Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (16 page)

Samuel
leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “It was hard carrying all the clay
tablets back and forth to class. We didn’t even have the wheel back then.”

“I didn’t
mean it that way—”

Samuel took
a turn at dispelling the clumsiness. “I know.”

Mara sipped
from her mug. Samuel loved the way she cupped her long, slender fingers around
it on both sides. If she had a scarf, she could be on the cover of one of those
trendy catalogs for European kitchen gadgets.

“You’re
kinda cute for an older guy.”

Samuel
blushed. The bluesman had stopped playing. He was shuffling through a handful
of papers while holding the guitar on his lap.

“Tell me your
story,” Samuel said.

“Can’t we
just sit here and drink coffee and leave it at that?”

He sensed
reluctance in her voice, but felt a pressure to force the issue.

“I don’t
think that’s why we’re here. I think I’m getting these dream opportunities for
a reason. It must have something to do with the Reversion.”

The last
word made her shudder. It pulled the curtain back on the coffeehouse façade, which
Mara had convinced herself was the new reality.

“Fine,” she
said, a new coldness emanating from her face.

Samuel
waited. He drummed his fingers on the table as the notes spewed forth from the
guitar again. The punk rockers brushed past with a mixture of leather,
espresso, and jasmine incense.

“We didn’t
have much. My dad worked the factory. He turned a nut on rods, or some bullshit
like that. We never really knew exactly what he did, but it kept him at sixty
to seventy hours a week. He’d work a full, eight-hour shift on Sunday and be
home by noon.”

She let the
statement hang and gave Samuel time to do the math.

“Didn’t
leave much quality family time. My mom babysat, which made me and my brother
feel even less special. On any given day, there would be ten or twelve kids
running through the house. My dad would come home after a twelve-hour shift and
the chaos would eat at him. I swear you could see it in his face.”

The
guitarist shifted into a down-tempo shuffle that reminded Samuel of “Stormy
Monday.” He thought of the dark cloud propelling the Reversion forward, and the
title of the song, before pushing it from his thoughts.

“I’m telling
you this because it had a lot to do with me leaving school. My mom got sick and
couldn’t watch kids anymore, and the factory started losing contracts to overseas
companies, which meant my dad lost hours and eventually his job. I took over
parenting for my younger brother, and I couldn’t do that and keep up with my
studies at the same time.”

“I wonder
how many other women have been in that same situation.”

Samuel meant
the comment as a token of empathy, understanding, but Mara simply shrugged and
continued.

“Tommy, my
little brother, was late that night. I was going to pick him up from hockey
practice because my dad was already asleep and my mom had taken too many of her
‘little sleep helpers’ to even consider getting behind the wheel. I remember
thinking how crazy it was for a twelve-year-old kid to be at hockey practice
until eleven o’clock on a Friday night. They don’t call Detroit ‘Hockeytown’
for nothing.”

Hearing the
name of the city ignited a synapse in Samuel’s dream brain. He felt an ache
behind his forehead, trapped in a place where it would gnaw and fester.

“I think it
was December. It had already been dark for like seven hours and a heavy, wet
snow had been falling for the past two. Detroit was in dire shape. They
couldn’t afford to put police offers on the street, let alone rock salt or sand
from a plow. If you live there, you accept it.

“So I was on
my way to get Tommy, cranking some killer metal on the car’s CD player.”

Samuel nodded.
Then he held up his hand, flashing Mara the devil horns, an international sign
for heavy metal.

“I don’t
think Dio started that, but it’s fine if history thinks so.”

Samuel
raised his eyebrows and smiled. His mind flashed to a Judas Priest concert he had
attended as a teenager, and he couldn’t remember any fans that even remotely
resembled someone like Mara. He would have gone to many more if they had.

“Yeah. So
the car is really warm and the music is really loud, two things that wouldn’t
be happening in our house. My time in the car was as much of an escape as I
could manage. I guess it’s why I never complained too much about chauffeuring
Tommy around. It gave me time alone to think and listen to metal.

“He was
waiting for me on the curb with his stick held like a sword in one of those high-fantasy
movies. I remember him being the only kid sitting out there on top of his
hockey bag. He came running over to the car toward the trunk. I pulled the
latch, and it rose like the opening jaws of a monster. He swung all of his
weight around to get the bag to clear the bottom of the bumper. He pushed the
rest of it in and then shoved the stick on top. I heard the muffled thump of
the trunk shutting. Tommy yanked on the handle of the passenger side door, and
I shook my head. He was a skinny kid and not heavy enough to sit in the front,
you know, with the airbag laws and stuff.”

Samuel
nodded. The more Mara talked, the more he shifted in his seat. The delicate strumming
of the bluesman started to erode his patience.

“Tommy
climbed into the backseat and started immediately yapping about practice. I
turned the music down to let Tommy have his say. It’s not like Mom or Dad was
going to ask him about practice when we got home.

“I made a
right out of the parking lot and eased on to Route 24. The four-lane cut right
through our hometown. Strip malls and used-car lots straddled it with an
occasional stoplight thrown in to allow greedy idiots out of the big-box stores
with their plastic crap.”

Samuel
smiled. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and began shooting glances
about the room. The patrons continued on their individual pursuits, and the
notes coming from the guitar strings felt like death by a thousand cuts.

“Like I
said, it was December, dark and cold. With snow. But that wasn’t really a
factor in it.”

A wheeze
escaped Samuel’s lips.

