Adermoor Cove: Sanctuary - 8. Chapter 7

Lane lunged down the hallway, terror rushing through his body like an unpleasant drug. He could hear the creature behind him. Every time it screamed in rage, he thought his heart might burst still beating out of his chest.

The hallway which he ran down was familiar and alien at the same time. This door here was the bathroom, and the door after that was his bedroom, and that door over there was the guest room where Nora had slept when she'd traveled from Indianapolis to see him. But the walls were dark, the wooden floors beneath his feet gritty beneath his feet. He didn't understand how these changes had taken place, how they were even possible, and there wasn't any time to think about it.

At last he reached the staircase. He threw a wide-eyed glance over his shoulder. The creature was almost on top of him, reaching for him. Lane gritted his teeth and gripped the banister so hard his fingernails dug into the worn wood. He aimed a well-timed kick at the oncoming threat. The creature fell down on its backside.

Lane took the second or two he bought himself and sprinted down the steps two at a time. There, slightly to the left, just ahead of him, was the front door.

At last he reached it. He grabbed with both sweaty hands, was about to open it, but the door flew open, slamming into his face. He stumbled back. Stars swam before his eyes. He almost lost his balance but managed to stay upright by leaning against the wall with its peeling wallpaper.

Standing in the doorway was a wide-eyes Bill and beside him, a gore-covered Carlos. There was no time to ask how in the hell they were here. The creature had recovered from its fall and was already halfway down the stairs.

"Run, run, run!" Lane shouted. He shoved down them, ran into the morning light and jumped off the porch. He heard the deafening roar of Carlo's shotgun, and then Bill and he were running after him, away from the lighthouse of horrors that had become Lane's lighthouse.

Their tiny, ragged group lurched laboriously down Donovan Road, in the direction of town. They passed an overturned tractor on the side of the road, and the wreckage of a pickup truck. It was there Lane stopped. He simply couldn't run anymore.

His heart galloped in his chest. His ribs felt like they were about to burst from his body. Bill was off to the side, his back turned to Lane. Though he couldn't see him, Lane could hear him fetching. His hands were cuffed behind his back.

Lane looked back in the direction of the lighthouse. The creature wasn't in sight. Not yet, at least.

"Is it dead?" He winced. It hurt just to talk.

"I don't know," Carlos painted. "I shot at it - and the shot seemed to do damage - but I just ran after you."

"How did...how did you two get here?"

Carlos grinned. "It's a long, interesting story."

Lane didn't laugh. He glared at Carlos. This whole thing had turned into a major fuck up. "I told you not to come after me. You were stupid to do so."

"And you were stupid to come here in the first place," Carlos shot back evenly. It appeared he was now just as pissedd with Lane as Lane was with him. "And now we're going back before that thing comes after us."

"I'm not going back. Not until I kill it."

"Kill it? You mean after you're done running from it?"

Lane rolled his eyes. "Well I was scared. I'm building up to it."

“You’re not going back. Not until we come up with a better plan.”

“Great, and where do you suggest we go to do that?”

“We’re within walking distance of Ramona’s house. We’ll go there.” Carlos grabbed a hold of Bill and shoved him forward. “Get to walking.”

                        …

Fresh chills crawled up Lane’s spine at the sight of the Sterling house. Like the inside of the lighthouse, the walls of Ramona’s home were covered in dark vines. He didn’t understand how they had gotten here, how the town could have changed so fast. Just thinking about these things made his thoughts spin out of control. Just when he thought he was getting answers, was starting to make sense of everything happening, some new mind-bending scrap of information came along and obliterated the rest. It was enough to drive someone crazy.

Lane didn’t like the thought of going into the house; he knew Carlos didn’t either. He also knew there wasn’t much choice. While it didn’t it look like it would provide much protection, the house would at least get them out of sight. Assuming the creature back at the lighthouse didn’t already know where they were.

The hinges squeaked when Carlos nudged the door open with the toes of his boot. The sound, deafening in the silent stillness, set Lane’s teeth on edge. He, along with the other two men, held their breaths as they waited for something to attack them. Shadows waited on the other side of the doorway but nothing moved inside the house.

