A glow of various colors lit the sky and a greater portion of the room, which gave me my bearings. Instead of making for the staircase, Rick had become disoriented and was running the wrong way, deeper into the darkness. “Rick, no! Wrong way! Wrong way!”
He looked back over his shoulder, nearly fell, quickly regained his balance and spun around in an attempt to change directions. But as he did so a loud cracking sound echoed across the room, and with a frantic and helpless shout, he fell straight down and out of sight.
The floor had given way and swallowed him whole.
I ran toward the spot where I’d last seen him, doing my best to keep the light level and all the while fearful the floor might also give out on me at any moment. I arrived at the hole quickly, crouched next to it carefully and shined the light through. A large section of flooring had collapsed and now lay in a heap on the floor below, along with Rick, who was sprawled out and covered in filth, but conscious.
“Are you all right?” I called down. He didn’t answer, but moved groggily and shielded his eyes from the light. His arms and legs were moving, albeit slowly and with some effort, but it didn’t look like he had sustained any serious injuries. “Stay there,” I told him. “I’m coming down.”
I noticed his knife near the edge of the hole. He had apparently dropped it when he fell. I scooped it up with my free hand and aimed the light back in the direction of the staircase. But before I had taken a step I heard a strange squishing sound, and from behind me came a deep gurgling voice.
“Welcome to my Eden.”
CHAPTER 35
A stream of fireworks shot through the sky, firing sparks into the air and releasing shrill wails as they fell to the ground in slow spirals. A rapid-fire series of red and blue bursts followed. The finale had begun.
Against the rear wall of the mill, draped in shadow, a huddled figure watched me from the darkness. Its head was shiny—slick and wet—and it wasn’t until I stepped a bit closer that I realized it was covered in blood. His head was bald, like it had been completely shaved—the wig gone—but I recognized the face even before the eyes opened, two white orbs emerging from crimson. They looked at me as if I were some sort of anomaly, as if I were the one out of place in the universe. And maybe I was.
My emotions became too great, and even attempting to control them seemed inane. Laughing, crying and choking all at once, I was certain I had slipped off the precipice into complete madness, because that which stood before me was not possible, could not be possible, and yet, there it was. But with this awareness also came an odd clarity, a release and an acceptance of the inevitable—whatever it might be—and at the moment of this epiphany my fear tapered off, my tears stopped and I became surprisingly composed. I had come to this house of horrors to find the evil, to stop it or to die trying. And now, I had found it.
He cocked his head as if he had heard my thoughts. For a fleeting moment something in his eyes spoke to me, and I glimpsed who he had once been so very long ago.
“Bernard,” I said.
“Come closer, Alan.” His voice was a bit deeper than normal, and gurgled and reverberated like his lungs were full of fluid, or like he was gargling while attempting to speak.
I did as he asked, and the closer I got the wider and more intense the flashlight beam became. He was nude and covered in shining blood to his shoulders so thick and bright it looked almost like paint. The fireworks finale continued, one explosion on top of the next as colors rained through the mill and slinked across our faces and bodies. I followed one moving shaft of blue light to his lower extremities. He was crouched there in the dark like a suddenly discovered and cornered animal. Around his feet the floor was covered in a kind of jellylike mass of quivering flesh, blood and bone, a great deal of which was also on the wall behind him, as if violently thrown there. It looked to be gradually passing through the floor and wall to somewhere else, like little by little, it was being absorbed.
Not all spirits cross peacefully, Claudia had said. Some hang on.
He seemed to have a normal range of motion but moved groggily, and at a snail’s pace. He reached a blood-soaked hand to his face, wiped a space clear around his eyes then looked away to indicate brooding, contemplative thought. As he exhaled each breath through his nose, more blood ran free of his nostrils and joined the sheen already coating him. Eventually he began to breathe loudly through his mouth.
Movement to my left distracted me. The shadowy figures from our nightmare stood several feet away, barely visible in the dark corner and just beyond the reach of both my flashlight and the illumination of the now constant barrage of fireworks.
But I knew who they were. I had seen them before.
“And you know why they’re here,” Bernard gurgled.
“You’re not real,” I told him. “None of you are real.”
“Are your dreams real? Your nightmares?”
“You’re ghosts in my mind.”
“Close.” He exhaled through his mouth with a loud hiss that sounded like air escaping a pipe, and his bloody lips peeled back into a grin. He no longer had teeth, only slick pink gums. “There are no ghosts, Alan. Only memories… echoes… residue.”
“Why did you do this?”
The eyes shifted, and a black tongue slowly traced his lips. “It’s my nature.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You were my friend.”
“A friend, a relative,” he gurgled. “Someone you trust, someone you believe in. I have no unique characteristics; there are no giveaways. Don’t you realize that by now? I’m everywhere, Alan. I’m everyone. Anyone.” His mouth opened wide as a gush of dark blood spilled from his mouth and poured over his chin. “The inconsolable, the weak, the lonely and the lost, the faithless and the unclean. The damned. The lovely damned.”
The fireworks stopped, and both silence and darkness returned to the mill. Only my flashlight remained, along with the sounds of the nearby ocean. I tightened my grip on the scuba knife.
“You came here to kill me, is that it?” The wet white eyes dropped to my hands. “With your ridiculous toys?”
I stared at the monstrosity before me, my chest heaving.
“Well I have darker toys,” he said.
“Why are you tormenting us?”
Wet crimson fingers caressed his bloody chin. After a moment, those fingers reached out for me, the tips dripping. “Come together, Alan. I’ll show you the beauty of torment.” He grinned as I stepped a bit closer. “Did I mention your mother’s down here with us?”
“My mother’s nowhere near you.”
“Can you be sure of anything anymore? Ever again?”
I forced a swallow. “I’m sure of that.”
“You had such nightmares then,” he said, using my mother’s voice now. “When you were a little boy. Do you remember, sweetheart?”
I’m afraid—so frightened I can barely breath. I’m crying violently, choking, and my entire body trembles. But then I realize my mother is there—so loving and patient, with the most beautiful deep brown eyes I have ever seen. She is holding me, sitting with me there on my bed, rocking me in her arms and whispering to me. She smells fresh and clean and warm, and I feel safe. “It’s OK,” she tells me. “Just bad dreams, little one, only bad dreams.” She gently wipes away my tears with her fingers, and the blur I had seen her through previously vanishes. “What were you dreaming about that frightened you so?”