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    The Creeping City: Full Dark, #2
    The Creeping City: Full Dark, #2
    The Creeping City: Full Dark, #2
    Ebook153 pages2 hours

    The Creeping City: Full Dark, #2

    By Erik Handy

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    About this ebook

    THE CREEPING CITY IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE!

     

    Reality has broken down, allowing the spirit world to bleed into our own. The source of this chaos, an ancient demon, stalks the streets, rallying his strength for a final confrontation with the young woman who has the power to stop it and to save our world.

     

    Erik Handy, the author of She Never Dies and dRain, brings you an urban fantasy epic that will stretch your imagination . . . and make your skin crawl.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherErik Handy
    Release dateMay 22, 2013
    ISBN9781497712317
    The Creeping City: Full Dark, #2
    Author

    Erik Handy

    Erik Handy grew up on a steady diet of professional wrestling, bad horror movies that went straight to video, and comic books. There were also a lot of video games thrown in the mix. He currently absorbs silence and fish tacos.

    Read more from Erik Handy

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      Book preview

      The Creeping City - Erik Handy

      PART ONE

      1

      She discovered she was running.

      Running.

      Through a Stygian place barely defined by any form or depth.

      From behind, a swirl of male and female voices screeched her name. Their shapes emerged around her. Or had she just noticed them?

      Trees all around, tall, stretched toward her. Watching. Bare gray stalks scratched and poked her bare arms and legs. Trees growing up towards an alabaster sky turned into towers of cold stone and steel.

      City.

      Watching.

      Knowing, but not telling.

      ***

      I don’t believe this.

      The planchette quivered.

      Quit moving it, Abby demanded.

      Brittany shook her head. I’m not moving it.

      The teenagers sat across from each other, the aged Ouija board between them. The board’s letters, dark and bold, shone up from the faded layer of wood. Tiny candles at each corner of the board flickered flame, throwing shadows all along the bedroom walls and upon the teenagers’ soft faces.

      Brittany felt the device under her fingers vibrate. She thought she heard a hum emanate from somewhere in the room. She tried to pinpoint its location, but the drone shifted position each time she focused on it.

      You’re moving the triangle, Abby said.

      I am not. It’s a planchette.

      Whatever.

      The hum gnawed at the back of Brittany’s skull and reached up into her ears.

      The planchette crawled to the middle of the board. It was now warm to the touch – like a friendly hand.

      Look, Brittany said.

      A. Abby grinned.

      A bead of sweat rolled slowly, gently, down Brittany’s back, gathering speed as it neared the bottom. The humming filled her eyes. A sliver of sticky tears formed around her eyes.

      B, she said.

      The planchette slid a millimeter above the B and then back down over it.

      B, Abby said.

      I’m not doing it, Brittany mumbled.

      The planchette, down to –

      Y, Brittany breathed.

      Abby just kept grinning. She looked up at her friend and shook her head. This is crazy.

      The wood turned to rubber beneath Brittany’s cold fingers.

      D, Abby said. D?

      Brittany pressed harder on the planchette to confirm it was still a piece of wood.

      I.

      I’m not doing it, Brittany mumbled again, louder this time. The humming drone filled her ears, eyes, and body. The warm hum. So familiar now.

      Abby didn’t hear Brittany any longer. The unfolding message numbed her to any external stimulus.

      E.

      Brittany snatched the planchette and jammed the tip into her friend’s right eye.

      ***

      She knew what she had done. Now she had to run.

      Hide.

      Faster.

      Further.

      If she could.

      Clutching the old Ouija board to her chest, she knew there was no escape.

      2

      Joan’s terror started when her daughter Brittany disappeared.

      Disappeared? The police said she ran away.

      After . . . killing her best friend.

      Joan shuddered.

      Did some maniac break in, kill Abby, and kidnap Brittany?

      Yes.

      No.

      Brittany, her only daughter, was a murderer.

      ***

      Joan went downstairs. Her husband was there in the darkness, a glass of bourbon in a shaky hand. She was halfway down the dreary flight when she heard him talking to himself. He had to be. No one else was down there.

      They know, the husband said. They keep track of all the deals people make with him. They keep an archive of all the contracts.

      She took one more step and stopped when she heard a faint, muffled reply.

      No. It was from above. Thunder? Wind?

      They keep all that shit in the Vatican, her husband spoke. The basement.

