Out of the Shadows (29 page)

Lurking in front of them was a hideous four-legged beast with ripped, bloody skin stretched too tightly over her bony frame. The piercing eyes targeted Charise, and the beast let forth a mighty screech that chilled the blood in their veins.

Henry Robert London stares at the bloody, skeletal, feline beast in front of them, its eyes fixated on Charise. He marvels at the taut, rippling muscles that launch the creature into the air, a predatory jungle horror leaping over the couch toward its prey. As it soars toward them, he sees it open its mouth to let out a bone-tingling shriek. He sees Charise put her arms up and let out a scream of terror, yet he hears nothing. His senses are limited.

Next to her, Tom wraps his arms around Charise and makes an effort to dive to the ground. The beast flexes its fierce claws mid-flight, nearing its mark. With one powerful swing, the beast’s arm swipes forward, lacerating Charise’s juicy, dark neck, sending blood rocketing through the air. The swipe effortlessly slices through bone. Her detached head soars across the room, the face frozen in wide-eyed terror.

Henry watches in horror as the beast casts Charise’s body to the side and begins mauling Tom, now on the floor. Tom reaches up to him, pleading to be saved as his jugular vein is torn from his throat. Henry stands, frozen, watching the gleam in Tom’s eyes slowly become dull, his hand flopping lifelessly to the ground beside him.

The beast slowly turns its head toward Henry, mandible dripping with gore. The beady eyes consider him, and then the creature turns and walks out of the door behind him.

He stares at the carnage at his feet, still unable to move, unable to act. Like always.

A man once asked, “What atonement is there for blood spilt upon the earth?” Henry had believed there was none, but not to
try
to achieve it implied a lack of guilt, or heartlessness. And Henry felt immensely guilty – for
everything
that had transpired this night – and his heart was painfully heavy. In this moment, he realized the journey toward atonement would not begin with inaction.

He shook away his mind’s vision of the slaughter of Charise and now looked at her, standing next to him, holding her injured side and gazing at the beast in front of them. He saw Tom, trying to breathe with a broken rib, slowly backing away. He observed what used to be his friend Karen but now had morphed into the stuff of nightmares.

Henry’s clothes were still damp and uncomfortable, chilling his body. Morbid or not, he had always imagined his own death being far more comfortable than this. Perhaps while lying in a warm room on a cozy couch, like the one that used to be in his father’s den at home, a feeling of contentment enveloping his heart.

Not at all like this.

Charise shot a quick glance to Henry and noticed the way in which he was looking at her, sadness in his eyes. “What, Child?!”

He placed a hand on her arm, a bittersweet smile of acceptance crossing his lips. “I’m sorry for everything.” He noticed the beast leaning back on its haunches, preparing to pounce and make his horrible daydream come true.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said.

Henry knew that there was no more time for words. His heart filled with regret that he would not get to see his father one more time, but this was what needed to be done. His journey toward atonement began here. He squeezed her shoulder, and then he ran –
toward
the beast – leaping over the couch between them, diving through the air onto the creature.

“Henry!”
Charise started toward him, but Tom yanked her back.

The beast’s legs gave out from the sudden weight of the man atop it. It howled and flailed, flinging him across the room. He crashed into the wall and fell to the ground, quickly picking himself up.

The beast, now furious with the boy, had turned its attention away from the rotund woman and now was focused on the person that had ruined its kill. Henry looked up at Charise and Tom at the other end of the room, starting to regret his foolish actions. He pointed at the door behind them and yelled,
“Go!”

As the monster leapt toward Henry, he dashed out of the room from where the beast had entered, hearing it collide with the wall where he’d been only a second before. With a spine-tingling screech of fury, it charged after him.

*     *     *

“Henry!”
Charise called out as the door closed behind the beast at the other end of the room. “Henry…” she called again, a small whimper escaping her lips.

Tom gritted his teeth through the pain of his ribs and placed his arms around the grieving woman, who cried softly as he held her. He glanced down at his watch. “We’re out of here in thirty minutes,” he said to her quietly. “Let’s go find someplace safe until then.”

Charise pushed herself away. “We gotta go help him!” And she marched across the room in pursuit.

“Charise, stop!”

She obeyed but didn’t turn to face him. The building shook violently again, the storm outside still raging. The amber emergency lights in the employee lounge lent oppressiveness that weighed upon them.

