John Byrne - Fear Book.txt

JOHN BYRNE 
FEARBOOK 
    
Prologue
    
    In the darkness he was not alone.
    Around him there were sounds. Scuttlings. Scrapings. The slosh and drip of noisome, stagnant water. There were cobwebs matted against his hair, his face wet with cold sweat. When he tried to brush them off his fingers left trails of slime across his brow.
    As his jacket dried-he'd fallen full length in the foul, constant pool at the foot of the short stairs-it lifted from his back. It seemed to draw decaying fingertips across his flesh; like the fingers he was expecting.
    All his senses were wound tight. The hair on his neck bristled at the slightest movement of air. His nostrils twitched as the mixture of foul odours wafted around him. Fragments of the darkness drew closer. Against the grimy walls old dirt shifted, perhaps from its own sodden weight, perhaps not. When he moved, it set off a chain reaction of sounds; the darkness came alive with rustlings. When a floorboard creaked above him, it was as if the earth itself moaned aloud.
    He drew himself into a ball, screwed up in lame defence against his nameless fears, his hands pulled back into the cuffs of his jacket, his knees tucked up against his chin. His eyes narrowed to slits, willing form out of formlessness.
    Hours he had been there. It had seemed like days, in the dank, foul darkness. His back was still on fire from the lashing of the great wide belt. His heart pounded, leaping faster at each new sound. He listened to the footsteps on the floorboards above, the raised voices, muffled by the thickness of the wood.
    Waiting. Waiting.
    Waiting for him to come as they had said he would come, his head twisted on his broken neck, his dead eyes seeing perfectly in the darkness. His decayed fingers reaching unerringly for a wrist, an ankle. Inhumanly strong.
    Seeking revenge.
    "But it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault!? A whisper in the darkness, but loud in the enclosed space. Speaking at all made his temples throb, made his dry tongue feel on fire. "It wasn't my fault."
    It grew louder, louder, each time he said it. Until it was no longer a frightened whisper. Until it was a scream. Until all the air in his lungs went into that one phrase bellowed towards the low ceiling, over and over and over again.
    "It wasn't my fault! It wasn't my fault! IT WASN'T MY FAULT! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!''
    He screamed and screamed until his very brain felt aflame.
    And in the darkness he was not alone.
    She was walking. It was hot. The air was hot. The land around her was hot. The asphalt beneath her bare feet was blistering.
    She walked without the slightest sense of her direction. Her eyes faced the darkness, where the desert rose to meet the deep, black bowl of the sky; behind her the lights of Benson touched the heavens with their pearly glow. Ahead, the road stretched arrow straight.
    There was a knot of pain between her thick blond eyebrows. Her face twitched each time her bare soles came down on the scorching pavement.
    But the pain went deeper.
    Her green eyes-small, wide-spaced-were filled with hot tears that ran down her cheeks. They dropped from the jut of her long jaw and gathered in small pools on her chest as they rivered their way between her bare breasts.
    
