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Blackout at Cherry Estates:  Part VIII

It was darker up there, impossibly so.  Everything natural would say that it should be no more or less pitch black than the rest of the building, yet somehow the third floor conveyed an altogether unsettling feeling that threw nature right out the door.

Ashley didn't know what she expected to find up there.  Monsters?  Witches?  A portal into Hell itself?  But there could be no going back at this point.  She could feel the insidious presence that had corrupted the minds of the other residents eating away at her mind.  Lord only knew what effect it was having on her two companions.  Pat looked shifty; flashlight in one hand, wrench in the other, and Travis' eyes flatly refused to meet hers.  Perhaps he was still in shock from the sudden, horrible loss of Catherine.  Ashley sincerely hoped that was all their was to Travis' sullen silence.

Abruptly, the flashlight started to flicker.  Pat swore and tapped it against his leg.  "I thought you kept that thing charged all the time," Ashley said.



"I do.  There's no way it should be crapping out this soon."  Pat jiggled the flashlight around, and it went out entirely.

"Jesus fuck, man," Travis whined.  "Why'd you have to be so rough with it?"

"I didn't do anything!"  Pat protested in the dark.

Then suddenly, there was light again.  Not from within their tight little group, but a short distance down the hall.  A sickly red glow that pulsed with a slow rhythm.

"What is that?"  Pat said, his face ghoulishly silhouetted by the dim illumination.

"Could be an emergency light, right?"  Travis said excitedly.  "Fire truck.  That'd explain why it keeps flickering like that."

"I doubt it somehow," Ashley replied.  "But we don't have any other choice but to have a look."

The trio made their way carefully down the hall, still watchful for mindless residents, but the entire floor seemed deserted.  Ashley thought she could hear a faint buzzing from up ahead, the same direction the light was coming from.

"Looks like...316," Pat said.  "There.  You know who lives there?"

Ashley shook her head.  "Can't be sure.  Someone...Stebbings, I think.  If I remember the mailbox number right."

"Grant?"  Travis interrupted.  "Grant Stebbings?  That whacko?"

"Whacko?"

"Well, I mean.  I saw him talking to himself.  Out front.  I thought he was having a cigarette with somebody, but nobody else was there.  He looked like he was having an argument, too."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Ashley muttered.  They'd reached the door.  The buzzing was clearly audible now.  She pointed to her ear and raised an eyebrow at the others.  They both nodded in agreement; they could hear it too.

She tapped at the door tentatively.  "Mr. Stebbings?"

No answer.  She tried again, louder.  "Mr. Stebbings?"

Merely a buzz.

She looked to Pat, who hefted his wrench, and then to Travis, who clutched his vacuum cleaner pipe nervously.  She placed her hand on the door.

The light vanished, as did the buzzing, and suddenly she was falling forward, as if the door had turned to air.  She screamed, and heard the voices of her two companions.  At least she wasn't alone in this place.  But where was it?

Gravity seemed to lose meaning, she fell end over end, then suddenly she was on her hands and knees on a hardwood floor, retching from nausea.  Had it all merely been a bizarre case of vertigo?  Nearby, she could hear Pat stumbling around, trying to regain his balance.  Travis had vomited and was lying on his side, groaning imcomprehensibly.

And before them stood a figure, barefoot, indeed, naked from head to toe, but entirely covered by a thick, black substance, like a scorched wax figurine.  It was a woman, young, quite pretty from her figure, but her face lacked clear definition beneath the layer of gunk coating her body.

Ashley found her feet and stood up, slowly, never taking her eyes off the figure.  She caught hold of Pat and helped him steady himself.  He blinked blearily and took in the bizarre sight, mouth slowly dropping open.  Beside them, Travis crawled to a kneeling position and gaped with them.

The figure opened its eyes - a lateral move at best, since beneath its eyelids the pupils were jet-black as well - and then its mouth.  And then came words.

"You have come here," it said, in a voice that was jarringly human in comparison to its alien appearance.  "Witnesses to the meeting.  I am nearly here."

