My hand fumbled to the wallet in my back pocket. The chair creaked as I tugged it free, flipped it open, pulled out the photo from Gram’s shoebox.
I stared down at the trembling thing: me, Rachael, Lucas and Dad. Taken a year ago, when things were less complicated, less broken. I began to weep now, too. I wept for the face that wasn’t there.
“But I know… God, do I know… what it’s like to lose family. I saw her die, Richard. A soul doesn’t recover from that. It’s bruised, crushed. Your wife and daughter, gone. There’s no worse punishment. But…”
I looked at him now. His long fingers smeared the tears into his skin. His eyes were closed, but he was pulling out of it, listening again.
“Alexandrov might be alive,” I told him. “The Dark Man might not be real. Can you open your mind to that? That sliver of possibility”
I reached out, slowly, and placed my hand on his shoulder. His body flinched, but he did not pull away. His face turned toward my hand.
“Can you open your eyes and see that world, a world that might be”
The room was silent.
And then, Drake did.
He sucked in air through his teeth, squinting at the comparative brightness of the room. His eyes fluttered, cataloging the hand on his shoulder as if it were a new thing. His expression was exquisite and bittersweet.
Something that sounded like a laugh—a genuine, joyful laugh—surged from his throat. It sounded gruff and rusty, out of practice. I watched his eyes roam from my hand to his shoulder, then down to his chest. He pressed his hands there, drummed his fingers along his ribcage. His eyebrows raised, hopeful.
I’d never seen a smile so beautiful or truthful. He laughed again, more confident this time.
His gaze shifted down to his slacks, his loafers—he was tapping his feet now—and then racked focus to my Vans.
The smile changed. The glee transformed into something more serious and straightforward.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
His pine-green eyes followed up my leg, to my knee and to the hand there, holding the photo. And then they flicked to my face. Tears spilled anew, down his red cheeks. The expression on his face was new, too.
He was… terrified.
His voice was hushed, quaking, barely audible. “Oh no. You’re wrong, so wrong.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder, and he uttered a low sound: rrrrrnnnnn
The light above us flickered. The strobe show was back.
A noise, wicked and unholy, rumbled from my right. The sound of something large scraping against the cinderblock mural… now the screech of knives, sharpened on stone… of breathing now, lascivious and wet and hungry… and the clickity-click of dogs’ claws on tile.
“—nnno God, no.” Drake’s face had turned pale, sick. “The Dark Man is here, behind you, whispering, showing me how you’re going to die. Here. With me.”
And that’s when the room went black.
I gasped, reeling back into the chair. It was black and cold and oh no, black, no, dark, oh dear Christ Almighty, breathe, please help me breathe, no air, no light, no anything—
Richard Drake screamed. I felt a rush of air, blisteringly cold, rush between us. I saw nothing in the ink, but yes-no-yes, I could sense something growing there, growing taller between us, rising from a feral crouch, now towering above us. The frigid wind came in waves now, as if hailing from a paper fan.
As if it were dancing.
And then, that sound. Autumnal leaves.
Tktktk.
“No! God, no!” Drake shrieked. “Not just you. Your family. It’s showing me… how your family will die, too. No! NO!”
The light blasted bright again, and began its manic Morse Code stutter, bzzzt bzzzzzt, bzzzzt.
I bolted from my chair, whirling around, eyes wild, searching for the thing I’d heard. Nothing. Not a goddamned thing but me and the painted walls and Richard Drake. I turned to him, chest heaving, my heartbeat a thunderstorm in my ears.
He’d covered his face with his hands, was screaming like a damned man. I stumbled backward, toward the door, my gaze irresistibly locked on the crazy man in the chair.
“CURSED!” he howled. “TOO LATE! Too late for me, Mr. Taylor, and too late for you and yours. I warned you, and now it’s free, the cage broken, I can see, it’s here to play… and it’ll play, Mr. Taylor, play with you like a cat plays with a mouse…”
His next word was either prey or pray. I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t care. My back pressed against the metal door. I slammed my palm against it. I made a fist, and pounded. My voice was high, cracking like a teenaged boy’s.
“EMILIO! For fuck’s sake, GET IN HERE!”
The bolt clacked open and Emilio’s hands were on my shoulders, yanking me from the room. I was airborne for a half-second… and I then was bounding into the hall, nearly spilling onto the floor.
Emilio was a tree-sized blur, cannonballing into Room 507. His massive form was soaked in the stuttering light as he reached out, ready to restrain the still-sitting, still-screaming Drake. Emilio tore Drake’s hands away from his face. He leaned low to give Drake a verbal warning, per procedure—calm down.
Their faces were inches apart. Drake’s scream rose in pitch, impossibly raw now, like shattering glass.
I dashed from the doorway, down the hall, head spinning, brains popping like a bad fuse, emotional overload, tilt, tilt. Tilting, the world was tilting.
The lights out here weren’t flickering, weren’t growing dimmer. They were getting brighter. How is that possible…
Emilio bellowed, like a tyrannosaur. I spun on my heel, eyes focusing on the doorway.
The world went slow.
Emilio Wallace ran full-speed from the room, his muscled arms flailing, as if aflame. His voice was a tornado, a battle cry, a thing his fans heard years ago in Southwestern convention centers. Nuh-nuh-no, not them, he was screaming, I wuh-won’t do it, not my boys . .
…and then his six-foot-five, 260-pound body smashed into the tiled wall opposite the door.
He bounced off and staggered, stupid. His broken nose gushed crimson, covering his mouth and Superman chin in a horror-show goatee. He swayed once, then slapped his palms onto the wall to steady himself.
He stared at the cracked tiles and snarled. He swung his head forward, bashing it against the wall. Ghoul’s paint sprayed against the pale green.
“Nuh-NO!” he howled.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.
Emilio drove his forehead into the tiles again and again, growling, now howling. A nightmare of flesh scraps and blood spritzed forward—then upward—as he hammered his skull against the wall. His face was covered in gore. His forearms and hands were slick, misted with blood.
And bashed again.
A tile broke loose and shattered on the floor. It was like a pistol shot. I ran toward him.
Roaring, he bashed again.
Meat spilled into his face.
And again.
A sickening, soggy crunch rang in the hall. My friend’s shoulders sagged. A terrible gurgle pushed through his blood-soaked lips… hhkkkkk… and he fell.
I stopped at his bloodied body. My eyes refused to work, to blink. It was impossible to look away.
The lights in the hall began to flicker. I shivered.