Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Excerpt from the diaries of Reginald Bowers III

     I am plumbing the depths of depravity and finding the well bottomless. So many deaths and so many atrocities in the name of this dreadful being. It seems impossible that no one has connected these dreadful events before now but I suppose that being so widespread in their dates of occurrence they were treated individually. My forbear traced the dragon's activity as far back as World War II. Limited technology hindered his research I am sure but still I am amazed by his tenacity. The earliest event in my grandfather's journal involves a German man of the Nazi party by the name of Josef Steidtmann. Steidtmann was in charge of executions at a concentration camp in Treblinka. When his quarters were searched after the camp's liberation, the heads of 37 Jewish and gypsy women were discovered in his closet. The heads were arranged in orderly lines on Steidtmann's shelves; the bodies were never found. On the wall behind a large red curtain, which bore the image of a swastika, soldiers found a crudely painted dragon.
     My own research extends much further into the past, revealing a dark and compelling pattern. Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed of Hungary murdered over 80 virgins in the 1600's and bathed in their blood. Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia son of Vlad II Dracul (a member of the Order of the Dragon) was a mass murderer in the 1400's often impaling his victims as he ate dinner. There have been over 90 severed heads discovered in North America in the past two centuries. Of those only half were ever identified. In 1975 an insurance salesman by the name of Seth Harris was arrested for the beheading of two of his female coworkers. As before, the bodies of the victims were never recovered. When questioned about the bodies, Harris simply stated that they were "in the black". Several entries in the man's journal referenced "the voice of the dragon".

Jonathan: Now
     Jonathan read for hours on end, devouring the information within the box. Inside he found journals, some his father's and some written in his uncle's precise script. He also found photocopied police records and case files,  crime scene photos, old documents written in Latin or Greek, and literally hundreds of clipped newspaper articles detailing missing persons. Some of the articles dated back decades. As he read through the notes of the two men, Jonathan came to understand that his father and uncle had pieced together a puzzle that even his grandfather and great grandfather before that hadn't been able to clearly see. The journals detailed a horrible possibility paralleled by cryptic Biblical passages and ancient manuscripts. Jonathan was familiar at least somewhat with the numbers 666 referenced in the scripture from the lid of the wooden box. It seemed now that the numbers held a greater significance. His father and uncle believed that there existed a literal abyss, a hellish place in some dimension parallel to our own where Lucifer himself, the Dragon was chained. They'd believed that while he was imprisoned he was still able to exert influence on dark-minded individuals in our world. Throughout history these individuals had been contacted and manipulated by the dragon to take the heads of victims. They would then draw or paint the dragon on a wall or door and by passing the body into the room it would pass between worlds. Each victim would weaken the wall separating our world from the abyss. If the number of sacrifices reached 666, the men believed that the wall between worlds would burst, and the Dragon would be loosed. The research in the box approximated the total to be around 620 victims but for obvious reasons this wasn't a solid figure; the number could be lower or far higher. 
     There was only one recent clipping which was dated 2 years before and described the sudden reappearance of a salesman named Clancy Matthews. Before he died, Reginald Bowers was planning to visit the man who had resided in an North Carolina mental institution since his strange incident. Jonathan's uncle had hoped to gain some insight into the horrible mystery. Now, as he closed the box and locked it again, Jonathan determined to go see the man himself. He carried the box under his arm back to his vehicle and sat behind the wheel contemplating. Police had found no trace of his uncle. After five weeks passed they had simply stopped looking. The letter had arrived soon afterward along with the man's last will and testament. Everything the man had owned in life now belonged to Jonathan. Somewhere out there he would find the answers he so desperately longed for. What had driven his father to suicide? What had happened to his uncle? As he put the rusting Chevy in gear and puled out of the driveway Jonathan was certain of only one thing. The trail would begin with Clancy Matthews.

