The Dreamer in Fire and Other Stories Read online

  I started to back away when I noticed that there was something wrong with the guys. They were moving, but only in the same way that a machine will keep running if you leave it on too long. Their eyes were completely white. Their pupils had risen up into their heads. They were already dead; they just didn’t know it yet.

  “Hey, Walt!” Ruth yelled. “Pay attention! You wanna see something really special?”

  She started laughing again—that hideous, high-pitched laugh that sounded more like a screech. As I watched, her flesh started to ripple. It wasn’t from the rough sex. It was like when you look at the street on a really hot day and the heat just makes the air pulse.

  Suddenly, her head flattened and caved in. Tentacles popped out, including what was once her tongue. They moved and flexed about as they attached themselves to the third man next to the bed and began sucking.

  Her chest bulged and a milky eye burst through the skin, blinking and looking around. Her hips and waist exploded outward, but what came out had never been inside a human before. There were snakelike appendages with mouths and tongues whipping about. They crawled over the Osborn kid like leeches, attaching and sucking. Her legs became scaly and clawlike, looking like a wet lizard. The men never stopped thrusting, but I didn’t want to know what they were touching. I couldn’t get the image of a dead cow being milked out of my mind.

  I started screaming and backing away when the tentacle mouth reached through the window at me and spoke.

  “What’s the matter, Walt? Don’t I turn you on anymore? Doesn’t the real me make you hot?”

  I screamed and ran for the truck. I could hear her laughing behind me and the sounds of something sucking and licking.

  As quick as I could, I got to Abe’s Bar. Abe saw me come in and didn’t say a word. He just put a bottle of whiskey in front of me and walked away. I couldn’t decide what to do. A part of me really wanted to just get in the truck and run away, even though I hadn’t been able to pull together enough money. And then there was the issue of Crystal and her son. I couldn’t just leave them there. Ruth would get them. I had to get them out. Then we’d all get the hell out of here and just deal with whatever happened.

  Staggering, I threw some money on the bar and left. When I got outside, I was surprised to find that it was already dark. I’d been drinking for over five hours. The birds were loud, louder than I’d ever heard before, and they were everywhere in the sky. I climbed into my truck and started to drive home.

  About halfway there, I was sure there was a car following me. The lights moved the same way I did. It was Ruth. It had to be. My hands were sweating and shaking and I reached for the axe on the seat next to me. But, when I turned a corner under a street light, I could tell it was just some old black Ford.

  Relieved, I turned down my street. I could see that Ruth’s car wasn’t at home, but neither was Crystal’s. I already got a bad feeling. I pulled into the driveway and walked up to the door.

  Inside, everything was dark but, before I even put on the light, I could tell something was wrong. I flipped the switch and saw that the living room had been torn apart. It looked as if there had been a huge fight in the room. Furniture was turned over; pictures were smashed on the floor; and over everything was a kind of slime. It was like some thick spit. I was already too late. While I sat at the bar getting drunk, Ruth took them.

  I slumped down into the corner and cried.

  Sometime later, my phone rang again. It was Ruth.

  “Hey, baby! I guess I just missed you before.” I could hear Crystal and Kyle screaming in the background.

  “Where are you? I’ll kill you, you fucking bitch!”

  Ruth laughed. “You wanna try, Walt? Bring it on! We’re having a big party here. Everyone’s having fun, especially Kyle. Remember I told you that all I needed was a little practice?”

  I heard Kyle screaming louder now and begging.

  “You leave him out of this! It’s between you and me!”

  “Then come and get me, big boy. You know where I am.” She hung up the phone and, just like that, I did know where she was. She was in the woods by Cold Spring Glen—where I killed her the first time.

  I looked around the house quickly. I still had the axe in my truck, but I knew I’d need something more, especially if she had those three zombie-things with her. So I grabbed a big carving knife from the kitchen and Kyle’s old baseball bat. It was all I had, so I’d have to make do.

