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  RETURN TO DARKNESS

  Michael Laimo

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2012 / Michael Laimo

  Copy-edited by: David Dodd

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  Cover images courtesy of:

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  OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS BOOKS BY MICHAEL LAIMO

  NOVELS:

  Atmosphere

  The Demonologist

  Deep in the Darkness

  Fires Rising

  Sleepwalker

  COLLECTIONS:

  Demons, Freaks, and Other Abnormalities

  Dregs of Society

  UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOKS:

  Dark Ride

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  Prologue

  Dark basement.

  Heavy breathing.

  The grainy shuffle of feet on a cement floor. Edgy fingers tapping a table’s rough surface. The reek of things moist and damp.

  Somewhere upstairs a clock chimes. A useless breeze sweeps a single candle’s flame.

  A hand moves to a small tape-recorder, sitting on the table top.

  One hesitant finger seeks out the stop button. Presses it.

  Ten seconds of deep, labored breaths.

  A hand moves to grab a needle…then stops….

  Chapter One

  What am I doing? Why have I, Michael Cayle PhD, decided now to kill myself?

  Suicide had been an option all along. But then doing so would’ve been murder to my wife and daughter—I’d kept myself alive solely to keep them alive.

  And If I’d chosen to take myself away from them, then they would have killed Christine and Jessica.

  Damn…damn…damn them back to the hell from where they came!

  With pain and confusion, I wonder: is what ultimately happened a better scenario? Or…would death have been a better alternative for my family, for me? Perhaps. But death…it has yet to become of us, and I remain here with a needle mere inches from my arm. My fate, in my own trembling hands.

  I wonder where I may end up should I choose to escape the hell that has become of my world. Does another hell await me, one deeper and darker than the one thriving in the woods surrounding my home? One rife with shadows, a corpse rotting beneath the bitter elements, ruled by demons and other unnamable minions of Hell?

  The manner of my death would equal the hell that has become of my existence. The needle in my hand would puncture my arm, and the hantavirus-tainted blood within the syringe would squeeze into my bloodstream and immediately begin to take effect. Fear would wrench the empty needle from my hand. It would fall to the floor, forever irretrievable. Within minutes I’d begin to experience uncontrollable diarrhea. In an hour, projectile vomiting. Fever would set in soon after that, virtually immobilizing me. In twelve hours, heavy congestion would fill my lungs, a labored cough soon following, filling in the burning gaps between my dry heaves. In less than forty-eight hours, I’d die from acute respiratory distress syndrome and hemorrhagic fever—the brutal side-effects of the virus.

  Might be easier to just hang myself.

  Or…I could simply enter their diseased den, and let them take me.

  But would they choose to kill me? Perhaps. I’d killed many of them, infected their embodiment with the virus and subsequently experienced a mass grave—many of the beasts dead at my hand, their will to live extinguished forever.

  But…some of them survived. They were sick, I could see that. But the golden glow of their eyes, it had remained strong. Dozens, still staring at me. Accusing me of their near extinction. Add in the fact that I’d killed their spiritual leader Old Lady Zellis—their liaison with the outside world—and I figure I’m a dead man anyway.

  Might as well make it easy for them.

  I bite the nails on my right hand. Thirty seconds passes. I grab the needle again.

  Trembling, I place the silvery point against my vein. In the candlelight, the needle appears to wink at me. Hold on, Michael. You’re in for one helluva ride, the little man in my head says.

  My hand trembles, the point so close.

  A simple slip, and I’m a dead man.

  I remind myself that without my wife and daughter, I’m a dead man anyway. I am, after all, wholly responsible for their demise.

  Demise? Michael, think about what you’re saying.

  I am thinking. They’d been taken by the Isolates, both physically and mentally. My wife gave birth to a human-Isolate hybrid, and in the horrific moments following the birth of the baby, both Christine and my daughter Jessica had slipped back into their web of otherworldly influence and saluted me with eyes that glowed gold before disappearing into the darkness of the woods.

  And as far as I can tell, they aren’t dead.

  They have Christine. They have Jessica. And with great hope and prayer, only I can save them. I can save them!

  As for the Isolates, perhaps they will let me live…because I am the only one who can save them. They are sick. Many of them dying. And that is the real reason why they brought me here to Ashborough in the first placed. To heal their sick. Mend their wounded. If I choose not to do it, they will make me suffer until I die from their unrestrained assault. And then, with no use for Christine and Jessica anymore, the creatures would kill them too. Then some other unwitting physician would be summoned here to take my place, just as I had seven months ago with Dr Neil Farris. That doctor will be told his predecessor had been killed by a dog, just like Dr. Farris.

  A dog. Yeah. Fell hard for that one, hook, line, and sinker.