Chapter 6

Laura: Now      The plan was simple, but Laura had found that the simplest plans were usually the best executed. If a plan had too many variables then there were far too many things that could go wrong. Until Laura had arrived in the cellar, the trucker had maintained the upper-hand by terrorizing the women. He had used fear to cripple them, keep them corralled, but Laura's mind had latched on to a few things that seemed to have not occurred to the others. First: even with the cattle-prod or any other weapon the trucker may have, the women in the cellar outnumbered him seven to one. Granted, some of the women were very weak by this point and could offer little more than a distraction but the fact remained that he was only one man. Second: the room upstairs was well-lit. When Laura first suggested that they turn off the lamp and hanging bulb the other women were hesitant. The light was their only source of comfort in the damp prison of the cellar. Laura explained to them that by turning out the lights and allowing their eyes to adjust to the darkness they would have an advantage over the trucker. When he plunged in to the room out of the brightness of the hallway he would be momentarily blinded. If they could charge the man and occupy him long enough, Laura could creep up behind him and smash his head with the base of the lamp. She didn't have to knock him out, she just needed to weaken him enough that he would drop the prod.      Eventually the women agreed to the plan. They removed the hanging bulb from its wire and unplugged the lamp from the wall. When the lights went out Nancy began to cry but Pamela (more alert now it seemed) comforted the scrawny girl and in a moment she was quiet. It took awhile, but gradually Laura began to see forms emerge from the inky blackness and soon she could make out the faces of the other women. With their eyes adjusted they soon realized that there was a faint glow from above that crept in between the boards of the cellar ceiling in a few places and they could make out the dim outline of the door through which the trucker would enter the room. Four of the women would charge the man when he entered the room from each corner and attempt to drag him further in. When he crossed the threshold Nancy would quickly shut the door behind him giving the women a greater advantage in the dark then Laura would attack from behind while he was busy with the others. It wasn't a perfect plan and things could still go wrong. For one thing they had no idea what to expect from the nameless girl huddled in the corner. She still hadn't spoken to or even acknowledged the other women.      The time passed slowly as they waited to spring their trap. They spoke quietly of their lives and families. Even Nancy uttered a few words here and there. At last they heard heavy breathing and approaching steps as the trucker barreled down the hallway beyond the door. The women scattered into position as quietly and quickly as possible. Laura gripped the lamp base tightly with both hands, took a deep breath and held it. Suddenly the man was in the midst of the cellar swinging and stabbing wildly with the crackling rod. Charlotte threw herself toward him at the same moment that Pamela dove at the man's legs. The impact caused the man to topple slightly off balance, but wasn't enough to force him deeper into the darkness. He managed to press the cattle prod into the older lady's collar bone and she collapsed to the ground, her body convulsing like a fish removed from its aquarium. He brought a booted heel careening upward into Pamela's chin dropping her as well then spun on the other two. Laura rushed forward and brought the lamp down as hard as she could, aiming for the base of the man's skull. At just that moment the girl from the corner of the room burst into motion. She blew past Laura causing her blow with the lamp to deflect off the trucker's shoulder instead of his head. She flung Nancy back from where she had been struggling to close the heavy door and ran out of the cellar and into the hallway before disappearing around a corner. When the lamp connected with the flesh of the man's shoulder he let out an angry grunt and spun toward Laura who was now unbalanced. With his free hand the trucker reached behind his back and when he brought the hand up again it was holding a pistol. The plan had failed, by now that much was clear. Laura didn't have a chance to scream. Before she could duck aside he had aimed the gun at her chest and pulled the trigger. Clancy: Then      Clancy's lungs screamed as he was pulled ever deeper into the black waters. He to free his ankle but the grip was unyielding. Just as unconscious was beginning to claim him, Clancy hit bottom. He felt the hand continuing to pull him first against the surface and then somehow through it. When he had cleared the floor he was released and he collapsed choking and coughing up the stagnant water. Pale, thin green worms swam and swirled in the puddles of water he had spewed up. He coughed again and saw another tangled mess of the green worms fly from his mouth like angel-hair pasta. This time he couldn't fight back the oblivion of unconsciousness.      When Clancy awoke he was in the same room but he was no longer alone. The being was tall and utterly black. Its face was featureless and the body itself was genderless. It was thin and shiny as polished steel. In the creature's stomach was a pink slit running vertically from its wist to the base of its throat. As Clancy was looking this slit peel opened with a wet smacking sound revealing an oval shaped mouth, lined with rows upon rows of needle-sharp teeth. For the first time Clancy became aware that he was restrained. chained tightly to the back wall of a small cave-like space. He peered out through the open doorway beyond the shadowy being and could see an impossibly enormous citadel, its walls dotted with countless other cells like his own, and there chained to the floor in the center of the room was the dragon. Not a statue but the actually beast itself as large as a house and every inch as sinister as in the art it had inspired. Sudden agony lit his right arm on fire. He looked and saw the creature was pouring an acidic juice the color of blood onto his flesh. Where it touched, Clancy saw his skin bubble and peel as the muscle blackened and fell from his bones. He screamed until his voice was gone and just as quickly as the flesh was destroyed he watched the green worms he had seen earlier crawl out of his tortured flesh and become new flesh. In a moment his arm was restored. The mouth in the creature's stomach snapped open and shut then splashed a fresh coat of acid on the new flesh witch instantly began to boil as before. Clancy thrashed his head from side to side. The pain was unbearable, unimaginable. His eyes came to rest upon the dragon again and he saw that the gigantic pale face was now turned his way and observing his torture with a wicked grin. He saw the dragon's eyes bulge in their sockets and he was certain that he saw merriment shining in those eyes. He was struck by a sense of recognition that for a moment was more consuming than the pain in his arms. The look in those eyes was the same as that he had seen on the face of the trucker when the man had swung open the door of the bathroom stall. The thick lips of the dragon's mouth parted revealing teeth the size of elephant tusks and just as curved. The dragon spoke. Its voice filled the space and vibrated through Clancy's skeleton. It spoke directly to him. "THE WORM DIETH NOT." it said, and at that moment, with the dragon's laughter echoing throughout the citadel, Clancy's mind finally shattered.

Chapter 5

Dearest Nephew,
     You hold this letter in your hands because I have failed. Most likely my body has never been retrieved and never will be, but I have died, of that you can be certain. The matter of utmost urgency to you and the reason for this communication is not how I have been killed but "why?". It was never my desire to pass this great burden to you but circumstances have forced my hand. Do not think me melodramatic or speaking in hyperbole when I assure that the world's fate hangs in the balance. Horrible things have been placed in motion that cannot be allowed to reach fruition. I know that when we last spoke we did not part well. I apologize deeply for the words I spoke of your father. Truth be told I loved my brother as I love his son. I suppose I was simply angry at him for leaving me with this weighty responsibility. That responsibility is now yours. Go to my house and remove the clothing from my bedroom closet. Upon investigation you will find the back wall of the closet to be a false one. Remove the panel and you will find inside a locked mahogany box. The key within this envelope will open that box. Inside you will find a stack of documents, these comprise a body of research first begun by your great grandfather long ago and passed down through the generations to your father and I. I now bequeath that dreadful work to you in hopes that you will not ignore the truth of it or allow your notions of the world's workings to hinder your ability to do what must be done. It must be finished, the dragon must not be freed. The oldest of the documents I have painstakingly copied from your great grandfather's notes. Many of the pages you will find written in the familiar handwriting of your father, God rest his soul. My time is up and I must say goodbye. I am sorry Jonathan, so very sorry. 

