Apparition, page 29
Martha moved so fast it scared him. Her hand darted out viper-quick and gripped his wrist. Her hand was cold, so cold Shane felt like he was being touched by a woman already dead. Dead, but her brain wouldn’t accept it, so she walked on and on in a world that no longer wanted her around.
“Many gifts,” whispered Martha. Shane gasped, and suddenly he was there… there in the house, not as it was today, but as it had been. In the house, and terrified because…
… it didn’t work. It didn’t work, it didn’t work.
She looks at her hands. Blood on her hands. Her blood. More trickles across the deep gash in her scalp.
There is a loud bang, loud enough that Martha almost loses control of her bladder, almost wets herself. After what she saw, it’s a miracle she hasn’t already done so.
Her knees buckle and she falls forward, half-laying across the hood of her car, which is still warm from the drive here.
Shane looked at Martha. His mouth was agape. He had to make a conscious effort to pull it shut long enough to speak. “What did…
… it do? What did it do to me? she thinks as she falls across the hood. Her mouth tastes coppery, salty. She spits and blood spatters on the dirt.
“Stop this,” whispered Shane. “Please…
… just stop it, she prays. But Jesus isn’t listening, and apparently His angels are busy, too, because there is no answer to her prayer.
She forces herself upright. Looks at the house that has become an open doorway to Hell.
She has to go back there. Doesn’t want to – doesn’t know if she even can – but has to, nonetheless.
Shane felt her inside him, but also knew he was standing here in the park, the children hanging loosely on their swings behind him, the old woman in front of him.
“You were in my house,” he whispered.
Martha nodded. Her hand still gripped his wrist tightly. “More than once,” she said. “More than…
… anything else, Martha wants to leave. Just get in her car and drive away. But she doesn’t. She feels her feet taking her inside. Because of him. Because of the boy. She can’t leave Andy in there.
She finds herself in the basement and almost doesn’t know how she got here. How she got in this dark place again.
Shelving on the walls.
A mirror in the corner.
Dark. No lights.
Something moves. It’s the boy. It’s Andy. He’s on the floor, crabwalking backwards away from his father. Oliver stands over him, holding a knife.
Shane shook his head. “That’s the same knife that Kari used. When she….” He couldn’t even finish the sentence.
Martha nodded, her face a strange mix of fear and sympathy. “She loved them didn’t she? Loved your children?”
“I thought she did, until –”
Martha shook her head, cutting him off. “She did love them, right up until the…
… end of the road: Andy has crawled back as far as he can. He is at the wall now, pressed against it as he tries vainly to escape his father.
Oliver’s knife is held high. Martha sees him bring it up, ready to plunge it into his son’s chest or throat or both. She tries to move but can’t. She had come to help, but now when it matters, she can’t make her feet work. She is stuck three-quarters of the way down the stairs.
She sees the reflection in the mirror in the corner. The way it is angled, she should be seeing only a reflection of Oliver’s back. Instead, though, she sees Oliver in the mirror face on. The other-Oliver grins widely, and she knows the thing hiding there is about to feast, about to slake its every-growing hunger.
Andy raises his arm. A useless gesture. “Daddy, no!” screams the little boy.
Shane sighed softly. Not the sigh of contentment or exhaustion, but a desperate sigh that spoke of his dread. “Don’t show me this,” he pleaded. “Don’t show me how it…
… is going to end in the death of the boy. Martha knows it. The thing has won.
Oliver Hanson – or what used to be Oliver Hanson, before he shed himself and was taken over by a thing that wears him like a tailored coat – brings the knife down. Martha flinches as she prepares to see a life end.
But all is not lost. Something flashes by her, down the stairs and into the basement. She hears the click-click-click-click or claws on concrete. For a moment her fear redoubles as she thinks some other beast from beyond has come to feed. Then she realizes – at the same moment it barrels into Oliver, knocking the man away from his son – what has come. It is Andy’s dog.
“I’ve seen that dog,” whispered Shane. He looked at Martha and for a moment she looked like an angel, a nimbus surrounding her. Then he blinked and the light disappeared and he realized he was crying. “I saw it on the first day we moved in. I saw that…
… dog attacks Oliver. Oliver is a sturdy man in the prime of his life. He should be able to toss the dog aside like an empty sack. But the dog’s attack is so ferocious that Oliver goes down like an empty sack himself. The dog’s teeth snap at his neck. Oliver barely misses getting his throat torn out. Then he kicks convulsively. The kick hits the dog.
“Daddy, no!” screams Andy. “Don’t hurt Buzz!”
The kick isn’t hard enough to really hurt the dog, but it gives Oliver the space he needs. He is still holding the knife, and now he uses it.
