December 10
Twenty-four Doors: Advent of Shadows
When Nathan Hatch asked if I wanted to contribute to his collaborative Twenty-four Doors: Advent of Shadows project, I didn’t hesitate. I was all in from the get-go. However, I did not know what I was letting myself in for, dear readers.
I had the spark of an idea early on. Then I had my working title (The Eater & the Eaten), which those paying attention as you scroll down will notice this is not. (That one will come later.)
I started with a short story, then realized that I was telling the wrong one. I rewrote that, but it still felt wrong, so I put it into screenplay format. That was better, but not quite right (thanks to Christa C Loftin for the excellent feedback & suggestions).
So, I rewrote it a third time. I think this is what the story wanted to be. It feels right, but I’m still on the fence about whether it’s all that good. I’ll leave that to you to decide.
The Road Home
The black Mercedes roared down the winding two-lane blacktop. Snow fell thick and fast, blowing across the road in undulating sheets and erasing the faded yellow lines even in the car’s high beams. A green sign, snow caking its edges, stood silent sentinel. New Smyrna, 5 miles, it promised.
Beyond the sign, an aging guardrail was the only protection against a 100-foot drop through pines and boulders to a dry (dead) creekbed at the bottom of the gorge. On the other side, a steep embankment dropped away into a pine forest so dense that the snow had yet to encroach beyond the dripline.
“I don’t give a shit, Todd!” the car’s driver shouted, pounding the steering wheel for emphasis. He looked to be in his late 40s or early 50s, salt just beginning to edge around his temples.
Static popped and hissed from the car’s speakers.
“The good-fucking-baby Jesus could be laying in the goddamn manger right in the middle of that development, and I’d tell you the same fucking thing: get them out. Your crews have until tomorrow night.”
“Jim, my people are gonna be at home with their families tomorrow. It’s Christmas—” Todd tried to reply, but James cut him off.
“Fuck Christmas, Todd! And if you can’t get it done, fuck you, too. If your crews won’t do it, hire someone who will or find another job. And it’s James. Don’t call me Jim.”
“Right, big James Carmichael,” Todd’s voice crackled, tinny and bitter. “You know what, James? Get someone else. I’m done with your shit.”
There was a click, followed by another burst of static from the car’s speakers.
“Todd? You motherfucker, you better ans—”
A dark blur flashed in the car’s headlights as something (someone) darted into the road; black fabric flapping, leaves and twigs tangled in knotted strands of long, lank hair.
“Fuck!” James shouted, slamming the brakes and jerking the wheel to avoid whatever (whoever) it was. The car slewed through snow and slush. He felt the instant the car’s front wheels lost contact with the asphalt, and it began turning clockwise, nose toward the guardrail and the precipitous drop beyond.
James wrenched the wheel in the opposite direction, but it was of no use. The Mercedes struck the guardrail, and with the screech of metal on metal, slid along its length, bounced off a support beam, and spun in a crazy circle before caroming off the other side of the road and down the embankment. Its journey ended abruptly in a splintering crash as the car smashed into the trunk of a massive pine.
✸✸✸
Silence settled swiftly. Steam slowly coiled from the car’s radiator, and one wheel spun lazily, wobbling. A single headlight speared upward at a drunken angle. The snow slowed, flakes drifting lazily down, as the clouds began to clear, letting cold, white moonlight wash the scene.
Inside the car, James clutched his head. “Holy shit,” he muttered. Blood trickled down the side of his face, and a growing stain blossomed on his abdomen. He shifted, trying to free himself from the seatbelt, and blinding pain lanced through his body. James screamed and clutched at his stomach. Something warm and sticky welled up between his fingers and coated his palms.
Panic blossomed then. James reached for the door, found the handle, and pulled. It didn’t budge.
