From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (178 page)

Drew’s desk
extension rang, the caller ID showing one of several clients that he had shafted
during his latest funk.

“Gotta take
this. Chiapas for lunch?’

“Served by my
sweet mamasita! I’m in.”

Drew shrugged
and tossed the receiver to his ear. He cocked his head sideways and tucked his
chin down in order to free both hands. He took the call and passed through the
rest of his morning with the efficiency of a top-level manager, delegating
tasks and wading through the ocean of e-mails sitting in his in-box. One day—or
even one afternoon—away from the program could result in a backlog of messages
stretching far into the digital horizon. Lunchtime appeared in an instant. Brian
ordered a margarita with his fajitas, which fostered even more flirting with
the young Latina girl who always worked the lunch crowd. Drew watched as Brian
winked at the young woman, who knew little English besides “Coke” and “check
please.” He found himself back at his desk with five o’clock creeping ever
closer.

Drew managed to
slay hundreds of e-mails while reestablishing contact with several clients that
had drifted from his attention. Brian slapped him on the back on his way out,
mumbling something about Happy Hour at Chiapas followed by a night of dancing. Drew
shrugged off the comment, knowing full well it would not take Brian long to bed
his mamasita, if he had not done so already.

He fumbled
through his internet browser, taking a last look at several social-networking
sites before finishing up for the day. Although the company did not filter
their access, Drew knew the ways of IT, and disciplined himself to dabble
socially only near the quitting hour, a time often left unchecked by Big
Brother. He clicked low on the screen to bring up his e-mail client one last
time for the day.

The “sender”
column sat with its usual list of abbreviated last names and squiggly symbols. All
except for one. Drew’s heart lurched in his throat and his mouth became dry. The
single white space of the column stuck out like a missing tooth, with colors
inverted to reveal a white gap against black text. He glanced at the subject
line of the anonymous message.

“won’t
be ignored”

Drew’s hand
shook and he looked over his shoulder, convinced that someone in the office
would think he was surfing porn on the company dime. He began mumbling to
himself and the hot salsa he had with lunch whispered at the top of his throat.

“Sticking
around?”

Drew jumped and
minimized the e-mail client. He turned to look at the source of the question,
his pupils dilated and his lip curled into a menacing snarl.

“Don’t think
it’s any of your business,” he muttered.

The woman
shrugged and rolled her eyes before pulling the glass door of the main lobby
and heading toward the elevator. Drew did not recognize the woman because they
all looked the same. The gaggle of newly turned thirty-somethings with
highlighted hair and foundation-filled crow’s feet on their faces never ceased
to annoy the shit out of him. He despised their sexual freedom and lack of true
responsibility. They could go out on a Tuesday night, drink, fuck, and call off
work in the morning. They could spend Saturday mornings watching cartoons and
eating double-chocolate-chip ice cream for breakfast. They could “weekend in
Vegas.”

Fucking
slut.

He waited for
the door to swing shut and looked around the office. One man at the far end of
the floor stood and grabbed his coat from the rack. At the other end, another
waning vixen touched up her mascara in the blackness of a powered-down computer
monitor.

Drew turned
back to his screen and restored his e-mail client. His eyes drifted toward the
middle of the page, in the vicinity of the anonymous e-mail with a cryptic
subject. He clicked on the message and the body started to load an image. Like
the last one from the anonymous sender, the lines filled the screen one at a
time, from the top down. There were no greetings in the body, no words, no
generic signature tacked on mindlessly by the sender’s program. The entire body
of the e-mail was a message that loaded like flowing honey.

The blinking
cursor stopped underneath the picture. It teased him with its constant motion. Drew
felt the punch of the image before he even saw it. The screen stole his breath
and singed his sinus cavities like campfire smoke. He coughed and choked,
reaching for a bottle of water on his desk. Drew started shaking his head as he
tried to will the image out of existence.

