Lineage(101)

The naked man sighed again as Lance took a careful step backward. With the sound of Lance’s foot touching the floor, the figure in the corner began to turn its head, its face coming into view. The eyes were blue, but below them, all normality fled. The man’s nose and upper lip had been hacked away, leaving an aborted stump of gristle with two black holes still visible. The teeth stood out abnormally white in the harsh glare of the flashlight, and a mixture of sinewy scars meshed the gum line. The thing finally turned toward him fully, its skin hanging off withered musculature and a shriveled snub of a penis poked at the air amidst a nest of white pubic hair. His grandfather’s ghost took an ungainly step toward him, and Lance saw that a malicious smile had spread across the dead, ravaged tissue of its face.

Lance’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Erwin?” he whispered.

The ghost’s maw popped open and a wet moan threaded its way from between the exposed teeth. It sounded eager, like it had waited a long time to let him hear it, and the longing within it tempted Lance’s bladder to release. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he noted that the thing before him cast no shadow.

Lance finally turned to run, dropping the light from the thing that now reached for him, and looked toward the door, his salvation.

A hand gripped his arm and stopped his flight. The grip felt beyond cold, like frosted iron left outside on a January night, but it was also familiar. He hadn’t felt it in over twenty years.

He turned his head and saw his father’s face floating in the darkness, just outlined by the suffusion of light.

“Where ya goin’, boy?” his father rasped into his ear.

Lance screamed and pulled his arm away. He felt his skin tear in his father’s grasp and he pitched forward, turning and bringing the gun up as he fell. The muzzle flash and roaring of the shot were simultaneous. As he skidded on his back, still in motion from the fall, he saw in the fire that flew from the end of the gun’s barrel that the room was empty.

His ears buzzing with the concussion of the report, Lance scrambled backward until he was in the light of the living room. The box of books had been pushed out of the doorway and now sat to one side, almost where it had before he entered the room. Lance’s chest heaved with panic, lungfuls of air discarded as soon as they were taken in. The shotgun still sat in his hands, the smoking barrel pointed at the dark rectangle before him.

The door began to swing shut and Lance’s finger twitched on the trigger. No shot exploded from the end of the barrel. In blind terror, he remembered he needed to rack another shell into the chamber, and did so just as the door met its frame and clicked closed.

Without another look back, he struggled to his feet and ran for the front door, snagging his key ring as he went.



He could feel something in his hand and he knew what it was before he looked. The knife gleamed in the light shining through the living-room windows. Its edge grinned up at him in a smile that said so many things. Wonderful things. It spoke to him, asking for something. He could almost hear its voice, a high singing sound of flesh unzipping. A clicking overrode the knife’s voice, and he looked up.

The door was opening again, but this time it held no fear for him, only anticipation. Lance felt himself gliding over the floor and into the room. The door shut behind him and he almost sighed with relief. He wasn’t alone here.

The room’s darkness didn’t impede his vision as he thought it would, and now he could see why. A large window had been cut into the far wall, giving the room an open feel and a breathtaking view of the lake. He could see a man standing knee-deep in the water, his back to the house. The window wavered for a moment, as if he were viewing it through high heat.

Something else had changed in the room. The chair now faced the window, and a woman sat bolt upright upon it, her arms fastened in the shackles. He didn’t need to see her face to know it was Mary.

The knife felt heavy in his hand as he approached her. Its tip pointed at her, as if to say, Yes, that one. As her features came into view, he was surprised to see that she looked calm. Her eyes rested on the lake outside the window, and even though blood seeped from wounds on her ankles and wrists beneath the steel that held her, she sat placidly.

“I’m not the one you know. You haven’t found her yet.” Her voice sounded dead, like something filtering out of a grave. He felt indecision sway the resolve that had been so strong mere seconds before.

“Who?” he asked.

Mary turned her head and looked at him. “You know who,” she said, her form blurring as she swam in and out of focus.