Carlos turned to Lane. His olive-tone skin was a shade or two paler than usual, which meant he was just as scared as Lane felt. “Do you sense anything?”

Lane closed his eyes, reached out with his mind, and searched through the stillness. "Nothing," he said. “It should be safe.” He shivered. “I just want t to get out of the cold for a moment, and away from those fucking birds.” He stepped inside.

There was a dank, moldy smell to the house. Weak light filtered through the windows, barely illuminating the space inside. He glanced at the staircase and the living room. The couch had been knocked onto its back, the cushions sprawled across the floor. Lane turned to Angel. “Does this look familiar to you...this house?”

Carlos nodded, looking around. “Yes. The layout is the exact same. But how is this possible...it didn’t look this way earlier?”

“I don’t know,” Lane replied, exhausted. “I’ve given up trying to come up with an explanation. We should check the whole house just to make sure.”

The trio climbed the steps. Each step groaned beneath their feet. Lane kept imagining the staircase collasping beneath their feet, pitching them into endless darkness. The handrail had come loose to the point that it was angled in an awkward position. He took the lead, creeping down the long hallway. There was something dead in the bathroom. It was impossible to tell what it was because there were swarms of flies buzzing drunkenly all over it; once it had been an animal. A cat, or a raccoon. Thye smell coming from inside the bathroom was awful. Lane closed the door just to make himself feel better.

Lane, Carlos, and Bill reached the bedroom at the end of the hallway where theyfound another dead body. It laid on the bed, sprawled across the mattress. Its face was bloated and grey with decay; the mouth stretched open in a silent scream to reveal the larvae crawling within. The eyes behind the glasses were rolled up in their sockets. Dried blood and what Lane could only assume was brain matter covered the headboard. The cause of death lay next to the victim’s hand: a double barrel shotgun. Lane forced himself to look into the face of the dead woman last time. The glasses gave her identity away.

“It’s M-Moira,” he said. Then he leaned over and vomited all over the floor.

“It can’t be.” Carlos looked pitfully dumbstruck, like a child in denial. “How is this possible?”

“Fuck if I know,” Lane said, on the verge of shouting hysterically, “but look at her, it’s fucking her!”

“She shot herself,” Carlos said. “She looks terrified. Something must’ve happened. The state of her body - she’s been dead for a while...”

Lane wasn’t listening. He simply couldn’t bear to see his friend’s body looking like this. “Help me roll her up.”

“I’d help you, but my hands are cuffed together,” Bill said. His face was scrunched up in disgust. Judging from the green shade of his cheeks, he looked like he was on the verge of throwing up himself.

“Shut the fuck up,” Lane snapped at him. “There’s no way in hell we’re uncuffing you, so forget it.”

Carlos and he stood on either side of the bed. Lane set the shotgun on the floor. Together Carlos and he grabbed both ends of the ruined mattress and rolled up Moira’s body in it as best they could. The body was heavy, even with Carlos’s muscle. Bill stood by the door and watched as the two men set the corpse on the floor.

“Let’s get out of this room before I barf again,” Lane said.

They climbed back down the stairs. Lane needed something to do to keep his mind off things. He began searching the kitchen and pantry for supplies. He’d brought the shot gun down from the bedroom. If he could just find bullets,they’d have an extra weapon on hand. In the pantry he found lighter fluid and - ah-ha! - a single box of shotgun shells that hadn’t been opened yet. He loaded the shotgun with shells. In one of the cabinets beneath the sink he found a bottle of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. Even better, he thought.

Lane went back into the living room where Carlos and Bill were waiting. They both sat with their backs slumped. They looked pitiful. Lane knew how they felt. “Business has just opened,” he said with false-cheer. He uncapped the bottle and took a long drag. The rum burned his throat pleasantly as it went down. It would have been much better cold, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He handed the bottle to the downtrodden Caros. “Now all we need is firewood. I’m going to go see if they kept any in the barn”

“Hang on, I’m coming with you,” said Carlos, making to get up.

“No. I don’t want you to. I want you to sit here, have a drink or two, and rest. I can take care of myself. I’ll be right back.”

Before Carlos could object, Lanewalked back through the kitchen and stepped out through the back door. The shot gun was a heavy reassurance in his hands. If anything tries to fuck with me I’ll just blow two holes in them the size of quarters, he thought.

