Authors: Brandon Massey
Twisted Tales (21 page)
Mya walked down the aisle. He waited. Wondering whom Mya would see sitting back there.
You know who dwells in the darkness, don’t you?
Coldness spread from his spine through every point of his body. He snatched the blanket from the seat next to him and covered himself with it. Still, gooseflesh rose on his arms.
Mya came back. “You must be imagining things, Sean. There’s no one back there that I know.”
“Who was in row fourteen?”
“No one.” She slid into her seat and buckled her seatbelt. “The entire row was empty.”
“That can’t be.”
“Check again for yourself.” She looked at him, intently. “Who’d you see back there that you recognized, anyway?”
He faltered. He was too shaken to conjure a plausible lie.
“Forget about it,” he finally said. “I must’ve been mistaken.”
She looked at him for a beat, and then shrugged, placed a pillow between the window and her head, and closed her eyes. Clearly, as far as Mya was concerned, the matter was forgotten.
But he couldn’t forget.
He sat there, gripping the armrests, gnawing his bottom lip.
Then, on impulse, he threw off the blanket, grabbed the back of the seat in front of him, and pulled himself upright. He staggered into the aisle. He walked toward row fourteen.
The row was vacant, like Mya had said. No black woman occupied any of the seats around, either.
I’m losing my mind,
he thought. He was, in fact, not feeling quite like himself. He was hungry; he’d eaten only a granola bar before they’d left the house for the airport, and he hadn’t yet sipped his usual morning cup of java.
he thought. He was, in fact, not feeling quite like himself. He was hungry; he’d eaten only a granola bar before they’d left the house for the airport, and he hadn’t yet sipped his usual morning cup of java.
Perhaps one of the side effects of caffeine withdrawal was hallucinations, he thought, a bit crazily.
But why would he have imagined his grandmother, of all people? Why would he have imagined that she would say such awful things to him?
Scratching his head, he turned to go back to his seat. As he neared it, he glimpsed that familiar cap of frosty white hair.
In his row.
Lead-footed, Sean shuffled back to his seat.
His grandmother—or whoever she was—sat in the seat closest to the aisle. The middle seat, his, was empty. Mya was in the window seat, fast asleep.
His grandmother looked up at him. Grinned.
He noticed bits of a black substance stuck between her teeth, as if she had been chewing on coals.
“Take a load off, Sonny Boy.” She patted the seat next to her. “Ain’t nowhere else to go. Long way to go to Hawaii.”
Standing there, gawking at this woman, Sean came up with a completely reasonable explanation for what was happening.
He was dreaming.
He was as unconscious as Mya, perhaps had ingested a capsule of Dramamine himself. He was asleep, and caught in this nightmare.
But what a vivid dream. The smell of hot coffee drifting to him from the food-and-beverage cart ahead. The humming of the aircraft’s engine. The faint taste of the granola bar still on his tongue.
No matter how real it seems, it’s still a dream. There’s no other answer.
Sean moved to his seat, being careful to avoid touching her.
She touched his hand. Her skin was cold and clammy. “Now we can talk.”
“About what?” He pulled his hand away.
“Why I’m here,” she said. “What I got to offer you.”
“Offer me?”
She folded her hands together, over the huge Bible. Glancing at the worn black-leather cover, he noticed a strange detail. The gold cross underneath the words Holy Bible was upside down.
Fear simmered in his chest. Years ago, he’d seen something on television about Satanists. One of the cult’s prized figures was the inverted cross, signifying a mockery of Christianity’s most hallowed symbol.
As he looked at the woman’s hands, he saw dirt caked underneath her nails, too. Grandma was the cleanest woman he’d ever known, would wash her hands several times a day. This could not possibly be her, and since his imagination had engineered this perversion of her for a dream, he needed serious counseling. He’d obviously lost his grip on his sanity.
“Lemme make you an offer,” the woman said, in a voice that was still a dead ringer for Grandma’s. “An offer you can’t refuse, like Marlon Brando said in
The Godfather
. Wanna hear it, Sonny Boy?”
The Godfather
. Wanna hear it, Sonny Boy?”
“No, but I don’t guess that I have a choice.”
She cackled.
“God gave you free will, didn’t he?” she asked. “Ain’t that what you used to believe?”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
Smirking, she motioned above. “Look.”
From the ceiling, a flat screen levered down from a compartment. The flight crew used the monitors to show safety instructions and in-flight movies. But Sean had an unsettling feeling about what he would see this time.
Electric snow filled the screen ... and then faded to reveal a TV newsman seated at a desk. The guy was talking, and his words were as audible as if they were being broadcast over the captain’s intercom. But in the illogical fashion of dreams, only Sean and the old woman paid any attention to the screen and seemed to hear the newsman.
“... Flight 463, en route from Atlanta to Los Angeles, crashed as it was flying over the Arizona desert. There were only a handful of survivors ...”
Sean almost bolted out of his seat, forgetting his belief that he was dreaming. “What the hell is that? This plane is gonna crash?”
“As surely as the sun is gonna set,” the woman said. “Got some kinda engine problem. By the time they figure it out, be too late for y’all.”
Footage of the wreckage flashed on the screen. Paramedics loaded bodies wrapped in black bags into ambulances. Corpses of the victims.
“There were a hundred and sixteen passengers,” the newsman continued. “Fewer than ten survived ...”