The picture had
the grainy detail of one taken from a distance with a zoom lens. The greens
looked fuzzy and the blue washed out the rest of the color. Drew would have
recognized the park in his neighborhood in the dark. He could feel the wood
chips under his feet while sitting at his desk.

Drew put a hand
over his face. He saw the swing set, the stainless-steel slide, and the wooden
jungle gym. Children sat in the eternal stillness of the photo in various poses
of innocence. Drew’s mind skimmed past the ponytails and white athletic shoes
until they fixated on a certain ponytail and a certain athletic shoe. Molly’s
face anchored the photograph, her mouth open in a wide smile with the
neighbor’s wife standing next to her. The photographer captured the three most
important things in Drew’s life with one shot. He thought it must be the type
of photographs pedophiles use when they cannot find a victim, the kind of
photograph that would end up covered in semen on the floor of a bathroom in a
filthy hotel.

Drew printed
the message and grabbed his car keys. He knew the e-mail was a warning, a shot
across the bow, but he did not want to take that chance. Drew left the office
with a trail of papers following his sprinting form.

***

Mashoka
squinted and waved a hand at Ravna as if the device had summoned a cloud of
gnats that threatened to infiltrate his nostrils.

“The web has
been around for decades. Quit pretending you don’t know what it is.”

Mashoka
grumbled.

“Unless you
have a better way of tracking Gaki’s appearances in the last few decades? Maybe
you can call all the Hunters in North America?”

Mashoka
grumbled again.

“That’s what I
thought. Should we start looking at this content, or bring the search down to
the region?”

The old man sat
still, staring at Ravna and his wicked tool.

“Let’s start
with the region.”

Ravna’s hands
glided across the keyboard and his eyes shifted back and forth between them and
the screen. His tongue curled out of the corner of his mouth and retreated like
a lizard prowling for an insect. Mashoka sat still.

“Uh-huh,” Ravna
said. “Yep.”

Mashoka pushed
his frail frame into a standing position. He grabbed the edge of the plastic
lid on the laptop and closed it. Ravna turned with both hands in the air, searching
for a word strong enough to repel Mashoka but not offend the old man.

“Shit!”

“Tongue of Satan,”
replied Mashoka.

A few of the
patrons in the café turned to look at the minor altercation, but not long
enough to remove their ear buds or to lower their book.

“Fine. We’ll do
it your way.”

“There is only
one way and it belongs to no one.”

Ravna rolled
his eyes and followed Mashoka to a table in the corner, farthest from the
counter and the bustle of the busy coffee shop.

“You know
nothing of Gaki.”

“I know. That’s
why I’m online looking it up.”

Mashoka closed
his eyes. He folded his arms over his chest and drew long breaths followed by
steady exhalations. Ravna pulled his phone from his pocket and touched the
screen until the time showed on the digital version of a classic clock face.

“Put that
away,” Mashoka said without opening his eyes.

Ravna leaned in
and waved a hand back and forth in front of Mashoka’s face.

“You rely too
much on your physical senses, young man. It is why you depend so heavily on the
plastic trappings of culture. Quiet your soul.”

In a final
display of slight inconvenience, Ravna turned his phone off. He shoved the
laptop into his messenger bag and closed the flap over it. He looked at Mashoka
like a man with fifteen items in the ten-items-or-less lane.

“You may keep
your eyes open, but I will not. I need to reach back to recount the story, and
I cannot do it with the hundreds of distractions in the room.”

“Count on it. If
you have your eyes closed they might think you’re dead. If we both do, they’d
call the cops.”

Mashoka ignored
the bawdy comment and drew a deep breath before continuing.

“I was only a
boy, but you don’t forget the vile memories of war.”

“Really? The
hyperbole.”

Mashoka grunted
and then stopped.

“Okay. Sorry. I’ll
shut up and let you tell it.”

The old man
paused and, once sure he would not be interrupted again, continued the story.

“Most of the
villages hailed the American GIs as heroes. The Emperor had committed us all to
death and we would keep our honor. But when the Marines started landing on the
islands, we secretly welcomed the chance to be released from the oath our
leader made on our behalf.