“I passed
through a busier section of 24, closer to the stretch with the car dealerships.
They were all closed at this time, but there was an Italian restaurant across
the street from one that always served dinner late. We were driving at about
forty-five, keeping the limit. We had some old-school Metallica jamming. Pretty
sure it was
Ride the
Lightning
, probably “Fade to Black.” Tommy and me, we loved that song. The
dynamics are brutal.

“There
weren’t many cars on the road, but enough to keep the headlights dancing in the
mirrors. Tommy shifted into the center area of the backseat, finding some way
to do that while keeping the seatbelt fastened. He knew I’d friggin’ flip if he
didn’t have it on.”

Mara shifted
in her seat and drew a breath. She had doled out as many of the inconsequential
details as she could, and now it was time to tell Samuel what he wanted to
know.

“There was a
car in front of me, maybe a hundred yards or so, and nobody behind. We were in
the left lane with nothing but faded lines on asphalt to separate us from the
traffic going the other way. The people had complained to city council and the
mayor a dozen times. They tried to get a cement median, you know, one of those
walls. But the owner of the Italian restaurant, local dude that probably had
his fingers in numbers and low-level drug dealing, fought it every time. He
argued that folks coming eastbound on 24 would have to drive an extra half a
mile to the next stoplight and make a U-turn to come back to his restaurant
going westbound. He said it would kill his business.”

Mara
emphasized the word “kill”. She could no longer look at Samuel. Her vision
clouded from the tears oozing from the corner of her eyes.

“So anyway,
the car in front hits the brakes hard. I see the flash and think that he
probably wanted a lasagna and passed the parking lot going forty-five or fifty.
But then I got that feeling in my gut, the kind that probably comes from
evolutionary instinct, if you believe in that kind of thing.

“The car
fishtails, and by now I’ve closed the distance and I’ve taken my foot off the
accelerator. Dad always got pissed when I used the brake to slow down on the
highway. He said if you remove your foot from the gas, you’ll slow down and
won’t scare the shit out of the people behind you.

“I see the
side of the car, some featureless sedan. And as soon as it crosses to the right
into the slow lane, I saw it.”

The blues
player stopped strumming. The barista stood with a dirty dish rag in one hand
and an empty mug in another. Everyone inside the coffee shop stopped and stood
like motionless creatures trapped in a dying world. Samuel’s eyes shifted from
one to the next as their skin, hair, and clothing morphed into a grayscale
curtain of despair. He watched as teeth fell out and eyes turned to obsidian
voids. The oppressive silence of the Reversion swallowed the hustle of the
coffee shop. The smell of incense and roasted coffee disappeared as well. Samuel
watched the lights dim, and the walls dropped their adornments like a tattered
robe, allowing the crooked and rotten planks to show through.

“The
headlights looked like eyes,” Mara said. “I know that’s a corny cliché, but
it’s true. The car looked like an angry beast. I remember starting to swerve
the wheel in the midst of Tommy yelling. Time sped up and then slowed. I
watched as the filaments in the headlights exploded on impact. That was the
last thing I could see. I remember thinking that I wasn’t even going to see the
face of the other driver. Was it a man? Woman? Were they drunk, lost,
disoriented? Were they courting death, like me?

“The hood
shot upward into the shape of an inverted V on impact. I can’t really explain
the sound. You would literally piss your pants if you heard it. I think I did. I
felt it more than I heard it. It was like the oncoming beast was eating my car.”

Mara paused.
She put a napkin to each eye while Samuel stared at his folded hands. More and
more of the creatures from the dying locality appeared in the coffee shop in
complete silence. They stood next to the table and behind Mara. Samuel tried
not to look into those lost faces.

“I’m short. I
was short,” Mara said, stumbling over her existence within an unknown world
buried in the dream of another. “The seat belt locked, and I felt the burn on
my neck.”

Samuel
lifted his head and saw Mara tugging at the collar of her shirt. She pulled it
down far enough for him to see the bruise that he had noticed when he arrived
at the Barren.

“And then
blackness. I don’t remember pain, not sure what happened to Tommy, what
happened to anything.”

The tears
came freely, without Mara using words to plug the dike.

“I can’t
even remember how long there was blackness. When I opened my eyes again, I was
here,” she said, using an arm to scan the room of the standing undead. “Well,
not here, but here in this locality.”

“Where?”
Samuel asked, unable to speak more than a single syllable.

“Wandering
through that fucking forest. The one where nooses hang like leaves from the branches.
The one you came from.”

He paused
and put a hand over his mouth. “Do you think you’re dead?” he asked.

“Do you
think I’m dead?” she replied. “I guess I wasn’t sure up until now.”

Samuel felt
the room shudder. The forms in front of his face shimmered as if the entire
room were submersed in water. He lifted his shoulders, sensing what was coming.

“I’m waking
up.”

He reached
across the table to grasp Mara’s hand. She extended hers and looked into his face
through puffy, red eyes.

Samuel
blinked the sleep from his eyes while staring at the back of Kole’s head as he
slept on the floor of the cabin. Major glanced down at Samuel and then returned
his stare to the window and the undead sentinels on the other side.

Chapter 11

The four
prisoners sat within the walls of the one-room cell. Major shifted every so
often, bending and craning his neck to acquire a better view of the army of
undead soldiers surrounding the cabin. Their presence destroyed the Barren and
any hope of exploring it further. Mara and Samuel sat on their respective
chairs, across from each other at the table, while Kole remained slumped on the
floor, running his finger through the dust. One lonely pot of gruel remained,
which they hoped would last for as long as they needed it. Major had saved
three cloudy bottles of water, now positioned at his feet.