Thunderland (38 page)

He had never been so disturbed.

How could his mind have conjured such a thing? Was he that ill? Sweet Jesus, if he had plunged this far over the edge, who knew what might happen next?

Chills swam like icy eels through his veins. His greatest fear had always been losing his mental stability, his presence of mind. Because he’d learned at an early age that a man was only as strong as his mind, he had spent his life educating himself, developing his powers of perception, and strengthening his will. To be tormented by hallucinations was a nightmare of tragic proportions.

To dispel the inner coldness, he turned the faucet handle, releasing warm water into the sink. He bathed his face.

After washing, he dried himself with a towel. He examined his face in the mirror. He looked tired but normal, not at all like a man who would be haunted by sick illusions. Better still, his racing heartbeat had slowed.

Nevertheless, tomorrow morning, he would visit his doctor. He loathed going to physicians, but letting an illness of this degree go unchecked was tantamount to driving blindfolded on an expressway during morning rush hour. He was in grave peril—from himself.

Booming thunder made the bathroom walls tremble. Rain rapped the window.

Out of curiosity, he checked his watch. It still read 9:14. Obviously, its battery had run down. Tomorrow, he would go to the jewelry shop and have the watch repaired.

He needed another drink, something more potent than beer. It was never his habit to deal with stress by consuming alcohol, but right then, nothing would have been as pleasing as a stiff shot of whiskey—a double shot, perhaps, to knock him out until morning and spare him the terror engineered by his own mind.

He opened the door.

An acrid smell filled the hallway. He looked to the spiral staircase. A large mass of noxious-looking black smoke churned up the stairs.

What was this? Fire? No, it could not be. Although the smoke roiled in thick waves, it retained its basic shape and did not dissipate like ordinary smoke. A blaze was not the cause of this; this was something else. Another hallucination?

As Sam watched, mystified, the enormous column of dark vapor writhed into the hallway. He thought he glimpsed hands in there ... a face ... legs. No, he was not seeing this. This was, absolutely, another demented illusion.

Because a giant-sized man materialized from the smoke itself.

“Hello, Samuel,” the man said.

Sam froze.

The intruder was a lean, very tall man dressed in a black tuxedo, black bow tie, black top hat, and shiny black shoes. A cape flowed from his shoulders in a silky black wave. Strikingly handsome, with chestnut-brown skin, he tapped the carpet with a black cane, smiling at Sam like a guest who had arrived late for the holiday cookout.

“Who the hell are you?” Sam said. “I am Mr. Magic.” He smiled pleasantly. “I’ve come to kill you.”

As Sam gaped at him, Mr. Magic drew back his cane and swung at Sam’s head.

Sam raised his arms protectively and lurched backward. The cane slashed like a saber through empty space, leaving ribbons of air in its wake.

Although he had missed Sam, Mr. Magic laughed. He began to march into the bathroom.

Sam did not know who this man was, what he was, or why he wanted to kill him, but he knew what he had to do next: get his .357 out of the gun case under the bed and blow this bastard away. In this age of random, senseless violence, he had prepared for an attack in his home—though nothing could have readied him for a threat quite like this Mr. Magic character. Illusion or not, Sam had something for him.

Since this was the master bathroom, it had two doors: one opened to the hall; the other led to the master bedroom. As Mr. Magic charged inside, blocking the hallway exit, Sam spun around, yanked open the second door, hustled through, and slammed the door shut behind him and locked it before Mr. Magic could follow.

On the other side, Mr. Magic chuckled.

“I’ll give you something to laugh about.” Sam ran across the dark bedroom. He clicked on the bedside lamp and reached underneath the bed; his hand found the cool wood of the gun case. He pulled out the case and gratefully removed the polished, loaded .357.

He rose, the weapon trembling a little in his hands. He rushed to the other bedroom door that opened to the hallway, and slammed and locked that one, too.

He moved beside the bed, watching both doorways warily.

Rain drummed on the roof.

Grinding wheels of thunder drove across the night.

Just when he thought Mr. Magic had decided to enter by another route, black smoke, drifting under the door that led to the bathroom, slithered into the room.

“I’m ready for you this time,” Sam said as waves of smoke poured inside. “Come on.”

In spite of his tough words, the gun shook badly in his clammy hands. He realized—or, perhaps, accepted—that these were not hallucinations. The truth, which was far worse, was that he was up against something unearthly, some kind of supernatural fiend. He was a skeptic on such matters, but like everyone, he had witnessed incidents in his life that defied rational explanation. Although he had never seen anything on the scale of an entity like this, the universe was full of mysteries both wonderful and monstrous, and he would never attain complete knowledge of God’s creation. This Mr. Magic character, though, seemed less like something from God and more like the spawn of the devil.

Quickly, the tower of smoke metamorphosed into the well-attired demon.

Lord, help me,
Sam thought.
Please give your servant the strength.

Mr. Magic stalked toward Sam.