“A hundred people dead?” Sean asked. Numb, he looked around. All of the passengers were oblivious to what he was watching and hearing. He glanced at Mya, afraid to ask his next question, but he had to: “What about us?”
The woman cracked her gnarled knuckles. “Ah, now that’s what our bidness is about. You and your bride. I got an offer; you gots a choice.”
Remember, it’s only a dream,
Sean thought. But the increasingly grave tone of this conversation had begun to sap his confidence. The horrific images on the screen had jammed up his brain.
Was it true that if you died in a dream, you died in real life ... ?
Sean thought. But the increasingly grave tone of this conversation had begun to sap his confidence. The horrific images on the screen had jammed up his brain.
Was it true that if you died in a dream, you died in real life ... ?
“What choice?” he asked.
“Serve me,” she said. “Sign over your soul. Do that, and you and your sugar pie will be some of them survivors.”
He blinked. “You’re kidding. You want me to sign my name in blood or something, like in one of those stupid horror movies?”
But the woman didn’t smile. She opened the Bible. Except it was no longer a Bible; the facing page, instead of being full of Scriptures, had only a few lines of text, and a long, blank signature line at the bottom.
“Don’t need your name in blood.” She extended a fountain pen toward him. “This’ll do just fine.”
He didn’t accept the pen. “Who the hell are you?”
“Stop foolin’, sugar. You know the answer to that, don’t you?”
You know who dwells in the darkness.
Sean swallowed. His Adam’s apple felt stuck at the base of his throat, as if he’d swallowed a golf ball.
“Hurry up now,” she said. “I got places to go, thangs to do.”
“This is bullshit,” Sean said, the logical side of his brain struggling to reassert itself. “I don’t believe in the Devil. That’s a bunch of religious nonsense.”
The woman tapped the pen against her lips. “You believe in God?”
“I don’t have faith—”
“I ain’t asking whether you have faith in a kind, loving God,” she said. “I’m asking if you believe He exists.”
“Of course I do.”
“Thought so. You believe in Him, even though you and Him been having issues lately.” She smirked. “Right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So there ain’t no light without dark, Sonny Boy. No hot without cold. Got joy—got pain. Everything’s got an opposite. God, too.”
Following the logic, Sean had begun to nod.
“Even if you exist,” he said. “I’m not gonna believe a word you say. The Bible says you’re the Father of Lies.”
“Ain’t you got some nerve?” the woman asked, rearing back. “Since when you start quoting Scripture? You—who can’t even humble hisself enough to say ‘Amen’? Who’d look dead in his wife’s face and tell
her
to have faith?”
her
to have faith?”
Sean lowered his head. His gaze slid over the book in the woman’s lap. The contract. “In return for the survival of himself and his wife on Flight 463, Signee pledges to assign care of his soul to Me ...”
“No,” Sean said. “The answer to your offer is no. Get away from me. Or I’ll—”
“Ask God for help?” She smiled, but it was a terrible, cold expression, the way a snake might smile. “You’re lost, sugar. All confused, don’t know what to believe anymore. Well, believe in this.”
She placed her hand on top of his. When she had touched him before, her skin had been cold as a dead trout.
Now, it was scorching hot. His flesh sizzled and smoked.
“Believe in this!”
Sean screamed.
Sean awoke with a shriek exploding from the back of his throat. He clamped his mouth shut in time to keep from howling—the scream came out as a violent gasp.
He was sitting in his seat on the airplane. The in-flight magazine lay on his lap.
Mya sat beside him, asleep. Beyond the porthole, he saw that the aircraft tilled a field of clouds.
Above him, the flat screens had lowered from the ceiling. A Jim Carrey comedy,
Bruce Almighty,
was in progress. Passengers around him were giggling.
Bruce Almighty,
was in progress. Passengers around him were giggling.
All a dream,
he thought.
Just a nightmare.
he thought.
Just a nightmare.
But his left hand ached.
Don’t you dare look at it. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
Heart throbbing, he slid his hands from underneath the magazine.
A red burn pulsated on his left hand, between the base of his knuckles and his wrist.
It looked as if someone with scalding-hot fingers had touched him.
For the remainder of the flight to Los Angeles, Sean was wide-awake. He requested two extra cups of coffee from the flight attendants, and drank them greedily.
In the event of a crash, he had to be alert.
When Mya awoke, it required all of his self-restraint for him to resist telling her what he’d dreamt. His head felt as though it would burst from the pressure of the dream images and the old woman’s prediction of doom. But he kept his mouth shut.
Mya, after all, thought he had faith in God’s goodness.
The only thing he couldn’t hide was the burn mark. While Mya was asleep, he’d asked a flight attendant for ointment and a bandage and dressed the wound. When Mya asked about it, he told her he’d spilled coffee on himself.
As they continued to fly, Sean listened for a mechanical malfunction, any unfamiliar,
wrong
-sounding noise. He heard only the engine’s constant drone. But when the captain announced that they were nearing the Grand Canyon, and they hit a ripple of turbulence, Sean nearly leapt out of his seat and screamed.
wrong
-sounding noise. He heard only the engine’s constant drone. But when the captain announced that they were nearing the Grand Canyon, and they hit a ripple of turbulence, Sean nearly leapt out of his seat and screamed.
They passed over the canyon, and the rest of the Arizona desert, without incident.
It was all a lie, he realized. The plane wasn’t going to crash; he and Mya weren’t going to perish in fiery wreckage. It was a lie, intended to fool him into signing his soul away.
Relief washed over him.
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