3vil Page 2

  So I turn on the light.

  The small area is also empty. There are a few dirty pieces of clothes on the floor, some towels carelessly hung about. Assuming this visitor is not hiding in the toilet, there is nobody here.

  Except for perhaps behind the shower curtain, I realize.

  I advance on the blue vinyl sheet. My bare feet squish loudly against the damp tile floor.

  Dread makes my fingertips tremble. I tell myself there is nothing to fear.

  I am the father and cannot be afraid.

  When I pray for strength, the curtain quivers slightly.

  I rip the sheet back with one hand. The other is balled into a fist.

  Nothing. I can feel a cold breeze licking me from the shower’s open window, so I shut it close.

  When I leave the room, I am slammed by the familiar stench. “God! Do you smell that?” I gasp to my wife.

  “No,” she replies, still busy bobbing the child in her arms. “What smell?”

  There is already too much overloading her senses. I must stay calm for all of us. “Nevermind.”

  I continue down the hall to the other room. I don’t recall this door being open before.

  This is my office. At least, that’s what we’ve called the room, though I don’t know if I have ever done any work in there. It is simply a spare in our house, filled with leftover clutter and homeless belongings that never fit anywhere else. A cluttered desk qualifies the entire space as an office. During an epic fight with my wife, I once spent a pair of nights on the futon in here.

  I go to turn on the lights, but nothing happens. I flick the switch back and forth, but the room remains shrouded in darkness.

  With the curtains drawn, the only light here comes from behind me in the hallway. The brightness only extends a few feet onto the rug before dissolving into blackness.

  A voice speaks from the shadows. “Boy,” it hisses in a low drawl.

  I leap back into the corridor.

  “What is it?” my wife asks.

  “Nothing,” I quickly lie.

  My eyes are blinded again by the hallway lights, obscuring everything in the office’s blackness.

  But I can hear something breathing, a soft wheeze that slowly rattles through heavy lungs.

  Quickly searching through a hallway cabinet, I decide the mop will make a better weapon than the broom.

  I find a flashlight too, thankful its batteries still have power.

  But when I point the light into the dark room, the beam fizzles out. I hit the casing with my palm, but it will not turn back on.

  When I turn the light over for inspection, it flickers to life again.

  Yet when the flashlight turns to the room, the bulb stubbornly refuses to work.

  “Is something going on?” She begins to approach from the child’s room.

  “No!” I hold up my hand to stop her. “No, just…” I want to tell her, but I cannot. “Just stay back.”

  I toss the useless flashlight aside and proceed forward. The rhythmic breathing continues while I re-enter the office. With the mop slung over my shoulder, it is poised to destroy.

  Slowly the darkness fades as my eyes adjust. Silhouettes and shapes begin to emerge.

  I can see the desk covered in papers.

  There are some piles of cardboard boxes to my left.

  A tall lamp with a coat draped over it startles me for the briefest second.

  Then I feel something crunch underfoot. On my bare sole, the object pops with a burst of crunchy goo.

  With my feet still in the dim illumination from the hallway, I lift my foot up to find I have crushed a bug to death.

  Then I notice dozens of roaches silently scurrying about in the surrounding shadows, as if afraid of the light.

  “Boy,” calls the unearthly voice again. It echoes as if it were spoken from the depths of a long cave.

  I look up and see it. The creature is suddenly right before me.

  “Dear God,” I mutter in horrified awe.

  While the room is dark, this apparition is darker. Its body is the purest black.

  Its form is massive, a shadowy and nebulous expanse that churns like a rolling storm cloud. Its figure stretches so far upwards that the ceiling forces its head to stoop forward.

  The monster’s gruesome face is perhaps most like a bird, since its snout sharpens to a point with no discernible nostrils. Even with its mouth hungrily agape, its tongue and jagged teeth are still so dark as to be barely visible against the rest of its mass.