“You take one step closer, and I’ll
blow your head off,” Sam said. He aimed the revolver at him, hands still shaky. “I may be old, but I’ll
be damned if I roll over and die for you.”

“Such tenacity,” Mr. Magic said. “I like that. I had not anticipated much resistance from a doddering old man like you. You have piqued my interest, Samuel. I will enjoy murdering you.”

“Go to hell,” Sam said. He pulled the trigger.

The gun boomed, the recoil snapping painfully through Sam’s wrists. A round blasted Mr. Magic’s chest, but he did not bleed, scream, or even grimace.

Refusing to accept that the gun was useless, Sam squeezed the trigger twice more. Both rounds plowed into Mr. Magic’s torso, but neither of them had any harmful effect. Mr. Magic strode forward, raised his cane in the air, and cast it upon the bed.

“What the ...” Sam’s words guttered into silence as he saw that the thing that had been the cane was now alive, squirming on the bed. Long and black, gleaming like some kind of snake, but with dozens of tiny legs along its body, and bubble-like eyes and needle-sharp fangs. It hissed malevolently.

Operating on pure instinct, Sam trained the revolver on the creature and fired. But the serpent beast was
fast.
As the bullet plowed into the bedsheets, cotton exploding in the air, the snake-thing scurried forward and launched itself at Sam.

Crying out, Sam swung the gun to bat away the serpent, but it attached itself to him. Its tiny legs, slick with slime, wrapped around his entire arm, and it must have had suction-type feet, because they pressed against his skin and started sucking, leeching the blood out of him.

‘Jesus, Jesus, get off me!” Whirling his arm around, Sam felt blood draining out of him, the thing’s repulsively warm body pressed tight against his skin. The creature sank its fangs into the back of his hand. A bolt of pain shot through him, and the gun dropped out of his fingers. He howled in agony.

Across the room, Mr. Magic laughed.

Filled with revulsion, yet determined, Sam seized the snake-centipede by the back of its slimy neck. It hissed and writhed, but he would not let it go. As if swinging a baseball bat, he whipped the creature’s head against the bed post. The thing’s skull snapped, and it fell away from his arm and onto the floor, leaving a residue of ooze and blood on his skin.

“Bravo,” Mr. Magic said. He clapped his long, thin hands.

 
Lord,
Sam thought. He was panting.
Please, let me survive this. Deliver me.

Deliverance might be as close as the nearest door.

His heart feeling as though it would seize up and never throb again, Sam fled to the hallway door. He popped the lock and twisted the knob—but the door would not open. It seemed to be glued to the door frame.

Impossible!
Sam thought. Open up,
damn it!

A hand fell on his shoulder.

“Sammy,” an eerily familiar voice said.

Sam turned.

The Lena-thing leered in his face.

He screamed. He shoved aside the damnable thing and ran, but it caught him by the back of his shirt. It jerked him toward it and wrapped its arms around his waist, hugging him from behind. Struggling to escape, he flailed his arms and stumbled forward a few steps, and then he hit the side of the bed and fell onto it.

The Lena-thing laughed. It crawled on top of him.

He grabbed fistfuls of the bedspread, straining to crawl away.

The Lena-thing roughly turned him over, forcing him to lie on his back. Sitting on his thighs, it lifted his shirt. It slid its hand underneath and touched his belly.

Its fingers were cold.

Repulsed, Sam squirmed, but he could not move from underneath the monster. It had him pinned in place.

“Gonna touch you the way I used to,” the creature said, sounding exactly like his dead wife. It smiled. “Gonna make you feel so good.”

The Lena-thing, balanced on his knees, moved its frigid hand in slow circles across his stomach.

“Get off me,” Sam said, weakly. The creature’s icy touch drove numbing chills to the core of his body.

“You’ve been looking forward to this for so long, ain’t you, baby?” It grabbed one of his nipples in its freezing fingers, squeezed, and twisted. Sam cried out. The monster laughed.

Oh, Jesus, what a nightmare this was. Sam wanted to awake into the comforting, familiar world of family cookouts, breakfast with his grandson, reading good books by the fireplace, golf with his buddies, and church services. Without warning, for an inexplicable purpose, someone had pitched him into hell.

A spasm corkscrewed through his heart.

No,
Sam thought. Another razor of agony cut across his chest.

It was the event that he had dreaded for years, ever since Lena had succumbed to the same fate: a heart attack. Above him, crooning wordlessly, the Lena-thing unzipped his jeans.

“I’m gonna make it real good for you, Sammy,” the Lena-thing said. It began to roll down his pants.

Sam ordered himself to fight against this monster’s violation of his body, but his muscles did not obey; another flash of agony seared through his heart, and then he felt himself drifting away,
sliding
out of his body as though his skin were only a light jacket. The walls of the bedroom dissolved. The demon vanished. Sam found himself in a vast, grassy field warmed by a golden sun.

In the distance, he spotted a familiar figure in a yellow dress, steadily drifting closer.

The dream about Lena,
he remembered. The real Lena, his love
for all time.

He traveled toward her, carried by wings of air.