Lineage(119)

“You’ve seen him?” Her voice was a whisper, but it held the urgency of a scream. Her hand scrabbled at the desktop, and the photo along with the crossword fell like leaves to the floor.

Lance leaned forward, his hands out in a placating gesture. “Yes. I think something’s happening at the house, but you’ve helped me. You’ve helped me understand.”

Her fingernails danced across the desktop with a chittering sound.

“He’ll be so angry that I’ve told. He’ll come. He’ll come in the night when there’s no one and …” Her eyes blinked as she faced the wall. They moved up to the window, where dark clouds now held the majority of the sky. “They showed us ways. So many ways if we were caught. Heinrich showed me how. ‘Not too straight,’ he said. You have to angle it up.”

Annette grasped the sharpened pencil from the desk and raised it to her face. Before Lance thought to reach out, she put the black tip of the lead end into her nostril, and with a quick slap of her other hand to the eraser, the pencil disappeared into her head.

Lance cried out as blood erupted from his grandmother’s nose. She sat that way for a heartbeat, her eyes expanded with the shock of pain and her spine rigid. Then she slumped forward, her face hitting the desk like a heavy steak.

“Fuck!” he yelled, and scrambled backward, knocking his chair over as he stood.

The young nurse ran into the room, an expression that politely said can I help with something? She then noticed the dark blood running in a steady stream off the desk and onto the floor, and a scream that didn’t seem possible from such a petite woman barreled up out of her lungs. Her hands rose to her cheeks, and her eyes found Lance, asking and accusing at the same time.

“I didn’t” was all he could muster. His hands came up near his shoulders as he shook his head. “She did it to herself. I couldn’t stop her.” Shock began to numb his senses, but something urged him to get out of the building and away from what had happened.

The nurse still stood in the doorway, her mouth open in what otherwise would have been a comical O shape.

“Please, help her,” he managed, pointing at what he knew was an already cooling corpse.

The nurse nodded, and then she was in motion and kneeling at his dead grandmother’s side. Her hands prodded at the old woman’s sagging throat for a pulse that Lance knew she wouldn’t find.

He backed out of the room and into the desolate hallway. The open space of the hall was a relief, and he hurried to the elevator and punched the button to call the car. His heart slammed in his chest, as he saw the pencil vanish into Annette’s nostril over and over. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the image away, as he became aware of another sound that filled the hallway. It was a shuffling that seemed familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. When he turned and saw the source of the noise, he barely restrained the urge to scream and pressed his back against the doors of the elevator.

The man he had seen on his first visit was shambling toward him, but this time, instead of a look of utter fear gracing his features, there were no features at all.

Bloody gristle covered the man’s countenance from forehead to chin. It looked as though the man had fed his features to the churning blades of a blender. There were no eyes to guide him, only swirled pools of congealed blood, yet he continued in a straight path toward Lance’s position, pausing only to turn an invisible doorknob.

A black hole opened where the man’s mouth should’ve been, and choked words spilled out in his father’s voice. “It’s the end, boy. Just drive yourself into a pole or slit a wrist. There’s nothing left for you.” The sliding steps were getting closer. “Or wait just a minute right there, and I’ll help you.” The man’s hands came up and reached yearningly toward Lance’s throat.

The doors behind Lance slid open and he fell onto the floor of the elevator. The shuffling monstrosity still approached, just a few yards from the threshold. Lance sat up and stabbed the button marked Lobby hard enough to send a jolt of pain through his wrist. The featureless figure moved closer, and at the last second the doors closed slow enough to cause Lance to slide to the back of the car and shut his eyes.

The unmistakable feeling of dropping filled his stomach, and he opened his eyes to the sealed doors of the car. His held breath rushed out of him in a hollow wheeze, and he watched the lights of the car nearly fade to darkness. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard to keep unconsciousness from claiming him and tried to stand. His stomach felt as if it might push everything out onto the floor of the elevator, but he forced the nausea away as the doors opened to the sound of running feet, and he stepped out into the hallway.