Lords Of Twilight Page 6

He reached down and petted Vince’s head.

  The shotgun you bought is in the bedroom closet. Get it. Load it. Now.

  With visions of the strange footprints and the three men still in his head, Lane made his way to the bedroom, retrieved the 12-gauge pump shotgun from the rear of the closet and then found the box of shells he’d purchased along with it in a drawer in the kitchen.

  He sat in one of the kitchen chairs, and with trembling hands, loaded the shotgun. When he’d finished he put the box of shells aside on the table.

  Lane noticed Vince sitting in the doorway, so he leaned the shotgun against the table then went over and picked him up. “It’s OK, Vin, I’m right here.”

  The puppy was warm and plump. He licked Lane’s nose.

  Despite the affection, fear rose from Lane’s gut like bile bubbling up into the base of his throat. You saw something you can’t explain, he told himself. You were frightened and with all the unexplained occurrences in town lately you assumed it was something more than it really was, and so your mind filled in the blanks, giving you a vision of what you felt you should’ve seen but couldn’t have. Not really, not truly. But even as his brain tried desperately to find an explanation and a way out of this nightmare, he knew damn well he’d seen Clyde and the others. He’d heard Clyde call out and speak to him. He’d seen those footprints. Gently, Lane stroked Vince’s head in the hopes that it might calm him and the puppy both, but his entire body had already begun to shake. His earlier dreams and visions coursed through his mind. The more he tried to suppress them the stronger they became. Lane held the puppy tight in the sparse light.

  Off the kitchen, floorboards creaked in the bedroom…once…and again.

  The dog’s body tensed and a quiet whimper escaped him.

  Someone else was in the house.

  FIVE

  In the silence of the house, the dog sits in the doorway and waits. For what, he cannot be sure. He only knows that eventually someone will come.

  He can only hope it will not be more of them.

  The screams are over now, but he can still hear them ringing in his ears like a bad dream. They make him shiver and cower even though he doesn’t fully understand their origin. He only knows how they make him feel and how those who inspired them frighten him when they are near. In those frustrating times, when no one else knows, when he can smell and sense but not yet see them, he wants so desperately for the others to know, to warn them. And he tries, though it seldom seems to work. There is a shift in the air, a disturbance of balance in things that signals they’re coming, and just as it registers, they’ve arrived and it’s too late to do much of anything. Because by then they’re standing right in front of him…behind him…all around him.

  He longs for those vague and blurred days before this began, when he was new to this world himself and knew only happiness and joy, contentment and fulfillment.

  Thoughts slink through his mind, and he focuses again on what has just taken place. He should’ve stopped it. But could he have?

  No. Still…

  The dog lays down in the doorway and sighs.

  Bring him back. I don’t know what to do without him.

  The dog closes his eyes. He is aware of the markings Lane made on the walls in his own blood, but is unable to decipher meaning.

  Finger-painted in manic, violent repetition is a single word.

  TAKEN.

  * * * *

  Lane stood before the threshold to the bedroom, Vince at his side. The small room beyond was mostly dark, as the shades had been pulled down over the lone window. Shadows played along the walls and floor, shifting slightly.

  Outside, in the sky overhead, a faint rumble grew louder and louder still as something large approached and flew over the house. Most likely a helicopter, it shook the entire house in the process, its thunderous grumbling so close it sounded as if it planned to land directly on the roof. Then as suddenly as it had arrived, the sound began to fade and soften until it had slipped away into the storm. In the quiet that followed, Lane forced a swallow and squinted to better see into the bedroom. He could’ve thrown the switch and illuminated the room, but something instinctually told him not to.

  Wind and snow lashed the house.

  Lane took a single tentative step over the threshold, moving into the room like he was stepping off the edge of a precipice and into the unknown. In a way that’s exactly what he was doing, yet this time the fear had little effect on him. Rather than running, his trepidation actually drew him nearer. He glanced back over his shoulder. The dog remained on the other side of the open doorway, staring intently into the darkness but making no sound. Lane gave his leg a gentle slap, signaling Vince to follow him, but the puppy refused to obey. As he turned back toward the shadows and darkness of the bedroom, Lane smelled it. The unmistakable scent he’d known for so long. A chill throttled him. Remaining very still, he took in another breath and realized he hadn’t been mistaken.

  Hand shaking, he reached for the switch on the wall to his right. He didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, but knew now he had no choice. There were not many things Lane could be sure of on this strange and cold night, but he had no doubt that someone was standing just beyond the far side of the bed, cradled in shadow. He still couldn’t make out anything definitive, but he could smell them.

  He could smell her.

  Lane’s hand hung in the darkness above the switch as he inhaled and again breathed in the cologne she had always worn. Faint, but unquestionably hers, he closed his eyes and waited. Nothing. Silence, eerie and pregnant. He opened his eyes, and without turning on the light after all, let his hand fall back to his side. He stepped closer. From shadows on the other side of the bed came the quiet, rhythmic sounds of someone breathing.

  Frozen particles of snow ticked against the window, hidden by the shade.