Something deeper than mere panic flared into life then. He was trapped (entombed). Darkness pressed in on him, a palpable weight (cold, heavy stones) crushing him. “Gotta get out,” James gasped. His breath hissed in and out through clenched teeth, and he shouldered the door once, twice—it juddered open with the groan of twisted metal. He clawed his way out of the driver’s seat into the snow and pine needles. James stared at the pine’s outline against the moonlight and wind-riven clouds as consciousness left him.
James came back to himself by slow degrees. Cold seeped in around the edges of the pain that sat (like a boulder) on his chest. Something wet and icy leaked through his Brooks Brothers jacket. Numbly, he touched the side of his face and felt tacky blood. He blinked. Where was he? How had he gotten here?
It all came back a moment later. He saw the flash of motion across the road and the twisted strands of hair again. Had he seen a face in the headlight beams? He shuddered.
With memory came the realization that he could not stay where he was. If blood loss didn’t kill him, the cold certainly would. He tried to sit up, and pain blazed white hot again. Glancing down at himself, he could finally see the cause: a tree branch had pierced the left side of his abdomen. Blood seeped around it, a dark flower blooming on his blue shirt and trickling into his trousers.
“Oh, fuck me…” He turned his head hurriedly and vomited noisily on the tree trunk. When he finished, James leaned on one elbow, heavy breath misting the air.
“I’m going to freeze to death,” he muttered to himself. James glanced at his stomach, then up the embankment he would have to climb.
“No fucking way.” There had to be a better option.
“If Todd hadn’t been such an asshole, I wouldn’t be in this mess.” He stopped himself. His phone! He patted his pocket, but it was empty. Where the fuck had it gone? He had a mental image of it falling to the ground as he escaped the car and being covered with snow or stomped into the slush, mud, and pine needles (lost, buried, dead).
“No, no, this can’t be happening!”
James reached for the open car door and managed to pull himself to his knees by brute strength, but the effort left him reeling. Half-blind with pain, he groped on the ground for his phone, but found nothing. Breath hitching in his chest, he crawled on his hands and knees to the door, hand sliding across the leather seat, leaving a smear of blood and snow behind.
“Where is it!”
And then he saw it—the pale (bloodless, corrupted) reflection in the phone’s screen. Despite the violence of the wreck, the phone was somehow still in the center console. He grabbed for it, but his abdomen connected with the edge of the driver’s seat. He screamed as the branch drove deeper (gouging, ripping, clawing, biting), collapsing into the seat and almost sliding out of the car.
James was still for a moment, watching the patch of moonlight on the seat fade as clouds moved back in. The wind picked up once more, whistling around the car. With one last effort, he reached as far as he could and felt his hand close around the phone, then he slid out of the car and onto the ground.
James lay there for what felt like hours, but what was probably only minutes. At least I didn’t pass out again, he thought. He forced himself to sit up, then tapped the phone screen with one shaking finger.
Nothing.
Heart racing now, he held the power button, praying that it would turn back on.
Nothing.
“How? There was a full goddamn charge!”
Then something caught his attention, sending a stab of fear through his heart. Fat, white flakes began to drift gracefully down, settling on the lifeless screen (like you soon). His vision wavered, and then the blackness took him again.
“Hello! Is someone down there?” a woman’s voice called faintly. The voice was followed by a form: dark shoulder-length hair, jeans, and a pink puffer jacket.
“Hello? Are you hurt?” the call came again. A muffled clatter of stones announced someone descending the embankment despite the snow. Through it all, James lay silent and still.
“Oh, my God!” the woman cried, reaching James’s prone body. “Are you okay?” She shook him a little before checking for a pulse.
James groaned and stirred. “W-who the fuck are you?” he stuttered.
“I’m Amelia. You’ve been in an accident. Do you know your name?” She reached to wipe blood from his face.
James batted her hand away. “Of course I know my fucking name: James. You think I’m a goddamn idiot? Yes, that’s my fucking car over there.”
“Do you have a cell phone? We can call for help.”