"Monica?"  Travis gulped.

"You know her?"  Ashley said.

"I...I help her with her groceries, sometimes.  That's all.  I don't think she even remembers my name.  What's happened to her?"

"I required a vessel, to better communicate," the monstrosity replied.  "I imagine this one heard my words as jabbering nonsense.  This is easier now, through this conduit."

"Monica, what are you talking about?"

"That's not Monica," Ashley cut Travis off.  "Isn't it obvious?"

"Not really," Pat said.  "We're standing in the middle of a blackout with insane people in it and - oh yeah - the windows and doors lead to nowhere.  And now some crazy tar lady is talking nonsense."

"Tell them," Ashley said, ignoring Pat's tirade.  "Tell them what you are."

The Monica-thing cocked her head at Ashley.  "What I am?"  it said.  "What are you?"

Ashely shook her head.  "Tell them," she repeated.

The Monica-thing smiled gently.  "I have had many names.  My loyal ones called me Shbuuth.  I could tell you the name given to me by my fellows, but your eardrums would likely rupture.  I think I prefer to be called 'friend.'"

Ashley glared.  "What are you?"

"That question is irrelevant.  Suffice it to say that I exist in the places in between.  There were once many of us, occupying a vast network of space where what you call 'molecules' do not meet.  We were happy to observe, though from time to time it felt..." here the creature shuddered in a grotesquely sensual manner "electric...to slip through, even if were just for a moment."

"I don't understand any of this," Pat snapped.  "What's it talking about?"

"I think I have a guess," Ashley said.

The creature grinned.  Slops of inky goo coated its teeth as well and slid out over Monica's lips.  "Enlighten them," it said.  "You grow more interesting by the moment."

Ashley bit her lip, but continued.  "You sometimes hear about...things.  Things that don't make sense.  Maybe its a door slamming shut when there's no wind.  A person goes missing.  Or maybe its just a feeling, like a place is wrong somehow."

"What you perceive as manifestations of a spirit world are merely our fingers reaching through," cooed the beast.  "Poking out of the hidden places to stroke at you lovingly.  We have watched you grow up."

"What, you mean like ghosts?"  Pat asked.

"Nothing so overtly solid.  Some perceive the breaches in different ways.  One person's hallucination, another's chill."

"What about now?"  Ashley said.  "This seems pretty different, doesn't it?"

"Ah."  The creature looked sad.  "You see, my cousins are all gone now.  I am alone in the empty space.  So lonely."  It moaned in a deep register.  "I was desperate for company.  So, a plan...emerged."

It inclined its head to the back of the room.  For the first time, Ashley noticed they weren't alone.  Not exactly.  In the living room, sitting back at an unnatural angle, was the body of a man.  His jaw was missing; torn off from some tremendous force.  Ashley swallowed hard to keep herself from throwing up.

"Grant?"  Ashley said, but she already knew the answer.

"Yes," the creature sighed.  "His feelings so matched my own.  Misunderstood.  Alone.  Unable to communicate with others.  So I pushed at him, delicately, just enough to make him understand the way."

"The way?"

"To open the path.  It is widening, even now.  Soon I will be able to push through."  As the creature finished this sentence, a patch of whirling green mist formed inside the space where Grant's mouth used to be.  His head, already tilted back in his seat, creaked back even further.  Reflexively, Pat and Travis both stumbled back, but Ashley's face turned grim.

"You made him kill himself," Ashley spat out.  "That's why Travis heard the gunshot, and then everything went crazy.  That was you, starting to push through."

"It was a necessary sacrifice," the creature replied silkily.

"I won't let you get away with it."

The creature scowled.  "I thought I had felt something, before," it said.  "Now I see it clearly.  You are one from the opposite end.  You push through into my realm, and you don't even know it."

Pat looked sharply at Ashley.  "What's it talking about now?"

Ashley stared Pat down.  "It must have something to do with my headaches.  My...feelings.  I've never put much thought into them..."

The creature laughed.  The room vibrated with the sound, a grotesque cackle that was full of liquid phlegm.  "You aren't even aware of it.  We have touched before, you and I."

