Deep in the Darkness (18 page)

I cooled down, nodded, a kaleidoscope of images twisting throughout my mind.
Neil Farris, Rosy Deighton, Lauren Hunter. All dead, all dead.
"I did wonder what'd happened to her. I also wondered if Neil Farris's bad fortune had come from the same source. I started putting the pieces together, thinking along the lines of a wild animal attack. I guess I was in the ballpark, sort of." I raised a hand to my mouth and chewed a firm nail. "You know...she said something to me that day."

Neil stared up at me, looking intensely interested.

"She mentioned that they were going to come for me, just like they did for Farris, and everyone else in the God-forsaken town. As she put it."

"She tried to warn you. It wasn't her duty to do so. It did her no good."

"Then my patient, Lauren...just moments before her death she said that 'they were coming for me, and that they had Christine too'. Phil...she'd said my wife's name. I'm telling you, she must've done some checking up on me 'cause I'd never mentioned Christine to her before."
   

Phillip shook his head, eyes tearing. He sobbed a bit. "I'm not in the right set of mind just now, and if I was I'm not sure I'd know what to make of that. Could be your patient might've known something. Or..."

"Or what..?"

"She could've heard them talking."

"What? Talking? Are you fucking kidding me?" I heard a sudden bustling in the trees alongside the house, somewhere close to the scene of Lauren's murder. I cut myself off, looked that way, squinting deep into the darkness of the woods and becoming vaguely aware of the breeze and the odd coolness and faint rotting vegetables odor it carried. It was terribly unpleasant, poisonous perhaps. My heart slammed so hard against my chest I thought it might soon render itself useless. I looked back at Phil who leaned his weight on the chair and stood. He replaced his Red Sox hat. I looked at his jacket pocket, the juicy tip of the Ziploc bag peeking out.

"I need to go back home, Michael," he revealed, eyes darting towards the woods.
Paranoia—here's a living breathing example of it in action.
"I'm not sure how many days I have left there," he added, at once anxious to get away.

"Phil..."

Here we go...do or die..."

"...Christine had an accident with the car today, and...and I tried to find some means of transportation, but I couldn't. Damn it Phil...I want out of here. Now. Tonight. Let's take your car, all of us, leave this fucking hellhole." Automatically, I kept shooting glances back towards the woods.

(Paranoia).

Are they out there now, watching? Listening?

Phillip laughed incredulously, loaded with mad volume. His tears were gone, but his body twitched as if he'd been prodded with a slight charge. He looked like a man who'd just discovered a swarm of ants beneath his clothes. He staggered down the porch steps and, in mid-stride, turned to look at me. "You ever see me drive, Michael?"

Damn...I hadn't. Come to think of it, I hadn't done much of anything since moving to Ashborough. Christine had done most of the shopping and escorting Jessica into town or the park. I'd left 17 Harlan Road perhaps a half dozen times since moving here (excluding lunches with the Deightons), all of those short excursions into town with Christine and Jessica, once to the school, a few times to the hardware store, once for a haircut at the barber shop. Other than that I'd been your typical work-out-of-the-home doctor with a grand old office to delight myself in...just what I'd always wanted.

Yeah, just what I always fucking wanted.

I shook my head.

"Haven't driven anywhere in four years. They won't let me. Seems as though they don't want you to either." He turned and walked down the front path.

"Christine hit a dog," I said unconvincingly, taking the steps to the bottom. "We should have the car back in..."
Jesus, how long did she say?

At the end of the path, Phillip turned and yelled, "Michael, I've got some very sad news for you...you're never gonna see your car again."

My heart leaped up into my throat, one powerful beat at a time. I wanted to cry, and might have hadn't it been for the sudden anger swallowing up my fear. "Fuck you, Phil! I thought you were a friend. You fucking used us; now we're screwed like the rest of the poor bastards in this god-damned town!"

"I'm sorry, Michael...I wish I could help you, but I can't even help myself."

I started walking toward him. "I'll fucking walk out of here. Twelve miles to Ellenville? No problem. I'll get help there." I was starting to lose it. I could feel the gears slipping in my head.