Reginald Bowers III

Jonathan Bowers: Now
     Jonathan read the letter twice before refolding it and placing the paper back inside the envelope. He held the brass key in his open palm, feeling the lightness of it and struggled to understand his feelings. There was still sorrow from the loss of his father of course and he still harbored a now pointless anger towards his Uncle Reginald but there were other, more complicated emotions as well. In his heart he now felt an indescribable amalgam of fear, confusion, and an odd species of excitement. All his life, Jonathan had known that his father shared some deep secret with his uncle. As far back as he could remember, Jonathan could recall the two men huddled in his fathers office, speaking in hushed tones. On more than one occasion they had closed the door so that Jonathan couldn't hear their arguments; those nights had usually ended with his uncle storming out of the tiny house slamming the door behind him. Afterwards Jonathan's father would seem weary and distant, ordering Jonathan not to enter his office before retiring to his bedroom upstairs.
     Now the heaviness of loss settled on Jonathan along with a profound loneliness. With a deep sigh he placed the key in the pocket of his jeans and left the house. As he started up the engine of the rusty old Chevy pickup and backed out of the driveway to head to his uncle's house, Jonathan felt tears well up in his eyes. Uncle Reginald had been all he had left and now even he was gone. He visualized his uncle's face in his mind: his high cheek bones and receding hairline so much like Jonathan's father's, his piercing blue-green eyes, and his always tidily trimmed beard. In spite of his sadness though, Jonathan couldn't help feeling a sense of anticipation. He would finally know the secret the two men had kept for so long. It wouldn't replace the men themselves, but by shedding light on the mystery he would come to know them more deeply and for that Jonathan was grateful. 
     He found the closet just as described in the letter. With the false wall pulled aside, the wooden box was revealed. It was a mostly plain box bearing little ornamentation. The lock was simple and undecorated. The only remarkable detail of the outside was a carved message etched into the varnished grain of the box's lid. "Revelation 13:18 and above that "Revelation 20:1-3". Jonathan turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid. 

Things to Ponder

Okay so no chapter today. Its been a bit busy and I want to focus my thoughts and give you my best so... instead of a new chapter I'm giving you some concept art. This is how the hooded figures appear in my mind's eye. May be you visualized them differently. So things to ponder... WHY ARE THERE HUNDREDS OF THESE BOOGERS RUNNING AROUND? Where exactly has Clancy found himself? Let me throw you a few teases. What if I told you there were exactly 658 of them counting the one who arrived with Clancy? Wouldn't that mean that the 7 other women in the cellar would bring that total to 665 and that would make Laura victim number...
Food to chew on and speculate over.
Revelation 13:18
and
Revelation 20:1-3

click on photo for a larger view

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Laura: Now

     The girl from the truck stood shakily to her feet and would have toppled over again had Laura not reached forward and steadied her. She could feel the girl trembling. The numbness in Laura's arm and shoulder began to fade replaced with a deepening pain but she was relieved to find she could still move the limb. Working quickly Laura removed the tape from the girl's mouth and began to loosen the cords binding her hands. While she worked Pamela recited the same greeting and introduction from before reminding Laura of a prerecorded message on an answering machine. Laura assumed the lady was in shock, probably the others as well. She was likely in shock herself although she found that inside her mind there was a stubborn voice that refused to be afraid. That Laura wasn't intimidated or desperate. The Laura speaking inside wasn't in shock; that Laura was angry, furious. As her eyes drifted across the faces of the broken women Laura felt the rage growing from embers into a raging flame. The trucker would pay. Somehow she would make him pay. Nothing gave him a right to do this. She looked at frail Nancy sitting now with her skeletal arms crossed over her narrow chest and Laura made up her mind: she was going to get them out of this cellar, regardless of the cost. Even if it meant her death, she would get them out. 

     The girl standing before them now was tall with straight black hair that hung curtain-like down to her waist. She was dressed expensively in a charcoal-gray business suit which was now darkened in places with dried blood. She told them her name was Wanda Lawson. The trucker had captured her and her friend Maria two days before when he offered to help them change a flat tire. The man had unexpectedly wheeled around smashing the tire iron into Maria's temple before turning to Wanda and forcing her into the back of the big rig. Laura gathered that the dead woman in the truck had been this Maria and that the tire iron may well have been the same instrument the trucker had used to subdue her at the gas station. The women, with the exception of the unnamed lady in the corner, sat on the dusty floor encircling the small lamp and each in turn told how they had come to be in the cellar. The stories were mostly the same and all of the women had been brought to the cabin in the back of the truck and shoved down the chute. Laura learned that before she arrived there had been three other victims. The trucker had entered the room through a locked door in the corner of the room that Laura hadn't previously noticed. He had burst into the cellar with a cattle prod crackling in his hand shocking each of them many times until all were left writhing on the floor. Then he had caught one of the three and drug them by their hair from the room, bolting the door behind when he left. The next day he had returned for another, and again on the third day. Now Laura understood the bruising on the battered arms and faces of the captives. The angry voice in her head spoke up again and Laura formed a plan.

