold the body of his precious Abby. As he laid her to rest in the shallow grave he wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Rest in peace Abby.”
His words echoed through the trees and down the valley, but they felt empty and hollow. He scooped the last few shovels of loose earth over her grave and with his deed done he bowed his head in a moment of silence. He dropped the shovel, letting it fall where it lay and started the long trek back towards Talcott Manor. He couldn’t be sure, but for a second he thought he heard the call of a raven, a long drawn out squawk filtering through the trees and singing homage to a life cut short.
I guess I could be bitter about the whole experience, but what would be the point in that? Jack Darrow was a man who lived his life according to his own rules, as strange and as warped as they might be. I no longer feel any sort of hostility towards Jack Darrow, I simply wish that things could have turned out different, but in the end I know that things happen the way they were meant to be. I take solace in the chirping of the birds, the winds that blow through the tops of the trees, and the knowledge that somewhere high above, two beautiful children watch over me. They are my salvation, my shred of sanity in an eternity devoid of logic.
Deep in the hills behind Myers Creek just off the wooded path we walked every day. In a small clearing where the shadows of the oaks and the pines blend together lies a shallow grave, and the woman in that grave is me.
REVELATIONS AND REPERCUSSIONS
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined... to strengthen each other... to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.
-George Eliot
I was born Abigail Eileen Anderson in the small town of Broquerville Oklahoma. A black dot on a state map, the kind of oil town where if the wells dried up so did people’s pocketbooks. My father was a roughneck, working the oilrigs from dawn ‘til dusk, my mother a homemaker, back in the days when that was still considered an honorable profession. I was born in June on a beautiful summer day, and I guess the year really isn’t important anymore. My delivery took nearly 21 hours of labor and nearly killed my mother. The running family joke was that I didn’t want to leave my mom, and for the next 17 years I rarely did just that.
I’m not sure what it was that drove me away from that small town and the loving family who cared so much for me. Perhaps the boredom in Broquerville just became too great, perhaps the excitement and call of the open road was just too tempting, or maybe it was the cowboy in tight chaps (his name really isn’t important anymore either) and the allure of the rodeo circuit that pushed me from my fledgling nest. Sure I often wonder what my life would have been like had I stayed. I’m sure I’d be married to someone other than Jack Darrow. I like to picture him as a kind and loving man with the kind of smile that lights up a room. I’m sure I’d have children. That’s probably the biggest regret I have about my life, not having kids, not getting to watch them grow up, offer guidance, tend to scraped knees, or make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on warm summer days. I’d have a menial job in that small town, the kind that doesn’t pay much and where you spend most of the time yakking with customers and fueling up on the latest gossip than you actually do working. And most likely I’d still be alive, alive and healthy. It’s funny, all the things in life that you take for granted until they’re gone. The bottom line is I made my decision and the rest is history.
Jack on the other hand didn’t have much of a choice in life. He was dealt a shitty hand and played his cards the best he knew how. You could argue that he was a killer, a sociopath, even a monster if you wanted to, but I know that had he been given a better start in life he might have turned out okay.
Whenever I feel anger or scorn at Jack Darrow I try to think about what his childhood must have been like, chained in the basement and constantly beaten and belittled by the one person who was supposed to protect him. He never knew his father, and he rarely spoke of him. He said once that his mother told him that his father was a transient, a worthless junkie, drifting through life and passing through town the night Jack was conceived. Whether that’s true or not, I can’t say. What I do know is that Jack left home when he was fifteen, and spent the next six years incarcerated in a juvenile detention center. He didn’t leave by choice, you don’t get a chance to make your own decisions when you’re fifteen and kill your own mother.
He never talked much about that either, the first murder he ever committed. Saying once that his mother was beating him again for whatever reason she came up with, spilled milk I think it was. Anyway she was hitting and screaming at him and he just snapped, went off the deep end so to speak, and grabbed a pair of scissors off the kitchen table and stabbed her in the neck. Then he cut out her voice box so she could never yell at him again and placed it in the garbage disposal, but it got caught in the gears and spat back out, hitting him if the face. Jack always said that it was his mother’s way of getting the last word, even in death she was still bitching at him.
He cut off her head and buried it face down towards his bedroom in the cellar, saying that his mother was always looking down at him in life and death couldn’t change that. His sisters came home that afternoon from school and found their mother’s headless corpse. Jack was escorted to the detention center that night. I’m not sure what happened to the girls, I believe their grandparents raised them and I hope they turned out okay, better than Jack did anyway.