The blade plunges into the dog’s belly. The dog whimpers. Oliver jerks the knife out. A gout of blood spurts. The dog whimpers again. It looks over its shoulder at Andy, and Martha feels like the dog feels more pain at his failure to protect his master than at the mortal wound it bears.
The dog whimpers again, then crawls into the darkness at the edges of the basement. A thick smear of blood trails behind it. It whimpers in the black. Then is silent.
Oliver stands.
Now Martha’s eyes were full of tears as well. “I went back in,” she said. “To try to stop it.” She lowered her head in shame. “It was too strong for me to…
… stop it. And she has to do it now. Oliver is standing over his boy again. Suddenly Martha feels strength flow into her. She runs at Oliver, intending to batter him away like the dog did. Only she’s much bigger than a dog, big enough to get him away from Andy long enough to allow the boy to escape.
Who knows? she wonders briefly. Maybe I’ll even survive, too.
She rushes at Oliver, fingers outstretched. The man doesn’t even seem to notice her. But at the last second he turns and she realizes he was waiting for this to happen. He’s ready.
His knife slices down. She feels the point enter her breast, then jerk away as she falls. She hits the concrete and expects it to be cold. But it isn’t. It’s warm, and it only takes a moment for her to realize that it’s warm with her blood, which is already widening into a wide, deep sea.
Martha used her free hand to pull the neck of her blouse down and to the side. The scar behind it was thick and brown, a gnarled mass of tissue.
“It left its mark,” she whispered. “It always leaves its mark.” Shane couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scar. For some reason, it seemed to be mocking him. To be saying that no matter what he did, it wouldn’t fix anything.
Martha’s tears spilled down her cheeks, dotting her blouse with dark spots as they fell from her chin and jaw. “It was too strong for me,” she said. “Oliver tried to stop it. To fight it. He tried to break the Lamia’s ability to work through him.”
“How?” said Shane. Though he suddenly thought he knew. He saw Kari, laying spread-eagled in her own blood, awash in it as it gushed out. She hadn’t been trying to kill herself, he realized. At least, not in a fit of madness. She had done it to stop the Lamia from using her. She had done it to save…
… the child, save the child! Martha’s mind screams. But she can’t even move her fingers. It is going to happen. It is going to end.
Oliver stands over his son. The dog – wherever it is – no longer whimpers. It is probably dead. Oliver holds up the knife. Martha can’t watch, but she can’t look away. She will see. She will bear witness.
The knife falls.
Andy screams.
But the knife never touches him. Oliver halts its descent only inches above the boy’s upturned face. Martha doesn’t realize what has happened at first. Then she sees how tightly Oliver’s muscles are clenched.
“Fight it,” she says. Or rather tries to say: the words come out in a barely-breathed whisper.
Oliver’s body starts gyrating. At first it looks like he is having a grand mal seizure. But he never falls. He just shakes, and shakes, and shakes. Faster and faster, until he is a blur and it is impossible to say where his body ends and the air around it begins.
The knife can still be seen as a flash inside the blur. And then Martha sees something else. Something worse. Something black, a hint of tentacles at the edges of the darkness.
A host of roaches seems to explode out of the whirling cloud of motion that Oliver Hanson has become. They spread out like a dark river on the basement floor.
The roaches scatter.
Oliver suddenly stops gyrating.
He stands up tall.
He looks at the boy who still lays powerless before him.
“I love you, Andy,” he says. And Martha knows it is not the thing that speaks. It is Oliver. The man, the father.
“What did he do?” whispered Shane. “How did he beat it?”
Martha shook her head. “He didn’t beat it,” she said. “Just stopped it for a moment, and then…
… the humanity falls away from Oliver’s gaze. The thing is still there, Martha realizes. Still inside him.
Oliver screams, though whether for rage or pain or ecstasy Martha cannot say. “I…” he gasps. “I… love… you!”
And then he brings the knife down. Not on Andy, but on himself. He slashes one wrist wide open. Then, moving slowly as he fights to retain control of himself, he cuts the other wrist just as deeply.
Blood flows. It falls on Andy, splattering the boy’s hair and clothing with blood.
Oliver smiles at his son.
He falls.
Andy is alone. Alone with the dead and dying.
“He saved him,” said Shane. The tears came thick and heavy now, as though Oliver Hanson’s triumph had reached across time and touched him with something he had thought lost forever: hope.
Martha was smiling, too. But her smile looked strange. He realized it wasn’t joy. Wasn’t happiness. It was a smile of pity. And he couldn’t understand that. Or could he? Because what had happened to Andy? What had happened to…
… the little boy looks at her and Martha knows he must have heard her moan. He sees her, and his eyes light up. Martha can’t think why he would be so excited. Then he turns to his father’s body, and she realizes what must be going through Andy’s mind. If she’s alive, he must be thinking, then maybe my father is still alive, too.