  The drive there took longer than I ever would have thought it could. The birds in the sky were going crazy, screeching and hollering, but I tried not to pay attention to them and the traffic around me. I just had to get there as quickly as possible. I didn’t think she’d kill them before I got there; she’d want me to watch first. But maybe I could throw her off if I got there quicker than she expected.

  I pulled off the road in the same place I did before. I thought I saw headlights somewhere behind me, but when I turned to look, they were gone. I tucked the knife into my belt and walked into the woods; axe in one hand and baseball bat in the other.

  It was as if I was following a path. I was on some trail made a long time ago by something so monstrous that nothing would grow there afterwards.

  As I walked, I could feel myself climbing higher. I was already beyond the point where I had killed Ruth before, and I kept walking. It was as if I was in a trance. I must have been because, not only were the birds screeching and howling, but I could swear that I heard voices coming from below the ground as well. Shortly, I could see points of light ahead of me. Moving closer, I could see that they were small fires. As I crested the hill, there was a clearing before me. There were large stones set in the ground in odd places. In the middle of the clearing was a large, flat stone almost like a table. On that stone, tied down, were Crystal and Kyle.

  Ruth and the three zombies were dancing around the table. They were naked and gyrating and chanting something that I couldn’t even say for sure was any kind of language. It sounded like a bunch of grunting and barking, but every time Ruth made a noise, the men answered. She was back in her regular form, her body naked and wet from sweat. I didn’t have any time to waste.

  Leaping forward, I rammed the axe into the back of the Osborn boy and he fell like a sack of wet sand. At the same time I swung the baseball bat and sent the second guy’s lower jaw flying outside the clearing. The third man rushed me, but I had time to take my batter’s stance and swing for the bleachers. His head came clean off his shoulders and I felt the impact run up my arms. As soon as they hit the ground, their bodies started to bubble and melt. Within seconds, they were only piles of green slime.

  I jumped toward the table and started cutting Crystal free. I took a second to look at Ruth, who was just standing there, giggling. She wasn’t even trying to stop me. I turned back to look at Crystal, just about to say that we had to get moving fast, when she brought her hand up and smashed me in the head with a rock.

  Everything was dark, but I tried to swim through it as hard as I could. I must have woken up faster than they thought, because they were still trying to tie me to the stone. They’d stripped all my clothes off and there were these strange symbols carved on my chest and down my legs.

  Crystal was trying to hold my arm down while Kyle was failing to tie me up.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.

  “Shut the fuck up, you stupid hick! You’re going to ruin everything!” Crystal screamed. “Kyle, tie him down, now!”

  Kyle tried to loop the rope around my leg, but I reared up and kicked him square in the head. He fell back hard and didn’t get up again.

  “Kyle!” Crystal screamed. She looked squarely at me. “You’re not going to fuck this all up, Walt! I’ve worked too hard for this.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I was trying to get off the table, but she had a grip on me such as I’d never felt from her before. My chest and legs burned and blood was dripping from a hundred places. Out of the corner of my eye, I
could see Ruth down by the bottom of the stone table. She was covered in blood. Probably my blood from all the cuts she’d made. Her eyes were white and she was chanting.

  “You think this just happened? I’ve planned it! All of it! I looked years for a dumb fuck like you. Someone who could be influenced so easily. Do you think any woman would want you, you ugly piece of shit? I used you!”

  I could see the axe lying on the ground. It was in the middle of a pile of green slime that used to be the Osborn kid.

  “Did you think it was your idea? You haven’t had an original thought your whole fucking life! I put it in your head! I made you want Ruth. I told you where she ran because I sent her there! And you did the job all right. But that’s all a dog like you is good for.”

  Ruth continued to chant. Her flesh started to ripple again. I knew what that meant.

  “I needed someone to rape and kill her so that the dhole could enter her body. Then it was just a matter of getting you back up here for the last part—the Scarlet Ceremony. It would give her the power she needed to open the gate. But you were too stupid to do it right!”

  She lunged to push me back down on the stone and I moved out of her way. Her head made a really satisfying smack with the stone. I punched her in the face, hard, and jumped off the stone.

