Return to Darkness Read online

  There’s no beating them. There’s only serving them, and praying for death.

  A mob of Isolates marauds me, taking me into their den. I’m led along the putrid wall, passing grottos where Isolates reside, each of them suffering from disease, festering sores riddled with pus and maggots, overtly picked at so I can clearly see them; golden eyes dimmed with pain and fatigue; labored coughs and distressed stomachs, phlegm and vomit blanketing their chins. Still, despite the sickness (which I’d caused), there are many who appear immune to the travesty infecting their kind.

  One of the creatures near me breaks away from the crowd, grabs me by the arm, and guides me into a separate antechamber to the left, where at least a half dozen times I’d been forced to treat them.

  Once inside, I am confronted with a familiar sight: my medical bags, three of them, the once-polished leather coated with mud and skittering insects. I’d left them here on a previous visit—always did save for one, which I would carry back for a replenishing of supplies. At once I’m grateful for them being here, and begin rummaging through them, looking for something to help myself. I know this isn’t what they have in mind, but if they want me to help them, then I need to help myself first. I locate a sample of Oxycontin, three pills which I swallow dry, an arduous feat considering how dehydrated my body has become. There’s a penicillin cocktail already fitted into the plunger, a product of some uncompleted job. With no regard for sterilization—what a horrible consideration—I jab the needle into my arm and send the antibiotic home. Digging further through the bags, I see a bottle full of methadone and another half-filled with morphine. It completely escapes me as to how and when I’d gotten these, and assume them as some of the many supplies left to me in the house by the late Dr. Farris, nine months ago.

  As the solid pills climb their way down my burning trachea, I finally look up and peer about the grotto. It’s a familiar site, my office in their den so to speak, and I simply cannot believe I’m back here—much less alive.

  There’s a clutch of Isolates laying side-by-side against the far fall. They’re sick and dying, eyes partially closed, noses dripping mucus. Their mouths are open and sickly moans leach out over swollen tongues. A claw grabs my arm and yanks on it…rather gently I suppose, given the situation. There’s an Isolate alongside me. Its face is healthy, given what I know of them, rough skin coated with strands of dark, coarse hair, eyes glowing as it speaks: "Help…Cerdas…"

  Help us…

  Riddled with pain and fatigue, still shivering from fever despite the warmth from the wall torch next to me, I consider refusing its demand, when I hear a commotion behind me.

  There’s a shuffle of footsteps, a series of grunts from a number of Isolates…and then the sound of my daughter’s voice.

  “Daddy…please…help me…”

  "Jessica!"

  I turn and see my daughter, the sight of which numbs the agony lancing out from my infected wound. Staggering forward, I slip in the mossy earth and crumple to my knees, making it easier for the beasts to seize my arms and legs, hold me back. She’s being held by two of the creatures, their claws digging into her bruised, soiled arms. She’s still wearing the same silky nightgown she had on when I last saw her in my bedroom all those hours ago, only now it’s covered in mud, with splotches of dried blood on it, garnered in her moments of Isolate-induced ignorance following the birth of Christine’s baby.

  The scene flashes before my mind’s eye like a shot from a gun…

  Jessica, staggering up, adjusting her cotton nightie which had bunched up around her chest, leaping up onto the blood-soaked bed, joining her mother, giggling in her little girl voice and licking the blood from her fingers, playfully tossing herself down on the blood-soaked bed...

  “Jess, honey, are you okay?”

  “No…Daddy, I’m scared…” She fixes me with her little blue eyes, such an innocent babe here in this den of filth, disease, and iniquity. Her curls are flat and soiled, hanging lifelessly upon her shoulders.

  I can’t help but recall how her eyes had glowed gold in the final moments before my swoon, and I asked her again, “Jess, are you all right?”