He walked towards the barn. It looked exactly the same as before. He wondered if he would find another dead horse in there - or even worse, a dead Ramona. The thought almost made him turn back to the house; only stubborness and determination made him walk the rest of the way.

The inside of the barn was as oppressive as the inside of the Sterling house had been. Dark, wet, and foul smelling. Thankfully there were no dead horses or bodies waiting for him. He found the firewood stacked up in the back of the barn, still relatively dry. He was in the middle of stacking them in his arms when a terrible pain passed through his head - it felt as if someone was hammering a metal spike through his head. The wood and shotgun tumbled from his hand, and he fell onto the floor of the barn, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

                    ...

He stepped out of the mouth of the cave, into the light. He’d been walking through the darkness of the cave for hours. He had no water left and the batteries in the flashlight had run out. His forehead and hands were covered in grime.

Where am I? he thought. He looked around at the trees, trying to gather a sense of place. He looked over his shoulder, at the mouth of the cave. It was still there, waiting for him, inviting him to walk back through. Please just be here when i get back, he thought. If I get back.

Lane resisted the urge to sit down and headed North, through the trees. IT didn’t take him long to realize he was in the very same woods he’d left Carlos in only moments ago - thinking of Carlos sent a spike of guilt running through him. Without thinking he’d been following the same path through the woods he’d always taken. How it was possible he didn’t know, didn’t care. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was ending this nightmare once and for all.

Crows flitted through the trees, breaking the silence with their reedy cries. Lane tried to avoid them as best he could - some form of instinct told him they were dangerous. He could feel them watching, searching for him. At last he broke through the last of the trees and came to the Sterling house.

He looked at the dark edifice of the house - with its shattered windows, crawling with dark vines that almost looked like plants, but wasn’t. He couldn’t quite be sure of what his eyes were telling him, but he was sure of one thing; the house looked exactly like the Sterling house, but it wasn’t the Sterling house he knew. He rested against the thick trunk of a tree long enough to decide if he should explore it or not. He made the decision to keep moving.

Lane made the long trek into town via Donovan Road. Apart from the crows, the oppressive stillness followed him. The world had never felt so empty as it did now, not even during those long nights he'd spent driving from state to state. It was as if the world had emptied completely.

Something catastrophic had definitely happened to the town. Lane could tell it had been abandoned for some time. The roads were unplowed. Cars were tangled and heaped in the middle of the street, most of them completely covered in snow. Many of the windows of stores were shattered or marked with graffiti.

Everywhere he looked, there wasn't a single soul in sight. He was completely alone.

Lane walked several blocks when he saw a body sitting propped up against the wall of a building. He stood still for several moments, watching it. He wanted to make sure it was actually dead. He crossed the street, weaving between ruined cars. His feet sunk ankle-deep in snow. His feet took him closer and closer to the body. A sense of dread began to trickle through his body. The dread turned into full-blown terror when he realized who the corpse belonged to.

"Oh, God," he said, as if the corpse could hear him. "Carlos."

In the back of his mind Lane knew it wasn't the real Carlos - not the one he'd left behind to come to this nightmare reality. But the effect was still jarring. Lane had to bite his lips, bite them until they began to bleed, to keep from screaming.

He was just about to move on when he sensed a change in the air. A burst of crows took flight, their black bodies nothing more than shadowy smudges in the gloom. Something was coming towards him - he could feel it. A wave of mist was sweeping in, moving as if it had a mind of its own. It came from the east and west side of the town and converged in the middle, building volume, becoming thicker.

Lane stayed where he was, summoning the tide to him. Priming up for battle. Within seconds the fog fully enveloped him. It had swallowed the town as if it was something hungry. Still, Lane waited. His hands were clenched into fists. His heart raced a mile a minute. Electricity was shooting through his veins.

He could no longer hear the birds or the wind.

But there was something, barely noticeable at first. Slowly becoming louder…

Footsteps in the snow. Someone or something was coming towards him. Lane resisted the urge to run - to do what his mind and body were telling him to do.

Scrape-scrape-scrape.