Ashley shook her head.  "I don't believe you."

The creature shrugged.  "It matters not.  The portal widens."  The swirling vortex in Grant's maw grew larger.

"But don't you see?"  Travis spoke up, to everyone's surprise.  "Your presence alone is causing people to lose their minds.  It's put this entire complex into a nightmare state.  You're not meant to be on this side, and you know it."

The creature seemed to consider his words with care.  "I cannot go back," it said at length.  "I am alone.  There will be those who can cope with my presence.  You are proof of that.  That is why I delayed my full emergence, until I could be sure there would be survivors."

Pat laughed bitterly.  "You want to make sure you have friends, is that it?"

The creature looked wounded.  "You cannot comprehend the vast emptiness I have been forced to experience."

"So, what?"  Pat took a confident stride forward and folded his arms.  "We'll just all be chums, then?  Go to the movies?  Hang out, shoot the shit?"

The creature indicated Monica's body with a wave of her arms.  "We will play," it said.  "As I have with this one.  She was as you are, as you all are.  Terrified of the dark."  It's expression turned to fury.  "Always afraid of what you do not understand.  I have been in the shadows.  Not every shadow, but any shadow.  And always you are afraid of the dark."  It bunched up its hands into fists.  "I will take away your fear.  We will play, together."  It relaxed slightly.  "The only one who understood was my portal.  He was not afraid.  He looked into the dark and he saw beauty.  He gladly did as I asked."

"We'll take your word for it," Pat replied.  He looked at Ashley significantly.  "The way Travis tells it, you were in his head for a while.  Talking to him."

"This is true."

Ashley caught on.  "And you'll come out of his head, too."  She stepped forward until she was an inch away from the creature.

"Yes," the creature said uncertainly.  Pat slipped quietly into the kitchen.

"How can you claim to love us, to want to play with us, when you've treated your most loyal friend so horribly?"  Ashley said.

"I..." the creature wavered.  "He gave himself to me."

"Did he?  You told us you influenced his behavior."  From the corner of her eye, she saw Pat emerge with a long kitchen knife.

"I had no choice!"

"You did.  Grant didn't.  You helped him into suicide.  I don't know what kind of moral code they had amongst your kind, but over here we had this fellow called Dr. Kevorkian."

The creature bristled with rage.  "I will not allow myself to be judged by one who herself plays both sides as easily as I do-"  It trailed off as it heard the sawing sound coming from behind it.  It turned.

Behind Ashley, Travis' eyes widened in horror.  "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me..." he gasped.

Pat had nearly sawed through Grant's neck with the knife.  Seeing the creature turn, he instead pulled the blade free, raised his arm high, and brought it back down.

Grant's head went rolling.  The creature let out an ear-piercing screech that shook the walls of Cherry Estates.

"Get it!"  Pat yelled to the others, and flung himself at the creature.

The room reeled like a funhouse, sending Ashley sprawling.  Travis bobbed from side to side, somehow staying on his feet, and caught the rolling head between his hands.  "I've got it!"  He shouted triumphantly.

"Don't just stand there!"  Pat roared, locked in a battle-embrace with the creature.  "Get moving!"

"Where?"  Travis wailed.  "What do I do?"

"The furnace room!"  Ashley crawled to the door and kicked it open.  "We have to destroy it!"

Travis didn't hesitate.  He bolted through the door and headed for the staircase.  Ashley looked back to the combatants.  Pat's face was set in a snarl, teeth bared as if he intended to bite the creature to death.  The creature had twisted pretty Monica's face into horror, eyes wide open and lips parted in a never-ending scream.

"Pat!"  Ashley screamed in desperation.  "Come on!"  The room lurched again, and she fell back against the wall.

Pat tried to break free, but the creature had a firm grip on his wrist.  It threw him to the floor.  As Ashley watched, the black ink rapidly soaked Pat's struggling form from head to toe.  His eyes stayed on hers even as the sanity and humanity left them.  The goop rippled over him and curved slits appeared in the dozens, all over what was left of the caretaker.  Each slid open with a sickening squishy pop, revealing hundreds of eyeballs.  They rolled about for a moment before all turning to regard Ashley in a horrific gaze.