  Lane transferred his weight from one foot to the other, causing the light behind him from the kitchen to shift. He could now see that the figure by the bed was standing with her back to him. She looked like a rumor, a figment of his imagination there in the shadows, all angles and smudges and darkness and maybes and what-ifs. But it was definitely Claire, right there in front of him, not five feet away. Or something like her, attempting to be her, to trick him into believing it was his ex-wife.

  She gazed back over her shoulder, not quite at him but near him, the whites of her eyes cutting the dark, blinking slowly, thoughtfully. As she had the last time he saw her, she looked horribly troubled, uncomfortable in her own skin, her own nightmares. Broken. She looked broken. Broken by him.

  “Claire,” he said, his voice so soft he barely heard it himself. It was not a question but not quite statement either, just a word tossed into the shadows moving between them, a stone thrown to oncoming waves, swallowed and gone so quickly it might have never existed in the first place.

  Lane’s heart raced and his chest tightened. It was only then that he realized he was pouring with sweat. Still, he couldn’t take his eyes from her. Even though he knew there was no way she could really be standing there, he couldn’t look away. Am I asleep? Dreaming? Or have I truly lost my mind?

  “Who are you?” he asked, louder this time, voice shaking.

  She faced him but remained largely concealed in shadow, her eyes staring straight into his now. “You know who I am.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

  Claire moved closer to the sparse light, revealing an outfit that included a tight tank-top T-shirt and a pair of jeans. She was barefoot and dressed more for summer, as if she’d just wandered in after a long walk on the beach, her dirty blonde hair a bit longer than he remembered it, parted in the middle and hanging in curls that cascaded down to her shoulders. As she so often did, she pulled her hair back and away from her face and combed it behind her ears with her fingers. Her wire rim eyeglasses were in place, troubled hazel eyes blinking behind the lenses. She’d always looked considerably younger than she really was, but time had begun to catc
h up to her even more than it had the last time he’d seen her. Claire, always a delicate cross between a quiet bookworm and an aging hippy free spirit, no longer seemed in firm possession of either identity. Instead, the woman that stood before him was a scarecrow, a patchwork of bits and pieces of what she’d once been, barely held together with memories and history, chewing gum and duct tape. She seemed to be experiencing something deeply profound, and confused as to how Lane couldn’t be experiencing it too.

  “Do you know who you are?” he asked her. “What you are?”

  “Why are you speaking to me this way?”

  “You would’ve hated it here,” he said softly.

  Claire looked around the dark room, as if she’d only just then realized where she was. She nodded. “I hate it everywhere.”

  “You used to be happy.”

  “So were you.”

  “I never stopped.”

  “Neither did I. Not voluntarily.”

  “I took it from you…”

  “You stole it from both of us.”

  “It didn’t have to be this way.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “I lost you—everything—over nothing.”

  “No, not nothing.”

  “Nothing, it was nothing, I—”

  “Do you really think you get to escape it all so easily?”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  Expressionless and still, she stared at him with empty eyes.

  “You want me to feel pain, is that it? Well I do, Claire. For God’s sake, agony is all I ever feel anymore. But tell me, where does forgiveness enter into this? Does it ever?”

  “Forgiveness for what, Lane?” She licked her lips and sighed. “You were falsely accused, remember?”

  A shiver passed through him.

  “Temptation is a terrible thing.”

  “No,” he said. “Everything that’s terrible is in the shame, guilt and regret.”

  “They don’t understand those things. They don’t know what they are.”

  His pulse quickened. “Who are they?”

  “Bad dreams.” She looked away, as if something in the darkness had caught her attention. “They come true sometimes.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Lane brought his hands to his head, ran them through his hair. They came back slick with perspiration. “I’m dreaming.”

  “You’re awake.”

  “You’re not real.”

  She reached out, let her fingertips gently brush the side of his face.

  They were soft and warm, familiar. Nearly choking with emotion, his face contorted into a grimace as tears filled his eyes. “This isn’t possible.”

  “Maybe everything’s possible tonight.”

  Claire sunk down onto the edge of the bed, the darkness reclaiming most of her. “Sit with me awhile.”

  It took every bit of strength Lane had, but he slowly shook his head no.

  “Are you afraid of me, Lane?” she asked sadly.

  “You’re not my wife. You’re not Claire. Not really.”

  She cocked her head, baffled. “Then who am I?”

  The tears spilled free, ran the length of his cheeks. “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t go away, Lane, not until we release it.”

  “Am I in Hell?”

  “There is no Hell. Only in us, we created it. Punishment and anger and revenge, greater powers have no use for any of that. God is love, forgiveness and transcendence. We’re the ones who can’t forgive, who need punishment and damnation, but we only damn ourselves, see? We are Hell.”

  “No. We’re more than that. We have to be.”

  “It’s within us, Lane. Maybe that’s why we’re so interesting.”

  Claire bowed her head as if suddenly overcome with prayer, and it was in that moment that Lane remembered this Claire. An old memory, from a time before things went bad, she looked and was dressed as she had been a few years prior while on vacation with him in the Florida Keys. A time of peace and togetherness, of love and joy neither would ever know again.