  She nods, and I cringe as the Isolates holding me wrench me with their claws, as if to assert their dominance. One of them comes next to my ear, and whispers with its foul, sour breath, “Michael…help…cerdas…”

  And I nod, knowing that I have no choice but to begin the cycle anew—that if I want to live and find my little girl back at home, I’m going to have to pay, just as I have in the past, just as everyone else here in Ashborough has for hundreds of years.

  So I nod, then grab two of the medical bags and drag my feet through the mud toward the injured and diseased Isolates. In the past, having to figuring out what’s wrong with them would sometimes prove to be the most challenging task. Once confident of my diagnosis, I would administer a vaccination, or supply a dose of antibiotics, or in extreme cases perform surgery, the most common being Cesarean deliveries. Here and now, with disease running rampant in their den, I am being summoned to fix the mess I’ve made; for every Isolate killed by my hand, there’s another one in need of treatment.

  I turn and look at Jessica, at the tears cutting swaths through the filth on her face. Her lips quiver, as if intending to say something to me, but nothing comes out.

  “What is it honey…tell me, what is it?”

  With this, the Isolates pull her out of the grotto. She puts up no fight, voices no complaint. “Jessica!” I scream, dropping the medical bags to the floor and attempting to stagger after her. But the Isolates keeping tabs on me are fast. One leaps down into my path, tripping me, while the others latch onto me with their claws, assuring I advance no farther.

  Muddied, in pain, and short of breath, I allow them to roll me back toward their sickly, where I shut my eyes and pray for it to all disappear.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Time passes with me laying there in the mud, unable to gather the will to carry out what’s expected of me. My daughter—everything I’ve worked for up until this moment—had been dangled before me like a damn carrot, and I could not so much as see past the mask of contamination she’s picked up here. And I know: no definites exist down here—I may very well treat their ill, get the Washburns to complete the ritual required of them, and I could still be handed back my wife and daughter half-eaten in burlap bags.

  Still, Phillip Deighton had been given his wife back (minus her lower jaw and plus a mountain of wounds), so I knew I had to try. If I allow myself to quit now, to just roll over and die, then all I’ve attempted since coming up from the basement will have been in vain.

  The Oxycontin has begun to work its magic, nearly erasing the pain lashing out from my wound. I feel no more energy than I did when I took Shea up to the circle of stones, but I’m still awake and that’s enough to get my task started.

  For the next few hours (my sense of time has completely abandoned me, leaving me to consider that anywhere from one to four hours might have passed), I treat their sickly, injecting them with penicillin, tetanus, whatever I could find in my bag. I give myself another shot with the last packaged needle, this time with tetanus, and I curse myself for wasting all this fine medicine on them when I could use it on myself. But I remind myself that if I hadn’t come down here, then I wouldn’t have had it in the first place. Damned if you don’t, and damned when you do. Shit.

  When I run out of meds, I collapse back against the wall of the grotto, the back of my head pressing against the slimy earth. Something crawls across my face, but I don’t give a shit. I’m dead to the world, and on the verge of passing out. For a moment I wonder how much of the taint in this place is making its way through my bloodstream, my wound a welcome mat for its easy entrance. Does it really matter anyway? I’m already riddled with infection. What’s a few more nasty bacteria added to the mix.

  An Isolate approaches me, this one clearly immune to the disease running rampant in this place. It looks at me curiously, eyes
glowing dimly.

  “Give me my daughter, you filthy motherfucker.”

  It shakes its head back and forth, and for a moment my (crumbling) mind hears it say, Tsk…tsk…tsk…

  It then raises the block of wood I didn’t see in its hand.

  It’s the last thing I see before it knocks me out.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I’m in my living room. The place is just as I’ve l left it: in shambles. I hear Jessica calling me from upstairs, "Daddy?", and in a panic attempt to race upstairs but something supernatural seems to be holding me back, making it feel as if I’m running through water. I realize now that I’m dreaming…but there’s a realistic sensibility to all I’m experiencing, and I can’t help but fear that I may be under the telepathic influence of the Isolates once again. I hear the sound of a dog barking upstairs. It sounds like Page, my daughter’s Cocker Spaniel, the very animal I sacrificed to the Isolates in a real-dream just like this one. The dog barks again, sounding distant, heavy with reverb. I trudge up the stairs, my body feeling awkward and heavy, difficult to move. I can feel the Berber runner itching against my feet. The polished banister supports my weightiness.