  Only the thing’s eyes are alight, staring wide in a pair of bright, pupil-less discs. While everything else about the beast is obscured in shadow, the white eyes are easily visible.

  “Boy,” the beast hisses again.

  Arms stretch outwards from the thing, attached to thin wings that flow like a cape. At the end of its frail limbs are long, sinister claws which grasp onto the desk chair and bookshelf to hoist it forward. With its ethereal appendages drifting in its mist, perhaps it has more than just a pair of arms.

  I retreat backwards into the hallway, my mop still ready for destruction.

  The creature begins to follow me.

  “What are you doing?” cries my wife.

  “Go!” I say, though I instantly realize both the demon and I block the only egress from the child’s room.

  When planning the layout of our home, we always imagined it best to have the baby’s room be farthest away from the front door, where any unwanted visitors would have to first clear our room. But now that plan has trapped us with nowhere to go.

  “What is it?” she screeches.

  As the fiend and I exit towards the light, I get a better glimpse at some of the monster’s features. Though its elastic skin floats like a disembodied ghost, it is actually formed in a bumpy and reflective shell, which is a dark crimson color. The way its shape slides and contracts, its hide is not unlike the husks of a million beetles crawling over one another.

  Its gaping mouth drips a black goo from between its fangs.

  But then the light behind me vanishes with a sharp crackle. The bulb has exploded, and electrical embers rain down on my back in drops of pain.

  The monster has all but vanished in the sudden reversion to dark night. Yet still its horrific white eyes crawl closer towards me, now edging out of the office.

  “Boy,” it hisses once again.

  “Oh, God, what is that?” squeals my terrified wife.

  When I turn to address her, the mad look of horror on her face silences me. She clutches the child tightly to her bosom and dashes into the back corner of the bedroom.

  I now stand as the final barrier to the monster, straddling the entranceway while the fiend advances past the bathroom.

  My grip tightens on the rod of the mop. I swing with all my might.

  The mop head vanishes into the creature as if it were not even there. But when I retract the weapon, the top has vanished. Only a charred stump remains from where the part had entered the phantasm.

  I fling the remaining stick into the head of the demon. It vanishes without a sound and does not make clatter on the other side.

  The thing continues unimpeded towards my family.

  I can hear my wife frantically mumbling as I stumble backwards into the child’s room.

  As the monster reaches a deformed claw towards the doorframe, the light shorts out as well, casting us again into complete darkness.

  The baby starts wailing wildly.

  The creature’s pale eyes bob into view at the door. “Boy,” it slowly calls. When the thing speaks, its jaws make a sharp clicking noise.

  Now it enters the room. Its arms drift outwards to canvas the entire corner, completely blocking the doorway. With my wife and child huddled behind me in the opposite corner, I am the only protection from the beast. Only a few feet of candy-colored carpet separates us.

  Then my hand knocks against something on a shelf. It is Grandma’s figurine, the tiny caricature of this ghoul.

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sp; I pick it up and hold it aloft. “Is this yours?”

  The monster’s gaze drifts to the totem, and it hisses at the object.

  “Then go fetch!” I turn and hurl the figurine out the window and into the night.

  The monster howls wildly as the light flashes erratically like a broken strobe.

  The beast’s supple body becomes rigid. Its vaporous exterior transforms into hardened scales. Its smoke-red hue glows vibrantly.

  The thing’s arms explode outwards, as if the thing were suddenly electrified. Its immense size grows to a newfound scope as the demon’s form spreads to cover the walls and ceiling.

  Its head cranes forward to just a few inches from ours. The white eyes blink haphazardly while sharp spikes or horns blossom from the back of its skull like the feathers of a proud peacock.

  “Boy, boy, boy,” it chatters excitedly while its rank breath stifles mine. “Boy, boy, boy!”

  It quickly thrusts an arm through me, chilling my bones and insides. Passing through my wife as well, the creature retrieves our crying son in its grip.

  The child floats away from her possession.

