Return to Darkness Page 5

  Shaking my head, mostly to keep myself from passing out, I use what little strength I have left to stagger across the yard to the house, the painful journey feeling like a motionless run from a monster in some horrible nightmare (is there no difference here from the horrors conjured in the mind, and the true waking world?). Finally, arms outstretched, I reach the side entrance of the house and hurl myself into the waiting room, finding very little strength to close the door behind me as I collapse down onto the carpeted floor.

  Time passes. A minute, maybe more. It feels good to be doing nothing, and my tortured body thanks me for it. With a gasp of pain, I roll over onto my side and lift my shirt up to reveal the nasty gash in my gut, running from my sternum, six inches down toward my right kidney. It’s deep, but any deeper and I’m a dead man. This doctor knows.

  Thankfully the blood has begun to coagulate, keeping me from losing a critical amount. Still, this wound—and a number of others peppering my body and face—are still leaking and causing me a great deal of pain and weakness. Through blurred vision I look at my hands and see the patches of filth, mud, and blood on them. I make an effort not to get working on my wounds, and lay there waiting for some strength to return before I make my first move in trying to help myself.

  In this time I do my best not to think of what has just happen—of what has happened to me over the last nine months following my move here to Ashborough. Sour tears fill my eyes and pour down my face, stinging the scratches on my cheeks. I did what I thought was best for my family!

  You fucked up, Michael, the little man in my head whispers.

  How was I supposed to know? It’d seemed like the perfect situation. A practice here in small-town USA, thriving with a career’s worth of patients. I’d had daydreams of friendly neighbors, never-ending greetings on Main Street, and a school offering a high-quality education for my daughter. What I got was hell…a grand scheme that’s been in play for hundreds of years involving everyone on the map, including doctor Neil Farris (who died before I came here), the widow Emily Farris, Phillip and Rosie Deighton, Sam Huxtable, the Ashborough Police, and perhaps even my colleague from New York, Lou Scully, who’d set me up with this position in the first place. Damn him to hell.

  And now here I am, alone. And remarkably, still alive.

  They kept you alive because they still need you, Michael.

  Indeed. They needed me then, and they need me now. Perhaps more than ever.

  Anger rises in me like a charm. I have to help them again. I have no choice. They still have my wife (God, what has become of her!) and my daughter, and they will use them as bargaining chips just as they have in the past. I must await their call, which will come sooner or later, and follow it deep into the woods, into their den where they will force me to work tirelessly for endless hours, healing their sick and mending their wounded. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

  I return to my senses and see now that the room is nearly buried in darkness. Time has passed, and night has fallen over Ashborough. As much as I want to find Jessica and Christine, I realize that now is not the time for me to take on any more conflicts with the Isolates. I am weakened to near-swoon, wholly unable to move on. For now, I must believe my family is safe, despite the adversity of the situation: the dark, the cold, the filth, the awful horrors. I have no choice: I must regain my strength before attempting a trek back into the woods to find them.

  Still the urge to press on is powerful in me; the time is now to take the first step in bringing my family back together. Convincing myself that I have slept for a bit of time while here on the floor, I gather my strength and fortitude, and with a husky “umph” push myself up on my elbows. Here I tell myself that I have to get on my feet and move into the examining room where all my medical supplies are. Pain attacks me from all angles as I stand. A familiar dizziness strikes me. Staggering in jerking strides, I make my way across the waiting room. Once in the threshold of the examining room, I fumble for the switch and turn on the light.

  I stare at the room for a long moment. I could taste the entire horror of the situation now, lumped in the back of my throat like a hunk of rotten fruit. Pushing past the hammering of my heart, the unruly thoughts poisoning my head, I immediately go to work on myself.

