The Reunion
(She Had Been Beside Him All Along, But He Had Never Seen Her.)
Natalie had closed her eyes and ran. It was all she could think to do. With her eyes tightly shut, she could deceive herself into thinking it was nothing but her imagination. But there were still the sounds: the wet slap of her feet on the carpet and the coppery stench of fresh blood.
She slammed into the door at the end of the corridor and groped for the handle. Praying it would turn and praying that the door would not stick firmly in its surroundings. She twisted it. It did turn. She pulled it. It swung free. Moments later, she could only hear the echoes of her feet hitting the concrete. It was cold in the stairwell, and though she could no longer hear the scratching sounds of the nails on the walls she could not will her eyes to reopen.
She clutched Matty to her like a shield. She was no longer sure who was protecting whom. She could still hear the chattering of things behind the door. The thick wood muted the creatures but could not silence them. Their claws screeched across the wire-strengthened glass and made sounds that almost formed words, but still defied her ability to understand their meaning.
Natalie opened her eyes and ran up the steps until she could no longer see the door. She could still see shifting shadows. Gradually they slowed until there was nothing there and she could fool herself into believing it was all just a trick of the mind.
She breathed in long deep breaths; willing her heart to stop its frantic pounding. The sound of it filled her ears and seemed to reverberate off the concrete walls. She clutched Matty tighter and buried her head into his shoulder. It had been a nightmare from the moment she opened the door to the second floor. Something had been torn apart and lay twitching in the middle of the corridor, and she thought that it would be the worst of it until she saw why it had been so messily dispatched. Around it were little splashes of black that she first thought to be patches of torn clothing until they began to move, and then her eyes refused to make sense of what she was seeing.
No two creatures were the same, few were even alike in the broadest sense. Five-legged things scampered along the walls, while something with a hundred eyes and no legs blinked at her before rolling slowly in her direction.
Natalie shrieked, her throat tearing as she hit a register it could no longer maintain. The sound broke in her throat, and she couldn’t make another. Barbed wire pain ripped through her throat as she swallowed. As the tears welled she willed herself not to sob, knowing the pain would be a downward spiral.
The door to the next floor loomed above. The walls around it were deep in shadow. Natalie tore it open and continued to run. The shadow followed at her heels. Dark hooks of fingertips clutched at her ankles. They grasped as the woman moved. Reaching out for the next step, its fingertips brushed through the air half a second after she vacated it. The shadow climbed one wall, descending on the spot she ran through, then scaled the other. An observer might have seen their joy in the gloom, a playfulness at the woman’s fright.
The woman saw no playfulness, she could not see that shadow at all, all she could feel was horror nipping at her heels. It drove her through the corridor, turning every glimmer into gnashing teeth. The child in her arms was heavy but the fear kept her strong. She hit the next door and wrenched it open. The next stairwell was still and silent and somewhere inside she knew that though she may experience something between those concrete walls it would not be as bad as what appeared on the floors themselves.
The moment the door closed the energy drained from her limbs and she felt them tremble beneath her. Her leaden arms could barely hold her child and they remained wrapped around him by her will alone.
Her feet were unfeeling lumps as they wobbled on the steps. Her knees threatened to buckle with each step. It would not be much farther, she promised herself, it couldn’t be. If it were much further her legs would no longer carry her, and the things she knew lurked in the darkness would creep closer, and closer still until she would feel their teeth hooking into her flesh. But that would not be the worst of it. As the teeth sank into her, she would be more and more helpless, and she would be able to do nothing more than watch as they advanced on her sleeping child.
She shifted Matty’s weight to her other shoulder and stumbled as her balance was thrown off kilter, her shoulder hitting the wall. She followed the stairs, only barely aware of her actions. She only knew she had to continue moving until she reached her destination. There would be safety at her destination, there had to be.
She moved through the door to the top floor without being aware of it. Her feet sank into the undergrowth, and the wind cut through her. The branches over her rattled like loose rib bones from the remains of hung men. But Natalie was aware of none of it. All she knew was somewhere in front of her was a place she could stop, and finally rest.
Matty felt something, but he wasn’t sure what it was. The phrase, “something walking over my grave,” popped into his head. It was a phrase that had always scared him. He didn’t want to think of his grave, and the thought of being aware of someone walking on it struck horror into him.
