I Don't Want To Kill You (37 page)

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Authors: Dan Wells

BOOK: I Don't Want To Kill You
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‘What are you doing?’
 
I set the gas can on the trunk, climbed up after it and reached across to the hole in the roof. The funnel just barely fit.
 
‘John!’ it shouted. ‘John, let me out! What are you doing up there?’ The car shifted as she moved again, and when I reached back to lift the heavy gas can onto the roof I saw her scrambling over the seats to reach the back doors. She put a hand on the gas-soaked magazines and drew back in disgust. ‘Is this gas?’ She smelled her hand and her eyes went wide with terror. She stepped over the seats, her feet splashing down in the puddles of gas in the foot wells, and pounded on the rear window. ‘John! What are you doing? Let me out!’
 
I hefted the gas can up onto the roof, unscrewed the cap, and tipped it lightly into the funnel. Gas streamed down, sending up a new wave of fumes, and Nobody screamed again. There was already plenty of gas in the car, but the fumes were the important part – that’s what would ignite, mingling with the air to fill the entire car with flame. Nobody tried one door, then the other, banging on the windows.
 
‘John, let me out! You’re going to kill me! You’re insane!’
 
I kept pouring, trying to keep the stream steady as the car jostled beneath me.
 
‘John, this was all a joke!’ she cried. ‘I’m not a demon, I’m not Nobody, I’m just Brooke. It was a joke! You can’t kill me!’
 
I closed my eyes and tipped the can upside down, pouring out the last few drops. Nobody hit the funnel from underneath, knocking it up and over, and the last slosh of gas poured out onto the roof. She was plugging the hole with her finger.
 
‘Please, John, don’t do this. Don’t do this.’ She was sobbing. ‘You can’t kill me. I am Nobody, I admit it, I am, but this is Brooke’s body. She’s still in here – you’re killing her too! I know you want to kill demons – I want to kill them too, but you’re killing Brooke! You’re killing your friend! You love her! She loves you! Dammit, let me out!’
 
I threw the can aside, stood up and carefully wiped my hands as clean of gas as I could get them. I reached into my pocket for a book of matches, pulled it out, and tore the first match free.
 
Nobody was by the back window now, banging on the glass and snarling like an animal. Brooke’s features were twisted into a mask of fury: lips curled up, teeth bared. Her hair and face were drenched in gasoline. ‘I will kill you, John, I will eat your heart, you bastard!’ She was screaming now, her voice an unrecognisable roar. ‘You think this car can hold me in? You think this fire can hurt me?’ She slammed her fist into the window. ‘You can’t kill me!’
 
I folded the matchbook around the match, pressing it tightly against the striking surface, and ripped it free. The match flared to life, a tiny flame hungry for fuel. I leaned forward, keeping clear of the gas, and reached out to drop the match into the hole in the roof. The car shook violently as Nobody slammed against the side door, and the flame caught on the puddle of spilled gas. The roof burst into flame and I stumbled back, falling onto the trunk. The fall knocked the wind out of my lungs, and the matchbook flew out of my hand.
 
I struggled for air as the burning gas began to run down the back window towards me. Nobody slammed into the door again, and I heard the side window crack. I rolled off the car, kneeling by the back wheel, and finally managed to draw a breath. The car shook again, the window shattered loudly, and a rain of broken glass exploded out from the car. Brooke’s body crawled out through the window, soaked with sweat and gas; she scraped against the broken window, leaving long bloody gashes in her arms and legs. The body fell out in a heap, gasping for air and moaning with pain, and I backed away.
She’s covered in gas. If I can find the matches, I can still kill her.
 
‘You,’ she croaked, ‘bastard.’
 
I turned wildly, looking for the matchbook; it was behind me, about ten feet away, and I lunged for it. Something caught my leg and I fell, landing on my wrist and bending it backwards. I screamed in pain.
 
