Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [100]
In the Nowhere.
Someone might’ve just died outside. He doesn’t know for sure. Who? He just heard the last of someone’s life in a slight moaning sound. The open window. No breeze. Just that sound. A soft but unpleasant ohhhhhh.
The puppy is whimpering. Somewhere nearby.
Other sounds, barely audible, seem huge.
Branches against the rooftop. Scraping lightly.
His heartbeat. A rapping hammer.
In the dark, the ticking of his watch is too loud. He slowly draws it from his wrist. Carefully, he presses it down into the left-hand pocket of his jeans. The watch clinks slightly against his keys. He holds his breath.
Needs to cough.
Fight it. Fight it. Swallow the cough. Don’t let it out.
Closes his eyes, against the darkness. Closes his eyes to block it out. To make it go away.
Holds his breath for another count. The cough is gone.
Brief sound.
Someone’s breathing. Over there. Across the room. Small room. More than closet, less than room.
Her? Thank god. Thank god. He licks his lips. Mouth, dry.
After a few minutes, he can just make out her shape.
He’s staring at her, and she’s staring at him, but they can’t really see each other. Just forms in the dark. Michelle? Ambient light from beneath cracks in the walls creates a barely visible aura around her as he stares.
Dead of night. Dread of night.
The dread comes after the knowledge. He remembers the line from the book. That awful book that he thought was fiction.
But the words do not come to him. The sounds of them, just beyond his memory.
Breathing hard, but as quietly as he can.
Smells his own breath. The stink of his underarms. Glaze of sweat covering his body. Shirt plastered to him. Hair wet and greasy against his scalp.
The chill that hasn’t left him, not since he came up out of the earth. Burning chill.
She’s going to do it.
Or I am.
One of them is going to scream again. He knows it. He wasn’t even sure if he had stopped screaming a half hour before.
Problem is, when the screaming starts, it happens.
And neither of them wants it to happen.
But the puppy is okay.
It doesn’t want the puppy.
That’s what someone said before. How many minutes ago? Did he say it? Had he said it and just not remembered it? “It doesn’t want the puppy.”
She whispers something. Or else he imagines she whispers.
Or it’s the sound of the leaves on the trees, brushing the rooftop.
If it’s her, it’s wrong for her to whisper. Neither of them knows what decibel level it needs to find them, but she whispers anyway, “Please say it’s a game. Please god, say it’s a game.”
He’s not close enough, but he wants to hold her. Hold her tight. Rewind the night back to day, back a year or more, so he can undo it all. He wants everything to turn out okay, but he knows it won’t.
Most of all, he wants her to shut her mouth up. He wants to hold her and press his lips or his hand against her mouth and keep in whatever she’s trying to let out.
Silence. Come on, silence. Don’t…
Even her whisper is too loud.
And it hears her.
And it wants to make her scream.
If she screams, it’s all over.
Not just the game. The game will never be over.
If we can just hold out ‘til daylight, he thinks.
But the noise begins. From her throat. He wants to shut her up, but he can’t. He can’t. She’s over there in the dark, and he’s on the other side of the room from her.
The scream is coming up from her lungs in a staccato gurgle. A hiccupping gurgle.
She can’t hold it in.
That’s when he hears the sound.
Not her scream.
Dear Sweet Jesus, do not let that noise out of your mouth. Do not scream. It is inside here. With us.
He hears the sound it makes as it moves. Wet, popping sounds, like bones springing free of joints, and then that stink of over ripeness. Rotten. Steaming. Then that awful thumping begins again.
And the steady hissing, as if dozens of snakes trail behind it.
He leans back against the wall, wanting to press himself into the wood as far as he can go. Wanting his molecules to change and move through the wood so he can just escape.