Clancy: Now

     The dragon stood in the torchlit chamber grinning hideously. Clancy stood before the statue that towered over him, nine foot tall at least, studying its carved features. Instantly recognizing the glaring, almond-shaped human eyes and the thin slope of the dragon's nose, the mouth filled with sharply pointed teeth. The body of the creature while still covered with scales was now far more human in anatomy, having arms terminating in long-fingered hands and two very human legs. Stone serpents, coated in a red glaze and resembling the snake he had just witnessed crawling from out of the darkness, were coiled around the figure's legs and waist forming a serpentine loin cloth and boots. The body itself was carved from a dark volcanic stone of a rough texture save for the face which seemed to be made of polished bronze inset with ruby eyes. Clancy paused long enough to take a photo and then taking a torch from the wall, he passed by the beast and into a long corridor behind it. Referring back to the drawing he had retrieved off the dead woman, Clancy was almost certain the rectangular shape in the center represented the room he had just left. 

     He continued forward and as he walked he became aware of a low rumbling sound. Up ahead the tunnel took a sharp turn to the right and led Clancy to the shore of a large body of water. The black surface of the water was still and unbroken and Clancy could see a bone-white strip of land on the other side and somewhere in the distance beyond, the source of the rumbling. Some sixth sense alerted Clancy just soon enough to turn and see that the hooded figures had silently made there way down the ladder and were pouring out of the mouth of the corridor knives in hand. He jumped to one side narrowly sidestepping a swipe from the nearest and lifting his camera from his neck by its strap, Clancy swung it at the figure's head. The hood slid to the side revealing a teaming mass of insects: roaches, spiders, and centipedes erupted in a cloud and rained down the figure's pale shoulders. Clancy turned and leaped into the water finding it only waist deep and began to make his way to the opposite side. Looking behind he saw the hooded corpses lining the shore and witnessed the many crawling creatures he had scattered already beginning to reform the head of the one he had hit. He was still close enough to see a fat, brown scorpion crawl into position in the center of its face where a nose should be. Then his feet stepped into nothingness and he fell. The black waters washed over his face and as he swam to regain the surface  Clancy felt icy fingers wrap tightly around his ankle and drag him further down into the abyss.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Laura: Now

     Laura found herself falling down a long greasy chute that eventually spilled her out into a humid, musky-smelling cellar. The space was dimly lit by a single bulb that dangled from a wire in one corner and by an old dust-shrouded lamp which sat at the center of the cellar's floor. There were other women in the room with her, all malnourished. Four of the women were waiting for Laura like a grim welcoming committee, having heard her arriving upstairs. A fifth was huddled in a corner rocking violently back and forth. A sixth, this one much younger and far thinner than the rest simply leaned against the brick wall of the cellar, staring at Laura with sunken, haunted eyes. One of the women, a blonde with harsh featuresstepped forward and spoke gently to Laura. "I'm going to get that tape off of your mouth... it... it's going to hurt a bit. Okay?" Laura nodded. The blonde peeled the corner of the tape up and slowly and gently as she could she removed it from Laura's mouth. Laura spat the bloody rag out coughing and gagging. The blonde waited for her to grow still then untied the cords that bound Laura's hands. As her eyes adjusted to the low light of the cellar Laura could see the other women more clearly, noting the many dark greenish-purple bruises that dotted their arms, necks, and faces. Laura thought the bruises gave their pale skin the appearance of molding bread. That image pushed her over the edge and this time when the nausea came Laura didn't fight it. The blonde watched expressionlessly as Laura was sick and then when she had finished retching the blonde spoke. "I'm Pamela." she said and then gestured in turn at the other women standing behind her introducing them as well. Melissa was first, she was tall with disheveled brown hair, sunken cheeks, and paranoia-filled eyes that kept darting around the cellar, never seeming to rest on anything. Next was a short-haired lady named Charlotte whose face bore the same emotionless quality as Pamela's. The last was older, her hair graying; her name was Mary. Pamela pointed to the teen leaning against the wall. " That's Nancy, she's been her longer than the rest of us."
     Nancy was emaciated. She lurked in the shadows like a scarecrow. Her arms dangled from her shirt sleeves like twigs, reminding Laura of pictures she'd seen from liberated concentration camps in World War Two. The holocaust victims in those photographs had been skeletal forms as well and in Nancy's eyes she saw the same breed of hopeless desperation that she remembered from their faces. Laura was told that none of them knew the name of the girl hugging her knees and rocking in the corner. She hadn't spoken a word sense the trucker had thrown her down the chute. Suddenly Laura heard a sound echoing out of the dark square above and the other victim from the truck plummeted into the cellar. 

