Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [98]
"Clegg's stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby." -- Dean Koontz.
"Clegg delivers!" -- John Saul
"Douglas Clegg is one of the best!"-- Richard Laymon
"Clegg is the best horror writer of the post-Stephen King generation!" -- Bentley Little
"Clegg is the future of dark fantasy!" -- Sherrilyn Kenyon
THE WORDS
by Douglas Clegg
“What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being…”
- M.R. James, from “Casting the Runes”
One: The End Is Like This
The end is like this:
After the last match goes out, he mouths the words to the Our Father, but it brings him no comfort. He remembers The Veil. He remembers the way things moved, and how the sky looked under its influence. He doubts now that a prayer could be answered. He doubts everything he has come to believe about the world.
The echo of the last scream. He can hear it, even though the room is silent. It seems to be in his head now: the final cry.
Hope it’s final.
The scream is too seductive, he knows. He understands what’s out there. It’s attracted to noise, because it doesn’t see with its eyes anymore. It sees by smell and sound and vibration. He has begun to think of it by its new name, only he doesn’t want to ever say that name out loud. Again.
Your flesh won’t forget.
Prickly feeling along the backs of his hands, along his calves. In his mind, he goes through the alphabet, trying to latch onto something he can work around. Something that will give him a jump into remembering the words.
He presses himself against the wall as if it will hide him. Rough stone. No light. Need light. Damn. He thinks he must be delirious because the goofiest things go through his mind: Michelle’s phrase, Unfrigginlikely, Spaceman Mark. Those aren’t the words. Spaceman Mark. Hey, Space! What planet you on today? Planet Dark, that’s what I’m on. Planet Midnight.
And out of matches.
The wind dies, momentarily, beyond the cracked window.
The damn ticking of the watch. Someone’s heartbeat. The sensation of freezing and burning alternately – a fever. The sticky feeling under his armpits. The rough feeling of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The interminable waiting. Seconds that become hours in his mind. In those seconds, he is running through sounds in his head – the words? What are they? Laiya-oauwraii…no. That’s the beginning of the name. Don’t say it again. It might call it right to you. You might make it stronger. For all you know. What the hell are the words?
He clutches the carved bone in his left hand. It’s smooth in his fist. Like ivory, a tusk from some fallen beast. Slight ridges where the words are carved. Like trying to read Braille, only he’s never studied. If only I could read them. Need to get light. Some light.
Distracted by the smell.
That would be the first one it got.
Over in the corner, something moves. Darkness against darkness.
Someone he can’t see in the dark is over there.
Eyesight is failure, Dash once told him. Perception is failure. All that there is, all that there ever will be, cannot be perceived in the light of day. At night, the only perceptions turn inward.
The words? he thinks. The words. Maybe if you remember them, you can stop it. Maybe it reverses. Or maybe if you just say them…
Moves his lips, trying to form vowel sounds.
The dry taste. Humid and weather-scorned all around.
In his throat, a desert.
Every word he has ever heard in his life spins through his mind. But not the words he needs. Not the ones he wants to remember tonight.
A beautiful night. Dark. No light whatsoever but for the ambient light of the world itself. Summer. Humid. Post-storm. One of those rich storms that sweeps the sky with crackling blue and white lightning, and the roars of lions. But the storm has passed – and that curious wet silence remains. Taste of brine in the air from the water, a few miles away.
He remembers summer storms like this – their majesty