Darling (26 page)

Matthew Reynolds’ evening swim was coming to a close. Though the pool was heated, the air was growing far too cold. He felt a sinking feeling deep in his stomach and heaviness in his limbs. He swam to the side of the pool and rested his arms against it. A painful cramp stabbed his right leg. He ground his teeth together and tried to get it out. He splashed water up over the sides of the pool and, between the noise and the intense pain, didn’t notice the tiny, cold fingers that had slipped around his ankle until it was too late.

Reynaldo Lopez shoveled a flavorless microwave dinner down his throat while his children played with tiny cars around his chair. All he wanted to do was go into the basement, sit in the dark, and wait for his darling to come. But his wife was taking her sweet time at the grocery store and he was stuck with his children. Manny snatched a tiny red Corvette from Benito and the younger boy screamed. Reynaldo stood and ordered him to shut his mouth, but his tiny son just kept screaming. He slapped him across the jaw, hard enough to split the boy’s lip. It felt good, too good, and Reynaldo slapped him again. It felt almost as good as what waited for him in the basement and he kept slapping.

Above him a different kind of abuse occurred. Morgan Torrance beat her husband about the face and neck with a rolled up newspaper, like someone disciplining a dog that had messed on the floor. She screamed about the dishes, spittle flying from her mouth, as she swung over and over. Josh stumbled backwards, tripping over his feet and falling. She felt strong and powerful, the way she always felt,
needed
to feel, when she took out her day’s frustration on him. She had always been the alpha in their relationship and it surprised her when Josh clutched the poker from the fireplace and swung it into her knee. The knee made a sound like falling timber as it caved in. She fell, the magazine flying across the floor and unrolling. Pain radiated from the useless joint in waves. Josh pulled himself to his feet and stumbled over. He looked down on her, his face fixed into a snarl like a rabid wolf. She had the thought,
So this is how
five years of marriage ends
, and then the poker came down on her skull again and again and she thought nothing else.

Little Jake Erik sat in his bed, his “Transformers” sheets pulled up to his chest, and begged his mother to leave the lights on. She scolded him, telling him that he was too old for such fears. He would start school this year, she said, and nightlights and bedwetting were things that babies did. “I love you honey,” and “Get some sleep,” then the light clicked off and the door pulled shut. Darkness crowded in on Jake, smothering him. He slid down into his bed, his tiny hands clutching the top of the sheet so hard that his knuckles were white. He couldn’t take his eyes from the closet door, no matter how much he wanted to pretend that his mother was right. When the door cracked open and the long, white fingers crawled out over the frame like the legs of a massive spider, he finally managed to close his eyes. He squeezed them so tightly that sparks went off behind his lids and his cheeks ached. He yanked the sheet over his head and cowered under it, wanting more than anything to avoid looking at the stark white face that he knew was peeking out at him from between his clothes and toys, a hairless face with bloodshot eyes that always salivated as it glared at him. He screamed when he felt its hot breath on the outside of the sheet and when it whispered
Come into the
closet, Jake. There are wonders here, dark and bloody, that will stay
with you for years.
He kept screaming long after his mother came and clutched him against her breast.

Jack Stark lay sprawled out on the floor of his workroom. His body was covered with sweat from the lights above him, from the bottles of vodka he had indulged in, and from the dreams he was having. He rolled back and forth in his sleep, moaning, wishing that he’d never heard the chewing and tearing sounds as they ate. Wishing he had never heard their voices. Wishing he had never agreed to be their caretaker, or to watch over this building. There was a reason Rudy didn’t live here, the same reason his father had paid Jack a ridiculous amount of money to look after things. That madman’s will and trust was what stuck him here and now that those things spoke, he questioned his own sanity.

In 116, Tony Parker watched his daughter read on the couch. His time with her always felt so short and she would be back with her mother tomorrow night. He was surprised how much she looked like his ex-wife. Her hair was the same golden color, her eyes and smile had the same mischievousness, her legs were just as long and tan, and her breasts were far too developed for a fifteen-year-old. He slid onto the couch beside her and smiled. She smiled back. He slid a hand along her calf and she froze. She dropped her magazine as he bent to kiss her. She tried to squirm away, to push him off, but it was no use. He twisted one of her arms behind her and maneuvered his knees onto the couch, positioning them between her legs as he undid his belt.

And in a hospital room near the university, Lloyd Trent could still hear the whispering of his darling, still feel the pull of that building and still feel her bugs crawling over him. He had stolen a pencil from an orderly earlier and painted its many names on the wall, smearing his blood over as much of the surface as he could manage. “Eosphoros,” “Lightbringer,” “Morningstar,” and countless other names in other tongues. The pencil lost its point quickly as the lead disappeared inside his flesh and he was forced to resort to the use of his teeth for more paint. He had to get all of the names out, everything that the roaches were whispering to him. “For you, my darling,” he chanted over and over again as he coated the wall with himself.

The lives of neighbors are filled with a hundred secrets and it’s impossible to know what happens on the other side of a wall. The residents of Raynham Place huddled inside their own walls, ignorant of the things occurring on the other side, as the autumn storms crept in over the hill.

The wind blew hard against these walls and the windows rattled.

Chapter Thirteen

Dennis stood in front of the supermarket’s open doors. Inside was darkness, pure and unsullied. It could not be defined by its lack of light. It was elemental, an idea of darkness brought into the world without filter.

Something nudged him, wanted him to enter, begged him to set foot inside. He couldn’t. How could a being born into the world of light exist in there? Even to dream about going inside would be death, he knew. It took will, but he looked away.

Allison stood behind him wearing the same red dress she had worn to her winter formal, exposed shoulders and neck wet with the light of the full moon. Her hands swished through dying brown grass around her. It looked so tall reaching up around her, clinging to her waist and caressing her breasts.