Clancy: Now

Clancy, startled by the sight of the many hooded forms surrounding him, crossed one foot in front of the other and fell to the ground. He thought he was surely doomed but soon found that crawling on the ground flat on his stomach, the attackers were unable to find him, their knives slashing through empty space or one another. He continued that way pressing through the crowd and brushing against the cold, clammy flesh of their legs for what felt like hours. He suddenly noticed a thin line of light on the floor in front of him. He scrambled to it. There on the floor was a octagonal panel which Clancy lifted and flung aside revealing a ladder leading down into a chamber lit from within. As he mounted the ladder and began to descend he peered up into the room above. The hooded figures stood motionless now and encircled the ladder. Their heads seemed to be writhing and undulating beneath the black cloth that draped over them. The crowd parted and a new figure emerged from the mass of pale flesh. It was the headless body of the woman from the rest stop, now walking upright and purposefully to the center of the room. The corpse removed its clothing and stood nude in the glow of the chamber beneath. Clancy watched as a snake slithered out of the inky blackness and began to climb around and up the corpse's leg. The snake itself was bloated and covered with red scales the color of fresh blood. It made its way upward and coiled its fat rubbery body around the stump of the woman's severed neck forming a hideous counterfeit head. Clancy was too terrified to move. He hung from the ladder frozen, unable to look away from the nightmarish spectacle above. One of the other figures stepped forward carrying one of the long black hoods in its arms and draped it gently over the still squirming serpentine head. Another placed a long rusty knife into the woman's hand. The sight of the knife was enough to break Clancy's paralysis. He began descending the ladder at a feverish pace, slipping once and falling a few feet before catching hold of another rung and continuing his way down into the chamber below. Above him the figures had dispersed no longer interested in him perhaps. When he reached the bottom of the ladder he had to drop the final yard or so into the room. He landed on the floor in a bloody heap. He had received two fairly deep stab wounds and several smaller wounds; the loss of blood was beginning to make his head spin. He stood and for the first time surveyed the chamber. His heart nearly burst from his chest as he found himself staring into the sinister face of the dragon, and this time it was no drawing.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Laura: Now      There was a loud howling sound as the trailer door swung open and light poured into the space setting fire to Laura's dark-adjusted eyes. When the blindness began to fade she was startled to find herself staring at another woman similarly bound against the opposite wall of the trailer. This lady's head hung limp against her restrained chest and Laura wondered if the woman was unconscious. To her right Laura heard the same shuffling sound again and assumed that a third person was imprisoned as well. Then he was there. He stood with his back to Laura facing the woman. "Wake up." he said. The voice was steady and calm, business-like. A moment later he struck the woman with loud echoing smack. On the other side of the box, the third person began to whimper. "Wake up." he said again. The voice was still serene but now there was a barely traceable undercurrent to it. Laura didn't think it was anger... she thought maybe it was excitement, anticipation. There was another pause then the man kicked the drooping woman; his steel-toed boot connected with her upper thigh. Laura heard the sickening sound of crunching bone and again fought the urge to vomit. The dead woman didn't move, would never move again. "Oh well." the man said then with a heavy sigh he turned to face Laura.       Looking at him now she was aware of some changes in his appearance. For one thing he had removed the dark shades, revealing eyes so dark brown they could almost have been black. Merriment danced in those eyes. Something about them made Laura think of the eyes of children on Christmas morning. The beard was gone now too; she could see a few still-weeping scratches on his cheek and chin which spoke of the haste with which he had shaved. The hat he still wore, now turned backward on his head. He looked into Laura's eyes and grinned. "Guess her little heart just gave out, huh?" This he spoke with a childish, gee-whiz sort of shrug then he reached forward with one hand. His thumb found the soft wet spot on the back of Laura's head where he had struck her at the station and pressed down. Agony exploded in her skull. The man's face faded in and out of focus. After what seemed like an eternity he released her and spoke again. "We are going to take a walk. You are going to be a good little lamb aren't you." Laura nodded.      He unfastened the strap from across her chest and she couldn't stop herself from falling forward. The trucker stepped back and let her fall, banging her chin on the hard floor of the trailer. A knife appeared in his hand seemingly conjured out of thin air and he cut the cords that bound her feet. The muscles in her legs were aching and cramped but she still managed to stand. The man stood behind her and placed the point of the knife between her shoulder blades then began to lead her forward toward the light. In her peripheral vision she noticed the struggling form of the third woman on her right then she stood at the opening. "Don't try to run." he said then shoved her forward and out of the trailer. She landed hard on a stone path, her arms still tied behind her back. She'd managed to fall on her side instead of face down this time but now her right arm and shoulder had gone numb. Before she could stand he had hopped down beside her and was dragging her up to her feet.      Laura found herself being led up a stone path toward a small cabin. The living room floor was covered with a large area rug which the man pulled aside revealing a hatch door. He lifted the hatch and gestured with the knife towards the square of darkness in the floor. "Hop in." he said. His eyes seemed to dare her to defy him. To fight back. To play. She walked to the hatch closed her eyes and plunged into the dark. Clancy: Then      The trucker slammed the stall door shut and the world changed. With horror and a shudder of revulsion Clancy shoved the corpse from his lap and climbed down from the toilet. He pushed the door open and fled the stall expecting to find the bearded man waiting for him in the red glow of the dragon, but instead he found the room empty and profoundly changed. It wasn't possible. His mind insisted that what he saw couldn't be real, and yet there he stood, not in a rest stop bathroom but in a long concrete room filled with rusting metal shelves. The shelves were empty. Clancy's felt the reassuring weight of his camera still hanging from his neck. He took a shot of the room. He took another of the headless body slumped against the door of the stall. His mind reeled. "Record it." he thought. "Document it. That's why you stayed." From his coat pocket he retrieved the mechanical pencil and notepad. Clancy turned to a clean page and wrote: Not sure how i got here. He drives an eighteen wheeler, he has a beard. The body is a woman. He cut off her head. Clancy stopped writing. Something about the body had caught his eye. A folded piece of paper was stapled to the corpse's shirt barely visible beneath a dark jacket. Clancy didn't want to touch the body again, didn't want to be near it again, but he needed to know everything he could about his situation. He needed to know where he was and who the trucker was. He approached the body timidly, aware now of the greasy odor of decomposition that permeated the dark structure. Clancy forced his hand to reach under the blood-soaked flap of the woman's jacket and retrieve the paper. Some dark voice in the back of his mind was almost certain that the lifeless hands of the woman would suddenly spring upwards and grip his own arm, piercing his skin with decaying nails. His fingers found the note without event and he unfolded it. The sheet was blank save for an odd sketch drawn in what looked like brown colored pencil. The red light that filled the room seemed to rob objects of their natural color and was beginning to make Clancy feel dizzy. The sketch made little sense. It resembled a map of some sort but without recognizable landmarks, place names, or even any sense of relative scale. The crudely drawn lines could represents roads, tunnels, or none of those things. He folded it closed and placed it in his pocket then resumed writing in his pad leaving a bloody thumbprint in the corner of the blue-lined page. He wrote: strange drawing stapled to the body, looks like a map, this red light is making me feel sick.       Clancy made his way to a steel door at the opposite end of the building. it had no handle but instead a large wheel was was bolted in its center. The door reminded Clancy of a door from a submarine or a bomb shelter. It took some effort but the wheel finally creaked loose and began to turn. the door opened outward into perfect darkness. The path ahead was black as ink and stepping through the doorway felt like being devoured.  Within a few minutes Clancy had lost all sense of direction; there were no walls on either side that he could find, only wide open oblivion. He could no longer even find his way back to the room with the headless corpse and grinning dragon door. Suddenly a sharp pain burned a path down his back. Immediately another searing line traced its way across his chest. He felt a blade pierce his left thigh then it was gone. He was being attacked from all sides! Hands in front of him, he began to run hearing the metallic clang of knives as his attackers stabbed and sliced the air around him. Blades tore superficial wounds into his palms and stomach as he ran. Lifting his camera he pressed the button and for a few short seconds the flash dispelled the darkness. He was surrounded by figures, their bodies pale like the flesh of a frog's belly, their faces obscured by black hoods that draped down their backs and chests reaching almost to their feet. In their hands were knives, many of them dripping with his own blood. In the camera's flash Clancy had seen hundreds of them.