The figure that hung in the air as if in mid-fall drifted towards them faster. Each pulse of light from the rip in the air over the circle of robed figures pushed the figure in bursts. Charlie was huddled beside the boy, Lucas kneeling with a look of utter amazement. Charlie’s face was filled with joy. Lucas looked at Matty, shaking his head as if trying to shake away cobwebs.
Matty’s attention was not on them, it was on the figure as it flew closer to where Matty stood, its back was to him, but as it grew closer its details became more apparent. Then the sickly blue pulse of light burst and the figure became a silhouette. Matty grabbed it, catching a handful of cloth and dragging the figure down. As he touched it, its weight returned and it fell, completing its descent to the ground next to the boy. The figure groaned and rolled to break its fall, and then Matty saw the man’s face. It was his face staring back at himself thirty years from the future. It was his father.
Ryan coughed and sucked in the air the fall had driven out of him. He hadn’t noticed his son staring at him, or Penny who lay unconscious on the floor beside a man and a little girl. For the moment he knew nothing but the sudden gravity that pulled at painful limbs. He looked back at the light and saw himself standing there. He could still see the resemblance to himself, but he could also see it was no longer him. What had taken his body had transformed it into something else, another person, perhaps even another creature entirely. Ryan tried to push himself to his feet but his exhausted legs would not hold him, he folded like a house of cards into a tangle of limbs.
Matty pulled at the man’s shoulder, and he turned over onto his back. Their eyes met but for the briefest moment, his father didn’t see him. Then recognition hit, and it hit the man hard. His eyes grew wide and a sound escaped him like a gasp of amazement.
“Dad?” Matty said, but the word was drowned by the thump of sound that accompanied the light strobe. Nearby Matty saw that Lucas was standing hand in hand with Charlie, his eyes moving from the pulsing blue light to the spot where Matty’s father had fallen.
“Matty?” Ryan replied, but Matty didn’t hear his name, but he knew his father could have only said one thing. The boy nodded and smiled, moving closer. Ryan wrapped his arms around his son and squeezed. None of it mattered now. Ryan didn’t care and neither did his son. The anger had drained from him, and as the thought entered his mind his eyes moved to the figure that looked like him but was nothing like him.
The jagged sick blue rip in the air tore wider with a car crash screech. The shadows inside it intensified. They frantically swept back and forth, thrashing at the doorway created for them. Lucas backed away from it, pulling Charlie along with him.
“Is that happening now?” Matty screamed over the noise. “Is this something that has happened, or is it happening now?”
Ryan shook his head, he didn’t know. Part of what he had witnessed was the past, but he couldn’t tell what belonged then and what was theirs to change. He thought of the rage he had carried with him for so many years. His outbursts had driven everyone away, and though they were his responsibility, he wondered if they belonged in the past or were ever solely his.
“I don’t know,” he screamed, “but we have to do something.”
Greta woke. She swam towards his shout through her pain. It clawed at her, the darkness was molten tar. It burned as it drew her in. Greta fought against it and pushed forward. She opened her eyes but then closed them against the foul blue light that washed over them. It turned her stomach. She put an arm against her chest, she could feel that something there had broken, but if she breathed shallowly she thought the pain could be controlled.
The young woman opened her eyes again, and what she saw struck her to mute amazement. They were on a rooftop, but they weren’t. She could see the faint glimmer of an arched stone roof over their heads, even as she saw the stars through it. They were in the catacombs under the mansion, but they weren’t.
Then she saw something that made her forget everything. Ryan was sprawled next to the boy she had found earlier. They were speaking but Greta couldn’t hear them over the sound of screeching metal. She moved to her side, and then to her knees. Her forearm was pressed to her chest, and her breath caught in her throat. The pain made her head swim. She paused a moment, but only a moment, before pushing to her feet.
Then he saw her, and the pain was forgotten when she saw the look in his eyes. He pushed up and moved to her. His arms wrapped around her before she could warn him and the pain rocketed through her. She screamed and he held her as her legs fell from beneath her.
“My ribs,” she mumbled uselessly. There was no way he could hear her, but he knew. His hand was placed over the one she had on her chest and the pain in his eyes echoed her own. He had no idea he had caused the injury. But then, she wasn’t sure that he had. She saw the figure beside the blue pulsing light. It was recognisable, and then it wasn’t.
“There are two of you,” she said. She thought no one could hear her, she could barely hear herself, but he did hear.
“It seems to be going around,” he replied, looking off into the distance.
