Authors: Mark Lukens
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Trevor stood on
the front porch; the pieces of his body had been put back together, the pieces stacked back up into what resembled a human body again, but the pieces were not fitting back together too well, the pieces didn’t quite line up with each other anymore. In the deep lines where the pieces met each other, tatters of bloody clothing hung in ragged strips.
Trevor’s head sat on his neck at a strange, cocked angle, a little like Frank’s head. His face was slack, his eyes glassy, his skin pale. His yawning mouth moved, and his muscles creaked as he tried to work his mouth closed and then open again, trying to speak, trying to utter out words through vocal chords that must have been severed.
“Give him what he wants, Cole,” the monstrosity that used to be Cole’s brother grunted out.
Cole had screamed when he’d first seen this thing that used to be his brother. But now he stood only a few feet away from this impossibility and he couldn’t move for a moment, frozen with fear, with awe, with confusion. His mind reeled and everything faded away around him for a moment. He had been aware for a few seconds that Needles was screaming from behind him somewhere. And Jose was shouting something at him, maybe to shut the door or shoot, Cole wasn’t sure what he said because everything was fading away into darkness all around him.
And the darkness was closing in – he could feel his mind slowing, his chest heaving, his muscles weakening.
He was very close to passing out.
Trevor took a step forward and the pieces of his legs that had been stuck back together shifted and moved, and there was not only the creaking sound of stiff muscles trying to work together, but the wet pulpy sound of meat squishing against meat.
This isn’t possible, Cole’s mind whispered. There’s no way this thing should be able to move.
Trevor’s mouth hung open impossibly wide like the jaw had been dislocated and then shoved back into his face, and now it was off-center. His mouth opened and then snapped shut again and then opened once more, like he was trying to say something else. “Cole …”
Cole couldn’t listen to anything else this thing had to say.
This wasn’t his brother anymore.
This wasn’t Trevor.
This thing that used to be his brother stumbled forward and reached for Cole.
Cole aimed his gun at the monstrosity and he pulled the trigger over and over again; five shots into the head and torso of this thing. The bullets knocked the reanimated thing back a few steps and tore large chunks out of what used to be Trevor.
Cole screamed again as he kicked the door shut and lunged for the door; he locked the door handle with trembling fingers, and then the deadbolt. He backed away from the door, staring at it.
Needles was still screaming. “It can get inside! It can get inside anytime it wants to! It can do anything it wants to us!”
Cole turned and stared at Needles with dead eyes – eyes that had seen too much horror and now those eyes were dead calm. “Shut up,” he told Needles in a soft voice.
Needles snapped his mouth shut as he stared at Cole from the side of the recliner where he cowered.
Jose still stood right next to the counter, he hadn’t moved an inch the whole time. He watched Cole. “That wasn’t Trevor anymore, Cole.”
Cole walked towards Jose with slow, deliberate steps.
“You know that, right, Cole? That wasn’t Trevor anymore, just like that’s not Frank anymore out there.”
Cole walked right up to Jose, his gun still gripped in his right hand.
“Cole, put the gun away,” Jose said in a low voice. He reached behind him and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from off the counter. He handed the bottle to Cole with a trembling hand. “Here, take a sip, man.”
Cole stood very still for a second, his eyes still dead, his breathing still shallow, his face slack with shock. Then he shoved his gun down into his waistband and took the bottle of whiskey from Jose. He took two long swallows of the fiery liquid.
Jose glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall, and then he looked back at Cole who still gripped the whiskey bottle by the neck. “It’s getting late. Maybe only a few hours before sundown.”
Cole just nodded – Jose didn’t need to explain what he meant. They only had a short amount of time to decide what they were going to do. He glanced over at Stella and David who sat on the couch, both sitting up ramrod straight, like they might bolt any second. But where would they go? Where
could
they go?
Stella stared at Cole, and she slowly nodded her head. “It will keep coming back,” she said in a low voice.
Cole took one more swig of the whiskey, and then screwed the lid back on. He handed the bottle back to Jose as he stared at Stella. “I want you and David to go into Tom Gordon’s bedroom. I don’t want David out here when we do this.”
Needles pushed himself away from the recliner, his eyes were bugging out. He shook his head no, his arms struggling behind his back, trying to wriggle out of his bonds, but they were tied too tightly.
“No, Cole, please.”
Cole ignored Needles. He’d made his decision. It had to be Needles. He’d killed the old man at the bank which was the reason they were here. And he’d tried to kill David. If they had to take someone’s eyeballs, then it had to be Needles.
Needles kicked his legs wildly on the floor, beginning to cry and scream. “Please, Cole. We don’t have to do this! We can think of something else!”