Behind her, Raynham expanded and contracted, brick and mortar groaning and creaking with every breath. Its exhales sent a cool breeze rushing towards him, blowing the grass and billowing her dress like a bright, red flame that grew hotter until it threatened to burst free and consume the entire field.

She held her hands out. Crystal blue eyes begged for an embrace. The skin was absent from her fingertips and gray bone shined in the moonlight. The flesh of her hands had greened and mottled, rot gradually receding as it made its way up her arms. He gently, tenderly took her hands in his, careful not to break them.

She smiled.

The decay crawled up her neck, over her face.

Her face drawn tight against her skull, the skin taking the slimy texture of rotting chicken, hair dried to dull-colored straw, and he loved her, loved every contour, every cell that hovered between life and death.

This is what she looks like in her tomb, he thought.

Her eyes were bloated blood-sacs wrapped in soiled gray cloth. Her smile was just as kind.

—Make love to me—

He’d longed to since her return, but they had been denied the comfort. She was little more than shadow when she came to him. They could embrace, sometimes share a kiss, but nothing more.

“How…?”

He heard one of the washing machines in the basement roar to life, the wet tumbling of the clothes inside, and the screeching of a chair pulled across concrete.

* * *

The whispering from behind Dennis’ door was maddening. Mike was tempted to knock, to ask
Who the hell are
you talking to when your cell phone is out here on the coffee table,
but couldn’t work up the nerve. Something bothered him about the late night conversations that his roommate had with himself. There was a rhythm, a cadence of whispers and pauses that suggested someone else was there.

He worried about his friend. He hadn’t seen Dennis for weeks and at first had chalked it up to the time he had been spending with Margot. But lately he wasn’t so sure it was his own doing. The whispering from behind Dennis’ door at night, when combined with the other experiences Mike had been having in the building, kept him on edge. But there was also school to consider. He knew what Dennis’ schedule was and his roommate was typically in his room at class time.

Then there was Eileen.

He had run into her at the mall last Saturday and they stopped in the food court for lunch. She expressed her concern about Dennis, grilling Mike for why he hadn’t returned her calls in the past two weeks. This had been news to Mike.

“I went by the gym looking for him,” she had continued, “and they said he’d taken his two weeks of vacation.”

“Well, he didn’t go anywhere. Far as I know, he’s only left his room for food, beer, and the bathroom.”

She had placed her fork down and folded her hands neatly on the table. She made him think of nuns praying in mountaintop monasteries. “I think it’s…it’s your sister.”

He had lost all warmth at that. “Allison?”

“He talked about her a bit recently. I don’t know why it’s hitting him like this now, but I’m sure all this has something to do with her.”

Mike couldn’t speak. He wouldn’t have known what to say even if he could. After an awkward pause, he changed the subject to Dennis missing class and was thrilled that Eileen followed cue. When they finished, he asked if she was going to come by and see Dennis.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to ambush him. If he doesn’t want to talk to me…Maybe we’re over. I don’t know.”

He felt sorry for her, but didn’t know what he could do. And now, listening to his friend again talking to himself, he was doubly confused.

He reminded himself that it wasn’t his responsibility and grabbed a Coke from the fridge.

He went to his own room and sat down in front of the computer, prepared to finish an English paper he had been working on. He opened the file and read over the work he had done. It was an essay on
Crime and Punishment,
which he hadn’t bothered to read. Instead he had read the Cliff ’s Notes, as well as the Wikipedia article and a few essays he found online. He had tried to read the book, but the language was too dense.

He opened the cold can on his desk with a loud
hiss
. He sipped and scanned the room, hoping for any distraction from his work.

The supermarket outside his window.

He knew the light in the parking lot burned, though it was hard to see during the day. He was both frightened by and drawn to the building. Ever since he

—made a sacrifice, freely given—

glanced at the darkness inside, he had a difficult time taking his mind away from it. His dreams were haunted by it. He found himself doodling it in the margins of his notepad during class and sometimes even walked its boundary at dusk, careful not to get too close, as he attempted to decipher the illegible graffiti that covered its sides.

And then there were the things he had been seeing in Raynham Place since then. He tried to tell himself it was his imagination, that the shadows he saw and the whispers he heard were products of his own mind, that the presence he often felt at his shoulder was his anxiety manifesting. Yet some feeling deep in his gut told him these things were tied to that building and he had set them free into the world.

He shook his head. That was ridiculous.

Wasn’t it?

Margot had filled his head with so many stories of this place, folk tales and ghost stories and urban legends, that he couldn’t dismiss the idea.

And there had been tragedies lately, deaths and missing persons. That poor little girl died from cancer.

—God is a bloated predator

eating flesh as He pleases—

Margot had been deeply unnerved by Matthew’s mysterious seizure in the pool a few nights ago. He was still in critical condition at UT. Not wanting to upset her further, Mike never mentioned how similar it was to the Callahan kid’s episode at the supermarket.

The dying grass around the building, the broken almost-strip mall, the graffiti on the walls—they took his eyes, stole them and refused to give them back. The light tickled the doors, reflecting back like a whore seducing him with fingers of multi-colored light.

There was a sharp cry from somewhere in his room.

He blinked.

It was dark. Had a cloud passed over the sun? He glanced at his clock.

7:23!
It was barely five o’clock when he came in here. That couldn’t be right.

He went to his computer, looked at the clock in the corner of the screen. It
was
7:23. He looked out the window again. The way the dark-blue night had collapsed over the hill, there was no mistaking it for cloud cover.

The cry came again.

How did he lose over two hours?

You were staring at that door.

His muscles went rigid. Had he been staring at the supermarket for over two hours and didn’t even realize it? That was impossible.