  “No!” shrieks my wife.

  When she steps forward to challenge it, she is blasted aside by a sweeping wing. Her limp body bounces off the wall, and I see her skin sizzling from the assault.

  “No!” I scream too, reaching to snatch the boy back.

  The thing clobbers me too, sending me crashing out the apartment window.

  The world is quiet while I sail downwards to earth.

  Then my shoulder collides with the ground in a brutal collision. I hear something snap as my body grinds to a halt.

  My skin feels strange too, stinging as if covered with a hostile antiseptic.

  I cannot move at first, though I fortunately am facing back up at the child’s bedroom.

  The lights continue to flicker on and off. I cannot see my wife, but I hear her delirious shrieking.

  Then her screaming abruptly stops, and the lights stay on. All I can hear now are the poor sobs of my boy.

  When I brace myself to stand, my palm is painfully poked by something sharp on the ground.

  It is the cursed statue from my wife’s hellish ancestor.

  I realize that I was wrong. The artifact is not responsible for the monster. Rather, it was responsible for protecting my child from the monster.

  The dire thought makes me cry more than the hellish pain shooting through my broken body.

  I hurry from the yard into my apartment complex. Parts of me creak and snap with each awkward step.

  I hold the figure so tightly that I might crush it.

  My broken arm burns as I stumble up the stairs to the second floor of our building. My feet feel like they disintegrate with every footfall.

  My front door is locked, so I instinctively leap through the window to the side.

  At this point, I cannot feel the jagged shards of glass decorating my savaged body as I rush towards my son’s room.

  His wailing grows louder as I approach.

  When I round the corner of the hall, I see the fiend holding my unconscious wife aloft with one claw. It holds my baby close to its breast with the other as if nurturing him.

  “No!” I scream, thrusting the figurine outwards to project its power at the devilish thing.

  The beast squeals painfully.

  The door slams closed.

  I fight with the knob, pound on the wood, slam myself against the stuck portal with all my might. But the door refuses to budge.

  All the while, my boy continues his crying.

  “I’m coming, damn it!”

  Then the child silences.

  The light inside the room goes out. The perimeter of the doorway goes dark.

  The sudden change halts my rampage. I stare at the shut door in confused disbelief.

  The door opens slightly ajar with a mild creak.

  I wait for just a moment, then swing it wide open.

  The room has been ravaged by the melee. There are toys and books spread everywhere. Various holes dot the walls. The ceiling fan dangles by a thread.

  Beside the crib on the ground lies my motionless wife in the moonlight.

  At her head is the child. The boy’s back is to me as he snarls and grunts. The baby almost appears attached to my wife, since her neck and shoulders tremble from the baby’s own turgid motions. His pajamas are shredded and bloody.

  “Son?” I ask as I approach.

  The baby does not respond, but continues his rustling.

  The sick sounds of squishing and crunching lead me to believe the boy may be feasting.

  “Stop that,” I command and reach for the kid.

  When I spin him around, his face is like the creature’s: bright pupil-less eyes with a protruding beak of a mouth smeared in black blood.

  I quickly shove the figurine towards the boy, and he hollers sharply.

  There is a flash of blinding light.

  I may have blinked from the explosion. Perhaps I blacked out.

  But now all the lights are back on.

  While the room remains in shambles, both my son and wife are gone.

  I look behind the shredded curtains, in the closet, beneath the crib, but there are no signs of either.

  When I look at the mysterious figurine still tightly clenched in my palm, it now resembles a stout little infant grinning merrily.

  Black Science

  “I am going to bring back the dead,” the old man proclaimed. The way the Professor’s good eye flared open defiantly when he spoke told us he wasn’t joking.

  But still some of us smirked, whilst the rest of us only smirked on the inside.

  The Captain wasn’t having none of our mirth. His old nose could smell our mischief. “You’re damn right we will,” he barked at us. “Ain’t that right, you yahoos?”