A figure stumbled towards them, and in its arms, it carried a child.
“Is that me..?” Matty mumbled.
Greta could see it was the woman who had attacked her earlier, the boy’s mother, Ryan’s wife. She stumbled as if at any moment she would fall into a heap. She could see no wounds on the woman, but she still looked as though she’d been through a war. Greta moved towards her, and Ryan followed with the boy moving ahead of them.
For the moment Lucas could not tell his up from his down, or his right from his left. All he could think was that his sister was back and he wished the noise would end so he could speak with her. Then he had sought out the source of the hideous sound, and even the presence of his sister could not dampen his terror.
The portal was opening, and the demented armies trapped on the other side were clawing to get through, and he had no idea what to do about it. It wasn’t just a disembodied spirit to exorcise. It wasn’t something that had been forgotten it had once been a person. What writhed on the other side of that portal had never been human, and it despised anything that even resembled a child of God.
The sound ripped through the world again, and Lucas backed away from the sickening light. Charlotte tried to pull him towards it, but he fought her, and now he was the bigger sibling. She was shouting, but he couldn’t hear her. She pointed at the man standing beside Matty, and then to the light. Her beautiful face was twisted in fear and frustration at her brother’s ignorance, but it did nothing to aid his understanding or dampen his fear. Every cell in his being told him to run, even as his mind asked where his body replied ‘anywhere but here’.
Charlotte was mouthing words to him, carefully speaking them with exaggerated care. It was the same words over and over. Her eyes begged his understanding, and he could tell the frustration and fear at his weakness was killing her.
Then, in a rush, it made sense, and in making sense it drove home that she had not returned to him because she had never gone away. She had been beside him all along but he had never seen her.
“Be strong, Lucas,” She had been saying, over and over, “Be strong, and of good courage.”
He repeated the words to her, carefully shaping his lips with every syllable. He felt the tears well up but fought them back. She had been there all along, a silent and invisible ally. He wondered how many times she had been beside him when he fought the demons of Gatehouse Apartments, as well as the demons he had brought with him, and all the while she had been standing on a knife edge between Earth and Hell.
Be strong, Lucas. He told himself. Be strong, and of good courage. And he allowed her to lead him towards the light.
No one noticed Lucas’ departure, they were all too focused on the new arrival. Matty had moved on ahead while Ryan supported the injured Greta, but all three were making their way towards the approaching figure.
Matty knew the roof could not be large enough for all that was happening on it. If it were supposed to be the roof of the Gatehouse Apartments then it would be nowhere near large enough to have such distance between them, his mother, and the thing behind them.
Matty accepted the absurdity, and he had moved on from it. After fifty episodes of Voltron, the boy was well-primed for accepting the impossible. His feet were moving faster now, and as he neared her he could see an expression on her face that brought sudden concern into his heart.
The boy saw fear as she looked at him, fear of him, not for him. Even as his feet moved faster he could see her approach slowing, hesitating as if she was considering running from her son. As the distance between them diminished Matty felt the same strange feeling wash over him that he had experienced earlier. It was a creeping unnerving sensation that could only be described as someone walking over his grave. The rooftop felt insubstantial beneath him, no more real than a dream, and he knew that it could be the truest thing he had thought about this strange place. He still neared his mother’s staggering form, but he felt as though he was running in place. Even though he saw her getting closer, he felt her growing further away.
The colours around him became muted, and as the scene faded to blinding white Matty’s running form collapsed into an untidy heap.
Ryan screamed when he saw Matty fall. It was so loud that it eclipsed even the demon-infused roar of the portal. Greta screamed as the sound hit her, his roar of anguish struck her like a blow. When he let go of her to run ahead she staggered and almost fell. Her arm pressed against what she knew must be a broken rib.
His feet pounded across the rooftop, but even as he neared the crumpled form of his son he saw that things were going from bad to worse.
Before his very eyes, the boy christened Matthew McMillan faded like a Polaroid photo in reverse. The details of his face became less defined and his skin became pale. The deep blue of the boy’s jeans became stone-washed before the frightened father’s gaze, and slowly what was a boy became a sketch of a boy by a talented artist. Even this faded, breaking down into the rough sketch an artist might draw before that too changed to nothing more than a blank page. Ryan stumbled and fell to his knees, pain shooting up one leg with the impact. He sat back and stared at the nondescript section of the rooftop where his son once lay.