There's a tear in my beer - Pt End (733 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: Untruth
Rating: 1.66 on 13 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Snark << snarkk.at.gmail.com (View user info) at 2005-10-23 05:03:45 EDT
He took the last step from creaking stair to dust covered floor, opened his arms wide, and got down on one knee as the glowing ghost of his daughter suddenly sat up and looked his way with unseeing eyes.
"C'mon kiddo." He crooned "Come to Daddy."
She stood up and ran. She flew at him faster than a ghost should and he closed his arm around where she should have been, but she was gone.
He stood and screamed drunken blasphemy at the walls. He wailed his anguish at the closure that was denied him, until it faded from the thick brick walls like ice frost from a windshield, and he fell to his elbows and leaked his sorrow onto the dusty ground beneath.
The basement grew silent and he stood, ready to meet the next onslaught of his daughter's torment because in the end there was nothing else to do. Her pain was a cycle; an unending circle of pain, like a record, and hell was the DJ.
He stood, panted, and reeked of the pride of Russia. He waited stoically for it all to begin again while his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, and the failing remains of his sodden instinct whispered to him through an alcohol shroud, clinching his brain.
But the torment didn't resume. It didn't start again. It didn't pierce his ears.
He stayed prone, stuck by elbow and knee to the cold ground until eternity kicked him in the ass and made him stand up, and he realized that the deep breathing wasn't his.
He'd forgot to breath. He'd forgotten to exercise the right of his lungs and the panting he was hearing was coming from somewhere else... somewhere close... somewhere behind.
He turned drunkenly. He moved slowly to see what it was, and the echo of his wife's words drifted through the room to him, fresh out of the phone he'd held in his hand a half hour before.
"There's something with her. Oh God please help my little girl."
Something with her...
Something with her...
Something else not her.
RUN!
His body screamed the need to flee but he'd passed the limit of drunk. He'd gone beyond the slow comfortable blur he'd conditioned himself too, and he knew his limbs would not take him quickly anywhere, so he turned to see the source instead.
He turned and peered into the gloom beyond the empty space beyond where his daughter had been, and fixed his eyes on the pale hateful face on the other side.
"Will you call me father? Will you call me brother?"
The thing spit the words out as if each vowel was an example of spite, and then it launched itself at him and he found himself reeling back out of pure reflex.
He threw his beer-bloated body backwards for what felt like a football field, all the time pursued by a naked pale animal of snarl and sinew, until he hit the wall. He hit the bricks hard and felt them buckle, felt them resist his heavy frame before giving in, and then he was in a space that was somehow between the inside and the outside of his wife's sanity.
The thing coming for him caught a strand of long grey hair on a beam, and a leg on a box, and went down hard, and he turned from it, and scrambled into his newfound space. He turned to the beckoning safety of the gap between worlds and scrambled on hands and knees through a corridor that he had not known existed until just then.
He turned his body to the gap between the walls and followed it until his face impacted painfully against the end, then turned. He rolled and got into a crouch, then half ran, half galloped, to the next corner. He hit a set of stairs, took them up, and ran harder until his ankle hit something hard and unforgiving and he went down in a heap of terror and despair.
He curled into a ball and waited for an end more gruesome than anything his nightmares had given, and when it didn't come, he opened his eyes to see where he might be.
The space before him was as dark as anything he'd gone through, but a tiny portion of light was leaking through what he surmised must be the outside wall, and illuminating what he could make out as a small table and what appeared to be a misshapen candle sitting on top.
He stared at it dumbfounded for a minute, realizing that it held some significance but too drunk to understand it might be salvation, and then his hands found the lighter in his pocket all on their own, and the next thing he knew it was ablaze and shattering his world.
The space around him sprang to yellow flickering life and he found himself surrounded by a million stolen memories. He found himself caged in by everything that had ever been right with the world and his mind creaked then warped like a bridge caught in a flood.
The walls around him were covered with images of life before the tragedy; photos of family moments, and crayon drawings he'd thought long dead. A dirty - vaguely familiar - blanket lay in the middle of the floor on top of a patched air mattress, and an old recognizable coffee table sat against the end wall, packed full of everything he'd ever thought lost.
Coffee machine, books, utensils, socks, tools... it was all there, and all at once he realized it for what it was. He realized the place he was in and the thing that had chased him there.
He understood Beth's delusions for reality as quickly as he understood the fact that they had never been alone in the house, and that his daughter had never meant to haunt them; she'd been haunting her murderer, the man living in the walls.
The house. The glorious old house. The turn of the century mansion they had bought had come cheap but (now that he looked at it) not without a price. It was a box within a box, a space within a space, and a madman lived in between; a beast of pale flesh and grey hair. The same beast that had chased him to the filthy hovel he sat in, a thing that must be flesh and blood, because ghosts don't get their hair caught in beams and they don't trip on boxes.
