Darkbound (26 page)

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The argument.
Such a silly thing.  He
couldn't understand how it had gotten to this point.

But here it
was.  Here
they
were.

Carolyn was staring
at him, holding Maddie tightly to her, as though she were afraid he was going
to
hurt
her, for God's sake.

"Come on,
Carolyn," Jim said.  He took a step toward her.

"Don't you
come any closer," she shouted.  Her voice was terrified, which made
him feel just awful.  Couldn't she see how much she and Maddie
meant
to him?

He stopped
moving.  He didn't need to run after them, anyway.  They were in
their bathroom, huddled in the tub.  Nowhere for them to go, really. 
"Carolyn, please.  Let's just talk this out."

"I don't even
know
who you are
."

That stung. 
"How can you not know me?" he said, dumbfounded.  "I've
known you two for months.  Forever, it feels like."  He hazarded
another small step forward.  "I love you.  You're my
girls."

"
What?
"

"I know
everything about you.  I know that you love banana bread but hate bananas,
Carolyn.  I know that your favorite place in the world is Disneyland,
Maddie.  That you both want to live in a treehouse like the Swiss Family
Robinson someday.  So how can you say you don't know me?"

Carolyn's face
changed.  His heart leapt, sure at first that she was coming around, that
she was remembering – was
realizing
who he was and that they were his
girls.  But then he saw confusion in her eyes.  "How do you know
those things?" she said.  "Where did you...?"  Then
the confusion disappeared.  "Oh my God.  Tom's journal."

Jim shook his
head.  The conversation wasn't going how he had planned. 
"Carolyn, let's not –"

"We thought he
lost it at the park, but you
stole it
.  You stole it and,
what?  You fixated on us?  On me and Maddie?"

The little girl
whimpered in her mother's arms.  Jim's heart fell.  He didn't want
her to feel bad.  That would just kill him.

"No, Carolyn,
I just… I knew you were…."  The words weren't coming. 
"You're my girls," he finally said.

"And for that
you
killed my husband?
" screamed Carolyn.

Jim didn't look
behind him.  Didn't look at the body on the bed.  He knew from past
experience that that wouldn't help anything.  The key was to move
forward.  To get past what was past and focus on the future that could be,
the future he
deserved
.

He stepped toward
them.  One more step and he could grab her.  Could grab Carolyn,
could grab Maddie.  He'd been wanting to hold them since he saw them in
the park almost a year ago.  If he could just hold them, he could make
them understand.  He knew he could.

If he could just
hold them.

One more step.

He reached out.

"You
sonofabitch," said Carolyn.

That stopped him up
short.  "Honey, let's watch our language in front of Maddie."

Her mouth
curled.  Jim took another step.

Carolyn pulled
something out from behind Maddie.  "Sonofabitch," she said
again.  There was a loud sound, three claps of thunder.  Maddie
screamed.  Something punched Jim against the back wall of the
bathroom.  He slid to the floor.

Carolyn
stood.  Holding Maddie in one hand.  A dark weapon in her other one. 
Jim couldn't make out what it was: everything was getting dark.

"Why'd you do
that?" he said.  "I can't feel my legs."  He giggled.

"Go to
hell," said Carolyn.  She aimed the weapon at his face.

Thunder rolled once
more.

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Jim felt
the pain of the bony fingers
on his skin, and now he recognized them as what they were: the pain of bullets
raining down on him.

The skull grinned
at him.  "I saved you for the end because you were the worst,"
it said.  "Pedophiles, drug dealers, skin traders, rapists,
killers.  They steal your life, your body.  But sociopaths, people
like you… they hide beside you, they pretend to be your friends.  Then
they steal your soul."

The side doors of
the subway train opened.

"You pride yourself
on being a good man," said the skull.  The driver.  "You
even believe it.  But being a good man is easy if your test for goodness
is doing whatever you want,
taking
what you want.  Regardless of
who else it hurts."

Through the doors
on one side, a woman entered.  Tall, beautiful.  Kind.  She was
dressed in a nightgown.  She had no eyes.

"Mother?"
said Jim.