  Slowly, awkwardly, and in pain, I strip naked, tossing my clothing—what’s left of it—into the garbage can alongside the sink. I catch a glimpse of myself in the stainless steel paper-towel dispenser, and for a moment think there’s an Isolate looking back at me from the polished surface. I lean back slightly and glimpse my own horrid face, realizing that this is the first time in many days that I’ve seen my own reflection—that I’ve been able to contemplate the terrible extent of my experiences. I look like a prisoner from a concentration camp, hollow and gaunt, bearded with stubble and grime. I’m bleeding from no less than a half-dozen places on my face, triple that if you throw my entire body into the vicious mix.

  I run the water in the sink, more hot than cold, and allow it to flow over my trembling hands. Using a fresh bar of medicated soap, I begin the process of cleaning my hands, my arms, my face, neck, and body, careful not to aggravate any of the open wounds. The deep gash in my stomach stings like hell, and as I blot it with a clean cloth, keeping direct pressure on it, I keep my ears open and listen for the Isolates: Ashborough’s living demons wholly capable of keeping their minds to the winds as they gather in their den like a nest of humming wasps, sleepy but deadly in their potential to wake up and make their presence known.

  Once the bleeding has stopped, I flush the wound with a spray of water from the hose in the sink, then douse it (and all my wounds) with iodine, teeth clenched behind a hurting grimace, breaths hard and burning in my lungs. The next thirty minutes are spent in agony as I utilize a sterilized tweezer to remove some of the woodchips and dirt deeply embedded in the clotting blood. I then tape gauze over many of my smaller injuries.

  But not the big one in my gut.

  For this, stitches.

  The day we moved here, I’d stepped on a rusty nail that’d pierced my foot deeper than any shot you’d had plunged into your arm when you were a kid. An hour or so later I found myself in Phillip Deighton’s bedroom bathroom, administering a tetanus shot into my thigh. At the time I’d remarked to myself how I’d never needed to do that before, in spite of having carried the booster around in my portable first aid kit for ten years. The kit had also contained the materials needed to sew up a nasty gash—also something I’d never imagined ever having to do.

  This is one of the perks of being a doctor. You can administer medication or sew up your own stitches and not have to worry about it being done correctly. Today I need both.

  In a matter of a minute I have a syringe unwrapped and fitted into the plunger…

  (One poke from the needle, Michael, and you can end it all. The hantaan virus will have a party with your already compromised immune system)

  …the needle an inch away from my thigh. Amazing how not two hours earlier I was about to perform this very same act, but with the hope of killing myself. Now I’m doing it to save my life. Fucked up turn of events.

  With a quick flick of my wrist, I inoculate myself in the thigh; all my life I’ve always winced at the pain brought on by the needle, despite however brief it lasts. Today, I barely flinch.

  To the stitches.

  I thread the needle—and no, this isn’t much different than the needle you’d find in a hotel sewing kit—keeping a good two feet of waxy thread available should I need to double back, something I am hoping to avoid. Shit. The wound is gummy, still peppered with dirt and stained with mud, despite my agonizing effort to cleanse it. Had I left a real-world wound in this condition before stitching it closed, I’d lose my license and find myself slammed with the mother of all malpractice suits.

  The pain of the needle puncturing my torn skin feels like a stab from a razor, and fresh blood begins to spring anew. Bright red rivulets trickle down into the waistband of my jeans,
leaving trails behind like winding rivers on a road map. Time passes. Pain locks my jaw under the forceful clench of my teeth, and leaps into my brain where it forces upon me a convulsing fit of the shakes. There’s a quarter-sized hole left in my gut, still unattended to, but my hands are shaking so much that I have to stop, praying that there isn’t any nerve damage.

  Telling myself that the bandages will do the rest (and not to worry about scarring because I’ve already got myself more than many soldiers earn in the battlefield), I again douse the wound with iodine and spend the next ten minutes taping a thick layer of gauze over it.

  The little man in my head asks, How long will it hurt for, doc?

  And I answer out loud: “Always and forever.”