Phillip, still walking away, shook his head and yelled, "Nobody there's gonna help you. Nobody here either. Besides," he said stopping and pointing into the woods, "you won't get very far. You already know that Neil Farris wasn't out for a casual jog. Just like so many others, he'd tried to leave. And
they
got in the way."

I stopped, feeling suddenly defeated. "Fuck you," I said, quietly, not sure if he heard me or not. Didn't matter.

Phillip started a slow jog down the driveway, the lamplights along the perimeters creating monolithic shadows of his lobbing body. "Good bye, Michael," he called, then started crying out loud.

I stayed outside, at first watching Phillip, then staring into the woods, all the while listening to his cries until he disappeared around the curve a hundred yards away down Harlan Road.

H
ours later, something woke me. A dog barking. Outside. I opened my eyes and realized that I'd been sleeping in Jessica's bed. Second night in a row.

My memory fell into a bit of a cloud; perhaps my subconscious was attempting to suppress the unpleasant events of the day. But the image of Lauren's death was too strong and haunted me in a ghostly-illusion sort of way, as though her bloody soul had slid under the sheets with me and hugged me with the intent of chilling me to the bone.

At once I thought of Phillip, of how he'd betrayed me to protect himself and his family—all along he'd been playing his little role in this great arcane conspiracy. Whether or not there existed an ancient race of people living in the woods piloting Ashborough's polluted destiny, or even some sick band of cultists (suddenly the latter seemed to make more sense), I needed to protect my family from them, and that meant leaving here as soon as possible.

After Phillip had left, I came back into the house with all intentions of standing guard until the morning. With all the horror and fear and anxiety racing through my body, I felt no choice but to stay awake while they peacefully slept, unaware of the dangers surrounding them. But then my body crashed and I found myself crawling atop Jessica's bed, putting my chin on the sill and watching out the window into the front yard, seeing only the lampposts along the driveway and the shadows of swaying trees before falling asleep.

I didn't remember dreaming, but it seemed as though the barking dog had somehow infiltrated my subconscious. Dazed, I sat up in bed. The world around me felt strangely intangible, as though I'd been put under hypnosis. I looked around. The dolls on Jessica's bureau sat like vague growths in the forest, dark and indiscernible. I crawled to the window and looked outside, as I did earlier before falling asleep. Jimmy Page lay on his haunches two floors below, out on the front lawn. Gazing up at me. He barked again then sprang across the walkway to the side of the house.

I tossed the covers aside and rolled my legs off the edge of the bed. The wood floor was cold on the soles of my feet; it sent a shiver racing across my back. On the floor next to my feet lay the head of one of Jessica's dolls—the same one that'd fallen off some nights ago. Its eyes stared up at me, two dark glossy orbs, bristly red hair splayed out behind it like a bouquet of anemone tentacles. The lids blinked, once at first, then again and again in a methodical fashion, producing a faint
clicking
beat; there hadn't been a breeze in the room—the window was shut—so I couldn't blame the movement on this. I looked to the shelf. One of the dolls had indeed lost its head—there was a gap in the collective shadow of dolls that wasn't there before. I closed my eyes and rubbed them. When I opened them I saw that the head had vanished from the floor. I looked over at the bureau again. There it was, back in its respective spot, sitting firmly atop the plastic body it belonged to.

This is a dream, Michael. You're dreaming...

Page barked again. It sounded distant and echoey. Yet...stunningly lucid for a dream. I paced from the room, my feet feeling as if floating inches above the floor; it'd almost seemed as if I was floating...almost—my body still felt cumbersome and heavy and it took quite an effort to simply move. I turned the landing and took the stairs one at a time, the Berber runner itching against my feet despite the 'floaty' sensation. The polished banister was thick in my grasp. I never remembered having a dream so...so
real
. Clearly this was a direct progression of the trauma of the day's events. The beginnings of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. Something to look forward to for the rest of my life. Yahoo.