‘John Cleaver,’ the demon hissed, Brooke’s hand tight on my ankle. I rolled to the side and saw her crawling towards me, reaching out with her other hand and grasping my leg. Her eyes glared hellishly from behind long tangles of wet, bloody hair. ‘I should have known you’d try to kill me. You never loved Brooke; she’s weak, and stupid. You could never love a stupid blonde nothing like
her
.’
 
Her fingers – Brooke’s fingers – dug into my leg like claws, and she pulled herself up further, letting go of my ankle and grabbing my chest. I tried to kick her off but she sat on my legs and slammed her fist into my gut, nearly doubling me over in pain. ‘I should have known I could never be happy as Brooke, but you – you’re something different altogether. Something powerful and driven. You’re passionate.’ She smiled wolfishly, baring her teeth. ‘I love you.’
 
A drop of burning gas from the roof of the car finally dripped down through the hole, and the interior of the car roared into blazing life. Nobody sat firmly on my hips, pinning me to the ground, and picked up a fragment of glass. It was a small cube of safety glass, but it had a sharp edge.
 
‘No,’ I said, struggling to push her off. She brought up the glass, gripping it so tightly that her fingers ran red with smears of blood, and pressed it against her forearm. ‘You’ll kill her,’ I croaked, but she smiled.
 
‘I’m only finishing what you started. Soon we’ll be together, more closely and more perfectly than you could ever be with Brooke. We’ll be one. We’ll be perfect.’
 
I grabbed her arms, trying to force them apart, but she brought them together with a terrifying, inhuman strength and plunged the glass shard into her arm. She dug it deep into the skin, raking it through muscle and artery and spraying hot red blood across my face. Blood pumped out in great spurts, covering me, and Brooke’s body shook with pain. As the blood poured out she grew weaker, and I knocked the shard out of her hand. I gripped her ragged forearm with both fists, pressing it tightly, trying to stop the hot, sticky flow of blood—
 
—and then something moved, thick and wet, against the palm of my hand.
 
I jerked back in an involuntary spasm of revulsion, as a dark black tendril reached out from inside of Brooke’s arm. It was tentative, like a snake’s tongue tasting the air. It grew longer, reaching towards me, and suddenly there were two, then three, then a vast web of black tentacles springing out of Brooke’s body. I covered my face with one arm and flailed against them with the other, trying madly to knock them aside, gritting my teeth against the pain in my damaged wrist. I felt a wave of nausea as the wet tendrils touched my skin, and then they were everywhere – grasping, reaching, sticking. I tried to push them back, tried to free myself and run away, but Brooke’s legs kept me pinned to the dirt while a sea of black tendrils grabbed my arms and forced them aside. Nobody loomed over me, a hideous mix of pain and triumph on Brooke’s half-dead face.
 
‘I love you, John. I’ve loved you since the day you called me, swearing to destroy us. It’s what I always wanted, but never dared to do – but not you. You can actually do it. You have the strength I never had. Sometimes I wish I could be . . .
you
.’
 
Black slime oozed out of Brooke’s jagged wound in great waves, undulating with some kind of hideous life. It seemed to hang in the air, a noxious blob frozen in time, then leaped suddenly at my face like a bolt of black lightning.
 
Chapter 27
 
I clamped my mouth shut, squeezed my eyes tightly closed, but it was everywhere – in my nose, in my ears, peeling back my lips and pressing in against my teeth. I pulled on my arms and legs, grunting with the effort to free them, trying to push back against the sludge with nothing but my tongue. My mouth was filled with the taste of ash and blood, the feel of grit and slime. It moved repugnantly inside me, pushing past my tongue, crawling up my nose, forcing itself into every crack and crevice. My head throbbed for want of air, my lungs burned; my ears buzzed with the sound of my own wild heartbeat and the sticky creep of sludge. I was blind and deaf, drowning in viscous evil, lost and alone.
 
I will not be taken,
I thought.
I will not let this happen!
But there was no way to stop it – its grip was too tight, its tendrils too many, its darkness my entire world. I felt my chest bursting and caving in at once, desperate for air, and then abruptly the weight of Brooke’s body fell backwards, its grip loosened, and I wrenched my hands free. My head was surrounded with black tar, warm and slimy, and I scrabbled at it like an animal.
 