Cole didn’t look at Needles. He looked at Stella and David and nodded at them, gesturing at them to go to the bedroom.
Stella stood up and took David’s hand. David had the notebook tucked under his arm. They walked across the living room and gave Needles a wide berth. Stella glanced at Needles who had thrashed his way away from the recliner and more towards the middle of the living room, onto the Native American rug that he stared at for such long periods of time. His face was wet with tears, his skin red from the exertion of thrashing, his eyes wild with fear as he looked around at the cabin like this would be the last thing in the world that he’d ever see.
Stella and David walked to the bedroom. They would be alone in the bedroom and this was going to be her chance to talk to David about what she’d seen in his notebook.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Cole checked the
windows of Tom Gordon’s bedroom as Stella and David made themselves comfortable on the lumpy, unmade bed. The windows were still locked and Cole didn’t see anything moving out there in the snow. But he wanted to check. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Stella and David by themselves in the bedroom, but he didn’t want David in the living room watching him and Jose take out Needles’ eyeballs.
And Cole had a feeling that nothing was going to happen to any of them as long as they were following the instructions, as long as they were giving it what it wanted.
Cole couldn’t dwell on the idea of what was out there making them do this for too long or that darkness would begin to creep in from all around him, that darkness that invited him to just close his eyes and float away from all of this.
“We’ll be okay,” Stella said as she stared at Cole. “It won’t come for us right now,” she told him, confirming what he had just been thinking.
“I don’t know how long this will take,” he told her. “We have to find some rope or tape and get him … get him ready.”
“As long as it’s done by sundown,” Stella reminded him.
Cole nodded as a wave of nausea wormed its way through his guts. He could feel bile at the back of his throat. This couldn’t be happening, he thought. But it
was
happening and they needed to hurry.
He left the room in a hurry. He closed the door and Stella could hear him stomping down the hall.
Stella turned to David who watched the door for a moment, clutching his spiral notebook which had become a little tattered at the edges now from him sleeping with it and protecting it the whole time.
But Stella had seen what he’d been drawing, and she needed to confront him about it.
“David,” she said in a soft voice.
David turned to her and looked at her with his dark eyes.
“What have you been drawing in your notebook?” she asked him, seeing if he would just tell her.
He stared at her for a long moment, and then he spoke. “You said we could run. You said it wouldn’t follow us. You said it wouldn’t find us. You promised.”
Stella felt a pang of guilt twist through her. “David, I know I told you that. And I tried.” She could feel tears threatening.
David just stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m doing the best I can.”
Finally, he nodded and gave her a small smile.
“When we found you at the dig site, David, you had blood all over you. But you weren’t hurt.”
David only nodded, staring at her with his dark eyes.
“It wasn’t your blood.”
He shook his head no slowly.
“Was the blood from your parents?”
David didn’t answer; he didn’t nod or shake his head no.
“Did that thing out there kill your parents? Did it kill your family?”
David looked away and now Stella could see tears beginning to well up in his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about it, she could tell. He didn’t want to remember.
She tried a different approach – the notebook, she had to get back to the notebook. “David, what have you been drawing in your notebook?” she asked him again.
He stared at her for a long moment, like he was trying to decide if he should tell her or not. Finally, he just shook his head no and whispered to her. “I don’t know.”
“Can I see it?” she asked.
David hesitated; again he seemed unsure of what he should do.
“You can trust me,” Stella told David. “You know that. I’m the only one here you can trust.”
David nodded and he handed her his notebook.
Stella took the notebook and she smiled at him, trying to give him her warmest smile under the circumstances. “Thank you, David. I just want to take a look.”
David nodded and he watched her as she opened the notebook and flipped from one page to the next; she flipped through page after page until she stopped where David had stopped drawing. Nearly two-thirds of the notebook had been filled with David’s drawings. She looked at him with shock in her eyes.
“How did you learn how to do this?” she asked him.
David stared at her for a long moment, and then he shook his head no. “I don’t know,” he told her.
“Do you know what these things are that you’ve drawn?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said again.
Maybe he didn’t know what was in the notebook, Stella thought, but she knew what it was. And she began to get the first far-off glimpses of hope in her mind. The drawings in this notebook might be the answer, she dared to believe, a way to fight that thing out there.
*
Cole searched through the house for the things they would need while Jose kept and eye and a gun on Needles. Cole could hear Needles pleading with Jose, but Cole knew Jose wouldn’t give in. They were all way beyond that now. Maybe they would have time to think about it later, but right now there was something out there that was impossible to fight. And with the sun setting soon, they had no choice but to do what it wanted.
For a few moments Cole was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find anything to tie Needles up with and he would have to go out to the garage and look, but then he found a roll of duct tape and a length of rope in the kitchen underneath the cabinets.