He continued, “Henry may have just sacrificed his life to save you, and you want to repay that by charging after him into danger?”

She slowly turned and wiped some tears from her cheeks.

Tom thought about the implications of what had just taken place. “What happens if he dies?”

Charise thought for a moment, becoming overwhelmed with
what-ifs
. “I don’t know,” she admitted, holding back her frustration. “This ain’t how this was s’pose to go.”

“But it’s how it went. And now we need to deal with it. I’ve stuck with you every step of the way, but I think we can both agree things have changed.” Tom had known Charise long enough to know that she wasn’t about to admit she was wrong, but he knew she wasn’t against reason either. “It’s time to let Henry take care of himself.”

Charise seceded her stubbornness and headed the other way, toward the door behind Tom. With annoyance in her tone, she spat, “When we get out of here, first beer’s on you.”

Tom smiled as he turned and joined her, leaving through the door behind them and out of the lounge, very much looking forward to that ice-cold drink.

*     *     *

“Come on, you son-of-a-bitch!” Henry taunted the beast down the hallway, ensuring it would continue to follow him. Having accepted his fate, he was less terrified now, but that didn’t mean waves of adrenaline weren’t crashing through his body. He shook with anticipation, and as the creature launched itself through the air, growling in anger, Henry dove down another length of hallway, picking himself up and continuing ahead.

As he turned another corner, he slipped and fell to the ground, and the beast hurtled toward its prone prey. He rolled to the side just as the thing landed where he had been. He thrust his elbow at its head, disorienting it as he sprang to his feet.

He started to run down the hallway but suddenly felt searing pain in his calf, followed by the warmth of blood gushing down into his shoe. The beast had swiped and sliced his leg.

For the first time since he’d left the lounge, he panicked. He knew he was spry and could probably avoid the beast running and dodging, but now he’d been crippled. He limped as quickly as his leg would allow. Blinding pain wracked his body with every step as the beast slowly rose to its four feet, knowing its prey had been critically injured.

With as much as the hospital shook from the storm’s exterior assault, he wasn’t sure whether he preferred to be in it or outside. But a staggering vibration went through the floor so fiercely that a huge crack when up the drywall to his left, and dust fell from the cork ceiling slats above. It was like a small earthquake had rattled the asylum’s foundation.

The beast trotted casually behind him, toying with its injured specimen. Henry limped more quickly, and the thing followed suit. Faster and faster he hopped down the hall, the creature gradually gaining on him.

He turned the corner up ahead and quickly yanked the small fire extinguisher from the wall. He pivoted on his good foot, pulled the trigger, and sprayed the can’s contents into the beast’s eyes. It howled in either pain or frustration – or both – and slipped on the foam forming below its talons. Once the can was empty, Henry violently threw it at the creature, bouncing it off of its bloody feline skull.

As Henry turned to continue hobbling down the hall for his life, he feared he might have only pissed the thing off. Soon it would stop playing this game and would simply attack.

Up ahead, he entered the vestibule that housed the circular security station that allowed access to the three patient wings.

“Henry?” came a stuttered voice to his right.

“What are you still doing here?!” he said to the security guard.

“I… I… I couldn’t… because… what’s happe—?” And in a blink, a fountain of blood spewed into the air where the guard’s head had been a moment before, the monster landing on the other side of the security station with grace.

Henry hollered from shock, his face becoming smattered with thick, crimson goo. He ran behind the security console to put distance between himself and the beast formerly known as Karen.

The thing paced, stalking Henry, its beady eyes never blinking. The building rumbled again, more violently than ever before, causing a few of the ceiling slats to fall to the tiled floor. Henry looked up at the security screens, and his brain itched with an idea that could possibly save his life, at the cost of many others.

Kill or be killed, right?

As he pushed one of the buttons on the console, he made a mental list of the new things for which he would have to atone. He heard the lock behind him hiss and click, releasing itself. Slowly, he limped backward toward the door, keeping eye contact with Karen.

He reached behind him with his hand and felt the cold metal handle of the door. The beast cocked its head, curious about the nature of his strange behavior, but it quickly decided it was bored and sprang into the air.