  Chapter Ten

  After getting dressed in a fresh set of green scrubs, I move into my office and dig out two Percocet from the samples filling the top right-hand drawer of my desk. Without hesitation, I wash them down with a mouthful of bourbon straight from the bottle. The hot liquid chases the pills into my stomach where it all explodes into a burning cocktail of fire. Leaving the open bottle on my desk (after all, I might need it later), I stagger over to the loveseat, clutching my midsection as the pain there begins to throb there like the constant snuff of a cigar against my skin.

  I lay down, facing the darkness beyond the bay window, the light behind me allowing me to contemplate my near-dead reflection. Part of me questions my choice to lay here, so close to the window, so close to them. But some other part of me wants them to see me…to let them know that I’m here and that I’m not going anywhere until I have Christine and Jessica back, as they once were.

  They’re all you’ve got, the little man in my head says, and he’s right. I’m an only child. My father left my mother and disappeared when I was six, and my mom died before she earned bragging rights of a doctor son. Somewhere in Florida I’ve got an aunt and a cousin, but I wouldn’t recognize them if they rang my bell and showered me with hugs after I answered the door.

  I’ve got some friends back in New York, some of whom I’ve even spoken to—Lou Scully included—during my first few weeks of living here. As the months passed I’d thought about telling them of big troubles here in Ashborough, but my fear and paranoia had them disappearing into the den of the Isolates before they even made it here to lend some assistance—had me paying the ultimate price upon speaking of their very existence. A cardinal sin here in this town of terrible secrets.

  The animal must be alive at the time of sacrifice...

  It had been the only way of stopping them. They’d made my life hell up until I found the courage (the right means of external influence, really) to kill my daughter’s dog on the center stone. Afterwards…they’d left me alone. Left us alone. We’d gone on living as a family unit, albeit one too damn scared to mention any word of what we’d discovered living in the woods surrounding Ashborough.

  They’d allowed us to exist…just as they allowed everyone else trapped here to live on, as long as we obeyed their strict rule of the land. No questions asked.

  I close my eyes and recall the words of warning from Old Lady Zellis…

  It took you time, but you did what was expected of you. Those around you are now safe...for now. But they will return with more demands, and when the time comes, and it will come, you must be here for them, ready, willing, and able. Do not deny them. Do not resist them. Do not attempt to leave. And most importantly, do not tell a soul of this. You must isolate yourself and adhere to the demands of those that govern the land. Their way is the law, and it must not be broken. He who denies them shall suffer through the torture, pain, and the mortality of their loved ones…

  The image of her craggy, soil-caked face fades from view, replaced now with the half-human, half-Isolate countenance of my wife. The words that fell from her lips earlier return and strike me like a stone to the head, rock hard and utterly painful: Do…as…Phillip…once…did.

  And as I fall asleep, I utter an unheard promise to heed their demand of me. Just as I once did in the past. Just as everyone here in Ashborough has for hundreds of years.

  Chapter Eleven

  I wake up, surrounded by darkness. I find myself standing alongside my desk and wonder with fear if I’ve been walking in my sleep. I think back to the dream I’d had some months ago—the one that’d lured me into the woods to sacrifice Page upon the stone—and check my feet for mud, but there is none. Oddly, there is no pain in my midsection either, and I have to question the reality of the situation, despite it feeling so "real."

  I look up and see that the examining room light is on. I begin to feel afraid, and as my fear takes on a dreamlike quality, I again question if this is all real—if I’m actually back on the loveseat (which appears empty to me now), caught in a web of deep REM-induced sleep. Too much of what has happened over the last nine months feels like a nightmare.

  Clenching my fists, I dig my nails into my palms. There is no pain. I force myself to pace across my office, not wanting to feel vulnerable given the sudden illusory quality of my surroundings. Nearing the examining room, the light seems brighter here than usual, and draws moisture into my eyes. Squinting, I cross the threshold and enter inside.