“Oh, right, because I hadn’t already thought of that! The d-damn phone’s dead. Who’s the idiot now?” James snapped, but his voice was getting weaker.
Amelia took a deep breath, hurt and surprise in her eyes, and held up her hands, palms out. “I get that you’re in pain, but maybe try not to be such an asshole, huh? You’re hurt pretty bad.”
James muttered something unintelligible.
“Do you think you can walk if I help you? I don’t live far, and we can call an ambulance from there.”
James said nothing for a moment, staring at his would-be savior. She was about his age, with salted dark hair that fell to frame large dark eyes, a straight nose, and still-generous lips, despite the age lines marring her features.
“I think so,” he said grudgingly.
Amelia grabbed one of James’s hands and braced herself. James moved slowly, but eventually got to his feet. When he was upright, he stood panting, eyes closed.
“Must have been some wreck,” Amelia noted, staring at the car.
“T-there was someone in the road. I didn’t get a good look, though. I swerved, hit the guardrail, and then ended up down here.” He held his jacket open, showing the grisly wound to Amelia.
Gingerly, she touched the area where the branch punctured him and groaned (moaned) in sympathy (anticipation). “That’s pretty fucking serious. We should hurry. I don’t know how long you’ll last (dead, dead, dead) with this much blood loss.”
James nodded, sighed resignedly, then turned toward the embankment. Behind him, Amelia smiled and licked the blood from her fingertips. Then she slung one of James’s arms over her shoulder and, together, they scaled the embankment as the snow fell in earnest.
✸✸✸
The road was deserted when they finally reached it. Snow blew across the blacktop in drifts, and James clutched his suitcoat tighter to his body.
“Just a little ways,” Amelia promised. “We’ll get a fire going once we get there and get you toasty (roasted, skin splitting, fat dripping) warm.”
James nodded, face gray with blood loss. He stumbled a little, but Amelia caught him, her arms surprisingly (fleshless) strong. Every few steps, he would stumble and sag a little more as he fought to stay conscious.
“James? James! Talk to me. Stay with me! Why don’t you tell me why you were out here in the first place? First time to New Smyrna?”
“N-no… fucking grew up here,” James said, then trailed off. Amelia shook his arm, bringing him back to the present. “Had to… visit my mom. Don’t know why she still lives in this fucking dump.” He stumbled again, slowing their progress toward safety to inches rather than feet.
“That’s nice that you’d come all the way out in this weather to visit her for the holidays.”
James laughed harshly, which turned into a coughing fit. “Yeah, right,” he wheezed. “Only came because… she fell down the damn stairs again. Neighbors keep sticking their noses in. Time to… get the old bat into a home.”
“Oh, no! Is she okay?”
James shrugged, which pulled at his wound. The movement ended in a whimper. “Broke her ankle… I think. Got what she deserves. Should know better.”
“You found her a place, then? I mean a retirement community.”
“Shadow Oaks, couple of towns over from where I live.”
“Sounds cozy.”
“Never even looked at it. Only… only place that would let me negotiate the rate down. She can rot there until she dies.”
Amelia stopped in the middle of the road, and her arm slipped out from under him. “What’s wrong with you? She’s your mother for chrissake.”
Without her support, James started to topple over, and she hurriedly put her arm back.
“No more than she deserves. Fucking bleeding heart for others, always had time to stay late at court to help some damn illegals get their green card or whatever, but when I wanted to go to college?” He raised his voice, mimicking his mother. “You’ll have to get a part-time job, James. We just can’t afford to pay the full tuition, not with your brother’s medical bills.”
“And don’t get me started on Michael, that freeloading asshat. Doctors said it was fibromyalgia. What a fucking joke. Just some made-up disease so people like him can keep leeching off their betters.”
“You— you don’t think fibromyalgia’s real?”
James laughed and shook his head. “Fuck, no—”. Suddenly, he slipped on something half-buried under the snow and fell to the road with a harsh cry. He dragged Amelia down with him, but she managed to catch herself.