  I reach the landing, turn, and move to Jessica’s room. I try to call her name, but again, like being under water, my voice sounds muffled and distant. Page keeps on barking, and that’s all I hear.

  The door to her room is closed. I grip the knob, push it open. On the floor in the room is the head and body of Jessica’s broken doll, its dark, glossy eyes staring up at me, the lids blinking, once at first, then again and again in a methodical fashion, producing a faint clicking sound. I step into the room and see on the bureau all of her dolls, a gap in the collective silhouette where the fallen doll belongs. I close my eyes, rub them. When I open them, Page—my dead Cocker Spaniel—is sitting in the empty spot on the bureau. Its hair is stiff and matted with blood. Its eyes are rotted and in them squirm a host of maggots.

  I look to the bed. Shea is there, naked, her body covered in yellow and purple bruises. Christine is laying alongside her, she too naked, seemingly unaffected by the germ of the Isolates, her skin milky white and clear, unspotted by anything remotely dirty or supernatural. I am confused by the symbolism here—the message either my (crumbling) mind or the Isolates is sending to me.

  Page barks once. I look back at the dog, still sitting amid the set of dolls. Then, looking back down at the broken doll on the floor, I see Jessica. My little girl, her soft curls and silky nightgown untainted and unblemished. She’s trying to fit the doll’s head back onto its body, but with no success. She looks up at me and says, "I can’t do it, Daddy. I can’t put her back together."

  I hunker down alongside her. "Honey, let me see if I can help." Again my voice sounds deep and distant, as though slowed down on tape and fed through a reverb effect. She hands me the doll. It feels warm, alive. I fit the head on its body, and as soon as I make the connection, its eyelids click open and its glassy eyes turn toward me. Somehow its plastic lips part and from within a harsh whisper emerges: "Maltor."

  I cry out and toss the doll down on the floor. The head—now Bonzo the cat’s head—falls off and rolls to the wall, its whiskered mouth moving up and down, mewling horribly. I turn to Jessica and gather her in my arms, holding her tightly, smelling her, kissing the top of her head and not letting go.

  She places her hands on my shoulders and whispers in my ear in a voice that is more Isolate than little girl: "Maltor…"

  Fear rapes my body. I shudder and peel her away from me. She smiles at me and giggles, then runs to the bureau and calls for Page. The dog jumps down from its place amidst the dolls, knocking many of them on the floor in the process. Jessica leans down and pets the rotting dog, laughing playfully as it laps at her face with a dark green tongue festooned with mold.

  I look over to the bed. Shea and Christine are still there, but situated between them now is the baby Isolate, my wife’s half-breed offspring. It glowers at me with its brown stumps for teeth, then nuzzles up against my wife’s breast and begins to suckle, staring at me with its golden eyes. All this while Shea strokes its hairy back.

  “Shea," I call out. She turns her gaze to me, and says, "Maltor." Christine, with the hideous little motherfucker still sucking her breast, says in a voice that isn’t hers, "Maltor."

  From the room, from everywhere, above and below, right and left, whispers fill the room, "Maltor…maltor…maltor…", and it takes me a few moments of looking around before I identify their source. The dolls. They’re moving, jiggling their tiny plastic and porcelain arms and legs, their lips moving slightly to release their cruel whispers, "Maltor…maltor…maltor…". just like the Isolates had from their secluded positions in the woods.