  So it remains: kill myself and risk an afterlife swimming in the bowels of hell, while my wife and daughter remain hostages to the Isolates in the deep, dark woods, each slowly tortured until certain death becomes of them; or, while they are kept alive through the unnatural influence of the demon who raped my wife and fathered what I’d believed at the time was my baby.

  All my life, I’ve never been a quitter. I’ve spent the last seven months of my life trying my damnedness to protect Christine and Jessica from the influence of the Isolates and their wicked means of survival here in the woods surrounding Ashborough. I’d mostly succeeded, too…until I decided to go against them with a bid to escape. To defeat them.

  It hadn’t been enough. I’d weakened them, yes. But they still live. They are out there. And they have my wife and daughter. I see no choice but to persevere—to make some form of attempt to save Christine, Jessica, and myself from the influence of the Isolates and the grand conspiracy that exists here in Ashborough, New Hampshire.

  Suicide is not an option right now.

  My only option is to survive. The life of my family depends on it.

  Chapter Two

  I stare at the syringe in my hand, the blood within the clear plunger dark and ominous, nearly swirling with the hantaan virus I nearly killed myself with. Deciding not to touch the needle anymore for fear of accidentally pricking myself, I place it atop the wooden table in the
center of the unfinished cellar, and immediately stand up.

  My head spins in wicked circles, and I have to grab the chair in an effort to hold my ground in the turning, twisting world. The tools hanging on the cinder wall merge with the workbench and the garden hose in a void of gray, and I close my eyes for the next few moments, praying for stability. Ghostly shadows of the candle’s flame flicker against my eyelids, warning me to move with caution, as the real world beyond the locked door at the top of the cellar steps awaits me with poisonous darkness and baited breath.

  I open my eyes and face the steps leading upstairs.

  In a single fluid motion, I let go of the chair and fling myself across the cellar, toward to the steps. The weight of my terror and fatigue takes me down to the floor, and I have to shove my hands out before me to avoid colliding with the bottom step. The rough surface of the cement tears into my palms, but the pain barely registers. I have grown nearly numb to physical pain over the last few days, as the level of mental anguish riddling my body acts as an analgesic to all my senses.

  I stare up at the shuttered door, its wooden facing worn with the age of time. Hanging from a hook like a life-preserver in the ocean is a small wooden hatchet, a partially rusted tool left behind by Neil Farris, the doctor and previous owner of this house.

  I begin to crawl up the stairs, each cement step biting through my jeans, into my knees. Now the pain begins to register. I can feel warm blood trickling down my shins. Sensing my own blood in this moment reminds me of the last time I saw Christine and Jessica, and hints to me now how futile my valiant efforts may now be in keeping these circumstances alive. I stop halfway up the steps and peer down at my hands, brown and stained with blood.

  The blood of my wife…

  …I looked at Christine. Our eyes locked, mine filled with tears, hers with blood. She was gone in mind in soul, I could see, as she pulled her split lips back into a wicked grin, licking the blood on her teeth. She arched her hips up from the mattress, pressed down on her belly, and her placenta came bursting out from her vagina, ruptured and purple and pumping blood and birth matter in a horrible flatulent spew…

  And then I think of my daughter Jessica, and what happened next…

  …Jessica staggered up onto the bed, adjusted her cotton nightie which had bunched up around her chest, and joined her mother. She giggled in her little girl voice, licked the blood from her fingers, and playfully tossed herself down on the blood-soaked bed...

  My head pounds with sudden pain, and it pulls me away from the hell that has put me in this do-or-die scenario. Suddenly death seems so certain, given what has become of my family: my wife, taken both mentally and physically by them, her newborn son racing about on the hideous clawed feet inherited from its father. And my daughter, my darling little girl who next month will turn six years old, who should be gearing up for a fun-filled day of friends and cake and noisemakers… is now being dragged through the dark woods, her fear suppressed beneath an illusion of normalcy, her mother by her side telling her that all is as it should be, the damn hallucinatory effects of the Isolates making it seem so.

  Yes, they have Christine—her eyes, her eyes, her eyes, they’d showed the same golden glow of her captors—but Jessica, as much as her eyes had also glowed gold, I know she hasn’t become one with them. Christine took the seed of their demon. But Jessica had experienced no physical bond with them. She is only a pawn in their game. Just as I was. Still am.

  I have to find them.

  Ignoring the pain in my head, I clamber up the remaining steps and find myself at the foot of the cellar door. Stretching, I reach for the small hatchet hanging on the back of the door. My muscles and tendons respond painfully, producing a sound in my head like snapping rubber bands. My fingers fall a few inches short of the tool.

  I grit my teeth against the sudden pain, latch on to the door handle, and pull by body up. A stench arises from me in a near-visible wave, forcing me to choke on my labored breaths. What is that? the little man in my head hollers, and when I peer down I see that many hours earlier I’d puked on myself and had never found the strength nor comprehension, really, to tear my shirt away.

  Gazing up through tear-filled eyes, I seize the hatchet handle and lift it up off the nails holding it in place. It makes a little scraping sound.