“Oh, my God, are you okay?” she asked, reaching (clawing) toward him.
James cried out in pain and rolled onto his back, clutching at his abdomen. Fresh blood welled around the piece of branch. Amelia knelt to inspect it. She placed the tips of her fingers at the edges of the wound, pressing (harder, harder, harder) around it.
“Does that hurt worse than before?”
“Fuck, yes, it does!” James all but screamed.
Amelia shook her head. “This isn’t good. We’ve got to get you some help.”
The snow fell harder. James rolled onto his side, facing away from Amelia, intent on finding what he’d slipped on. Behind him, Amelia licked her blood-coated fingers and smiled.
“What in the hell?” James exclaimed.
“What is it?”
“That’s… that’s what I tripped over.” He pointed at something dirty white and spotted with black protruding from the snow. What in the fuck?”
Unable to make out the object, Amelia stepped around James. It was a slender human hand, white-blue and half rotted. A gold class ring with a rectangular red stone encircled the ring finger. Most of the nails were splintered and clotted with dried blood, but one still showed the remains of a manicure. Amelia picked it out of the snow and studied it for a minute before dropping it on the ground in front of James.
“I think it’s fake. It’s gotta be a Halloween prop someone tossed out the window.”
James reached for the hand, but recoiled when he touched the dessicated, cold flesh. He grimaced and reached for it again, his eyes drawn to the ring. Embossed into the metal were the words Class of 1975, New Smyrna High, with the initials A and S. His eyes widened, and he gasped before flinging the hand away.
“You look like you saw a ghost.”
“You’re right. That was nothing. A fucking fake is all.”
With a quiet smile, Amelia bent to help James back to his feet.
✸✸✸
“I’ve got to rest for a minute,” James grunted. They’d made incremental progress down the road, between the worsening snowstorm and James’s injury. Just then, James slipped on a scum of ice under the snow. He grabbed for Amelia, desperate to stay off the ground, but the movement sent a searing pain through his body. James groaned in agony, lacking even the energy to scream. Blood dripped onto the snow-covered road.
“We don’t have time. You’re going to bleed out on me if we don’t get you somewhere where you can get fixed up.”
James’s eyes slowly closed, and he staggered, falling against Amelia. She managed to keep him upright, but only barely.
“James!”
No response. His body slowly sagged lower.
“James!” She slapped his face, hard.
“Hey, stay with me! Talk to me.” She searched for something to say that might help anchor him in the present. “Looking at your clothes and that Mercedes, you made it to college. Tell me about that.”
“W-what?” James muttered, then he processed her words and nodded. “Majored in mathematics with an emphasis on statistics and probability.”
Amelia mulled that over for a moment. “Sounds… fascinating. Are you, like, a statistician? A math professor?”
“Fixer. I help my clients with problems and take out their competitors.”
“Really? Got some examples of competitors you’ve killed?”
James stumbled then, and Amelia moved to catch him, one arm around his back, and another around his front. Her hand pressed on the wound in his stomach, and James shuddered and cried out. Amelia tried to keep him upright, but he sagged to his knees.
“C’mon, James, get up,” she urged, gripping him under the armpits, as she slowly helped him regain his feet.
“Cli— you asked about clients,” James half-gasped. “I took down Ender, Black, and Gamol LTD by myself.” He wheezed for a moment before continuing. “That’s a financial firm in case you’re wondering.”
He coughed, blood flecking his palm. “EnStrata, Elena Gomes, the Ruffo brothers…”
“Big bad James Carmichael, killing them since ’76,” Amelia said.
James slowed to a stop, head lifting to look at his companion. “I-I never told you my last name. How did you know that? And you’ve got the date wrong. I didn’t graduate college until ’81.”
“Lucky guess?” Amelia offered with a shrug. “But the date’s definitely not wrong.” Her smile was predatory.