  “They stole it,” he said, trembling. “They crawled inside my head and stole that memory I have of you.” He took a step back, away from her, his eyes rapidly scanning the shadows along the walls and ceiling. “They’re watching us right now, aren’t they?”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Still?”

  “Always.” This time it was Claire who cried. As a single tear ran across her face she seemed surprised, reached for it and scooped it up with a fingertip. Slowly, she brought it to her lips, tasted it. “They don’t understand love either.”

  “Do they understand pain?” She blurred through his tears. Angrily, he wiped them away and addressed the darkness around them, screaming now. “Do you understand pain? Do you? Do you fucking understand that?”

  He sunk to his knees, hands clutching his head as if to literally hold it together, and began to sob like he hadn’t done since he was a child.

  After a few moments he felt a hand gently moving through his hair, across the back of his neck and around to the side of his head. Gently, she pulled him closer and against him. Soft…warm…and yet…

  Lane looked up at the woman standing over him.

  No longer Claire, but Emma. Not a woman, but a girl.

  Choking on the darkness, Lane managed to speak through the sobs, “No, you—you don’t get to do this to me, you—you don’t get to put her back in front of me then take her away like that. Please…Christ…please…”

  “Get up and stop slobbering all over yourself like a little bitch.” She moved away, toward the bed where Claire had just been sitting. “Try growing a set.”

  Lane struggled to his feet, wiping away the tears as he staggered after her. Taking hold of her wrist, he none-too-gently spun her back around to face him. “Where is she? Where is she, you little bitch! Where’s my wife?”

  Not even remotely intimidated, Emma smiled her crooked, cynical smile. “Mister B!” she said with mock astonishment, her icy blue eyes wide and alive. “Oh. My. God. You are so sexy when you’re angry!”

  He felt his free hand curl into a fist.

  “Oooo, you gonna hit me now?” She easily pulled her wrist free of him and sauntered closer to the shadows by the bed. “Why not just fuck me and get it over with? Again.”

  Helplessly imprisoned in a tempest of his own guilt, fear and rage, Lane stood watching as Emma began to laugh. It was a cruel, heartless laugh that he did not remember her possessing.

  “None of this was your fault, I…”

  “I didn’t have to turn your ass in,” Emma said. “But it was so much fun watching you squirm and lie and try to find your way out of it. I figured then you might know how you made me feel.”

  “I never wanted to hurt you, Emma.”

  “Right back at you, Mr. B.”

  “Did you think I was in love with you, Emma? Is that what you thought?”

  Her act vanished, and she stood before him more like the child she was than the temptress she so desperately wanted to be. “What difference does it make?” she asked in a soft, pained voice. “I was in love with you.”

  He took a tentative step toward her, his hands out before him like a traffic cop. “No, you—”

  “Don’t worry.” Her expression turned to steel. “I don’t love you anymore. I see you for what you really are. And you know what? They see it too.”

  It’s the truth that scares you. It always has.

  “I made a mistake, Emma, a horrible mistake. I’m so sorry.”

  She absently gave her forced cleavage a quick scratch. “Since we’re just animals they don’t really get it, you know? They’re trying to understand.”

  Head spinning, Lane reached out and steadied himself against a wall he knew was there but could not see. “We’re human animals.”

  “Problem is…they’re neither.”

  “What’s happening to me, Emma?”

  She sat on the bed, in the
exact spot where Claire had been sitting, and, folding one leg beneath her, left the other dangling off the edge. “OK, try to think of it this way. When we grab an animal in the wild for research purposes—a lion, let’s say—and tag it, study it—whatever—do we explain ourselves to the lion? Even if we did, would the lion have any concept of what the fuck we were talking about? Through no fault of its own, the lion doesn’t have the capability to even begin to understand what we’re doing or why. It only knows it’s afraid and wants to get the hell away from us. Just like you feel right now. Some like to laugh and point out how vastly superior another species would have to be in order to really exist and be interacting with us here on Earth. If they were so vastly superior, why would they have to abduct humans and perform crazy experiments on them? We’re vastly superior to lions, so why do we do what we do? What people sometimes forget is that superiority doesn’t rule out the possibility that such a species might be able to learn something from us, just as we do from the lion. They may not have a very good reason for what we perceive as fucking with us, but maybe they do. Same as the lion assumes we’re there to do harm, maybe it’s not always about help or harm at all. Maybe it’s about something else entirely. Maybe it’s bigger than all that. Think about the computers we have and all the things they can do. Now imagine what theirs might be capable of. Think about it. Who’s to say what reality is, how it works or who controls it?”

  She smiled at him. A genuine smile, real as Claire’s fingertips brushing his face had been. Real as the darkness swirling around him like the living entity it was, and sacred as the evil and ancient eyes watching it all unravel.

  Something clenched deep in his gut, and Lane doubled over and vomited a strange black, inky substance that splattered into a thick pool at his feet. Left lightheaded, he tried his best to focus on Emma…there…on the edge of the bed…just beyond his reach…

  And then the cold…the snow…the wind…

  It was not yet quite night, but no longer day. Twilight. It was twilight and somehow he was outside again, standing in deep snow, eyes trained on the outbuilding in the storm.