  I didn’t have much time. I grabbed the axe and brought it down on Crystal’s head. You hear about people’s heads splitting like ripe melons, but it doesn’t happen like that. It’s more like cracking open a coconut. She screamed and fell forward onto the stone. Her blood fell into the grooves of the stone, making patterns and symbols like the ones on my chest.

  “Ooooo, Walt, you like it rough, huh?” I turned and looked at Ruth. Her whole body was shaking. “Mom or you. Don’t really matter. It’s all good.”

  I wanted to ask what the hell she really was and what she was trying to do. I wanted to understand what all this meant and why it had happened to me, but I didn’t have the time. I swung the axe with all my might and felt it thud into her throat.

  “You gotta try harder than that, Walt,” Ruth laughed, blood foaming out of her mouth. She drew back her hand and smacked me hard. I fell back on my ass. “So simple. Speak the right words at the right time and open the way. Like computer instructions.”

  She turned away from me and went back to the table. Her body was shifting again but not as much as last time. The tentacles came out of her waist and started feasting on Crystal’s body. Ruth turned her head to the sky and chanted.

  “N’gai n’gha’ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y’hah; Yog-Sothoth, Yog-Sothoth!”

  Ruth raised her hands to the sky and the stars started to shimmer and blink. The birds grew quiet.

  “Ygnaiih . . . ygnaiih . . . thfthkh’ngha . . . Yog-Sothoth . . . Yog-Sothoth! Y’bthnk . . . h’ehye-n’grkdl’lh!”

  Crystal’s body began to shrink, like a balloon with all the air let out. I staggered to my feet, axe in my hand. Without a word, I brought it down on the stone, splitting her tentacles in two. She screamed and grabbed my head. She started to squeeze and pull my head toward the hole that had been her stomach. I swung the axe blindly and felt it hit her leg. Her blood sprayed on my face.

  The birds were screeching again, their cries getting louder and louder, almost like a symphony that had spiraled out of control.

  Ruth stepped backward, and that was all the break I needed. I lifted the axe high above my head and brought it down on her with all my strength. It split her head in two. Some sort of liquid steam oozed out and she began to melt. I tugged the axe out and was getting ready for another swing when I heard someone shouting behind me.

  “RICE! Put it down! Put it down right now or I’ll shoot!”

  I swung around and saw it was Detective Armitage with a couple of cops. I smiled. They’d understand. They’d know that I had to do it; that Ruth was some sort of thing from outside. She had to die. But before I could tell them anything, Armitage fired.

  Three days later, I woke up in the hospital in Arkham. I was handcuffed to the bed. My head hurt as if several mules had taken turns kicking it. I lay there, laughing and crying until the doctor came in. He shone that light in my eyes, took my pulse, and left. No matter what I asked, he wouldn’t answer.

  I couldn’t even turn on the TV.

  I fell asleep again and, when I woke up this time, Armitage was there. He just glared at me. “Did you see it?” I asked. “Did you see her?”

  “Oh, yeah, I saw her all right, Walt. I saw all of them. Your wife. The boy. And the girl. All hacked to death. By you. With the very axe we have videotape of you buying. I knew there was something hinky with you. That’s why I’ve been following you since Ruth came home, but there’s just one thing I don’t understand, Walt. Why’d you do it? Why?”

  “What are you talking about? Didn’t you see her? The tentacles? The . . . the mouths and suckers? She was a thing. A thing from outside. She was going to . . . to . . . (what the hell did she say?) . . . open the way! She was going to let something in that would’ve taken over the world.”

  Armitage just gritted his teeth and stared at me. “So that’s how it’s going to be, eh? Going with the insanity defense? Gonna say you sacrificed them to some ‘voice’ in your head? That’s why you cut yourself on your chest and legs with the knife we know you took from your kitchen? Thought you were a man, Walt. Thought you’d stand up and take responsibility for what you did.”

  “I am! I killed a thing! I don’t know what she was, but she wasn’t human!”

  “Not human. Right. Here, Walt, take a look at this.”