  We mumbled things like “yeah” and “sure.”

  The Captain’s boy Jones said rightly, “Yes, sir,” and clapped his heels together like he was still Royal Navy.

  Some of us wondered if the Captain was really a true believer of this madness too, or if maybe the whole dog-and-pony was to help the sale. If he were sober, he’d likely laugh his ass off at the notion of resurrection. But when he was on the bottle, oh, we knew the Captain could be anything he wanted to be.

  But for the money being paid our way, wasn’t a one of us to complain about nothing either. He was the Cap, and the job was a job.

  The fact that the work also got us off dry land and away from the nosey eyes of the law was another benefit. Nary a one of us enjoyed being the rat out in that trap, and there were many sins from which to flee. Working the sea may not have been the best life, but it was as good as it got for our kind.

  So none of us said much of anything as we hauled all the Professor’s equipment aboard. The crates were big and unforgiving, making strange tinkling and clinks like the daintiest of fairies were fencing fiercely each other on the inside.

  “Tell them to be careful,” cried the Professor. “They’ll ruin everything.” He waved a cane about in the air that was hungry for blood.

  “You heard the man,” echoed the Captain.

  The two old souls watched us from the bow as we broke our backs getting all that gear aboard. Most passengers on our old Glorianna brought a trunk or two, but this strange scientist had over a dozen mighty crates of cargo.

  On one of those behemoths, Hardy dropped his corner, and the box came crashing down like a thunderclap. Our decrepit leaders heard nothing, but we lost our cool in a fit. Some were angry, others delighted.

  But Hardy didn’t care about our mockery or concerns. He looked scared out of his wits. But it wasn’t about breaking anything. “You guys hear that?”

  “The ocean? The wind?” we asked.

  Never one to pass on a bawdy guffaw, Delgado said, “The captain passing gas?” We loved to laugh at our jokes, even the worst of them. On this damned dreary vessel, we didn’t need much of an excuse.r />
  “No, no. Listen.” Hardy held a stiff finger up to shush us.

  Even though a quiet crew is the surest sign of trouble on a ship, we humored his request.

  The old boat creaked, the wind whistled, and the waves splashed. Nothing unusual but for our silence.

  “You don’t hear that?” he asked. His voice was strained, like it hurt to even ask the question.

  “No,” we whispered.

  “It’s like…” Hardy’s head twisted, like he was fine-tuning a frequency on a radio. “It’s like a girl is crying.”

  But still none of us heard a sound.

  “It’s very sad to hear.” Daffy old Hardy was even getting a little misty-eyed.

  Delgado said, “I think you’re hearing a pussy… cat.”

  We meow at Hardy the rest of the day as we resume the work.

  But we couldn’t just leave that baggage alone like usual, simply dropping it off till we needed to fetch it at the final destination. No, for this job we were now expected to break them all open and unpack the man’s belongings into their new home beneath deck. “The Professor’s laboratory,” dubbed the Captain.

  At least now we could see what all the fuss was about.

  Inside these crates was equipment, scientific things we uneducated dolts could barely begin to fathom. Long glass beakers, mysterious liquids. Shiny machines built of odd gears and pistons. A ton of foul-smelling tomes each thicker than a loaf of bread. No one knew what they all did or meant, but we knew enough from books and papers that it was the real deal.

  The large quarters the Professor had commandeered soon became packed to the timbers. We tried to be more helpful, but the old coot insisted, “Just put it down anywhere. I’ll figure it all out.”

  “Hey,” whispered Svenson, “take a look.”

  Under his arm was a box. Once we checked the coast was clear, he slowly removed its top.

  Inside were a set of jars, each filled with a dark yellow liquid that smelled of rot. Svenson withdrew one so we could better see its contents.

  Inside was a small baby, but smaller than a normal baby. Its head and arms were of regular size, yet its bottom half was but half-formed, resembling more like a shrimp’s tail than human legs.