  Sitting on the rolling stool alongside the examining table is Lou Scully. Blood covers his hands to the wrists. His shirt, once a bright yellow polo, is messily painted in deep red. Although his eyes are closed and twitching, he is busy with something on the table, and when I glance down I see the deer from my bedroom laying on it, legs hanging stiffly off the side, the axe I’d planted in its flank sticking out like a zoning marker.

  How is this possible? I took the hatchet into the woods with me and dropped it on the ground.

  I hear myself utter, “Lou…”

  Lou’s eyes snap open. They are glowing gold, Isolate eyes of the purest form. His hands, wet and glistening, grip the hatchet’s wooden handle and yank it from the deer; the wound it leaves behind is silent and bloodless. Like a hunter, he holds the hatchet up alongside his head.

  “I did not know, Michael,” golden-eyed Lou says.

  Unexplainable anger rises in me, as though the little man inside my head disagrees with Lou’s statement. “It’s still all your fault,” I hear myself say, lips seeming to move of their own accord.

  Lou stands and I can see that his pants are also splattered with blood. He looks more like a butcher than a hunter now. He fixes me with his Isolate gaze, mouth drawn back into a deadly, glowering grimace, face underbelly-white. He takes a step toward me, bare wrinkled feet covered in mud and dead leaves, sliding across the bloody floor, leaving stark streaks behind.

  I step back toward the door.

  “The Old Lady had me Michael…I didn’t know what I was doing. She came to me in my dreams, threatened to take my son away from me, showed me images of him lying in an alley with a gun in his hand and a bullet hole in his head. I dreamed of her every night…every goddamned night, until I couldn’t take it anymore. She told me that she wanted you, Michael. When the call came from Emily Farris that her husband had died, and that ‘did I know anyone for the job?’, I sent you. After you left, the dreams stopped.”

  I say, “So you did know.” I take another step back.

  “I didn’t know what would happen…”

  “You set me up…and now I’m as good as dead.”

  Lou’s golden eyes trigger toward the hatchet as he raises it over his head, face straining. “The only safe man in Ashborough is a dead man, Michael.”

  He lunges forward, glowering, the axe coming down…coming down…coming down…at me.

  I turn and run with the difficult sluggishness so familiar in nightmares. “Don’t Lou! Please don’t!” I scream.

  “I’m here to save you Michael…to take you away from all that has tortured you.”

  “You’re here to wash away your guilt!” I cry, again ungoverned, as though my mouth is working independently from my mind. I look over my shoulder and see Lou four or five steps be
hind me. I am entirely unable to flee any farther than the first few steps into my office. His eyes are glowing like flashlights, bloodstained face now patchworked with bristly hair.

  I turn away and Lou’s free hand grips my neck. My heart bulges with terror and it feels as if it is going to explode. I twist around and Lou’s Isolate face jerks forward, scowling as the hatchet swings down at my head. I thrust both arms out and seize Lou’s wrist just moments (and inches) before the hatchet finds my face. Sticky blood seeps through my fingers as I squeeze his wrist and try to shake the weapon free.

  Lou’s free hand continues to squeeze my neck, slipping from the blood on his fingers but still able to dam up my breath after I release one final, struggling wheeze.

  “It’s the only way Michael,” Lou grunts, the hatchet falling from his hand onto the floor with a rug-muffled thud.

  Suffocating, I let go of his wrist and claw at his golden eyes. His free hand joins its brother in its attempt to kill me and we both stagger backwards, into my desk. My lungs begin to burn and I reach back to the bottle of bourbon I’d left out on my desk, before going to sleep.

  A sense of triumph falls over me as I grip the heavy glass bottle. It’s still filled with bourbon, brown and pungent, feeling so good in my hands. I swing it over my shoulder and connect squarely with Lou Scully’s head. The glass shatters violently, making a sound like a lead weight dropped on a tile floor. The bourbon sprays us both, more so on Lou, who begins to choke and stagger. His hands slip free of my neck and the pressure on my throat loosens. He puts his arms out, as if to balance himself, then collapses down onto the floor.