    The air felt hot against her naked flesh. She expected relief to come with the night, but there was none. It almost seemed as if the darkness made the heat press closer, like a great black beast curling itself around her, suffocating her.
    She walked naked through hot, dry darkness. It was a service road she walked along. She had chosen it specifically from the crumpled road map that had guided her to her cousin's house. It was a long, straight road that no one used, a road that went nowhere.
    I told him, she thought. The words repeated and repeated, like surf pounding against a rock shore. Pounding, pounding, wearing away the rocks, smoothing away their hard, sharp faces until they were no longer proud, jutting crags. Until they were only lumps of smooth stone without a trace of their violent birth.
    I told him, I told him, I told him. A hundred times, it seemed. A thousand. Begging. Pleading. Cajoling. Demanding. "Don't do this thing. You don't know. You can't know what you might let loose. You said yourself.?"
    "I know what I'm doing," he insisted. (How hard his voice! How sure!) "It's a simple process. Nothing can go wrong, provided you don't distract me. Provided you don't make me screw it up."
    "But in the house? Does it have to be in the house?"
    "Where do you want me to do it? In the middle of the yard? So the neighbours can see? They think we're strange enough as it is."
    "In the garage-you could do it in the garage, couldn't you? I'll move the car.
    "I've told you. Haven't I told you? It's too new. That garage is less than ten years old. I need the age of the house around me. The sureness of age."
    "You keep saying that. You keep saying that, but it doesn't make sense. The house is only a couple of hundred years old. What you're talking about goes back thousands of years. Millions!"
    "You're free to leave. You can take your doctor friend and go. Anytime you like. I won't stop you."
    The hot, still air was so close around her. She drew her breath in short, pained gulps. Why did he bring that up? Why did he throw that in my face? It was over. It had been over for weeks.
    "I don't want him. You know I don't want him. It was? .it was just a craziness. Because you were so busy with your work. I know it's such a cliche, but?1 don't want him. Please. We could go away. You've always wanted to go to Europe. To take your studies there. Katherine recommended it. We could go to Europe."
    "Katherine is a fool. You know how I feel about her. She likes to play scientist. But this isn't science. This is nothing like science."
    All the time he spoke, he worked. She watched him spread the small, bright stones on the dining room rug. Arranging them. Rearranging them. She saw a pattern evolve. Then another, and another. She winced as he swore under his breath.
    He swept up the stones and started again. A circle within a square within a circle. Nearly a hundred of the small, shiny black stones. Spaced so carefully. One just exactly here. Another just precisely there.
    Then the words. Horrible, horrible words. Not English. Nor nothing like English. She could not understand a syllable. They made her skin prickle. They made her want to scream at him and to kick the smooth little stones all out of their careful array.
    "Please. Baby, please, don't?"
    ' "Shut up! Shut up, damn you! Now I'll have to start again''
    The words. A chant. Rhythmic. Guttural. It made her think of her grandfather muttering in German when Gran told him not to smoke in the house.
    It wasn't German. It wasn't any language spoken aloud for thousands of years. She knew he'd spent most of his adult life gathering all the clues that would tell him how to pronounce those words. Twenty years, easily. Since long before they met and married.
    The hot tears dripped against her breasts. The pavement scorched the soles of her feet. The sky above was black. There were no stars. There was no moon. The stars and moon were hiding from her. They didn't want to look at her in her nakedness. In her pain.
    The pain that brought her across the country. Driving, Alone. Stopping only for gas. For nature. Sometimes not even for that. Her cousin scarcely recognized her, banging on her door. Three o'clock in the morning. Banging on the door. hanging and banging. Wanting to scream. But her throat wouldn't let her.
    After it happened she'd screamed for nearly three days without halt. She'd sometimes had to stop the car to scream. Scream and scream and scream, until her throat felt broken. Until she couldn't scream anymore.
    She heard the words again, low and rhythmic and guttural. Over and over. Him moving a stone, chanting the words, kneeling before the intricate pattern of a hundred smooth, shiny black stones. Chanting. Swaying.
    "Please?" The word had forced itself past her clenched teeth. No more than the barest whisper, the faintest sigh. "Please?"
    He looked up at her. His face was drawn behind his bushy black beard. His hair was all in disarray. There were beads of sweat on his brow. Cold, white fury in his deep brown eyes. Not at all the face of the man she married. He snarled at her. "God dammit, I told you?"
    Then there was light. Bright. Searing. Like an atom bomb exploding before her eyes. Exploding right there in the dining room. Bright, searing light. A rush of scalding hot air.
    It pushed her back against the wall. It pushed inside her blouse. It felt like hot, dry hands. Groping. Pushing up her trouser cuff. Up her legs. Battering against her sex.
    It forced its way past her lips. Down her throat. Into her lungs. It filled her, expanded her, until she thought her chest would burst.
    And right there before her eyes, she saw him dancing. Jerking. A puppet on a single string. Dancing in the very centre of the bright blue fire. As his flesh bubbled and cracked. As black bile oozed from his nostrils. From the corners of his eyes. From his ears.
    He was screaming, but there was no sound. No sound anywhere in the world.
    Then he was gone. The light was gone. The blue flame was gone. The shiny black stones were gone.
    She began to scream.
    
    The desert air was hot against her naked flesh. She left her clothes strewn along the road behind her. She walked tall and straight, as if invisible wires were pulling on her. Forcing her to stand erect. Her joints were locked, her legs and arms stiff. It would have looked a pai...