Meanwhile, old tough guy, terror-of-the-docks Heslip died. Whatever was in there hit him again and again like a shark in a sea of blood. Charlie could not see what it was, not exactly. He only knew it was shaggy and fast and had claws like threshing blades. Heslip barely put up a defense. Maybe if he’d had the knife, but it was still clenched in his hand and his hand was on the floor, severed at the wrist.
He fell halfway out the door, his head bouncing off the floor. His face was a mass of blood, his eyes dangling from their sockets by what looked like strings of red licorice, and his lower jaw was missing. As Stilson and Cubby pressed themselves up against the opposite bulkhead, they saw a scaly, bristled hand grab Heslip by the belt and drag him into the darkness. Then the cabin door slammed shut. And this is what Charlie saw for several minutes: just the door with droplets of blood running down its surface.
10
When he came out of it, he was sitting there before the wall, touching it very lightly with his fingertips. What he had just seen, whatever sort of psychic trip it was, was lost on him. There was only the wall.
The paper felt moist, lumpy.
It was as if there was something beneath it, something wet and plump and wormy. Something that moved under his fingers. He half-expected to see the wallpaper split open and dozens of glistening pale larvae coming squeezing out, wriggling and looping.
“All right,” he said. “Knock this shit off.”
He squinted his eyes shut to make it stop.
He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating… but the wallpaper was bulging now, swelling, forming into a rising bubble that expanded into a great central pouch like it was filled with water. As he watched, the bubble expanded and deflated like it was breathing.
You’re not seeing any of this.
To prove it to himself, he reached out and touched it. He flinched. The bubble was real. It was soft and… warm. He ran a hand over it. It felt like the belly of a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy. He pressed on it and it seemed like something moved in there, not kicking like a fetus might but moving with a slow, undulant roll. He was giving into his delusions now, he was feeding his hallucinations and becoming one with the madness that filled his mind like gray fuzz. He pressed a finger to the bubble until it sheared open and a warm, gushing juice spilled to his feet. Placental fluid, is what he thought. There was an acrid sweet odor to it that was slightly saline and darkly secret, though by no means unpleasant.
He set the lantern down. Breathing hard, icy fingers unwinding his vitals in shivering loops, he tore the wallpaper free. It was slimy and nearly hot under his fingertips. He tore it away and there was a hole on the other side. He knew there couldn’t be a hole. There was only wallpaper, plasterboard, and the steel bulkhead beneath… yet there was a hole, a dark chasm on the other side.
He put his face up to it because he felt that he had to. It was not necessarily a conscious decision anymore than getting an erection is. This was darker, deeper, almost instinctual and subconscious.
He could feel the heat coming out of the chasm and it gave him a momentary erotic thrill. The scent he breathed in was like that of warm, juicy, well-marbled meat, the way he had always thought the privates of women smelled when they were moist and engorged.
Moving on auto by that point, he reached down for the lantern.
He had to see. The feel, the smell… it had excited him in ways he had not been excited since he was thirteen. He could hear movement in the chasm. It was soft and slick like oiled flesh sliding against oiled flesh. He brought the lantern up and saw what was in there. His impression was subjective and damaging. The hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end. Gooseflesh spread up from his lower back, bristling up his spine in a cold wave until it covered the nape of his neck. His eyes widened, seeming to expand in their sockets as if they might blow open the orbits that held them. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. It ran down his face in droplets.
In the chasm he saw… he saw a face emerging from the hot womblike darkness, a wriggling, soft machinery straining to break free. It was membranous and pulsating, coiling with fat purple-blue arteries and grinning with a puckering and suckering mouth like that of a pond leech.
No! It’s not there! You’re not fucking seeing it! YOU ARE NOT SEEING IT!
He blinked his eyes and it was gone, but there was another rising bubble on the wall. And another and another. Dozens of them were pushing out now like sores filled with pus, like water blisters. With a cry, he scratched at them, popping them even as more rose up. Hot fluid like infected blood ran over his knuckles. He tore the bubbles open and from each one, black, wiry hairs sprouted, thickening and tangling until the entire wall was furry and crawling. He tore the hair out in clumps like weeds from garden soil, filling his hands with it and tossing knotted tufts of it in every which direction, clawing and clawing. His fingers scraped against the bulkhead beneath, but it was not steel… it was soft, pliant flesh, leprous flesh that came apart under his nails like spongy tissue.
The walls were bleeding.
With a scream, he fell back, hitting the floor on his ass. He saw the forest of creeping hairs suck back into the holes that had birthed them. They made a strawlike, rustling noise. He brushed sweat from his eyes. When he looked again, he saw only dusty wallpaper and nothing more. An unbroken expanse.
“Enough!” he said, climbing to his feet. “I’ve had enough of this shit!”
And there went his voice again, echoing shrilly like his words were being mocked by a locust or a cricket. Strident, piping. He studied the wallpaper even though he knew it was the last thing he should be doing. It bled and wavered, vines and stems knotting together. He looked away and the room tilted this way then that as if he’d just gotten a whiff of poison gas. He sat down on the bed again, trying to screw his head on straight.
There’s nothing holding you here, you know.
Oh, but there was. Fifty grand in gambling debts. And Arturo, of course. If he left now, Arturo would know he didn’t have any guts. He would know what Charlie was beginning to suspect about himself: that he’d spent his entire life puffing out his chest and inflating his balls, talking the talk and walking the walk because… because inside he was scared to death and always had been. And even if he suspected this, he couldn’t let Arturo know it, couldn’t let him see the raw and unreasoning fear that dogged him. Because if he left now, Arturo would see it on him or smell it on him the way they said dogs sometimes could.
But to stay… the idea seemed worse all the time.
Worse? No, it was getting to the point where it was fucking dangerous.
He’d already experienced too many weird things, enough so that he was now doubting the nature of reality. He had a mad, almost feverish feeling that if he walked out that door right now there would be nothing on the other side but some immense and bottomless black gulf or maybe a brick wall like there was in old haunted house movies when people opened doors.
Things were happening, they were building up to something and he knew it. He was no longer believing that some of Arturo’s goons were running around causing mischief. This was far beyond simple parlor tricks like that because the real enemy, he was starting to think, was his own mind… that and the thing which manipulated it, plucking his nerves like the strings of a lute.
Bang, bang, bang.
Charlie jumped, a bolt of white fear piercing his chest. Gooseflesh covered his entire body. His mouth went dry as dirt. Somebody was pounding at the door. He told himself he did not hear it, but then it came again and he seized up inside. From head to toe, he shook. His teeth were even chattering.