Even if he had to go out to the garage, he believed that the thing out there wouldn’t kill him as long as he were doing what it wanted.
Maybe, his mind whispered. But how did he know?
What kind of being was out there? What kind of thing could bring the dead back to life? Hollow people out and put pieces of his brother back together and reanimate them, use their bodies like puppets?
Cole didn’t want to think about it right now. He needed to concentrate on this task.
But thinking of going out to the garage made him think of the snowmobile for a split second. Did the snowmobile even run? Even though the thing out there had ruined the pickup truck and Stella’s Suburban, had it somehow overlooked the snowmobile?
He pushed the thought of the snowmobile from his mind. Maybe this thing could read minds. Who knew how powerful it was? And if it could read minds, then he didn’t want to give away his one slim hope of getting away.
Stella had driven away from this thing down in New Mexico (if she was telling the truth, his mind whispered), if she and David had gotten away, then maybe he could too.
Cole placed the tape and the rope on the dining room table and he went into the kitchen to find some tools. There weren’t many tools in the cabin; he’d found a hammer, a screwdriver, some nails. He wasn’t going out to the garage to look for tools. Instead, he found some spoons and knives in the kitchen drawer, and they would have to do.
A little earlier Cole had searched the cabin for some kind of pain killers, even aspirins, something to help dull the pain for Needles. But there was nothing in the kitchen or the bathroom. He’d found a bottle of Tylenol and a bottle of regular aspirins. But both of the bottles were empty. He wasn’t sure if Tom Gordon had left empty bottles behind in his cabinets, or if the bottles had been emptied somehow.
It doesn’t want Needles to be anesthetized, his mind whispered. It wants Needles to feel the pain, feel every bit of his eyes being pulled out of his face.
Cole pushed the thought away again as another wave of nausea washed over him.
Cole had wanted to force some whiskey down Needles’ throat to help ease the pain, but Jose didn’t want to do that; he said it was just a waste of time and they needed to hurry. Cole agreed that they needed to hurry, but he also suspected that Jose wanted to keep the whiskey for himself as a cushion of numbness in case he needed it when the end came.
But Jose was right – they needed to hurry.
Cole and Jose looked at Needles.
It was time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Needles was tied
to one of the dining room table chairs with many lengths of rope, duct tape, and two more telephone cords. Jose tied the last of the bonds as Needles struggled and screamed in the chair; the chair’s wood creaked from his struggles, and it seemed like it might tip over, but it didn’t, and the bonds held.
Jose stood up and backed away from Needles. He glanced at Cole who looked miserable.
“I wish we could’ve given him something for the pain,” Cole muttered.
Jose’s expression had turned cold and hard; he was focused on what had to be done. “I told you, we don’t have enough time for that. We need to get this done before the sun goes down.”
Neither one of them had to look towards the windows in the kitchen or the living room to tell that the sun was setting. The waning afternoon light filtered in through the curtains that covered the window, casting a warm, yellowish light on the gruesome act that they were about to perform.
Needles struggled in his chair, but then he gave up as he breathed heavily – the bonds were too strong, and there were too many of them; there was no hope of him escaping and he realized that now. He looked around, his eyes wild with panic. He glanced at Jose, but he knew that there was no bargaining with Jose, his only chance would be with Cole.
“You’re making a big mistake, Cole” Needles said, trying to keep his voice as calm and reasonable-sounding as possible. “That kid, he’s doing all of this somehow. I know it.”
Cole looked away.
“Listen to me, please. You need to kill that kid. That kid’s doing all of this. He’s the demon. The devil. He’s going to get all of you in the end if you don’t kill him first.”
Jose stood by the table and inspected the “tools” that Cole had laid out: various spoons, a few different kinds of kitchen knives, a bowl, some rags for cleaning up. The duct tape was near the tools. He picked up the roll of duct tape and tossed it to Cole. “Shut him up, will you?”
Cole caught the roll of tape.
Needles’ eyes followed the tape and he stared at Cole, pleading with him. “No, wait! You have to listen to me! I’m not crazy! I know what’s going on here! It’s that kid!”
Cole wrapped the duct tape around Needles’ mouth, wrapping it around his head several times, covering the lower half of his face with the tape.
Needles screamed into the tape and struggled again. Tears flowed from his eyes as he sobbed into the tape.
Jose picked up a small, serrated kitchen knife and stood in front of Needles. He looked at Cole who stood behind Needles. “You ready?” he asked Cole.
Cole managed a small nod as he swallowed hard. “I guess.”
“Hold him still,” Jose said.
Cole grabbed each side of Needles’ head and held him as still as he could. He pried Needles’ left eyelid open with his fingers as he held him.
