Afterlife. Part 31

A tale of teen alienation at the crossroads of darkness and absolute brotherhood, The Words will get under your skin...and stay with you long after the lights go out.

"Clegg's stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby." -- Dean Koontz.

"Clegg delivers!" -- John Saul

"Douglas Clegg is one of the best!"-- Richard Laymon

"Clegg is the best horror writer of the post-Stephen King generation!" -- Bentley Little

"Clegg is the future of dark fantasy!" -- Sherrilyn Kenyon

THE WORDS.

by Douglas Clegg

"What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being..."

- M.R. James, from "Casting the Runes"

One: The End Is Like This The end is like this: After the last match goes out, he mouths the words to the Our Father, but it brings him no comfort. He remembers The Veil. He remembers the way things moved, and how the sky looked under its influence. He doubts now that a prayer could be answered. He doubts everything he has come to believe about the world.

The echo of the last scream. He can hear it, even though the room is silent. It seems to be in his head now: the final cry.

Hope it's final.

The scream is too seductive, he knows. He understands what's out there. It's attracted to noise, because it doesn't see with its eyes anymore. It sees by smell and sound and vibration. He has begun to think of it by its new name, only he doesn't want to ever say that name out loud. Again.

Your flesh won't forget.

p.r.i.c.kly feeling along the backs of his hands, along his calves. In his mind, he goes through the alphabet, trying to latch onto something he can work around. Something that will give him a jump into remembering the words.

He presses himself against the wall as if it will hide him. Rough stone. No light. Need light. d.a.m.n. He thinks he must be delirious because the goofiest things go through his mind: Mich.e.l.le's phrase, Unfrigginlikely, s.p.a.ceman Mark. Those aren't the words. s.p.a.ceman Mark. Hey, s.p.a.ce! What planet you on today? Planet Dark, that's what I'm on. Planet Midnight.

And out of matches.

The wind dies, momentarily, beyond the cracked window.

The d.a.m.n ticking of the watch. Someone's heartbeat. The sensation of freezing and burning alternately a fever. The sticky feeling under his armpits. The rough feeling of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The interminable waiting. Seconds that become hours in his mind. In those seconds, he is running through sounds in his head the words? What are they? Laiya-oauwraii...no. That's the beginning of the name. Don't say it again. It might call it right to you. You might make it stronger. For all you know. What the h.e.l.l are the words?

He clutches the carved bone in his left hand. It's smooth in his fist. Like ivory, a tusk from some fallen beast. Slight ridges where the words are carved. Like trying to read Braille, only he's never studied. If only I could read them. Need to get light. Some light.

Distracted by the smell.

That would be the first one it got.

Over in the corner, something moves. Darkness against darkness.

Someone he can't see in the dark is over there.

Eyesight is failure, Dash once told him. Perception is failure. All that there is, all that there ever will be, cannot be perceived in the light of day. At night, the only perceptions turn inward.

The words? he thinks. The words. Maybe if you remember them, you can stop it. Maybe it reverses. Or maybe if you just say them...

Moves his lips, trying to form vowel sounds.

The dry taste. Humid and weather-scorned all around.

In his throat, a desert.

Every word he has ever heard in his life spins through his mind. But not the words he needs. Not the ones he wants to remember tonight.

A beautiful night. Dark. No light whatsoever but for the ambient light of the world itself. Summer. Humid. Post-storm. One of those rich storms that sweeps the sky with crackling blue and white lightning, and the roars of lions. But the storm has pa.s.sed and that curious wet silence remains. Taste of brine in the air from the water, a few miles away.

He remembers summer storms like this their majesty as they wash the June sky clean, bringing a gloom on their caped shoulders, but leaving behind not a trace of it. The smell of oak and beech and cedar and salt and the murky stink of the ponds and bogs. Their years together, all in those smells. All in the dark.

The night, summer, perhaps just a few hours before the sun might rise.

Might.

He wonders if he'll ever see another storm. Another summer.

Another dawn.

Those d.a.m.n words.

"Your flesh will remember the name even if your mind forgets," Dash had told him, and he had still thought it was a game when Dash had said it. "The name gets in your bones and in your heart. Just by hearing it once. But the words are harder to remember. They don't want you to know the words because it binds them. So, listen very carefully. Listen. Each time I say them, repeat them exactly back to me."