  Much like the sound I hear on the other side of the door.

  I freeze up out of both fear and conscious choice.

  Gently, I place an ear against the door, struggling to keep my body from trembling against the old wood. If there is someone on the other side of the door, then even the tiniest creak from the hinges would alert them of my presence.

  It is here my mind begins to tear around in another rambling circle: if there is someone out there, it could very well be a passing resident of Ashborough, here to check things out for them. One of their sentries, or even someone from the general populace put to task under threat. No one in this town can be trusted. They’re all in on it. Every single goddamned one of them.

  It’s not like they’ve chosen a terror-filled lifestyle under the watchful eyes of those human/demon halfbreeds in the woods…but at some point in their lives, they’d made the unwitting choice—just like I did—to move here seeking to spend their days alongside birds and deer and homemade pies and neighborly waves from everyone crossing their paths.

  Little did we all know.

  From beyond the closed door, another noise. A footstep? An arm bumping into the kitchen counter? It might be Christine! Or Jessica! Or maybe both of them, released from their bond with the Isolates due to some unanswerable circumstance. Perhaps the creatures are too injured from my attack to convene—to make a collective choice as to how to utilize their captives against me. Maybe, just maybe, their supernatural hold on my wife and daughter (oh, God the same eyes I’d spent years looking into were glowing gold!) fell away, just as it did in the basement of Old Lady Zellis’s house…

  My screams clamored piercingly about the basement: in this foreign place where only the near-dead and dazed existed. The spell Old Lady Zellis had on Christine and Jessica appeared to weaken, Jessica now standing with her arms folded tightly across her chest, crying, Christine looking more surprised than frightened as she sat up from the cement slab, shifting her pregnant belly with two hands…

  …and Christine and Jessica had been able to escape their den, now thriving with hundreds of dead and dying Isolates, rife with maggots and disease.

  Oh God, I can only pray.

  Then I wonder: perhaps it is an Isolate or two, sent here to make certain that I keep myself sequestered in my barricaded home at 17 Harlan Road, where I can do them no further harm. Where they can once again lay down the law of the land and begin to use me to heal their sick and mend their injured.

  And with their race sicker than ever, what better time to use me than now?

  Then another notion hits me: perhaps I should let them drag me back into their den, to be put back to task? Just as they once threatened the safety of my wife and daughter in exchange for my services, I can now threaten to withhold my aid to them in exchange for my family’s safe release. Is it possible? Or would they in turn murder us all and start the cycle all over again, calling upon some other unwitting doctor with a promise of all things wonderful in small-town America?

  I am so confused.

  How would they do this? How deep does the grand scheme go? Lou Scully and I had worked together for years in Manhattan. A year ago he came to me with an offer of a thriving practice in a middle-of-nowhere New Hampshire town I’d never heard of before. Ashborough. Just a speck of dust on the map, surrounded by inches of woodland with only one road in and one road out.

  If you ask me Michael, Scully had said, it’s a steal. You’ll never find a complete practice and such an elegant home for so small a price…

  Now, I wonder: Did Lou Scully know?

  He’d claimed to be a good friend of Neil Farris, and despite never having heard the name ‘Farris’ mention
ed before, it never occurred to me later on that somehow the Isolates and the enslaved residents of Ashborough had gotten to Lou, and that they may have others out there, working for them beyond the miles of woodland surrounding the town.

  Another noise shakes me from my paralyzing memories.

  This time it sounds like the quick muffled patter of footsteps on the living room rug. Or is it coming from upstairs?

  Sweating despite the frigid air in the house, I grasp the knob on the cellar door, and turn it.

  Chapter Three

  The door groans as I inch it open, amplified in the dangerous silence of the moment. Beyond the threshold I see the hardwood floor in the short hallway leading from the kitchen into the living room. The counter across the way seems as commonplace as ever, the telephone (a useless tool here in Ashborough, I’ve discovered, should an emergency exist and you attempt to call for help) sitting alongside one of Christine’s unread paperbacks.

  Dull light pierces my eyes as I push harder against the door…but it moves no farther, fettered by the chain I’d locked in place upon coming down here hours ago. I unclip the chain from its brace as quietly as possible, then lean against the door until the gap between it and the wall is wide enough for me to slip through.

  Taking a deep, painful breath, I step out into the hallway and peer into the living room—toward where I thought the noise had come.

  Everything seems as it had prior to me taking cover in the cellar. The couch and chairs still in place, scattered papers laying randomly about like windswept leaves on a dry autumn day. Quickly I twist around and look into the kitchen. From this angle I can see only the butcher-block table and sink, plus a smear of mud trailing in from some unseen point. It moves through the hallway below my feet, and into the living room. If I had to guess, the trail of mud eventually made its way up the steps and into my bedroom, the place where I last saw Christine and Jessica.