I suppose you want to hear the rest of the story, what happened to Jack, the sheriff Randall Jackson and his family, and I suppose I have time to tell it, it won’t take long. The same day that Jack buried me in the woods he was down in the basement polishing his revolver and about to end his own life when the shit really hit the fan.
Randall Jackson knew something wasn’t right the second he pulled his Cherokee up the gravel drive that led to Talcott Manor and saw the front doors wide open. Even from the seat of his truck some twenty yards away he could see the blood, a massive trail of sticky redness pooled on the porch and striping the front steps. He was on the radio right away, belittling himself for not having listened to Ellie sooner. Things had spun out of control and in the back of his head he feared they were about to get worse.
“Denny, come in. I need you over at Darrow’s place ASAP. We got trouble.” He had to fight the urge to go storming into the house alone, but he knew better. This was a task in need of backup.
Denny dropped the handset of the portable radio on the dinner table, threw his gun belt around his waist, and buttoned his uniform as he headed for the door. Laura, who had also heard the franticness of Randall’s call couldn’t hide the concern in her voice.
“Denny, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know, guess there’s some trouble over at Jack Darrow’s place, gotta run.”
“When will you be back?”
“Not sure, tonight I hope. I love you.”
His last words hung in the air as he disappeared through the front door.
“I love you too.”
Laura said as she watched him go, well aware that he had not heard her words. She turned to Chubs who was sitting in the middle of the living room looking up at her and thumping his tail gently against the carpet.
“Well it looks like it’s just you and me Chubs.”
Chubs lay down and rested his head between his paws, a small whine, barely audible, escaped his throat.
When Denny arrived Randall was waiting on the front porch, taking cautious measures not to step in the pool of still coagulating blood.
“Holy shit. What in the hell happened?” Denny said as he strode up beside him.
“I’m not sure, but that’s what we’re going to find out. Whatever it is, it’s not good.”
The two cops drew their side arms, preparing for the worst. Randall placed his back against the left side door and pushed it further inward as they entered the house. Darrow heard the squeaky hinges all the way in the basement, the sound working its way down through the pipes in the house.
He took the gun away from his head and gently removed his finger from the trigger. Goddamn pigs, even in my final moments they won’t leave me alone. He snapped open the cylinder and loaded five more bullets into the gun, snapped it closed and waited. It was their decision after all, and if they insisted on pushing it, he would make sure to take them with him.
It took them nearly an hour to secure the upper floors of the mansion. In an upstairs bedroom they found a massive amount of blood that ran another trail all the way to the elevator, which curiously was waiting for them. Someone had either left the basement and wasn’t in the house, or had sent the elevator up for them. Randall had a strong feeling that it was an invitation courtesy of Jack Darrow. He eyed his deputy with a word of caution.
“I don’t know what’s down in the basement, never cared to find out, but if it’s anything like the rest of this place you can be sure that it’s a giant maze.” Denny only nodded. “So be careful.”
They stepped into the elevator and pulled the lever. At the bottom they found a darkened corridor running in both directions, lit only by flickering overhead bulbs that buzzed and hummed in their last stages before they burned out. The tracks in the dust led mainly to the right, that is where they’d find Darrow, Randall was sure of it. He nodded to Denny to cover their backside as they proceeded down the hall, just in case he was wrong. They moved quickly and silently, Randall leading and Denny watching their rear.
Darrow waited in the embalming room, next to the fuse box and facing the door revolver in hand. It was pitch black, just the way he liked it. He had left the hallway lights on for a reason, he wanted their eyes used to the light, their pupils constricted as much as possible, and then, when they were close he would throw the switch, cutting off all light to the basement from the main fuse. The only light would emanate from the boiler room, not enough light to see, not for them. They would be blinds as bats, and he would be ready. It wasn’t more than a minute later that he heard their boots outside his door and listened to them talking, two of them at least. They were such amateurs, stomping around like elephants. As he heard the doorknob turn he cut the lights, dropping the hallway into complete darkness.
Randall was just opening the door when the lights went out.
“What in the hell?” He said as the door swung inward. “I can’t see anything.”
“Peek-a-boo, I see you.” Darrow said as he squeezed the trigger.