As if to confirm her thoughts, Andy cries out, “Daddy!”
He crawls to his father’s body. Martha sees a roach skitter from the shadows that hide Oliver’s motionless form like a dark cloak.
“No, Andy!” she screams. Whether she doesn’t have the strength to say the words loud enough or Andy simply ignores her, she can’t tell. Either way, he gives no sign he has heard her words. He crawls to his father’s body.
Oliver is face-down. Andy pulls at him, trying to turn him over.
And Oliver’s bloody arm streaks out! A crimson-painted hand grabs a thick bundle of Andy’s hair. The boy’s head is jerked back, his mouth opening to scream as his neck is laid bare.
The knife flashes.
The scream never comes.
***
Chapter 27:
Thralls
***
Theresa Riggi was worried she would lose her three children in a custody dispute, so she stabbed them to death.
She was sentenced to sixteen years in jail. Five and one-third years per dead child.
In December 2011, only about a year and a half into her prison term, she was moved to a psychiatric hospital for further care. The authorities were worried that some of the other inmates had tried to kill her.
Can you blame them?
Martha felt drained and somehow dirty around the edges, like a tub emptied after a long bath. She couldn’t tell if it was a good feeling or not. Either way, she had at last been able to share what had happened. No one – not even Pastor Joshua (who was not now and never would be “Josh” to her) – had ever heard the story. Not all of it.
Shane Wills was staring at her. He looked at his hands as though expecting to see them holding the knife that had killed Andy.
Then his hands shot out, grabbing Martha’s shoulders in a grip so tight she winced.
“Martha,” said Shane, “this… thing… it has to have a weakness. There has to be some way to stop it. An exorcism. Or we move far away. Something.” The last word came out almost as a whine as he pleaded with her. At the same time, there was something in his eyes, a hunger that she had seen before. It took all her strength not to recoil, not to pull away and run from this man who was already halfway under the control of the thing that had come into her life.
It had found her. No matter how well she hid, no matter how thoroughly she cloaked herself in religious artifacts and righteousness, it seemed that she could not escape the influence of the demon that had stolen Andy and Oliver away.
Despair coiled like a garrotte around Martha’s throat. She spoke slowly, choking over each word. “The house isn’t haunted, Mr. Wills. The Lamia is drawn to certain places for some reason: that’s why so many deaths have occurred in your home over the years. And if you hadn’t moved there, maybe you could have kept the children safe, could have kept them hidden from her long enough for them to grow up and no longer appeal to her. But now that you’ve been touched by her not once, but twice….” Her voice drifted away. She could see Shane didn’t believe her. He was clearly searching for something to say, looking for some loophole he could crawl through to escape this nightmare. She shook her head. “It’s touched you. It wants your children. Leaving won’t help you. It will follow you. Wherever you go.”
Shane’s eyes opened. He looked like he had just shoved a screwdriver into an electrical outlet. “Oh, dear God,” he whispered.
“What?” asked Martha.
Shane loosened his grip on her shoulders. One of his hands came away and he looked at it. “We spent the night in a motel last night,” he said. His voice was suddenly dreamy; drugged-sounding. “To get away. But while the kids were sleeping, I found myself holding… I mean, I almost….”
Martha nodded. She understood what he was trying not to say. “It picks a family. It picks the children. Your children. You’ve been twice-marked, and it will never stop. Never.”
Shane looked at his open hand for a long time. Then his fingers curled into a tight fist. “No,” he said. “I refuse to believe that. There has to be some way.” He looked at her again, and Martha almost wilted under the intensity in his gaze. “You have to help us.”
Martha wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him to forget it. But her eyes fell on the children, still sitting on the swings.
The boy, a trace of a smile tugging at his lips, as though not even death and the threat of damnation could possibly faze him for long.
The girl, sitting as far from her brother as possible, yet still somehow projecting her intention to protect him.
And between them, on the empty swing… Andy. The little boy hung listlessly, looking at neither of the children beside him. They probably couldn’t see him either, Martha knew. That was part of her gift – her curse. Most people couldn’t ever see what was beyond the dome of this life. Only a few could see even if what was out there wanted them to see. And far fewer were those like Martha: those who could always see.
Andy looked up as though suddenly aware of her attention. His face was the gray of a storm-ready sky. His eyes, once blue and beautiful, were now filmed over with death’s cataracts. His throat, slashed widely and deeply, gaped as he looked up. He didn’t smile. He never smiled. The Lamia had taken him. And so he still belonged to it. To her. To the she-demon that possessed parents and made them slaughter their own children, then withdrew and left a shattered husk of a parent behind.
