“Yo, Ethan!” The voice that called out to him was familiar. Ethan had known it for years and, yet, it couldn’t be him.
It couldn’t be Billy. It couldn’t be the boy he used to work the neighborhoods with. The only one he had ever considered a friend. The friend that had gotten shot when they were stupid enough to run from the cops. Shot by the bullet that had missed Ethan by mere inches and pierced Billy’s chest instead.
With the itch raging inside his head, Ethan turned around and saw a shadow standing a short distance away from him. The shadow stood hunching underneath a streetlight, eerily immovable in its presence.
Ethan squinted his eyes to make out the features of the stranger’s face. He found himself unable to focus.
Just as the torture inside Ethan’s skull rose to new heights, the shadow raised its hand and waved at him slowly.
“Yo, Ethan!” The voice rasped along the main road until it reached Ethan’s ears. From there the message fought for attention with the itch inside his head.
The shadow dashed forward and then it was all just instinct. Ethan ran as fast as he could along the main road.
Tears filled his eyes. The torment inside his head was almost as unbearable as the anxiety building up inside the pit of his stomach. Where could he go? Where could he run? Who in this town would help him? Barely able to think, Ethan realized there was only one answer. The old man!
Ethan turned left off the main road and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. The itch in his head had made room for a burn, rivaled only by the feeling of his lungs ready to explode.
He passed the Pineview Baptist Church on his right and knew that he was nearing the west border of Brettville.
Ethan shouldn’t have looked over his shoulder. He knew it the moment he did it. The shadow was close on his tail and was now chasing him on all fours. Galloping toward him as its ugly panting poisoned the air around it.
Ethan left the church behind him and passed the border onto a sandy road covered by an arch of enormous pines. They lurched over him as he ran along the road toward the Toaves mansion.
Pines as far as the eye could see, their branches clawing over Ethan’s head as if extending hands in a dance of cold and malicious chaos. Pines to his left, pines to his right.
With the roaring shadow close behind him, Ethan ran along the sandy road and hoped, prayed, believed, that he would make it to safety.
The end of the road came into sight and Ethan saw the iron gate to the mansion rising up behind the pines. It was closed.
Ethan prepared himself for the climb of a lifetime and passed the barrier with three strong jumps. With a loud thud he landed on the other side of the gate and looked back at the shadow.
The pain in his head was nearly unbearable and yet his shock was greater still at what he saw. Without any effort the shadow moved through the iron gate and pursued him with its rough and enraged gallop.
Ethan shook his head in disbelief as he started toward the dark mansion that was only a short distance away.
“Mr. Toaves!” he yelled at the top of his lungs as he ran. “Mr. Toaves!”
Ethan could feel the shadow’s burning breath on the back of his neck now.
“Mr. Toaves, help me! Help me!”
The lights in the windows of the mansion went on and Ethan knew he was saved.
And then the shadow crashed into his back and Ethan went flying toward the cold, hard ground. It was all he could do to turn on his back before the shadow lunged at him a second time.
The shadow landed on top of him. Ethan could see its face clearly—it was Billy. It was Billy’s zombified face, parts of its skull missing, maggots crawling in its skin.
The shadow bit at him and clawed at him and consumed him. It ate his face and his hands and swallowed his tongue.
(September 23, 2019)
Arthur Toaves stood in the doorway next to Dr. Stewart as he looked at the young man strapped to the hospital bed.
It hadn’t even been a day since that young man, Ethan Walker, had climbed the gate to his mansion and screamed for help. Arthur couldn’t forget the desperation in the voice he heard that night. Calling his name.
“We keep him sedated. There isn’t much we can do for him here.” Dr. Stewart turned toward the old man next to him. “I need to send him to Bryce.”
“Bryce?”
“Psychiatric hospital.”
Arthur gently shook his head. “When we spoke on the phone you said there were other cases like Ethan’s?”
Dr. Stewart nodded. “We actually don’t know what’s happening. These are all normal, healthy people. And then…. Then all of a sudden they’re not.”
Arthur knew the doctor was trying to avoid a specific word. Crazy.
“Before Ethan stopped talking altogether he claimed he was attacked by what I would have to interpret as some kind of zombie. Says his dead friend ate his face,” the doctor said.
Arthur agreed that Ethan’s face looked completely normal. “And the others?”
“All of them completely healthy. Completely sane. Until all of a sudden they weren’t. And they all have their own stories, Arthur, of being chased or assaulted.” The doctor paused before he added, “None of the stories make any damn sense.”
Arthur knew Dr. Stewart as a grumpy man that had aged faster and faster as he had gotten more and more responsibilities at the hospital. Still, at the core, Arthur knew the doctor was a capable and diligent man.
“And they’re not sick? I read about viruses that can attack the brain.”
Dr. Stewart took a deep breath. He didn’t have much patience for people who went on the internet and created their own theories. Of course, he couldn’t say so to a man as powerful and generous as Arthur Toaves.
“There’s something wrong with their brain, alright. The scans show several cognitive impairments, as if they suffered from some strange kind of cerebral event. But what it is that happened to them, I simply have no clue.”
Arthur nodded as he mulled over everything he knew. Last night the young man had arrived at his mansion, screaming frantically for help. Mary had been the first to the door and found the young man rolling around on the ground, trying to fend off an assailant that simply wasn’t there.
Now that young man lay sedated and strapped down to a hospital bed. A danger to himself, quite possibly a danger to others, too.
But the young man had come to Arthur. In his hour of need, crazy or not, Ethan Walker had reached out for Arthur Toaves. And Arthur was not ready to fail Ethan just yet.
“Dr. Stewart, please leave him here for now. I want all of this documented and investigated,” Arthur said.
The doctor threw his hands in the air as he exclaimed, “Look around you, Arthur! This is a small-town hospital! We don’t have the time, nor the resources. You have been generous to us, but there is only so much we can do!”
Arthur turned to face the doctor and gently touched his shoulder. “I understand your frustration, but you must keep Ethan here for now. Are the others still here as well?”
“Two we sent to Bryce. The other two we’re getting ready to send off.”
“Keep them here as well. I can still throw some weight around. May even get the government involved if it’s necessary.”
“The government?”
Arthur nodded. Something dark had come to his town. He didn’t know what it was or how to combat it, but he was dead set on finding out.
DAY 1
OCTOBER 24, 2019
Whenever Caleb sank into an unstable sleep his mind lingered in the turmoil of his past. It wandered and strolled and lurked around the maze of his unconsciousness, only to be confronted with the exact same person each and every time. The monster at the end of every nightmare.