Deep in the Darkness (32 page)

Suddenly there came a squeal of pure agony. The weight on my back lifted and when I tilted my head up I saw a thick wash of blood on the windshield. In this brief moment of respite, the pain of my attack rang out, suddenly and excruciatingly. I kicked my legs frantically and felt them connect with the Isolate. It screamed, but didn't fight back. There were a series of coughs. Finally I flipped over and scrambled as much as I could into Jessica's seat, arms outstretched, prepared to throw fists. Jessica was pressed flat against the back of the seat, sweating and trembling.

The Isolate was dead, or approaching its fate fast. The scalpel now protruded from its other eye, a matching tapioca trail painting its other cheek. Its body twitched as though charged with electricity.
 

"I did it, Daddy..." Jessica said. "I...I..." She was shaking uncontrollably, then broke out in hysterics.

"Michael," Christine said, "Is it...is it dead?"

I prodded it with my foot. The creature slipped off the steering wheel and fell against the door. The scalpel that Jessica had so bravely pulled from one eye and inserted into the other pressed against the window and sank deeper into its head so only the tip of the handle was exposed.

Then, something came to my attention. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, with not much success; my stomach wouldn't take it—it was too filled with fear.

"Who shut the car door?" I whispered.

No answer.

I reached over and triggered the locks. "The keys," I said. "Where are they?" I shifted my body against the dead Isolate. Jessica leaned down, grabbed Christine's purse.

"Is it dead, Michael? Is it?" Christine repeated.

Gingerly, I placed a hand against its wrist. Déjà vu. I'd done this before a dozen times in their den. "Yeah, it's dead," I confirmed.

In the alarming silence, I added, "Whatever you do, don't open the doors." I shifted the Isolate's body over my lap, between the two front seats. Christine screamed as the befouled head lolled in her direction.

"Quiet, Christine!" I whispered forcefully, looking out the windows for a sign of them.
Someone closed the door...
"Take the body and put it next to you in the back seat. And again...don't open the doors."

Christine said, "I can't look at it...it's dripping all over. Can't we throw it out the window?"

I pushed the body into the back seat. Christine slid to the opposite side, curling the blanket around her body as though it might protect her from the dead creature. "They're out there, watching us. They know what we did. And now they're waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"For the right time to kill us."

A
ll was quiet. Too quiet. A bat fluttered overhead, making a noise almost like a snicker. Probably because it knew just how many of those motherfuckers were out there right now, watching us from the woods.

Jessica handed me the keys she retrieved from Christine's purse. I slid them into the ignition and started the car. As if in answer, the woods ignited with golden eyes. About two dozen sets, maybe more. Slowly I took the minivan over the dirt driveway.
 

With the ease of trained gymnasts, the Isolates darted from the woods after the car. One was already nearby (presumably the same one that'd closed the door, shutting us inside with its brother) and leaped atop the hood of the car. It latched its claws onto the windshield wipers, pressed its horrible face against the glass, and howled at us.

I slammed on the gas pedal. A cloud of dust rose from the back tires, filling the yard. The minivan shot down the long thin driveway. Jessica screamed, "They're coming, Daddy! They're coming!" Her voice was jarred because of the bumpy path.

The minivan reached the end of the driveway and I just took my chances that no other cars would be traveling along the tree-shrouded road. I won this crapshoot. We spun out into the road, wheels skidding on the thin layer of snow. The Isolate on the hood lost its grip on the wipers and sailed off toward the side of the road like a loose piece of luggage. The force of the turn also sent the dead Isolate in the back seat on top of Christine. She screamed, flailed at it, pushed it away with disgust, then continued kicking it once it was back on the other side of the seat, as though that would keep it away for good.

Glancing into the rearview mirror, I could see about a dozen Isolates racing from the driveway out into the road, zigzagging like hungry rats in search of food. But the car had gained too much momentum for them, and once they seemed to realize that it was completely out of their reach, they all at once raced back into the snowy cloak of the woods.

At this point my intentions were to flee Ashborough. Or at least make some sort of an attempt to do so. All I had to do was drive as fast as I could right the fuck out of town, right? I came to the state road and pondered which way to go, right or left. I couldn't drive east because then I'd have to go right through the village, and there'd be townsfolk and cops there and other scheming obstacles with their sick statutes and Isolate-given edicts and maybe even bats and torches in their hands. And they might as well be wearing tee-shirts that say,
Welcome to Ashborough! You'll never get out alive!
So, I decided to travel west along the state road, which would take us right past our home, and then into Ellenville.

"We're getting out of here," I said.

"They won't let us," Christine said, "You and I both know that, Michael."

"Fuck 'em," I said, with not an ounce of rationale to back me up.

"If we'd been able to get out of here, then we would've done it a long time ago. So would've all the other people living here. Nothing's changed. They're still not gonna let us go. In fact, they're probably going to kill us now, after what we just did to the woman. You said so yourself."

In an effort to create hope, I changed my tune. "They won't kill us... we won't create an opportunity for them." I continued driving along the state road, pushing forty despite the curves. My knuckles were white against the steering wheel, and it was a good thing because I really wanted to reach back and slap Christine across the face—that'd shut her up and allow me to let off some steam at the same time. "I mean, how could they possibly get to us now? We're in the fucking car, so let's be serious here!"

Damn it to hell...I wasn't making any sense, and I knew it too. They'd managed to trash the car on Christine, while it was still moving, no less. So why couldn't they do it again? Well...they probably could. But the problem was that I had this odd concept called freedom in my head and I was ready, willing, and able to do anything to acquire it.

Jessica started sobbing. "I want to leave here, please, Daddy! Please, Daddy!"

