The Lamplighters

Chapter Thirty-One

Marla cut around the perimeter of the cove, heading for the steep bank of rocks that afforded the quickest route to the jetty, and the boats. The clouds had left the sky, sharp moonlight bringing with it a drop in temperature. Wishing she had more layers to wear, Marla hugged herself and rubbed her arms. Then she saw two figures up ahead on the rocks, walking toward her. She stopped in her tracks, gripped by fear of the murderous giant, but these were no giants. One figure was much shorter than the other and she began to make out its juvenile form more clearly, realizing it must be the little boy who’d run away. Bent over the boy, using his shoulder as support, was a man in his twenties. He looked to be shivering and with good reason—he was dressed only in swimming shorts. His limping gait, and his reliance on the boy for support, told Marla he was injured. He wore a shock of tousled blond hair and an athletic physique. He looked like a surfer. The kid’s eyes widened in surprise as she called out to them, her voice echoing off the rocks. For a moment she thought the little one would abandon his burden and make a run for it again, like he did at the house, but he held firm and waited as she ran across the rocks to meet them.

A frenzy of words spilled from her lips, about danger, about the man at the house. The blond man looked delirious and was shivering like he was in a state of shock. He was covered in cuts and bruises, a slick of blood congealing around his ear. Marla could get nothing from the child about where he’d found him. He looked down at the ground, subdued and not speaking. She tried to get through to him, asking how he’d escaped from the house like that—trying to appeal to him with admonishments that he was a clever boy, a brave boy and everything would be all right. Taking the weight of the delirious swimmer onto her own shoulder, she asked the lad where he was headed. To this he did respond, holding out a lithe little arm and pointing inland where the rocks formed a v-shaped inlet. Marla saw a large circular opening there—what looked like an outlet pipe.

“There? You’re taking him in there?”

Now the boy spoke, in that strange little voice of his.

“My daddy can fix him.”

“Vincent? Is he your daddy?”

He didn’t answer. Marla rounded on the boy, using her free hand to lift his chin a little so she could look him in the eye.

“Are you Vincent’s son?” It didn’t seem possible, he’d be much older by now, unless the old man was even more confused than she’d credited.

The boy resisted her touch, and her questions, breaking free from both her and the injured swimmer. As she watched him back away, Marla looked again to the black circle leading into the pipe. Perhaps Vincent had managed to get away and hide inside. She pictured him lighting a little stove, making coffee for her, and recalled how tenderly he’d attended to Pietro’s injuries. This shocked guy was in bad shape, but not half as bad as Pietro had been. Vincent would know what to do. But what about the boats, they’d be ashore by now? Maybe help was on its way, but then again Marla had no idea who was on those boats. She would follow the boy, find Vincent and they could all leave the island together. It wasn’t much, but it was the only plan she had.

“Okay, lead the way.”

She helped the swimmer along with her. Together, they climbed into the pipe. The curve of the pipe meant if she walked dead center, they could almost stand fully erect, as if in a tunnel. The floor of the tunnel was treacherously uneven, littered with gritty sediment and moss underfoot. Trickling water that smelled of blocked drains flowed constantly in little rivulets through the pipe and dripped from above. The air was damp, colder and mustier the further inside they traveled. As Marla made her way carefully behind the boy, the moonlight began to fade into the distance.

“Christ, it’s pitch black in here,” Marla complained, realizing now just how bright the moon had been outside. She glanced over her shoulder. The opening through which they’d entered now looked a marathon sprint away.

The boy didn’t answer. He just made strange little grunts of effort as he walked on into the pipe. The sounds were almost comical to Marla’s ears—like the noises of elderly people getting up out of their seats.

“Where… Where we going?”

It was the muscular swimmer’s voice in her ear. As he spoke, she felt his upper body stiffen in fear. He was having a moment of lucidity and was clearly perturbed to be stumbling into a pitch-black outlet pipe with a complete stranger propping him up.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. We’re going to get help.”

“Where the hell am I?”

His speech was slurred like a drunkard’s, his accent strongly Australian. Or maybe Kiwi. Marla could never tell, and had often offended Antipodeans back in London by making a wild guess.

“You’re… on an island. I’m Marla, I kind of work here. But now I’ve resigned. And I’m going to… Oh, never mind—we’re going to get you some help.”

Her voice echoed off the curved walls. The pipe had widened into a tunnel. The young man lapsed into semi-consciousness again, his heels dragging. Marla shouldered his weight as best she could, feeling a sharp twinge in her lower vertebrae. She wondered how long she could keep going like this.

Several minutes of walking and Marla was in near-total darkness, her steps slowing to a crawl. Struggling on, she could vaguely discern a bend in the tunnel and followed the quick shape of the boy around a corner. There was a flicker of sepia light on the wall of the tunnel in the distance and the faint odor of sulfur. The light was immediately comforting to her, now she had something to aim at. The muscles in her lower back screamed in protest as she shifted the weight of the swimmer upwards in an attempt to get a better purchase on him. But as she did so, she lost her footing and they both crashed to the floor. The injured man landed on Marla awkwardly, a dead weight knocking the wind from her stomach. Painfully, she lifted her head and tried to focus on the light up ahead. