314 Book 2 (3 page)

Aubrey screamed and took Alma’s hand as they ran out of the building. There was a small patio out of the back door and a sidewal
k that led around the building to the parking lot where Jacker, Stephen, and Rachel had died. To the side of the walkway, away from the building, was a ditch that led up to a black wire fence, past which was another, similar office building. Aubrey pulled Alma along as she tried to escape.

“Come on, Alma!” Aubrey jerked at Alma’s arm to try and snap the girl out of
her docility.

“We’re already dead,” said Alma.

“We will be if you don’t move your ass.” Aubrey tried to go left, toward the street, but Alma held her back. “Come on!”

“Don’t go that way,” said Alma and
she pointed toward the rear of the building. “We need to try and go that way.”

“Why?” asked Aubrey.

Alma couldn’t explain herself, and just said, “Because we die that way.” She pointed at the street as if waiting to be proved right.

“What are you talking about?” asked Aubrey. “Okay, fuck it. I don’t care. Let’s just get out of here.”

Aubrey and Alma ran along the side of the building as the fog stayed above them, looming over the lip of the roof as if ready to descend, but kept at bay. Alma glanced back and saw that the white fog was sliding off the roof beside the exit, willing to cover their tracks as Aubrey guided them forward. Then the electricity popped within the cloud and coincided with an explosion somewhere on the street, now hidden by the mist.

Alma didn’t need to see the accident to know what happened. A truck had plowed into the cars parked on the side of the road, and that’s where Aubrey died once, pinned between the vehicles. Alma could see her pained expression as if a poignant memory had been revealed. She was reminded of how thoughts of her brother, Ben, had returned to her in the kitchen of the cabin when her mother had scrawled the symbol for pi on the floor.

Alma could hear the scrambling, bony hands of the children as they crawled across the roof of the Emergency Services building. The fog hid them as they scurried toward Aubrey, but they were revealed as menacing shadows when the green electricity sparked.

“Come on,” said Aubrey as she saw that Alma had slowed down. The fog rushed around the
building and toward the young girl. The Skeleton Man’s hand came around the corner just as Alma was about to scream in warning. His fingers tapped, one by one, on the brick before he appeared. He spied on them like a devious child sneaking into his parent’s bedroom at night, his chattering teeth ever present in Alma’s head.

“H
ow should we bleed her?” asked The Skeleton Man. His demonic horde scurried across the roof and Alma heard their steps slow down. The fog swirled at a lethargic pace, and Aubrey’s movements became caught in the mire of The Skeleton Man’s hold on time. The blonde bartender tried to scream, and perhaps in a different sliver of reality she could be heard, but Alma’s mind was trapped by the will of the demon that lingered in the fog.

“Shoul
d we be quick about it?” asked The Skeleton Man.

He stepped away from the wall, revealing his skull face, the bones held together by the fog itself as the green cloud slipped in and out of his features. A single eyeball sat within his left socket, lazily rolling in the bottom until the fog carried it up to focus on Alma. His jaw was
wrapped in what appeared to be a strip of human flesh, stitched with wire that tied it to his cheekbone. His teeth chattered, and when he spoke his jaw didn’t move to accommodate the words, as if this demon wasn’t actually the one that Alma was hearing.

Alma wanted to scream, but her every movement was caught in the web of time; only her thoughts were free of the prison.

“Does she have pretty eyes? Do you like them?” asked The Skeleton Man. He reached up to his own, lonely, wobbling eye and plucked it out. He let it drop into the mist, and it hung there as if suspended in thick liquid, only slowly descending to the pavement.

“Alma, should we steal her eyes?”
The Skeleton Man moved to stand behind Aubrey. “They’re such pretty eyes, don’t you think?”

The Skeleton Man
grasped one of the hounds at his side. He took the child by the snout and then lifted the creature up as the mist swirled around it. He held the lower half of the monster’s jaw and ripped it apart. The fog pushed into the creature’s mouth and seemed to help mutilate the hound, tearing it apart until The Skeleton Man was left holding just the upper jaw, the teeth now dripping with fresh blood. The Skeleton Man plucked out one of the canines and tossed it into the mist where it floated away like the eyeball had moments earlier. He examined the mangled snout, with only one long canine still protruding from it like a jagged barb.

Alma was forced to watch as
The Skeleton Man used the fleshy tool on Aubrey. He wrapped his arm around her neck and then stuck the only remaining canine of the upper jaw against her left tear duct. Then he pressed the tooth in, causing Aubrey’s eye to bulge from its socket. He scooped the eyeball out, and Aubrey’s slow expression of pain and horror was torture to witness. Her eye protruded from her head as The Skeleton Man wormed the tip of the jaw into the socket.

“There we go,” said the demon as Aubrey’s eye flopped down into the curvature of the
hound’s severed upper palate. It was still connected by the white optic nerve like a ball on a string. The Skeleton Man reached up and gripped the eyeball before jerking it out of Aubrey’s skull. When the white strand was pulled forth, a blob of pink matter came with it before snapping free.

“I love her eyes,” said
The Skeleton Man as he put the eyeball into his own socket. It twirled as the fog positioned it, floating in the empty socket as the optic nerve spun behind it. “Don’t you?” he asked as he looked at Alma. “Let’s get the other one.”

“Look what you’ve done!” The tortured spirit screamed as her face sprung from the side of the building. She was unfettered by the slow progres
sion of time, just like The Skeleton Man, and reached out in a desperate attempt to grasp the demon in the mist.

The fog receded, seemingly frightened
by the woman in the wall, and The Skeleton Man fell apart as it went. The eyeball that he’d stolen from Aubrey fell to the pavement along with the jawbone that he’d ripped away from the hound. The Skeleton Man crumpled as the woman in the wall grasped at his form. She tore at his cloak and pulled it to her, revealing nothing but fog and bones within.

Aubrey cried out in pain and covered her eye as her movements returned to normal.
The woman in the wall was attracted to Aubrey’s screams and grasped at her once The Skeleton Man had disappeared. She gripped Aubrey’s leg and dragged the girl down, causing her legs to sink into the cement walkway.

Aubrey struggled, but the woman continued to drag her down
, just as she had done to Darryl at his desk. The spirit disappeared beneath the ground, and only her arms sprouted forth, fingers digging into Aubrey as the young woman cried out. Alma moved forward, intent on helping, but the spirit pulled Aubrey down until the bartender was waist deep in the cement, as if she’d succumbed to quicksand in the middle of the town.

“Take my hand,” said Alma as she reached out for Aubrey.

“No!” The spirit lunged from the walkway, lashing out at Alma. “She’s mine now. I’ll use her to watch you.”

Alma fell back as the spirit pulled Aubrey further down. The young bartender was lowered to her waist, trapped within the cement, and succumbed as the woman pulled her even further. Aubrey tried to speak, but blood came from her mouth
instead of words, spilling out onto the walkway like vomit, and chunks of meat and flesh were mixed in the puddle. A strip of pink flesh hung from her lips, still attached to some part of her innards, and her mouth continued to open and close as if she was trying to tell Alma something.

The woman below pulled Aubrey even further down, sinking the girl to her chest as Alma backed away in terror.

“I’m so sorry,” said Alma as she watched Aubrey’s head bob. Gore flowed from the girl’s mouth, adding to the pool of blood and flesh on the sidewalk. Then the spirit’s hand rose to grasp Aubrey’s face, and her finger sunk into the bartender’s empty eye socket before tugging her below. The pool of blood rippled where Aubrey had been.

“Oh God,” said Alma as she tried to stand up. She knew she should run, but she was nearly too weak to move. The pool of blood seemed to slither across the pavement, running in thin streams towards her like a squid’s tendrils.

“Ma’am,” said a young boy’s voice.

Alma screamed out in terror and clasped her hand over her heart as she looked back toward Main Street where a group of children had gathered. There were at least twenty of them, wearing thin coats and backpacks over their shoulders. She’d never seen them before, yet they were still familiar.
They were all boys, some older and taller than others, but all of them were elementary age.

“What are you?” Alma screamed her question. She was still seated, and crawled backward, away from the mob of school children. Her hand slapped into the pool of Aubrey’s blood, which initiated another
cry of horror from her. “What do you want with me?”

“
We’re alone here now, but we don’t have much time,” said the boy at the front of the group. He was chubby, with blue eyes and a buzzcut. There were red speckles on his cheeks, and he held a knife in his right hand that was dripping blood.

“Don’t have time for what?” Alma was frantic as she cowered from the children.

An alarm roared over the town, and the children were startled by it. It sounded like a tornado warning, but with a lower tone and far more ominous. Each time the alarm sounded, it seemed to grow louder until it was shaking the ground, causing Aubrey’s blood to splash.

“You have to go where the witch was.” The boy tried to scream over the alarm.

“What?” asked Alma, unsure that she heard him correctly.

“Go where the witch was!
Where the girls are headed.”

“Who’s the witch?” asked Alma, but the boy couldn’t hear her anymore. The alarm was so loud now that it hurt their ears. The children winced and covered the sides of their heads. Alma did the same, but kept yelling out her question until the pain from the alarm was impossible to overcome. She closed her eyes and fell to the ground where Aubrey’s blood wet her cheek.

Then it was over, and Alma felt her stomach lurch, just like it did when she descended the hill on her way into Widowsfield.

*   *   *

Jacker was driving the van as they left Widowsfield.

Stephen was in the passenger seat and was toying with his camera. Rachel, Alma, and Aubrey were in the back, crunched together on the middle seat. The entire rear seat of the van was loaded with Stephen’s equipment, which required the girls to all sit together.

“I can’t wait to get home,” said Rachel. “I’m going to sleep for, like, twelve hours straight.”

Alma
had her hands in her coat pocket and was rubbing her thumb against a small piece of soft fabric on her keychain. The sensation soothed her.

“My eye won’t stop watering,” said Aubrey.
“And I’ve got the worst stomach ache.”

“Stop the van!” Alma’s sudden outburst scared everyone in the vehicle. She
leapt from her seat between Aubrey and Rachel and grabbed at Jacker’s shoulder as she pleaded again, “Stop the van!”

Jacker hit the brakes and the van skid to a stop on the road leaving Widowsfield. It was foggy out, and there was a heaviness to the air that hinted
of rain. Alma felt lost for breath as the others asked what was wrong.

A car honked from behind them, and then swerved to go around. The car’s tires squealed as it passed on the wet road and Alma caught a glimpse of the driver.

It was her father.

I never thought of myself as a very good liar, but I’m a fast learner.

I think I heard once that the average person lies several hundred times a
day. Those are mostly little lies though, like telling someone that you’re having a good day when you’ve never been more depressed. Those are hardly lies. They’re more an adherence to social order.

The really big lies are taxing. They start small, but to stay alive they have to be nurtured. Over time, those little lies grow bigger as they’re joined by more lies. They grow and grow together, massing into one twisted distortion of reality. It becomes monstrous, and requires a great amount of effort to be sustained. Before you know it, what started as a little lie can overwhelm you, and you’ll end up dragging other people into it as a way of keeping it all together.

Now start going backwards, and you’ll have an idea of what I’m dealing with. Start with a big lie, one that no one would believe, and then work your way backward, breaking the lie down into smaller chunks as you go. Head all the way back to the very beginning, to that very first lie, and you can control the whole thing. If you knew the outcome of every lie before you ever even told it, you could do anything you wanted.

As long as you don’t forget where the lying started.