chapter 1

catch up here first: http://thefringesnovel.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fringes-is-ongoing-horror-novel-by.html

Chapter 1

Laura: Now

            She awoke to darkness and echoing thunder. The back of her head was a screaming symphony of agonizing pain. As she swam gradually back into consciousness, confusion transformed into slowly dawning terror. Her mouth was taped closed and filled with a ball of foul-tasting cloth. She recognized the coppery flavor of blood; it was overwhelming and caused nausea to constrict her throat. She fought the urge to vomit, knowing that she would drown if she did. Laura Henley fought the fear, pressed it into a corner of her mind, and held it at bay like a rabid dog that could bite if she let it too close. She began to take note of her surroundings. She couldn’t see of course but she could hear. What she initially thought was thunder she now was certain to be the deafening roar of a tractor trailer rattling down the highway. She was forced between two large boxes, possibly refrigerators judging by their size. Her hands and feet were bound tightly with cords. She attempted to lean forward and found she couldn’t. A strap across her chest held her upright and was attached to the trailer wall behind her.

Her last memory before awakening in the truck was of paying for gas and a coffee at the station across the road from her motel. Laura recalled stepping around the side of the building, looking for a payphone. She didn’t remember hearing the man approach. Now as she fought to concentrate, she found she couldn’t picture his face. The ache in her skull warred against coherent thought, but Laura forced herself to focus. She did remember that the man who had hit her had been wearing a blue shirt. Pushing her mind further she was almost certain that he had been exiting the store when she entered it. He had held the door for her. Laura tried again to picture his face. She thought he may have had a thin beard, perhaps sunglasses. He’d been wearing a hat with a deer head logo on it. Nothing about the man seemed to stand out in her mind. In fact his look seemed to her so perfectly unassuming as to make him anyone. Faceless. Unidentifiable. She had no way of knowing how long she had been unconscious or how far from the station she now was. It had been morning when she was taken. Her weight shifted from side to side and the piercing squeals of the truck’s breaks filled her ears as she felt the vehicle slow and finally settle to a stop. For a moment there was silence. But not perfect silence. Something was moving in the darkness. Laura could hear a thumping and shuffling sound coming from her right. She realized with a chilling certainty that she was not alone in the darkness.