I crossed the living room into the kitchen, then followed the hallway (with its nice new hollow-and-rather-insecure cutout doors) into the waiting room of my office. I could hear Page barking outside just beyond the entrance, wanting to be let in. I opened the door. Indeed Page was there. But instead of clawing at the door he bounded away ten feet then turned around and looked at me and started barking again. I recognized this little doggy gesture; he'd done it before. It basically said
c'mon daddy, this way, I want to show you something
. I went outside and nearly tripped over my boots, which were still damp from my attempt to wash them this afternoon. I slid my feet in them then walked across the back lawn to where Page stood. He barked one more time then raced to the shed

(the shed)

where he stood and waited...presumably for me to follow. I stepped closer to him
 
and could see in the faint moonlight streaks of wet blood jeweling his furry face. It was on his paws and body too. I swallowed a very real-feeling lump in my throat, then stopped, five feet from the shed.

I looked at the slightly ajar door, twisted my head in an effort to peer into its depths. It began to move, swaying at first as if perhaps caught in the embrace of a breeze. Then, ever so slowly, it opened, the rusty hinges creaking like ghosts riding the beams of a haunted house.

From the darkness within, I heard a noise. A shuffling.

Something...was...coming...out.

I saw the head first. Then the body.

A deer.

Not just a deer.
The
deer.

It stood just beyond the entrance of the shed, its head crushed in, a black blotch of blood marring its neck. Its ribs jutted like white chalk lines. A wet organ dangled from its gut like a piece of peeled fruit.

I looked at my surroundings. The scene was deadly silent...no birds chirped, not a cricket sang. Even Page sat mute, looking up at me with soulful eyes, the moonlight reflecting glossily off the blood on his muzzle. I looked back at the deer. Somehow it had returned from the dead, its intentions purposeful yet dreadfully unknown. It stared at me with its one good eye (the other had vacated the socket, leaving a dark moist void behind like a rotting hole in an unremembered peach or apple), then limped up the path into the woods. Page yipped, and followed. I stayed motionless, watching the two animals walking side by side like animated characters in some sick cartoon. They stopped momentarily, turned back to look at me. Waited. Waited for me to follow. Which I eventually did.

Surprisingly enough, I felt no fear, and understood why almost immediately. This was a dream. Dead animals do not walk, and definitely do not request my presence—live animals don't even do that. Well, maybe Page did sometimes...but somehow, here, he acted differently. He had an almost humanlike quality to him, lending even more to the fact that at this very moment I was home in my bed, under the sheets, eyes rolling feverishly beneath my lids.

Feeling strangely enticed, I pursued the animals into the woods. The deer bounded off at breakneck speed. Page barked at me to follow and I picked up the pace, walking briskly to the spots he would stop at so I could catch up. The path wound in and about the trees; the deer would appear out of nowhere at times, like magic, sometimes right next to me, other times in the distance. And then, just as swiftly as it would materialize, it would disappear, as if it'd been obliterated from my memory. For a brief moment I wondered why dream characters often pulled this stunt...perhaps there was some grand scheme going on in one's subconscious, a system or methodology that for some reason also sent you back to college butt-naked, late for an exam you didn't study for, or to the supermarket where, if you were lucky, you might find yourself playing hide-the-salami with the cute cashier in the produce aisle. Some things we simply didn't have answers for. This was one of them.

Page and the deer pressed on. I followed them, never once straying from the path. Everything felt so damn real. I could feel the brambling woodland beneath my boots: the sticks, the roots, the soil. The night wind was cool against my bare legs and arms. At one point my forehead found a low-lying pine branch; the needles pricked painfully against my skin.

Despite my lucidity and sense of control, I wasn't enjoying this dream at all. I told myself that in lucid dreams you could wake up at any time if you wanted to...all you had to do was try. I tried...but found no success. And as a result found myself void of any temptation, suddenly riddled with surmounting apprehension. This dream held me in a very powerful grasp, one that would keep me here until I woke up—at which point I'd probably scoff cockily at all its incongruities. So I prayed for morning, wanting very badly to wake up—I felt no want nor desire to follow my little cocker spaniel and a zombie deer up into the circle of stones, the shrine of the Isolates. A place I didn't want to be. Dream or not.