He's s.h.i.+vering. Sweating. Nausea and dizziness both within him, the pit of his stomach. Something's scratchy around his b.a.l.l.s feels like a mosquito buzzing all along the inside of his legs. Twitching in his fingers. Tensing his entire body. Afraid to take another breath.

A conversation replays in his head: "It's not that hard. Watch."

"I can't. I just..."

"All you do is take the thing and bring it down like this. Think of it as a game."

"I can't do it."

"Don't think of it like that. Pretend it's a game. It doesn't mean what it looks like. You've been trained to think this is bad by church and school and your parents. And the world outside. But it is not real. It is just a game, only n.o.body else knows this. They're stupid. n.o.body's going to get hurt. Least of all one of us. Least of all you or me. I would never let it happen. You're like my brother."

"I know. But I can't."

"All right. I'll do it. I'll just do it. Just remember what you're supposed to do. As soon as it happens. As soon as my eyes close. Promise? Okay?"

"Okay, okay."

"And the words. After. If it's too much. You know what to say. You remember?"

"Yes."

"You know how to p.r.o.nounce them? You have to know. If this gets out of hand, you can stop it. The name for me, and the words to stop it. If it's too awful."

"I know, I know."

"'Cause it might get too awful. I don't know."

"Sure. Of course. I remember how to say them."

"And the name?"

He has no problem remembering the name. He'd like to blot it out of his mind. The name is on the tip of his tongue, and he can't seem to forget how to say it, how to p.r.o.nounce it perfectly. The words have somehow vanished from his mind.

He tries to remember the words, now. How they sound. The language was foreign, but he couldn't read them off the bone. Especially with no light. But even if he had some light, he knew the letters looked like scribbles and symbols. They didn't look like sounds. All he can remember is the name, and he doesn't want to remember that.

A name like that shouldn't be said in a church.

A New England church. Saint Something. Old Something Church. Older than old, perhaps. Nearly a crypt. Made of slate and stone. Puritanical and lovely and a bit like a prison, now. Church of punishment. Rocky churchyard behind it. He remembers the graves with the mud and the high gra.s.ses and the smell of wild onion and lavender, as if it were years ago rather than the past hour. Smell of summer, wet gra.s.s, and that fertile, splendid odor of new leaves, new blossoms.

The smell of life.

He is inside the church. In a room. The altar is at the opposite end.

Danny had the lighter, he thinks. If I get it, maybe I can at least save her.

He wasn't sure if the shape in the doorway was Danny, or the thing that he didn't even want to name. Not Dash. Not anyone he had ever met or known. An 'It'. A Thing. A Creature. Something without a Name.

But it has a name. He knows the name, but he does not intend to ever say it again. He knows the name too well, but it's the words he keeps trying to remember. The ones that are on the bone. The words that might stop it from continuing.

He tries to lick his lips, but it's no use. His mouth is dry.

Dry from too much screaming.

Nearby, there's a very slight noise. A sliver of a noise. He is sensitive to sound.

In the Nowhere.

Someone might've just died outside. He doesn't know for sure. Who? He just heard the last of someone's life in a slight moaning sound. The open window. No breeze. Just that sound. A soft but unpleasant ohhhhhh.

The puppy is whimpering. Somewhere nearby.

Other sounds, barely audible, seem huge.

Branches against the rooftop. Sc.r.a.ping lightly.

His heartbeat. A rapping hammer.

In the dark, the ticking of his watch is too loud. He slowly draws it from his wrist. Carefully, he presses it down into the left-hand pocket of his jeans. The watch clinks slightly against his keys. He holds his breath.

Needs to cough.

Fight it. Fight it. Swallow the cough. Don't let it out.

Closes his eyes, against the darkness. Closes his eyes to block it out. To make it go away.

Holds his breath for another count. The cough is gone.

Brief sound.

Someone's breathing. Over there. Across the room. Small room. More than closet, less than room.

Her? Thank G.o.d. Thank G.o.d. He licks his lips. Mouth, dry.

After a few minutes, he can just make out her shape.

He's staring at her, and she's staring at him, but they can't really see each other. Just forms in the dark. Mich.e.l.le? Ambient light from beneath cracks in the walls creates a barely visible aura around her as he stares.

Dead of night. Dread of night.

The dread comes after the knowledge. He remembers the line from the book. That awful book that he thought was fiction.

But the words do not come to him. The sounds of them, just beyond his memory.