Through the other
doors, a girl and her daughter.  One dark, one light.  Jim felt a
thrill of hope as they came into the car.

They're here to save
me, he thought.

But as they stepped
forward, they seemed to shift for a moment.  For an instant they weren't
his girls.  No, they were two creatures whose humanity had long since
disappeared, if ever it had existed in the first place.  Their faces were
scaly and cold, the expressionless visages of snakes.  They each had three
mouths, and those mouths were lined with sawlike teeth that gnashed together in
eternal hunger.

Their legs were
short, and ended in hooves.

Then the moment
ended, and Jim saw his girls again.  But he knew it as a lie.  It
wasn't Maddie, it wasn't Carolyn.  It wasn't his mother coming toward
him.  Just as it hadn't been Olik's children being savaged in the car,
hadn't been the girls and boys whom Olik sold that came to wreak vengeance upon
him.  It wasn't Adolfa's family in the car with her, waiting forever for
her to die; and it wasn't really the children that Freddy had molested who were
now cavorting forever on his sentient, pain-ridden remains.

The only things
here were beings that had been born here, and would exist forever in a place
meant only to bring pain and shame.

As if to give lie
to Jim's thoughts, Maddie spoke.  "Hello, Daddy," she
said.  She licked her lips, and her tongue was black and subtly forked.

"Hello, my
love," said his mother.  She was holding something.  It was a
knife.  A kitchen knife from the block near the stove.  The stove she
kept so clean, so spotless.

The driver stepped
back to give room to the newcomers.  They crowded around Jim.

His mother reached
out for him with fingers that had grown nails ragged and deadly and
sharp.  They raked over Jim's face, clawed out his eyes.  But he
could still see.  Could see clearly for the first time.

And what he saw
terrified him.

He began to scream.

And screamed still
louder as the knife began to dance across his skin, as his blood painted the
inside of the subway car.

After a long time
the driver moved to the front of the car.

Jim could see it
move.  Could see the skull-thing.  It threw one last smile over its
shoulder as little Maddie pulled each of Jim's fingers off with delicate joy.

Jim shrieked.

The door at the
front of the car opened.

The driver left.

The door closed.

And Jim knew the
subway would continue, as his screams and suffering would continue.  As justice
would continue.

Forever.

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Kayla tried
to calm down.  One last
look over her shoulder to make sure.

No cops. 
Looked like she'd gotten away.

She didn't know
about Frank or Killian, though.  The alarm went off at the bank, the cops
showed up and started shooting, things went a bit haywire.

Screw 'em
.

A moment later she
felt a familiar push-pull as the subway drove into the station.  The train
creaked forward.  Stopped.

She walked to the
nearest car, the second from the back.  Waited for the doors to open.

They didn't.

Weird.

Kayla looked in the
car.  She could see people in there.  A white-bread looking dude, a
gangster with some kill-tats on his face.  A huge white guy, a little old
latina
lady, a beautiful woman who looked like she was on her way home from her
brokerage job, and some pervy type in a stained brown trench coat.

Kayla waved and
motioned that the doors weren't opening.  None of the half dozen
passengers took notice of her.  They didn't seem to be ignoring her, but
almost seemed like they weren't even
seeing
her.  Like they were
existing in some other dimension.  It was weird, and it gave her the
heebie-jeebies.

Someone bustled
past her.  It was a squirrely guy with a bad combover.  "I think
the back door is the only one that works," he said in a voice that matched
his body: all high and desperate.

"Thanks,"
she said.

For a moment she
considered skipping this train.  If the doors didn't open, what else might
not be working?  She looked at the people in the car in front of
her.  Shivered.

Then she remembered
the cops.  They were still on her.  They had to be.  She had to
get moving.  The subway was the best way to get going.

She'd just take it
to the next stop.

She got on.

A moment later, the
doors closed.

And the subway
continued on.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michaelbrent
Collings is a full-time screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling
horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including
The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound,
Apparition,
The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale,
and
the bestselling YA series
The Billy Saga
.

Follow him through Twitter
@mbcollings
or on Facebook at
facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings
.