      She sat on the stairs, her mind and memories going in infinite directions. She wanted to cry, but found she was too exhausted.

      ***

      The terror began for John when he picked up the phone one afternoon. He was home alone. Joan and Brittany had gone out to shop for curtains. He was arranging and rearranging the living room when the phone rang. He hoped it was his wife. Since moving in, every time she left his presence, he longed for her, as if he hadn’t just seen her or spent the last twenty years with the woman. This was a new feeling for him.

      Hello?

      No answer. Only a bit of static.

      Hon? That you? he continued.

      Static.

      Call me back.

      He hung up.

      As soon as he placed the handset in the cradle a tremendous ringing erupted from the phone. John jumped, caught his breath, and picked up the handset. Again, he was greeted by static.

      Hello? Joan?

      Static.

      Then perfect silence.

      Daddy?

      John dropped the phone.

      The voice wasn’t Joan’s or his daughter’s.

      John wanted to run out of the house and keep running. Away. Instead, he picked up the receiver.

      Daddy? the voice repeated.

      John slammed the handset into its cradle.

      The voice was male.

      A young boy’s.

      ***

      Brittany brought home a story one evening that she shared around the dinner table. John couldn’t eat anymore afterward. Joan laughed it off and only ate a few more bites before pushing her plate away.

      Some time ago, another family lived in the house. A husband, wife, and their little boy. All was well in the family until the wife began seeing things. Small objects like her little ballerina figurines disappearing, leaving nothing in their place. Larger objects like chairs melting and then regaining composition.

      Just like his wife, the husband began to witness odd occurrences. Their son, however, never joined in on the family visions.

      These visions intensified so much that even when they slept, the husband and wife began to hear objects poofing out of sight and dressers oozing down and up again.

      Exhausted, the couple blamed their son, who hadn’t witnessed any such incidents. They believed their son was behind the strangeness, using his mind or some other supernatural power. Then they came to their senses and realized that he had no power over the objects. He was hypnotizing them, making them see what he wanted, making them go insane.

      They skinned the boy alive and burned his flesh. They buried the remains somewhere in the backyard or the basement or in the walls, Brittany’s story wasn’t sure. The couple, man and wife, father and mother, then disappeared.

      ***

      They all are, John muttered in his sleep. He was curled up on the couch, face snug in a cushion. They’re all there. Don’t believe what you’ve heard.

      He rolled onto his back.

      I’ve never seen it. But I’ve been there. His hand lazily found his brow and hovered over it. Right there.

      ***

      The house shook, just once. No airliners overhead. No train passing in the distance. No ghetto rat with his pathetic car stereo cranked up.

      Joan’s bathroom light was bright. No shadows here.

      Joan was draped over the toilet, staring at the peaceful water disturbed by salmon bile.

      ***

      John rocked back and forth on the couch when Joan walked into the living room. His eyes were closed, but he was silent.

      Joan watched him, not wanting to break the mood by leaving or speaking.

      We have to find Brittany, he finally said. The sound of his voice made Joan jump. He opened his eyes and looked over at his wife.

      Joan broke down. She dropped by John’s feet and put her head on his leg. He placed his hand on her cheek. Closing her eyes, she heard him say something else, but by then, she was already asleep.

      ***

      She set the baby in his crib, making sure he was sound asleep and safe.

      Safe from what?

      There is no baby.

      She left the room, pulling the door slightly closed. He seemed so far away from her. There was a vast distance that she tried to reconcile, but still it remained.

      So far.

      She looked over her shoulder and saw the door had shut completely. It was no big deal. He slept soundlessly. He would be all right outside the comfort of his mother for a little while.

      But he’s so far away.

      She turned again.

      There was no door.

      She couldn’t breathe.

      She forgot her baby’s name, screaming blindly instead.

      She wished her husband was home. She wished anybody else was home with her. She was alone with her boy.

      No.

      Just alone.

      The house ate him, she thought. Yeah. That’s it. The house got hungry and ate my precious boy up.

      I never named him.

      She turned around again.

      The hallway wasn’t her hallway. It was wider and longer, institution gray. She was still alone. And far from her home, husband, and child. The distance could never be crossed. There were tethers holding her to what she was missing, but they could not be choked. There was a distance between them and her hands. She didn’t try to reach them.

      The walls on both sides of her closed in until

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