"See that, Chris? Your daughter wants to leave, and that's just what we're gonna do. Leave."

"We should go home," she said despondently. "It's what they want us to do."

I swallowed a lump in my throat, then said, "You're out of your fucking mind if you expect me to go back to that house. I'm not going there, and I'm not gonna let you or Jessica go back there either."

"We killed the fucking woman!"
she screamed, silencing the car. The immediate tension inside felt like humidity on a hot summer day, heavy and oppressive. She added, "Isn't it bad enough that we're simply talking again? We should just go back to the house and lock ourselves in."

I looked into the rearview mirror. Christine's expression was set in a very peculiar way, expressionless yet riddled with fear. It was as if she'd seen Medusa and had turned to stone. And then her eyes narrowed, as if to confirm her revelation: that all along we'd feared speaking to one another because it would've resulted in severe injury or death. That the Isolates had
owned
us all along.

Now...with all that's happened today? I had no choice but to agree with her, which reconfirmed my initial thoughts: that we'd killed their spiritual leader, and now they were going to kill us.

For months they'd been threatening us with death. Those threats were now going to be carried out. The way I looked at it, it didn't make much of a difference what we decided to do. It made much more sense to, at the very least, attempt an escape. Right?

Ignoring Christine's wishes, I floored the accelerator. The minivan took off down the road. It wasn't a bull when it came to pick-up, but it kept us moving, pushing fifty and climbing faster.

Christine screamed for me to stop. But all I could wonder was how could they possibly halt us now. Would they really start hurling themselves under the wheels?

Our house was a quarter mile ahead. We passed Phillip Deighton's house on the right, and I quickly wondered how long it'd be before
 
the local real-estate agent ushered in the next young unsuspecting couple with a deal too good to be true.

"
Look out, Daddy!
" Jessica screamed.

I'd looked away for the briefest moment to peek at Phillip Deighton's house. When I set my sights back to the road, stunned terror hit me like a knockout punch. I slammed down on the brakes. The minivan skidded and three-sixtied, much too late to avoid the ash tree lying end-to-end in the road about twenty feet ahead. We slammed right into it, jolted, went up on two tires and nearly flipped over. Two loud explosions sounded, that of tires blowing. The tree splintered into a million pieces and rained down all over us. The minivan lurched back down, then tilted forward as the front tires fell away from the axle. The stench of gas immediately invaded my nostrils.

A moment of stunned silence passed between us. I could hear everyone breathing heavily. Jessica then started crying, and so did Christine. I wanted to cry also, but held the looming hysterics back. Someone needed to be strong, and it wasn't going to be my naked pregnant wife or my five year-old daughter. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw blood on Christine's face, uncertain if it was hers or the dead Isolate's.

"Is everyone okay?" I'd slammed the top of my head nice and hard against the roof of the car. The pain of doing so had shown up fashionably late, and was just now making itself known. Thankfully, despite the fact that none of us had seatbelts on, we all seemed to come out of this okay.

"I smell gas, Michael."

I exited the minivan. There were pieces of the tree everywhere, many chunks lodged into the grill. One thick shard jutted from the bumper like a stake. The front axle of the car had shattered, causing the two front tires to lay flat on the road. Gas bled out onto the blacktop. Our car had no life left in it...just like the witch.

Jessica had gotten out and was standing on the side of the road.

Near the woods.

"Jessica! Get away from the woods!" I had sudden visions of an Isolate leaping out from its camouflage, grabbing her and pulling her away.

"The car might explode," she said, racing out into the center of the road, far ahead of the car.

Right she was, too. I quickly opened the back seat and eased Christine out. She had the blanket wrapped around her like a shawl, belly and breasts protruding, blood and mud now spotting the dried layer of green slime on her skin. She started laughing, a high chortling sound that was probably the onset of hysteria.

I pulled her away from the car and we all walked as quickly as possible down the center of the road. When Christine's giggling died down, I said despondently, "I guess we have no choice now but to go back home now."

"It's what they want us to do," she exclaimed, suddenly and rather spookily composed.

"You mentioned that earlier..."

Revealing nothing new, Christine answered, "If they'd wanted us dead, then they would have done it already." Shivering, she wiped her nose with the end of the blanket, then promptly three-sixtied on her tune. "I just don't understand it though...I mean, why don't they just kill us?" She started looking around in a paranoid fashion, over her shoulders and into the woods. Clearly the likelihood of hysteria still loomed. Jessica huddled close to me, something she hadn't done in months.

Then, I answered, "They're not killing us because...because they need me. That's why."

There was a moment's hesitation, then Christine said, "Michael..."

"Yes?"

"We need to talk."

"I..." Instantly, my past fears came back to me. I couldn't speak...I was afraid to talk to her—it was as though the sudden reminder had retriggered the negative-memory engrained in my subconscious. Now
I
was looking over my shoulder, thinking that they were watching us now, listening to us...

"I don't care about their threats anymore," Christine revealed, not so much out of bravery as much as denial. Again, she repeated, "If they'd wanted us dead, then they would have done it already. Right?" It appeared as if she was trying to convince herself of this deduction.

"Unless they're waiting for the right moment."

"If that's the case, then we better get home and formulate some sort of plan. Pool our experiences. Maybe we can learn something about them. Maybe they have a weakness, something we can exploit. Something that can help us escape. It doesn't appear as if we have any other choice."

Holy shit...

I stopped walking, started thinking. Christine's words, suddenly logical, stirred an amazing revelation in me.
A weakness. Something that can help us escape.
Christine and Jessica stopped walking, turned to look at me. I stood silently in the center of the road for about thirty seconds, rubbing my face, thinking...thinking...thinking that there might actually be a way to get out of this after all. Jesus, all I needed was...