Henry madly yanked the handle, swinging the door open as the beast flew into the threshold. The instant the creature had landed, he quickly pushed it closed until he heard it latch. He slipped on the guard’s blood making his way back to the console, but he managed to slam his hand down onto the button that re-engaged the door’s locking mechanism.

He felt a small pang of guilt at having locked the beast inside The Alley, although he wasn’t sure if he felt more sorry for the monster or the inmates.

Henry stared down at the headless body of the security guard, noticing the nametag: “Stanley.” The pool of blood under him grew more massive with every second. “I’m sorry, Stanley,” he offered. Whether Stanley would have accepted the apology, he’d never know.

“Charise!” he called out, hearing his voice echo down the empty catacombs. “Can you hear me?” He wanted to make sure she was safe; who knew if there might be more of those beasts lurking about?

He limped from behind the console, taking care to step over Stanley’s body, and headed back in the direction he’d come. When the floor began shuddering softly, he stopped. He was beginning to think the storm had nothing to do with the rumbling.
Lightning doesn’t cause earthquakes
, he reasoned.

The ground trembled, shaking more fiercely than ever before. It became difficult to remain balanced. So violently the hospital shook, the walls filling with cracks, dust raining down from above.

Behind him, a large chunk of ceiling buckled and fell to the floor on top of Stanley’s body. Huge bits of the walls crumbled in on themselves. It felt as though the whole building were about to collapse.

Henry heard a low, muffled, rumble growing in intensity as the building reached the pinnacle of its quaking. He braced himself for everything to come toppling down.

Suddenly, the door to his right burst open, tearing itself from its hinges and sending it tumbling end over end through the air, a massive torrent of wind exhaling from the hall into the vestibule. And from that great gust echoed a magnified, booming, god-like voice that bellowed,
“Heeeennnrrryyyyy!”

Then everything went still. He stood stricken with fear, staring at the now-open hallway that he’d traversed on numerous occasions, the reverberations from the phantom voice still shaking in his bone marrow.

It was the voice of his father.

The golden warmth of sunlight beams down upon Henry’s vibrant face. He is eight years old, his dark curly hair barely hanging in his eyes. He soars through the air and back again, feeling the solid hand of his loving father behind him, pushing him toward the sky on the swing. He laughs joyously.

On a nearby wooden bench, his mother sits watching, smiling, her white sundress flowing in the breeze. She is absolutely radiant.

They are surrounded by majestic sycamore trees with emerald leaves, content to undulate with the soft air current. Henry giggles with glee, but he quickly realizes that something isn’t right with this perfect personal park.

Henry pulled himself out of his memory, a strange feeling in the back of his brain that something was off. An incessant ping on the top of his head.
What is that?
he wondered. He stepped and noticed a drip of water rhythmically splashing to the floor onto a single, green, five-fingered sycamore leaf.

He looked up to see that he was standing below a section of ceiling where the cork slats had fallen to the ground, and weaving through the duct above was a giant tree branch, dripping with wetness. He marveled that the outside storm had grown so powerful that it had forced nature unwillingly through the air vents.

One of the cracks in the wall from the most recent mysterious quake also housed a leafy protrusion that reached into the security vestibule. The building swayed and shook with rumblings, a slight breeze filling the air around him. He almost felt as though he were outside and not in a hospital, staring through the ominous open door into the claustrophobic hallway that led to his father.

For a moment, he had forgotten the terrible pain in his calf, but now the stinging returned with a vengeance. His heart raced, and his limbs began to tremble. The boom of his father’s voice that had whistled down the wind was still rattling his nerves. He yearned to run the other way, to find and help Charise. But deep within, he knew that helping her wasn’t why he wanted to run.

Henry took one shaky step toward the open hall, his body following the intense magnetic pull of whatever lurked on the other side of the threshold.

Jus’ take it one step at a time, Child,
he heard Charise say in his mind. He knew that he was taking a far-too-literal interpretation of her advice, but nonetheless, he stepped forward, crossing into the hallway.

As he entered hell, he quickly turned around, expecting the door to slam shut, trapping him and preventing his escape. When nothing of the sort occurred, he took a deep breath and continued down the sickly, yellowed hall.

He hated the fact that walking through the building toward his father’s room felt like a death march. He limped past the first patient’s door, but it was no longer a door; it was a window, and in this window was a memory, and this memory showed Mother and Father clapping excitedly, urging baby Henry to continue from his first step as an infant.