Even wounded and dying by inches, James didn’t buy it. Something was off here. “Wh-what is this? Who are you, really?”
Amelia cocked her head to the side, looking up at James, her expression curious. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” James demanded.
Amelia laughed, but the sound was distorted, twining with shadows and the clatter of bones. She tossed something that glinted gold even in the low light. James caught it and stared with horror. It was the class ring from the severed hand.
“Jog any memories for you, killer?”
“I don’t know what you think you know, but—”
Amelia cut him off. “What I think I know? I’ll tell you what I do know, Jim,” she growled. Her face distorted, her bottom jaw distending, jagged teeth glinting in the dimness. She lunged at him, and then James knew only darkness.
✸✸✸
Within the darkness in James’s mind, a pinprick of light grew. It flickered and danced like a flame, but the color was wrong — white-gold, rather than red-yellow. As it expanded, motion danced within, and then it swallowed his awareness.
A white 1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am roared down a dark road, shattering the summer cricket song. Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” blasted from the car’s speakers.
Within the car were two people: a young man, perhaps 18 or 19, who was obviously James. The other was a girl of about the same age, with dark hair and large, dark eyes.
She laughed at something James said. James took a slug from the bottle of whiskey nestled between his legs, then offered it to his companion. She pushed it away with a sudden frown.
A rabbit dashed across the road. Belatedly, James yanked the wheel to avoid it, and the tires squealed against the blacktop.
“Be careful, Jim!” the girl cried.
“I’ve got this, Ames. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
He grinned and took another slug of whiskey, hand dragging the steering wheel to the side with his distraction. The car fishtailed, and James whooped with laughter. Ames screams breathlessly.
“Just… just slow down a little. You’ve had a lot to drink.”
“Babe, I drive better when I’m drunk. Now shut your mouth, ‘cause you’re starting to sound like my goddamn mom.”
He turned the radio up louder and sang along:
Schoolgirl sweetie with the classy kinda sassy
Little skirt’s climbin’ way up the knee
With each verse, he swerved the car back and forth across both lanes intentionally.
There were three young ladies in the school gym locker
When I noticed they was lookin’ at me
“Jim, please!” Ames begged, fear in her dark eyes.
James laughed and began yanking the wheel from side to side even harder. Headlights appeared in the distance, coming toward them, but James seemed oblivious, lost in his game.
“James! Stop it!” Ames screamed, grabbing the wheel as the approaching car loomed larger.
James jerked the wheel away from Ames while shoving her back into her seat with his other hand. The movement toppled the bottle of whiskey, which spilled across his thighs and onto the floorboard.
“You little bitch! Look what you fucking did!”
The screech of tires made them look up just in time to see the oncoming car almost on them. The other driver frantically honked his horn. James jerked the wheel, and the Trans Am spun away. For a split second, it seemed like they would be fine, but then the car crashed through the guardrail and rolled side over side down the embankment. It came to rest upside down at the bottom of the gorge.
For a moment, everything was silent. The crickets resumed their song. The only other sound was the tick-tick-tick of the Trans Am’s engine cooling. After long minutes, a metallic, grinding sound echoed through the gorge and off the tree trunks. James forced his door open and spilled to the ground, miraculously unscathed. Unsure what had happened, he sat there with his head in his hands. After a few moments, he looked around, trying to get his bearings, his eyes still bleary from the alcohol. Then realization hit.
“Ames!”
He rushed around the car and tried to wrench her door open, but it wouldn’t budge. He threw himself on the ground, reaching through the shattered window to grab her arms, before pulling her bodily from the wreckage. She lay there, broken and covered with blood. Hesitantly, he put his finger to her neck.
“No, no, no,” he slurred. Then, “FUCK!” He slapped her across the face. “How could you do this to me?”
Just then, a man’s voice called in the distance. “Hey! Anyone? I’m coming down! Help’s coming!”
