the box?
Tktktk.
I gritted my teeth, trembling. I pointed my makeshift lantern at its face.
“Would you be mine, motherfucker?” I whispered. “Could you be mine?”
The Beast roared.
I clawed my way toward the crumpled shoebox, toward my boogeyman. I tasted dirt on my lips, felt it turn to bitter sludge against my teeth. This box was the “X,” the thing Drake knew/didn’t know, the thing his subconscious prayed was here. Endgame secrets, covered in decay.
The shade-shape splashed onto the crawl space ceiling, screeching, talons swiping the earth, raising no dust, leaving no marks. I edged closer.
“Unfinished business?” I growled, holding the glowing phone ahead of me. “Someone holding on, on the other line?” I gripped it tight, groaning as I inched forward—my body was beaten, nearly broken. “On the other side, maybe?”
Or maybe coincidence, bad timing, Rachael’s voice said from a lifetime ago, as we’d chased Lucas. Bad battery, battery going dead…
The phone’s plastic case squealed and snapped in my hand. A hunk of plastic dug into my palm (the battery cover, I thought, panicked) then tumbled away. The cell’s screen flickered. The device gave a malcontent chime. Fuck.
“Not stopping,” I said, shivering. Vapor surged from my mouth as I gasped. “Not done. Can’t let it go.”
My torn, bleeding fingers pressed against the shoebox. The phone chimed another warning. The Dark Man wailed a laugh, and descended.
Earth became tar and we sank together into this new murk, his shark’s teeth gnashing my legs, my ribs, and I still clutched the sputtering lantern, still tugged at the box bobbing on the slick, viscous surface. It tipped, and the contents of the box were swirling in the ether now, barely visible in the phone-glow.
My capillaries seized, freezing. My eyes fluttered, lungs burned.
I snatched a swirling sheet of paper—
Dear Danny, I have to leave, and I want you to know why…
—and then I gripped the document beside it, the copperplate letterhead already familiar to my mind—
CENTRAL INTELLI…
—and then my fingers found the photograph.
The phone peeped a feeble chime. Battery nearly gone. Its splintered screen light dipped from white to gray.
Do not humanize the Inkstain, Mr. Taylor, Drake cooed, far away. The only human thing about it is the souls it shreds.
The Dark Man began to shred.
The last of my air was lost in a churning, gurgling scream. The pain was indescribable. I stared at the photo with dead man’s eyes.
A short man, angular face, crew cut, unfamiliar military fatigues. ALEXANDROV, PIOTYR, the typeface said in the photo’s yellowed border.
DECEASED, it said.
The tearing and gnashing ceased. Sweet oxygen rushed into my lungs. I gasped, sucked in the air, terrified and grateful.
As the broken phone’s light dimmed to nothing, I looked at the crawl space, at myself.
No new gashes, not a tooth mark. My clothes were intact. The letter and photos lay by my face, bone-dry.
The Dark Man… if he was ever here… was gone.
I closed my eyes, and passed out.
27
The crawl space was marginally brighter when I awoke. Slivers of sunlight peeked through cracks in the foundation around me and the floorboards above.
I shifted in the dirt, slapping a hand over my mouth to suppress a sudden shriek. The Dark Man may not have left a mark, but Daniel certainly had. The muscles in my torso and face sang from his beating; the pain was exquisite and loud, a full-body cathedral choir. My tongue teased at a loose tooth. My right eye seemed to move in a viscous syrup—the beaten, bruised flesh around it had swelled, nearly sealing it. I gritted and groaned, sliding across the filth toward the place I’d landed last night.
I longed for Lucas and his parkour-honed “field medic” talents. I imagined him in my Alphabet City living room, hand over contemplative mouth, considering me… and then turning to Rachaeclass="underline" Now this, my dear Hochrot, is the face of a foolbiscuit.
I grinned… then fretted over the loose tooth.
Lucas and Rachael. My tribe. I couldn’t wait to—
“Oh, shit,” I whispered. My voice was hoarse, ragged.
Richard Drake said they’d been marked. When Rachael had called last night, the car’s heater had surged back to life, and that feeling of being… hunted… had vanished for the duration of my drive here. Had the monster rushed back to the city? Had it devoured my lover? My brother? Then returned to confront me down here?
“Oh, shit,” I said again.
The Dark Man is here, behind you, whispering, showing me how you’re going to die…
Yes. Richard Drake had said that. And he’d said that Rachael, Lucas and Dad were going to die, too—but he say didn’t how, or when. Rachael’s last word to me as the cell phone died in my hand had been “help.”
My hands trembled as I stuffed the shoebox documents and photo of Alexandrov into my satchel. I spared a moment to look at the fragile cell phone that had saved my life. Hunks of its plastic case and buttons were missing, exposing blackened circuits. A vertical crack bisected its dark LCD screen. I flipped it over and gazed at the exposed battery. It was covered in barnacles of corrosion.
I placed it in the shoebox and closed the lid. The phone—or its caller, I thought—deserved to be, finally, at rest.
And now, I needed to get out of here, man, right now, giddy-giddy. I tore through the earth, reaching the trap door, bracing for the pain that would sweep over me as I would shove open the trapdoor, bolt out of the crawl space and run to the car. God, this was gonna suck.
Wait.
I paused, did as I was told. My lizard brain was growling. I listened. If Daniel Drake were somewhere in the house, waiting to finish me off…
Chill, Z. Take a breath. Go slow, for God’s sake, go slow.
I placed my palms against the door and pushed upward, gently. Its hinges creaked.
My eyes rose above the scuffed linoleum like a periscope. Daniel’s body lay in the center of the room. His legs were splayed across the remains of the shattered kitchen table. The man’s left shin—obviously the leg I’d hit with the hatchet—was wrapped in a blood-soaked dishtowel and cinched tight with a leather belt. The hatchet rested against his belly. Daniel’s glass-shredded face was covered in dried blood. He was snoring.
I pulled myself up through the trapdoor, hands sliding in the tacky blood on the floor, desperate to be quiet.
Daniel blew out another foghorn snore… and then his ass tooted a fart, almost like an exclamation point. I choked back a half-laugh, half-sob of pain. I hated him, but I couldn’t leave him like this. I told myself to call an ambulance when I had access to a working phone.
Seconds later, I was up and gone, hobbling through the back yard, past the grass field. Its tall blades swished in the morning breeze, a thousand-thousand fingers waving goodbye in the eastern sunrise.
Working the Saturn’s pedals was an excruciating chore.
The rotten-tooth house finally sank into the rearview mirror, and I sighed, grateful to be gone.
And when the car hit the interstate, I slammed the accelerator to the floor.
Cell phone reception.
I needed cell phone reception.
Speedometer: 85 MPH. Dashboard digital clock: 7:22 AM.
Nausea swirled in my belly and I dry-heaved with fright. It was a wordless drive, surrounded by the dim roar of the passing road, punctuated by the screams in my mind. The screams of a World Without.