The next door seemed to morph into a window as well, and it contained the familiar memory in his father’s den, his young self bouncing happily on his father’s knee with his mother smiling behind them.

Next, he saw his jovial father consoling his weeping mother as little Henry ran down the sidewalk, a too-big book bag slung over his shoulder, attending his first day of school.

Memories flooded his mind, threatening to explode from him in a sea of tears.

As he turned the corner ahead, the floor shook. Henry froze, bringing his mind back to the dim hallway. The windows of memories were doors once again, locked with a keypad and thumbprint scanner as they always had been.

Suddenly, the floor violently shattered and raised with a startling massive quake, flinging him into the air before falling back into place. He landed on his back with a thud and quickly sat up, wide-eyed. He watched in horror as the walls cracked, great chunks falling to the ground, the building shuddering fiercely, like it were coming alive.

He clenched his jaw to hide the pain in his leg as he jumped to his feet. Gusts of wind tunneled down the hallway coming from nowhere, blasting into his face. Great hunks of the ceiling above him broke away and were sucked upward into the stormy sky, like an unseen tornado had been tearing the building to bits. Lightning electrified the blackness above as a torrent of rain cascaded through the open roof and into the hallway.

Henry ran.

He sprinted down the hall continuing toward his father’s room, not knowing how many more pounding steps his injured leg would allow him to take. The storm seemed to follow him as the walls continued collapsing and the ceiling broke apart, as if God himself needed an appropriate view of the disaster unfolding within the asylum.

He dodged chunks of drywall falling into his path and leapt over the upheaval of floor tiles all around him. Sycamore leaves slapped into his face, the hands of nature reaching out to subdue him. He took a faulty step and slipped on the slick, rain-covered tile, sliding on his back into the wall ahead.

The nerves in his calf sent searing agony through his body, but he couldn’t stop. He was so close to his father’s room!

He picked himself up from the slippery ground and halted. In front of him, a great chasm formed as the ground rumbled and cracked, slowly growing wider.

Should I jump? Turn back? What if I—? Stop thinking for once, and just go!

Henry took a running start, reached the edge of the chasm, and jumped as hard as he could. Perhaps with both of his legs intact, he could have made it. But as it were, he felt the pit in his stomach grow deeper in mid-flight as he saw that he would come up short and crash into the never-ending blackness of the gaping chasm.

He stretched his arms as far as they would go and felt his palms make contact with the tile’s edge in front of him. His body slammed into the rocky face, and one of his hands lost its grip on the wet tile above.

Dangling over the black pit of madness, he flailed his arms and legs, but he managed to right himself once more, grasping the ledge again with his free hand. Upper body strength had never been his forte, but in spite of the quaking, the wind, and the violent storm crashing through the crumbling ceiling into the hospital, he held his breath and hoisted himself up onto the slick floor.

Returning to his feet, he continued down the hallway, racing against something he knew not of, where the reward for winning would be survival. A tree stump shattered the wall to his right, knocking him off balance, but he continued on.

The hospital was collapsing all around him, and yet the only thing on his mind was what lay at the end of the labyrinth of hallways. “Father, I’m coming!” he called out, knowing that there was no way
anyone
could have heard him over the din of the storm and the mournful cries of the dying building.

Where the walls actually remained, they were spattered with wet leaves, the sterile white hallway now a jungle of madness. Henry struggled to keep his balance as the world shifted, and the floor behind him fell away into the darkness below, prohibiting any kind of retreat. He rounded the corner ahead leading to his father’s room and slid to a halt.

He first saw Tom, sitting with his back to the wall in a pool of blood, his eyes wide and his breathing far too rapid. And standing right outside of his father’s door was Charise, a bloody knife pressed against her throat, held by a man clad in filthy orange clothes, a thrilling sneer of bloodlust across his disgusting, stubbled face.

Crazy Gary Shorno.

“Henry!” Charise called out, but Gary pressed the knife into her skin to muzzle her.

He felt a twinge in his brain when he saw this repulsive man. He recognized him, had heard gruesome stories of the hideous feats he’d performed. He was nauseated by everything this man embodied.

“Let her go!” Henry tried to sound forceful over the sound of the raging weather. The ground shook, and the storm unloaded its fury on the penitentiary.

Gary smiled devilishly. “No, I don’t think I will.”