Clancy: Then

            Clancy allowed the phone to ring a few more times before finally slamming it back into its cradle with a frustrated sigh. He was still shaken by the trucker. He was certain that the dragon tattoo had been the same. For heaven’s sake, he’d been documenting the horrible thing for too long not to recognize it. He saw it in his sleep now. The first date had arrived: 3/17/10. Clancy wasn’t sure why he had come a third time to this rest stop. The date held some sinister significance he was sure. He had told himself that he wouldn’t come, that he would just check the news. He had driven all this way fully intending to drive right past the small building tucked away at the base of the tree line. It wasn’t until he pulled into the gravel lot and placed the Ford in park that Clancy knew what he intended to do. The dragon, with its human face and cruel grin had called him to this place and he hadn’t been able to resist. Whatever wickedness was going to descend upon that place, Clancy intended to be there to see it, to record it. As he pushed open the door and entered the no longer white-tiled room, he half expected to see the gory remains of a butchered corpse sprawled on the floor and bleeding into the drain in the center of the room. Perhaps he expected to find a head resting half exposed in one of the round porcelain sinks, blind eyes staring at the ceiling. Instead he found the room unchanged. The fluorescent light fixture above him still flickered, strobe-like above and Clancy noted that the paper towel dispenser was still empty. It seemed that while he was drawn to the place others avoided it, maybe somehow sensing its menace. Clancy had a brief vision of birds in the sky diverting around the spot, giving it a wide berth lest they fall dead from the sky. He shuddered and crossed the floor to the stalls. When he neared the third one he reached out his hand toward the pale green door. From outside he heard tires rolling across gravel and the distinct sound of a parking eighteen wheeler. In a sudden panic he rushed to the door and flicking off the light in the bathroom he cracked the door open just wide enough to see. Outside in the lot sat the idling form of the truck that had picked him up. The driver had gotten out and crossed in front of the vehicle, heading in the direction of the rental car. For a brief moment the headlights illuminated the familiar bearded face and Clancy shut the door. Scrambling in the dark, feeling his way along the filthy walls Clancy stumbled into a stall and climbed onto the toilet. He concentrated on slowing and quieting his breathing. One of the notebook statements flashed unexpectedly through his mind: Can they see me if I make myself very small? Clancy felt his skin erupt in gooseflesh and tried to become small, willed himself to be invisible, to be shadow, to be away. The door to the restroom creaked open. The florescent lights hummed back to life. Clancy nearly screamed. Somehow in his panic he had hidden in the dragon’s stall. Its toothy grin mocked him. The date scrawled on the door may as well have been carved into tombstone marble. Clancy heard the sound of something being dragged along the floor and dropped in front of the stall. From the other side of the door Clancy could hear the trucker breathing. Then the stall door swung open, the man shoved something heavy into Clancy’s lap pinning him against the wall. The flickering light above shattered but didn’t plunge the room into darkness because there was now a dull red glow shining out of the crudely drawn symbol on the door bathing Clancy in monochrome. In the red glow of the dragon Clancy could see the headless body of the woman draped across his chest, he looked up into the truckers face, saw the madness in the man’s eyes and the rapturous smile on his face. And then Clancy did scream.

           

Prologue

Prologue

The Fringes

Clancy Matthews was a salesman. Not a very good one perhaps but not an extraordinarily bad one either. The most accurate description for Clancy was “mediocre”. He was a mediocre salesman, a mediocre lover, and a mediocre guitarist in his spare time. Put simply, Clancy was average in every possible way. Perhaps this was why a life on the road suited him as well as it had for the past fifteen years. He had few relationships to tie him down: no wife, no kids, and a mother he called once a week, a father he’d not seen in five years. Unattached as he was, Clancy was mostly satisfied with traveling up and down the east coast, staying in cheap off-the-interstate motels on the company dime, and generally avoiding the stress of extended human contact. For awhile the job had become boring, and then Clancy developed a hobby. In his right jacket pocket, Clancy kept a tiny notebook and mechanical pencil. In his line of work, Clancy often found himself in establishments that he had come to think of as humanity’s fringes: rest stops, gas stations, and truck stop diners. These were places that seemed to rest just outside of civilization. They were the repositories of the unattached and average. Runaway teens, homeless hitchhikers, and many other unspectacular pieces of human driftwood inevitably washed up on the shores of the Fringes, and all of them used the restroom. For two years Clancy had amused himself by keeping an odd sort of collection. Within the tiny notebook and several others like it, Clancy recorded bathroom graffiti. Not the trashy stuff of the “for a good time call… variety, but the interesting ones.

Some were poems that made him laugh. Here I sit, broken hearted, tried to crap, but only farted. Some were cryptic messages scrawled in sharpie marker or ball point pen.Isabelle’s face is pale, why can’t she breathe the concrete? Or Can they see me if I make myself very small? In his time as self-appointed chronicler of the great American bathroom stall, Clancy had come to realize that the Fringes were inhabited by many who were clearly insane. Schizophrenic ramblings and mad omens made up a considerable percentage of his odd collection. The first time that Clancy saw the dragon he didn’t even record it. It was just a drawing, four inches square, on the top right corner of a pale green aluminum stall door at a rest stop outside of Raleigh, NC. He recalled later, when he saw the symbol (for it was a symbol) again that there was something odd about the dragon’s face but at the time it hadn’t stood out. Two weeks later when he saw it again, scrawled in pink lipstick on a gas station mirror, Clancy found that the dragon was deeply disturbing to him in some way. Perhaps it was the surrealness of seeing the symbol again, or the way that the dragon’s face seemed vaguely but unsettlingly human that made Clancy’s skin crawl. Looking at the mirror, Clancy felt every hair on his body raise and a cold chill crawl through his veins like ice in his blood. It was the pink lipstick. Clancy wasn’t a ladies man by any means but he was fairly certain in some instinctual way that the grotesque dragon was not drawn by a woman. Something about the crude lines was distinctly and savagely masculine. Why would a man have a lady’s pink lipstick? Clancy had taken the notebook out of his pocket and drawn a crude (mediocre) copy of the dragon, taking special care to capture the human aspect of its face. Four days later he saw it again at a diner in West Virginia. A week later he saw the dragon in a hotel shower in Connecticut. Each time he saw it Clancy made a mark in the back of his notebook. When his tally reached thirty sightings he began to do some research.