There was a blinding flash of light as the gun exploded, the cracking sound of the bullet magnified by the confined quarters added to the confusion. Before Randall knew what hit him he was on the ground holding his stomach as blood slipped through his fingers. He sat up despite the pain in his gut that threatened to bowl him over and unloaded his entire clip in the direction of the fire flash. Darrow dove for cover underneath the embalming table as bullets riddled the metal around him. The shots rang out in fury, sounding like a war zone in the basement.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Over and over Randall fired until his clip was empty, not sure if he hit Darrow or not. Not wasting any time he reached for his extra clip and began to reload.
“Denny! I’m hit!”
But Denny was already moving, stepping over him and into the room shrouded in darkness.
“No Denny! Don’t!”
But it was too late. Darrow already had him in his sights. His gun exploded again, the bullet ripped a path through his flesh before splintering the bone beneath. The young deputy screamed out in pain, feeling as though a red-hot poker had been jammed into his shoulder. He turned and fired in the direction of the fire flash, unloading his entire clip. Deafening shots rang out again, one of them catching Darrow in the thigh. He barely seemed to notice; hatred and adrenaline numbed the pain. They were wounded, blind, and panicking, emptying their entire clips in a single flurry of bullets. Darrow only had four bullets left, he didn’t have that luxury, but he didn’t need it, he was patient and he would wait. The deputy was closer now. He fired again, the bullet sailed just over Denny’s head an inch away from taking his life, but the flash gave away Darrow’s position and it was all the time Denny needed. He was on him in a flash, jumping down on top of him and trying desperately to pry the gun from Darrow’s fingers.
Christ he’s strong Denny thought as they wrestled on the floor, how the hell can this little man be so strong? Darrow began to press the gun towards him, Denny resisted with all his strength but his wounded shoulder made it an uphill battle. He could feel the barrel of the gun beginning to tilt towards him in the darkness, if he didn’t do something quick he was as good as dead. Drawing his head back as far as his neck would let him, he let a head butt fly as hard as he could. He heard a loud crack and watched blinding light erupt from behind his eyeballs as his forehead collided with Darrow’s nose, fracturing it in several places. The blow stunned Darrow enough to cause him to loose his grip on the gun, it went clattering away into the darkness, but Denny was stunned as well and Darrow used the opportunity to wrench himself free and he scurried to the safety of the boiler room. Denny heard him go and followed quickly behind him taking just a second to slap his extra clip into his weapon. He felt the doorframe and entered the boiler room. Randall was just getting to his feet, doubled over and still clutching his stomach.
Darrow waited patiently in the corner, next to the pickaxe leaning up against the wall. The young pig was whipping his head back and forth trying to make out anything in the near darkness. When he was in striking distance Darrow gripped the handle of the pickaxe and lifted it silently, but Denny’s well-trained ears picked up the nearly inaudible sound of iron grating against concrete. In a flash he wheeled around, hand gripping the handle of his semi-automatic pistol, he drew it out and prepared to fire, but Darrow had the jump on him and he was quicker. The pickaxe knifed through the air as Darrow brought the pointed end down into Denny’s skull. There was a sick popping and crunching sound as iron pierced through bone and into the soft brain tissue beneath. Denny felt a flash of pain, and then he went limp. Darrow stared down at the fallen cop, blood pouring out of the perfectly circular hole in the center of his forehead.
God damn fucking pigs!
And then he raised the axe again and again as he delivered more blows, sending a torrent of blood flying as it spayed from the axe, leaving distinctive cast off blood patterns on the walls and ceiling. Randall entered the room and barely made out Darrow’s form in the darkness, lashing out violently at his partner.
“
NO!!!”
Randall screamed as he unloaded his clip into Darrow’s body, bullets ripping through flesh and rupturing vital organs as they pummeled into his torso. Randall didn’t stop until his clip was empty, firing the last rounds into Darrow’s skull as he fell to the floor. Darrow twitched only once as his last gasp of air escaped his lips.
Randall dropped to his knees, cradling Denny’s head in his hands. As he felt the warm blood rush over his hands he knew his friend was going to die. Randall Jackson began then to weep like a baby. Barely discernable pleas escaped his lips as he wailed.
“Hang on Denny. It’s going to be all right. Hang on okay.”
Denny’s breath was barely audible, escaping in a gurgle of blood.
“Stay with me buddy. Come on Denny, stay with me.” He could barely make out his friend’s face in the darkness.
As the lifeblood drained from Denny’s body so too did the light fade from his eyes, until they blended perfectly into the surrounding darkness.