I pulled the thing away from my head and opened my eyes to blinding heat. The entire car was ablaze, the broken window spouting flame like a raging furnace. The sludge was on me, grasping at my hands, crawling back towards my head; Brooke lay on the ground in the spray of broken glass, bleeding and moving feebly. Her body was connected to mine by a black, pulsing web, snared together like flies. Hands were scraping at the sludge on my body, pulling and pushing it away. My hands and other hands, worn and familiar.
 
My mom loomed over me, teeth bared in a grimace of effort, real and alive, wrestling with the demon like charred, black taffy.
 
I tore at the sludge in my mouth, spitting it out, clawing it out of my nose and gums. ‘Mom,’ I croaked. My voice was thin and distant; hers was inaudible. I pulled at the sludge in my ears, struggling to free them, and suddenly the world burst with a rush of sound – the aural surface shock after a deepwater dive.
 
‘Get off of him,’ Mom raged, but it was no use. The demon had recovered from whatever initial attack had knocked it away, and it had adapted to face a new opponent. With a sweep of its tendrils it knocked Mom’s feet out from under her, thick whips of black pinning her arms so she couldn’t catch herself. She landed heavily, grunting with the impact, and the black sludge swarmed back to me like a mass of hungry worms.
 
‘You can never stop us,’ hissed Brooke’s voice. Her eyes were closed, and she lay in a limp knot like a discarded puppet. The black sludge forced my arms to the sides and oozed slowly up my body to my head. Brooke’s mouth moved unnaturally, as if independently of her body.
 
‘John and I are one; I am John now, and we will never be apart.’
 
‘Shut up,’ I snarled, but it was a threatless cry; I was immobile and helpless.
 
‘Get away from him, whatever you are.’ The sludge was flowing away from Mom to focus on me, and she struggled free of its grip.
 
‘I love him,’ whispered Brooke’s voice, ‘and he loves me.’ The sludge was up to my neck, hot and vile on my skin.
 
‘Never,’ said Mom, diving back towards the sludge. ‘Brooke maybe, but never you.’
 
‘He does,’ said the voice, and the ashy black tendrils reached up to my face, prying at my mouth. I pressed my lips tightly together, flexing every muscle in my face, but still it started to open them, to crawl back inside.
 
Mom looked at me in desperation, her eyes wet with tears, her hands clawing at the flowing black sludge. She screamed helplessly and staggered back.
 
‘John hates himself,’ she said loudly, looking back and forth between Brooke and me as if unsure where to direct her voice. ‘Become a part of him and he’ll hate you too. He always will.’
 
The sludge slowed, tendrils pausing in mid-air.
What are you doing?
I thought.
 
Mom swallowed and went on, ‘He didn’t love Brooke either, or Marci, or anyone else, and they didn’t love him.’ She looked at me, eyes pleading.
She’s sorry,
I thought.
I know that face; I know her better than anyone in the world. Why is she saying these things if she’s sorry about them?
There was another look there, too, hidden behind the other.
What is she doing?
 
‘There’s only one person he’s ever loved,’ she said, ‘and only one person who’s ever loved him back.’
 
The look in her eyes became clear, and suddenly I knew she was saying goodbye.
Don’t do it!
I screamed, but my mouth was full of ash and I couldn’t make a sound.
 
Mom stared into my eyes, intense and terrified. ‘
Me
.’
 
The sludge stopped moving completely.
 
‘Who’s been with him through everything?’ Mom asked. ‘Who’s the only person who’s never left him, and the only person he’s never left? He even abandons himself sometimes, throwing his life away in one idiotic plan after another, but never his mother. Never me. I’ve been there since the beginning, helping him through every crisis, hiding the first demon’s slime from the police, showing him how to control himself and his dark side. I’m the only person he’s ever loved and the only person he’ll ever love, and if you want him to love you, then . . .’ She paused, eyes wide, and swallowed again. ‘Then you have to take me.’

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