The first dragon sighting had been in Febuary. By April, Clancy had purchased a digital camera and as he made his way back through his usual sales route, he returned to photograph all of them. A few had been removed or painted over but he had managed to take pictures of Twenty two of the original drawings. The most disturbing detail of the return trips was that Clancy had found dates added to ten of the symbols, written underneath each of them in black marker. They were all written in the same handwriting. They were all dates that had not yet come. Some of the dates were months even years away, the closest he had found was only two weeks ahead. His research into the dragon symbol had yielded few results. Biblical references to Satan as a dragon were unsettling but not unexpected. In his heart Clancy knew that he had stumbled across something significant out there in theFringes.

When the first of the dates was still two days distant, Clancy’s company car sputtered to a stop in a patch of grass off of the interstate. His cell was dead, the car charger foolishly left behind at his two-room apartment. As many times before Clancy gathered his suitcase (filled with a few changes of clothes, emergency toiletries, and product samples) and his digital camera, locked the car and began to walk north parallel the road, pausing to stick out a thumb when vehicles approached. The plan was always the same: hitchhike to the nearest business, call the head office, and rent a car for the rest of the trip. Clancy heard the rattling approach of an eighteen wheeler and extended his thumb. He was relieved to see the truck slow and then pull over on the shoulder of the highway. Clancy ran to the waiting vehicle, pulled open the door with an irritating steel-on-steel squeal, and climbed into the diesel powered behemoth. He thanked the driver and closed the door. As the large truck pulled back onto the road and began to accelerate, Clancy and the driver exchanged the usual chit-chat: introductions, where you headed? Clancy found the driver unremarkable as himself. Just another piece of driftwood in the Fringes. After a few minutes the man took an exit and pulled into a large, well-lit gas station, bringing the truck to a halt. As Clancy climbed out into the parking lot he reached back into the truck for his suitcase. The driver extended his hand to shake; as Clancy gripped it he noticed a faded blue-green tattoo just above the man’s wrist that had been hidden by the driver’s sleeve until now: a dragon with an oddly human and familiar face. Terror gripped Clancy’s heart but he tried not to let it show in his eyes. He retrieved his camera from the seat but his nervous fingers lost their hold and he dropped it into the mess of burger wrappers plastic bottles and crumpled napkins that littered the truck’s floorboard.  As he lifted the camera by its strap out of the trash a small cylinder-shaped object under the seat caught his eye. There in the shadows beside an empty soda can was a half used stick of pink lipstick. It was a color he had seen before, and it was splattered with blood.

Clancy Matthews disappeared on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. Security cameras at the Shell gas station on exit 326 off of I-75 in Georgia clearly record Clancy exiting the cab of a blue eighteen wheeler on Monday, March 15. The truck pulls away and out of frame. Clancy enters the station. The cashier on duty recalls Clancy for two reasons. In the words of the cashier: The guy seemed really nervous, I thought he was strung out on pills or something. Dude spent a good hour in the bathroom. Weird. Clancy used the station payphone to contact his head office. His car was found in the exact spot described in this call, still locked and seemingly untouched. Security cameras again capture Clancy as he leaves the store and enters a rental car delivered eighty-five minutes after his arrival at the station. The car is a Ford Focus, blue, four-door. The ford pulls away from the station. It is the last visual record of Clancy Matthews for fifty-six days. When Clancy fails to arrive at his expected appointments the following three days and the rental car is not returned, police are contacted. A search for the salesman yields confusing results. On the Tuesday following Clancy’s disappearance the Ford is found abandoned at a rest stop 260 miles from the gas station where he was last seen. The car contained only his suitcase in which only clothing and product samples were found. Clancy’s fingerprints were found on the rest stop pay phone and further investigation proved that he had placed a call from the phone at 8:00 Pm on the previous Wednesday. The call was to his mother who was not at home at the time and did not receive it. No message was left on her voicemail. Additional fingerprints were found in the restroom on the sink and paper towel dispenser. Dogs tracked Clancy’s scent from the car to the third stall of the restroom but oddly enough the trail stopped there. The dogs were unable to track Clancy from that point on.

Fifty six days later cameras in an Exxon station in Raleigh, NC capture footage of Clancy Matthews bursting out of the restroom screaming before collapsing on the floor in front of a Pacman arcade game. In the video one can clearly see that the man is covered in blood. His clothes are tattered. When police arrive on the scene Clancy is not responsive. To this day he has not spoken a word since his curious reappearance. Security footage corroborates the station worker’s claim that Clancy never entered the store. He simply appeared. Three items were recovered from the traumatized man: a mechanical pencil, a small notebook (badly deteriorated), and a digital camera. Only ten people have had access to the camera itself and of those ten only three have managed to view the entire body of images recorded. The camera recorded seventy-two images and one brief out of focus video. Most who view the images on the camera are overcome with a sense of horrible dread followed by a wave of nausea and are unable to view more than the first ten or eleven images. The video clip itself last for only fifteen seconds, and reveals little more than a reddish blur, darkness, and static. More disturbing than the video clip’s imagery is an unsettling wet sound that audio technicians have determined are Clancy’s footsteps on some unidentifiable surface. More disturbing perhaps is the content recorded in the notebook. At some point in Clancy’s horrible ordeal, before his mind shattered, he began to document an incredible and bone-chilling story. The entries in the notebook become increasingly disjointed. The final entries are little more than cryptic phrases. The final statement in the notebook that can be considered language and thus the final communication of Clancy Matthews simply reads:Oh God, that face…