James looked from the girl’s blood-smeared face, then back to the road, panic in his eyes. “Shit, he can’t find us like this.”
He could hear the other driver crashing through the underbrush in his haste to help them. He was far off, but getting closer. In his mind’s eye, James saw the bottle of whiskey, slowly glugging its contents onto the car’s interior. The cops wouldn’t give a shit as long as you weren’t sloshed, but a wreck from DUI meant more than a ticket. The dead girl was even more damning. Ames’s death meant jail time and that his hopes of going to college and getting out of this shithole town and away from these people would evaporate.
And just like that, James made his decision.
He grabbed Ames’s arms and began dragging her away. He stumbled often in the dark, his breathing harsh and fast, but he refused to stop. The other driver would make it down the gorge soon, and he had to be finished with his work by then. He mopped sweat from his eyes, and then he saw it: the dry creek bed.
“I’m sorry, Ames, but this is just how it has to be,” he said, then began piling stones over her, his movements feverish, fueled by terror and Jack Daniels. Soon, Ames was just another part of the landscape, a mound of stones among other stones. James ran back to the wreck, arriving just in time to meet his rescuer.
“You okay, son?”
James nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Was it just you?”
James nodded again, but in his mind, he saw the cairn, limned in summer moonlight.
✸✸✸
James came back to himself to find he was lying on rocks in a dry creek bed. Above, snow-capped pines bent over him, observers in a game he could not follow. Not far away, a mound of rocks humped up, half covered in snow. He rubbed at his eyes. The place looked familiar, but why? Then recognition ripped a sob from his throat.
He knew where he was. But…
“What do you want? I’ll give you anything, just fucking name it!”
He struggled to sit up, glancing around for the woman he knew had to be there. He finds her seated on a boulder not far away, a quiet smile on her lips.
“Can’t you guess?” Her smile widens, tearing the flesh of her cheeks to tatters. Her jaw jutted forward and down, teeth thrusting up, like shards of broken glass within her maw.
James screamed in terror then. “Monster! Get the fuck away from me!”
“I am what you made me, James.”
Confusion flashed across his face at that. He’d never seen the woman before in his life. But she knows, he thought to himself. She had to. Why else drag him here, of all places?
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
She rose from the boulder and shook her head. As she did so, her body swirled, like the curling of a wave crest. The silver faded from her hair. The lines around her eyes and lips vanished. Her face and body thinned. Soon, a girl of 18 or 19 stood there, dark-haired and dark-eyed, face twisted in rage and grief.
“Do you remember me now, Jim? I told you the date was right.” She laughed, bitter as falling ash.
“I-it’s not possible. Ames! You died in the wreck!”
Ames shook her head. “I died, but not in the wreck. I was still alive when you piled rocks on top of me like some dirty secret you were too ashamed to tell, you fucking coward.”
“W-what do you want?”
Ames’s smile was languid, jagged teeth ready to rip and tear. “I want to return the favor.”
James’s screams ripped through the quiet, but cut off abruptly. Above, the wind teased the clouds apart, revealing cold stars burning in the vault of the night. Moonlight painted the tops of the snow-covered pines white and silver. A woman’s soft laughter echoed across the gorge.
Tomorrow, December 11th, Andy Edge!
Check the full Advent of Shadows calendar at the link below ↓
Thanks for reading! I’m grateful that you’re here.
Now that you’re all done with this one, why not jump into something different?
Keep up with all the stories in the Advent of Shadow project.
Catch the latest chapter of my historical fantasy serial, The Ashes of Rome.
Put some horror in your reading list with The Untimely Death of Lilly Rainwater (and check out the rest of the Hallowtide Files!).
Check out my dark fairytale, The Roots That Clutch.
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This was like a fucked up Christmas Carol!!! James was so awful and hilarious. Your descriptions of the landscape/injuries/sensations were wonderful. Great stuff.
Love it.
Perfect Aerosmith song.
And the Trans Am...
Love it.