“My mother
chased me into the jungle when we heard the planes. They sounded like the
dragons of the ancients. Most of the elders in the village pulled their hair
and wailed into the nighttime fires. I would wait until nightfall, or until the
sound of machine guns ceased. The Americans feared the jungle, especially the
snakes, and would not march through it after sunset. Most nights I came back
along a trail that led through the valley and to the next village. Sometimes I
crawled through the heavy brush towards the light of the fire, challenging
myself with a game of youth. Had I stayed on the trail that night, I never
would have met Gaki.

“The cave stood
on the ridge and most children in the village explored until the daylight was
swallowed by it. Parents warned the children of the evil gods living under the
mountain, that they would rise during the day to feast on the flesh of youth before
receding at night. It was damp, dark, and dangerous. Sinkholes dropped people
without warning. An elder sister of my friend became lost to us a few weeks
prior and I had no desire to become the next. But the noises coming from the
cave that night drew me in like a moth to the flame.”

“Can I have the
version without clichés?” Ravna asked.

Mashoka ignored
the interruption. “It sounded like children whispering. I heard voices but
could not decipher the conversation. My feet pulled me closer to the gaping maw
until I stood on the threshold. It was then that I realized I could not turn
back. I caught a word or two of English, not enough to translate them. The
timbre of the voices led me to believe it was an argument. No, a disagreement. I
saw a flicker of light on the wall and realized a torch was lit wherever the
conversation was taking place. I told myself I could go that far, thinking the
two engaged in a tussle would have been captured by the mountain gods already
and that I did not have that to fear.

“I used my hand
to guide my way towards the voices as the light from that torch had not
cascaded out very far. The tunnel of the cavern twisted and turned, bringing
the voices closer with each step. The tunnel spun, and there I stood in a
chamber-like room, deep in the cavern spurned by our elders. The darkness
inside rivaled that of the jungle, and American Marines with machine guns
routinely camped in the caves to escape the night. I was scared to step into
the cavern and yet more frightened to try and get home when there were clearly
Americans nearby.

“I hid behind a
rock that helped to shield me but got me close enough to hear a more nuanced
version of the disagreement. The voices went from quick, staccato bursts to
long, drawn-out soliloquies that I still could not understand. I misjudged the
tone of the conversation as adversarial. It felt more like two old friends enraptured
by a debate that would not be solved in their lifetime.

“I began to
lose interest in the adult conversation, taking place in a tongue of which I
knew but a handful of words.”

“Refill?”

The young man
stood next to Ravna, speaking the word at him but staring at Mashoka. The boy
strained his neck to see if the old man was still breathing.

“We’re fine.”

The boy stood
for another moment until the bell on the door rang and he was forced to go back
behind the counter and sling another caffè latte.

Before Ravna
could tell Mashoka that the boy was gone, he picked up right where he left off.

“It was then
that I heard the noises. They sounded like dogs tearing at rancid flesh thrown
into the dirt, but more methodic and patient. As I was trying to determine why
dogs might be part of this conversation deep in the cursed cave at night, the
odor drenched me. I gagged and covered my mouth, fearful of revealing my
position. The smell crawled into my mouth. I could taste the bitter darkness
through my nose. The air felt desecrated and I struggled to keep it from
entering my lungs. My stomach could not control things any longer and I lunged
back towards the tunnel to vomit. The hot liquid ran down the wall silently,
which I hoped would prevent my discovery. The odor felt slimy, as if it would
penetrate me and cover me in the filth.

“I stepped back
to the rock and took another step to the right. I had to identify the
mysterious noises and put an eye on the source of the horrid smell.”

“They’re
closing in fifteen minutes, Mashoka. I’m not trying to rush you, but we’re
already getting looks from the crew of teenagers behind the counter that have
texted the night’s plans to their buddies outside.”

The old man
nodded and opened his eyes. He shook the vision from his shirt along with the
crumbs of the biscotti they enjoyed when they first entered the café.