Henry wasn’t accustomed to encounters such as this and therefore wasn’t sure how to proceed. He was good at gathering data, though. “How did you get out of The Alley?”

Gary chuckled to himself with an air of arrogance, suggesting that he knew many things that Henry did not. “I can’t reveal my secrets.”

Henry had already grown frustrated with the vocal exchange, and it had barely begun. “Why are you doing this? Just let her go!”

His gnarled, toothy grin widened in defiance.

Charise cried out, “Forget me, Henry! Robert needs you!”

Earlier in the night, when he’d decided to cowardly leave the asylum, Charise had said something that had stuck with him.
I ain’t no coward when the people I care about need me
, she had said. It was because of her that he now stood his ground.

“I said ‘let her go.’”

“Henry!” Charise protested.

He proclaimed, “I’m not a coward!”

She knew to what he referred, and she closed her eyes and sighed in defeat.

Gary laughed, getting much amusement from the heartfelt exchange. “There’s so much going on that you don’t understand, ‘Li’l Bobby.’” He mocked Charise’s nickname as he said it.

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

The evil man snickered, not intending to answer. “I’ll tell you what: you let me gut
you
like a catfish, and I promise not to slit this bitch’s throat.”

Charise pleaded again. “Please, Child.” Desperation filled her eyes now, as if this meant more to her than it did to him. “Forget me; go to your father.”

Henry glanced at the door to his father’s room, so close yet so far away. The cacophony of rain, wind, lightning, and crumbling concrete made it difficult to think through his options logically. His heart pounded, and his leg throbbed. He was so exhausted and weary. He had already accepted his fate once tonight when he lured the deformed skeletal beast away from the lounge, so when he looked at Gary and said, “Deal, now let her go,” his heart barely skipped a beat.

“Henry, no!”
cried Charise.

Gary grinned evilly as he removed the blood-crusted shiv from the woman’s throat. He quickly spun her around to face him and jammed the weapon deep into her gut, her eyes wide with horror at the betrayal.

“Charise!”
Henry started toward them.

Gary pushed her to the ground next to Tom and brought the blade up in front of him to stave off the trusting fool.

Henry, fiery tears in his eyes, cried, “We had a deal!”

“The deal was that I wouldn’t slit her throat.”

“You asshole!” And without thinking, Henry recklessly charged at Gary.

Tom and Charise sat, propped against the wall, slowly but surely dying as the two men fought with the ferocity of rabid animals. Henry punched Gary’s face, knocking out a tooth. Blood flew through the air as Gary retaliated, kneeing Henry in the crotch. Henry pulled him to the ground and the two wrestled, punching, clawing, elbowing, drawing blood and blackening eyes.

Tom slowly tried to get up to help, but Charise reached out her blood-soaked hand and clutched Tom’s. He weakly turned to look at her.

“He needs… to do this,” she mustered between gasps. Tom seemed unsure about heeding her words, so she continued, her lip quivering, “Please don’t leave me.”

Tom looked down at his watch, his face growing paler by the second. “It’s… almost time,” he said with an air of hope in a hopeless scenario.

Charise smiled, trying to hide the fear of their inevitable fate. “Right.”

Gary’s knife flew through the air and landed on the ground. Henry elbowed him in the face and quickly crawled toward the blade, but Gary pounded his fist down onto Henry’s sliced calf.

He howled in pain as Gary clamored over him, going for the prone weapon. Both of their faces were bloody to the point where no one knew whose blood was whose. Henry grabbed Gary’s foot, slipping in the pool of goo that poured from his friends. He reached forward and managed to thrust Gary’s face into the wet tile, stunning him for a moment, hearing his nose cartilage crackle.

Henry reached over him, snatched up the knife and painfully jumped to his feet, ready for Gary’s retaliation.

The crazy criminal scrambled to his feet and turned to Henry, the two facing each other for their final showdown. Suddenly, Gary glanced behind Henry and straightened as his eyes grew wide with terror, and he slowly started backing away.

“Henry…” Charise coughed and pointed weakly behind him.

The ground rumbled as sheets of rain crashed onto the tiled floor from missing chunks of ceiling, and Henry turned to see the thing he had hoped never to see again. Bloody, bony, and beast-like, the sleek creature flexed its talons, ready to have the fun it earlier had been denied.