It seemed to be coming from right behind him. Lane whirled around, ready to strike with a wall of kinetic energy...but nothing was there. Now the sound was coming from the other direction. And then all directions. It sounded like an ambush.

Suddenly a shadowy hand reached out of the dark and grabbed his arm. Before Lane could react, the arm tossed him through the air with the strength of four men. Lane crashed painfully against a wall and suck down so he was sitting next to Carlos’s corpse. He couldn’t breathe; the air had been knocked from his lungs. He tried to scramble to his feet, to fight, to run, to do anything but just sit there, but he couldn’t make himself move. Every part of his body was a screaming alarm.

His attacker came out of the fog, a being made of pure shadow and darkness. At first it had no face, no gender, no features whatsoever. But as it came towards him it began to morph, turning into a twisted version of his adopted father, Craig Hardy. It stopped just inches away, leering at Lane with Craig’s mouth. The face was exactly the same but for the eyes. They were like two pieces of black onyx.

“Fuck you,” Lane spat. Flecks of blood flew from his lips. It was all he managed to say before the drk man’s fist flashed towards his face. Lane didn’t even feel it connect with the side of his face before everything went dark.

                    …

Lane sat up.

“Fuck,” he said.

The pain in his head slowly receded. The world stopped spinning and centered itself. He slowly got to his feet, brushed the straw off his jacket and pants. Alarm bells were still going off in his head. What a head trip, he thought. Only he knew he hadn’t been tripping, nor had it been a dream. It was a memory, a memory of what happened when he first came through the cave.

Chills went up his spine as he remembered the corpse of Carlos he’d disvoered...only it hadn’t been Carlos, or at least not the Carlos he knew. Just like the body of Moira they’d found in the house hadn’t been the Moira they both knew.

I barely made it out of the lighthouse alive…

This realization made him want to go home now more than ever. And it made him realize how stupid it was to come here, alone in the first place. I’m not strong enough yet. Maybe I never will be. Lane fought off the feelings of fear and defeat warring inside him. He ahd to get back to the house before Carlos began to worry and came searching. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder, picked up several pieces of firewood, and made his way back to the house.

Carlos stood up when Lane came into the living room. “I was beginning to worry about you - you were out there for a while. I was just about to come out and look for you.”

“I know.” Lane set the pieces of firewood in the hearth. “I’m fine...It’s just when I was out in the barn I remembered what happened when I went through the cave. Let me get this fire going and I’ll explain. I think I have a theory.”

Once he got the fire going, Carlos, Bill, and he gathered closer around the hearth. Lane held his hands out towards the flame, enjoying the feeling of warmth seeping through his frozen body. Carlos handed him the bottle of rum and he took a long swig. “What did you remember?” Carlos asked.

“The town is dead,” Lane said. “It’s been abandoned for a long time. Something happened here - something bad. I found your body.”

Carlos’s face turned a shade or two paler. “My body?”

Lane nodded. “Yep. Just like we found Moira’s body.”

Carlos looked down at his body, began running his hands over his chest. “How is this possible. I feel alive.”

“That’s because you are. The body I found wasn’t you. It was just a version of you, a doppelganger. SO here’s my theory: i think we’re in a different reality.”

Silence fell over the house. Carlos simply looked at Lane, his face slack and unreadable. Bill was the first one to break the silence, erupting into laughter. “An alternate reality?” he said in between guffaws. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Lane flashed him a dirty look. “This is an A-B conversation. See your way out.” Back to Carlos: “I know it sounds crazy, but just moments ago we were back in Adermoor Cove and it didn’t look anything like this. I swear to God the body I found looked just like you. It’s the only thing I can think of. And if you don’t believe me then just take another look at the body up there.” He nodded up at the ceiling.

“I believe you. It’s just a lot to take in right now.”

“I know it is,” Lane said. “Whatever has been happening in our reality or universe or whatever you want to call it has already happened here, I think. Which means if there’s a version of you and a version of Moira, then there’s a version of me. I can only assume I failed to stop the apocalypse from happening, so I must be dead.”

Suddenly Bill let out a howl of pain that made both Lane and Carlos jump. He was bent double in agony, his eyes clenched shut. "I can feel him inside my head!" he shouted. "He knows where we are! He's coming!"