He looked around the room, slack jawed, and felt true hate give birth in the area of his guts that was closest to his balls.
He turned to an old black and white televisions and thought of smashing it but his eyes picked up a familiar shape sticking out of a cardboard box beneath. He turned his head away but it turned back of its own accord, and all at once, he knew it for what it was and bent down to retrieve the beer bottle.
He twisted off the cap and brought it to his lips but stopped as a harsh breath rang out from behind.
"Will you call me brother?"
He turned too late. The blade hit him high and to the left, sinking fast and deep into the meat of his shoulder.
He fell back and screamed his pain and then the thing was on top of him and its bright black eyes locked him in place as it withdrew the rusty blade.
"My family! Do you see? She came down that night. She caught me in the low place. She caught me but I only watch... I only ever watch but she was there, and she would tell, so I cut her deep. She screamed and YOU slept and so I cut her again and again until she stopped, and then I hid. Do you see?"
"NO!"
He spit the word out because it felt good to do so. He shot it out because it was all he had and it helped to shield him from the pain if the rust flecked puncture in his shoulder.
"I watch! I watch and you live. That's how it goes, but she found me here. She found me in the low place and I couldn't let her... and now she's everywhere. She's everywhere I go... I left you know... I went into the day and found a place but she followed so I came back."
He nodded and let his eyes go blank.
"I hoped you could help. I hoped the priests and the psychics you called here would take her away but they never did. I hoped they could save me but she's always here and now she calls. She calls for YOU! So I know what I need to do to make her stop. I know how to make her stop screaming at me. I'll give her you."
The scrawny wraith in front of him brought the knife down again, and he put up his hand to block it, then screamed as the rusty jagged blade punched through the palm of his hand.
"She needs you!"
Beside him, lay an intricate box, a jewelry box once belonging to his daughter and he hit it hard with the bottle in his hand, turning it from blunt instrument to jagged weapon.
He brought his hand up, thrust himself forward with all his might, and closed his fingers around the haft of the beast's blade.
His aim was strong and true and the glass in his hand hit its target dead center of the throat. He pushed again and felt it crunch through the cartilage and bone beneath, then twisted it and pulled back.
The beast opened its eyes wide and stumbled back as its lifeblood spilled out of the gory hole. It brought one hand up to stem the flow then fell to its knees and coughed crimson.
Dan looked from it to the bottle in his hand. He didn't know whether he should cry or dance or call 911. He sat and watched as the monster at his feet fell onto its side and twitched, then turned his head away.
He got up and made to leave the room but it suddenly filled to overflowing with his daughter's scream.
"DADEEEEE!"
He turned in time to see the beasts outstretched hand and the pistol grasped in it. He turned in time to see that the monster had fallen down to reach under the mattress, and he brought his foot down hard on its wrist. The outstretched limb caved in under his heavy foot and the beast gurgled deeply, and then Dan was on him, and grabbing his hair, and slamming his ragged skull into the hard concrete beneath.
He sat astride him and grinned insanely as he pulled the head up, then pushed it down again. He smashed it's skull once for each horrible memory, each echoing scream. He worked it into the concrete until it didn't resist anymore and a tiny hand grabbed his to stop him.
"Daddy. It's Ok."
User Reviews
Submitted by Stabkill (user info) at 2008-09-15 15:01:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2005-10-26 11:35:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by MyTeeOne (user info) at 2005-10-24 17:34:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I have to agree with The Caes. However, I will never go into my basement alone again without staring at the walls. Well done.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-10-24 11:03:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I didn't like the place you went to with this. I thought part 1 was original and interesting, but this one sort of 'degenerated' into a typical action movie type thing. I liked the creep-factor of having the killer live in their home, but when it gets down to the dad killing him, it's just too...I don't know, ordinary. I think part one stood enough on it's own; it was a different flavour, a better one. Also, too many reminders that he was drunk.
But it was well written.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-10-24 10:49:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-10-24 10:33:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-10-24 02:11:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2005-10-23 23:48:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice to get the second half of the piece.
Although...I did enjoy being left wondering what was going on at the end of part 1.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2005-10-23 23:24:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You got a two because this is worthy, albeit a little thin. I don't criticize much of what you do because it's mostly all ass kicking stuff. This plot did not appeal to me as well as some of your other stuff.
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2005-10-23 22:29:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It would be rather nice if you posted once and a while.
What happened with writing Necrosiac as a novel? Did you finish it?
Submitted by HadToBeDone (user info) at 2005-10-23 16:22:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Damn you, dude. Don't you fucking leave.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-10-23 15:53:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh you really need to come back. Really really really. I miss getting my fix of creepiness from you. The others try, but it's just not the same.
Swear to god, if you don't post at least once a month, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND DESTROY YOU.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2005-10-23 05:04:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Here's the last half... also not edited.