  I cry out, but no one seems to hear me. Christine and Shea continue comforting the baby Isolate; my darling little Jessica continues to giggle, her face streaked with black ooze from Page’s rotting tongue. From all around me, the whispering voices grow in volume and capacity, filling the room like a turbulent storm through which I cannot move or be heard. The dolls are now looking at me— all of them—those on the floor now on their stomachs, their plastic limbs fidgeting as they crawl toward me. I scamper back as they make their approach, watching the others climbing down the front of the chest of drawers, clutching the handles for support. Behind me, the door is closed. I claw at the doorknob but it is locked. My (CRUMBLING) mind screams, There’s no lock on this door!, but it seems not to matter, for the dolls are upon me now, their little cherubic faces metamorphosing into monstrous visages, brows downcast, lips scowling, the hair on their heads a matching brown caked with soil and filth. Their hands have turned into claws and they’re grasping me now, climbing me, all the while repeating in that terrible, harsh whisper, "Maltor! Maltor! Maltor!"

  Kill! Kill! Kill!

  As the dolls climb over me like rats supping on a carcass, I see through my tears Shea, Jessica, Christine…and now Lou Scully standing behind them, their eyes glowing gold as they join in on the baleful chorus.

  Maltor! Maltor! Maltor!

  “No!” I startle awake, my scream ripping through the house. The house! Despite having been knocked unconscious by the Isolate in their filthy den, I awake in the place of my dreams—on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom. Darkness surrounds me, save for the cold, blurry light of the moon slicing in through the open blinds. First thing I notice as I turn my eyes upwards are Jessica’s dolls, still seated in their places—even the broken one—upon the chest of drawers beneath the window. I cannot see any of their features, but they are still and lifeless as they should be, their collective shadow unmoving.

  I make an attempt to move, and agony makes itself known in my body. Not only is my wound barking up a storm of pain, but now the muscles and tendons in my limbs and back are sore from the stress they’ve been put through since taking Shea up to the circle of stones.

  Thinking of the girl reminds me of my dream and I twist my gaze toward the bed, but again find nothing out of the ordinary there. Still unmade and slightly soiled, it remains as I left it, with no evidence (that I can see) of Shea, Christine, or the baby Isolate ever having lain there.

  Reaching up, I grab the edge of the doorjamb for support and pull myself to my feet. I cry out as my stitches tear, and I can feel the bandages there dangling from my body. A hot trickle oozes from the wound into the waistband of my pants. I put my hand on it with no regard for the filth it's probably covered with, and feel the heat beating from it like an exposed heart. Sweat coats my body, and a wave of chills plunges from the top of my spine all the way down to my ankles, leaving pounding aches in my joints as it passes by. Dizziness nearly takes me down as I attempt to catch my laboring breaths.

  As I stand there, trying to recapture my wits and perhaps the strength I need to get into the bathroom for cleaning and another dose of painkillers, antibiotics, whatever, I peer over at the dolls, all of them looking at me through glassy eyes ignited from spears of moonlight, and see t
heir lips… shiny and glistening with blood.

  My blood.

  In a panic, I lunge out into the hallway where in the bask of bathroom light I look down and see on my exposed ankles and arms a peppering of tiny bite marks, many of them red and bruised, the skin broken and clotted over.

  This cannot be, Michael.

  But clearly, it is, and at this point, nothing comes at a shock. Nothing at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Back in the bathroom, a journey seemingly more daunting than that of my recent excursion into the Isolates’ den, I peer down at my wound and behold a monstrous sight.

  The bandages dangle from the wound like some failed grade-school paper-mache project, riddled with filth and blood and pus, like that of the wound itself. The stitches have all but failed, now unraveled like shoelaces and buried in the sea of pus overtaking them. Blood and black stuff oozes from the clotted mess, now expanding without the aid of stitches. The skin surrounding it is purple like a beet, a moat of infection reaching out four inches on all sides. It’s tender to the touch, and painfully hot. This is serious stuff, a problem this doctor no longer has the power to treat. I’m in need of a hospital, something Ashborough’s residents have never seen the inside of.

  And the pain! A simple shift of my body is nearly impossible to make, much less having to walk about the house. Trying to save my daughter from the Isolates seems more fantastical at the moment than a climb to the peak of Mount Everest.