"No!"  Ashley cried.  She turned and fled, following Travis out the door and down the stairs.  Behind her, she could still hear the creature crying out in pain and fury.  The black liquid pursued her in a long strand like a ravenous snake.

In the darkness, she could barely make out where she was going, but she didn't care any more.  All that mattered was destroying the monstrosity that had somehow occupied her home.  Ahead, she heard Travis cry out in fear and terror. She leapt down the stairs to the first floor and opened the door.

The hallway was lit now.  It was lit by a blazing fire.  Down the hallway, panicked residents - sane or insane - raced to and fro, desperately trying to beat the flames out.  In the threshold, Travis clutched the head in his arms and whimpered.  Ashley caught hold of him by the shoulder.  "We have to keep moving," she said urgently.

"Let's just throw the head in this!"  Travis cried.  "This should be enough, right?"

"No," she put her hand out to the flames.  "It's not real."

"What?"

"It's trying to trick us, Travis.  It's not real fire."

"How can you tell?  It feels real to me."

How could she tell?  If there had been time, she would have very much liked to have asked the creature what it knew about her.  As it was...

"Trust me."  She scooped the hand out of Travis' grip with one hand, and grabbed him with the other.  "We're going to get out of this."

With that, she dragged him down the hall, through the flames, past the residents, to the basement door.  She tore at it so hard she felt like she could rip it off its hinges.  She felt light.  Her headache was making her delirious, like the perfect high.  She took the stairs two at a time, racing against the terrors behind her.

When she and Travis it made it to the end of the stairs, she could feel heat.  Not the fake, otherworldly heat that the creature had conjured, but honest-to-god, real, good old propane heaters.  She found a hatch.  She opened it.  She held the head up to it, and paused.

Her eyes met Travis'.  They barely knew each other.  But they were the only ones left.  She hugged him tightly.  "We're going home," she whispered.

She dropped the head into the furnace.

*  *  *  *

The police questioned her for three hours before finally releasing her.  In the lobby of the station, she brushed past Travis.  He gave her a single nod, and he was taken into the interview room after.

She didn't know what else to do, so she waited.  They took four hours with him, probably because he talked so much more.

When he emerged, he had a haunted look about him.  She stood up to meet him, and the two of them went to a quiet bench in the corner of the station and remained there for a quiet period of several minutes.

He was the first one to speak.  "They're calling it a mass hallucination," he muttered.  "The effects of some gas, maybe.  Or a fungus.  That's what they're blaming it all on.  The other residents going crazy, hurting each other, even..." he swallowed, "killing each other."

Ashley processed that slowly.  "Did they say how many?"

"They're not sure yet.  They have to confirm everyone's whereabouts.  Mr. Salinger, for instance.  He was outside with his car.  He didn't even know anything happened."

"What about the blackout?"

"There was no blackout.  It was all in our heads.  You know they're saying we were only in their five minutes?"

Ashley barked out a harsh laugh.  "Is that so."

"Yeah."

"And in that time, we managed to beat up an old lady, lose three friends to places unknown, and had god knows how many people murder and assault each other."

"Yeah."

Ashley clapped her hands on her knees and stood up.  "Good enough for me."

"Wait."  Travis stood up too.

"What is it?"

Travis looked nervous.  "It's just...how did you do what you did?  What did that thing mean, about you reaching through to the other side?"

Ashley stared at him.  Her gaze bored into his head in more ways than one.  "I guess we'll never know."

She turned and walked away, but stopped at the door outside.  "I don't know about you," she said.  "But from now on, I'm sleeping with the damn lights on."

Travis laughed.  "You're not scared, are you?"

"Nope," she said.  "I just want that thing to know where it's not welcome."

She opened the door into clear, bright sunlight.




**thank you all for reading!  Click here for a brief retrospective on the writing of this piece**