Jose brought the tip of the knife close to Needles’ left eye which was bulging with fear, the eye couldn’t look away, couldn’t help but watch the tip of the knife as it got closer and closer, the knife shook a little in Jose’s unsteady hand.
Just as Jose was about to sink the tip of the blade into the side of Needles’ eyeball, Needles moved and Jose jabbed Needles in the cheek just below the eye; the wound began to bleed immediately, the blood ran down his cheek and down the tape, the blood dripped down onto the cross hanging outside of his thermal shirt.
Jose backed away, suddenly angry. “Shit, man. You’ve got to hold him still.”
Cole dropped his hands away from Needles’ head and backed away. “I’m trying. He’s struggling too much.”
Jose sighed and set the knife back on the table. He pulled his gun out from the waistband of his pants and he walked around to the back of Needles.
“Struggling too much?” Jose asked, and then he wacked Needles on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, knocking Needles out instantly.
Needles’ head slumped forward and his breathing was even and steady out of his nose.
Jose stuffed his gun back into his pants and walked back to the table. He picked up the knife and a spoon. He looked at Cole. “Hold his eyelids open. I’m sure it doesn’t want these eyeballs damaged.”
Cole shuddered, but he moved in beside Jose. He pried Needles’ left eye open and the eyeball stared back at them, lifeless and unconscious.
“I’m going to cut it out and you get the bowl ready to put it in.”
“Just hurry,” Cole said.
*
Thirty minutes later, Cole and Jose sat at the dining room table, both of them exhausted. Needles was still unconscious and tied to the dining room table chair, his bloody head hung forward, blood-stained gauze and duct tape were wrapped around his face where his eyes used to be, but the tape was off of his mouth now to allow him to breathe more easily.
Stella and David were still in the bedroom. Cole was about to go and get them. He and Jose had cleaned up the mess around Needles as best as they could. They put his eyeballs in a bowl and left them out on the front porch – a gift for that monster out there.
Suddenly, Needles woke up. He lifted his head up and screamed. “My eyes! You took my eyes!”
Cole jumped to his feet and ran over to Needles. “Just try to calm down, Needles.” His own words sounded surreal to his ears, this whole situation seemed unreal to him.
“It hurts!” Needles howled. “It hurts so bad! Why did you do this to me, Cole?”
“You deserved it, you sick son of a bitch,” Jose said; he was still seated at the dining room table, a few feet away from Needles. “If you hadn’t shot that old man in the bank, we wouldn’t even be here.”
Needles wouldn’t stop crying and screaming. “Oh, God, where are you, Cole?” Needles rocked his head back and forth like he was trying to look around the room with eyes he didn’t have anymore.
“I’m right here,” Cole said from right beside Needles. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he looked at Needles, once his friend, now tied to a chair with his eyes carved out. What had he done? Cole asked himself. What had he become?
Needles still looked around as he moaned, like he couldn’t quite place where Cole was. “It hurts so bad!! I can’t take the pain!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Jose screamed at Needles, and then he got to his feet beside the table and glanced at Cole. “Shut him up again, please.” Jose paced away from the table, into the hallway, he needed to be away from Needles, he couldn’t take the crying anymore, but even in here he could still hear Needles screaming and moaning.
“Please, Cole. I can’t take the pain anymore. I … I can’t take – ”
Needles’ last words were cut off by a booming gunshot in the cabin.
Jose rushed back out from the hallway to see Cole standing behind Needles; Cole had his gun in his hand, still aimed at the back of Needles’ head. Needles was slumped forward in the chair as far as the rope and tape would allow him. His head was pitched forward and blood drained from the large wound in his forehead where the bullet had exploded out of his face. The gauze and tape over his eyes was stained dark red already, and a puddle of blood was forming on the floor in front of the chair.
Jose stared at Cole in shock. “What the fuck did you do?”
Cole shook his head no as he stared at Jose with a vacant look in his eyes. “I couldn’t leave him suffering like that. I couldn’t let him keep feeling that kind of pain.”
Jose paced around the living room, a rage building in him quickly. He ran his hand through his dark hair several times. “Did you stop to think that the thing outside didn’t want him dead?”
Cole watched Jose. “I don’t care. I wasn’t going to let him keep on suffering.”
Jose punched his fist at the air a few times in frustration, and then he turned to Cole. “Fuck! We needed Needles! What are we supposed to do if that thing out there wants another body part? We could’ve used Needles over and over again.”
Cole felt that now familiar wave of nausea washing over him again, but this time it was Jose that nauseated him. He could feel his own rage building up inside of him, that rage that had been just beneath the surface of him the whole time he’d been in this cabin. “Let’s get Needles out on the front porch, and then it can have all the body parts it wants.”