  Armitage dropped a file in my lap. I opened it up and there were full-color pictures of my dead family. But something wasn’t right. Crystal looked fine. Well, except for being dead from an axe to the head. But she didn’t look as if she’d had the life sucked out of her. And Ruth . . . well, Ruth looked like any other sixteen-year-old dead girl. No tentacles. No big eye in the middle of her chest. No scaly legs. She looked perfectly normal . . . and perfectly dead.

  I didn’t understand any of it, but it didn’t make any difference. As Ruth had said, none of this really mattered. All our laws and morals are nothing more than the chattering of insects. So I let them go through the motions. I refused the insanity defense. I pleaded guilty and got a life sentence three times over for it. They shipped me to Walpole Prison where I sit in my cell, pressed against the farthest corner from the door. No one comes near me and that’s the way I like it. I’m safe here; safer than most people because they don’t know what I know. Those things are all around out there . . . just waiting for their chance to come through. They don’t care about us. We’re nothing more than tools to be used and discarded—when they bother to think of us at all. As soon as they come through, they’ll wipe the earth clean and they will reign supreme. I know it’s true because, at night, while I listen to the birds screech along with my breathing, I finger the scars on my chest and remember.

  The Gathering Daemonica

  Inside the main lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, groups of people milled about as they waited for the events to start. The hotel employees were busy checking in new arrivals and bringing luggage up to the rooms. It was a hotbed of activity. The largest convention of the year was almost ready to begin and the staff was already overloaded with guests. The hotel manager was running back and forth, obviously pleased that he had filled the hotel to capacity for this weekend. Off to one side, near the registration desk, two men stood talking very intently.

  “It is nearly time to begin and he has yet to arrive,” the first one said. He was of medium build, slightly pudgy, and completely bald.

  The second man sighed. “After all this time, you have still not learned patience. He will be here.” He was taller, thinner, and impeccably dressed. The suit, of course, was black.

  “What will we do if he doesn’t come? We have events planned. Do you know how long it took to put this all together? I haven’t been able to organize one of these for nearly a hundred and ten
years since the last one in England, and you remember what a problem that was when someone I refuse to mention went on a rampage. I’ll be damned if I’ve gone to all this trouble for nothing!”

  The second man smirked. “You’re damned anyway.”

  “Well, yes, of course. But that’s beside the point.”

  “Look, stop fidgeting. You always were a nervous one.”

  “But we can’t have the convention without him. He’s the Guest of Honor!”

  “And he will be here. You can’t expect one like him to be on time. He’s very busy you know.”

  “I know, I know. But I confirmed these plans with him personally ages ago!”

  “Then he’ll be here. It is an important day. He will not miss it.”

  The pudgy man fidgeted. He was about to say something else, thought better of it, and kept silent. The second man stood quietly as the crowd surged around him. It would be difficult for the untrained eye to separate the conventioneers from the normal hotel guests, but it was not difficult for him. He knew all the guests. The oldest ones he had recruited himself, but he had taken the time to get to know them all personally. A few greeted him as they passed by and picked up their registration materials at the convention desk. They came in every shape and size, every race and color. Fat and thin, beautiful and ugly, short and tall. They were all the epitome of normal human beings. Which was exactly the way he had trained them. It didn’t do for humans to see demons walking among them, unless that was what they wanted. And yet, even the second man was becoming irritated.

  It was getting late. The guest of honor should have been there hours before, but he supposed it was only to be expected. After all, it was not every day that a demon was promoted out of Hell. Actually, it had never happened before. Which also irritated him. Cluchach (known affectionately as “C”) was one of his oldest demons, procured shortly after the Fall and back when he still made special deals to fill his ranks. With so few people back then, he needed to be inventive when recruiting. He had long since given up using such things as contracts. Too binding—too limiting. But, back then, he was young and didn’t know how to run his business properly. He’d learned since then. But C was never supposed to fulfill the terms of his contract. None of them were. Who’d ever thought that one demon would ever be responsible for the eternal damnation of almost one zillion human souls? C was only one soul short and it was certain that he would hit the mark this weekend. C never failed. Now he would be duty bound to honor the contract and release C from his service. It was to be the highlight of the convention, and he didn’t like it one little bit.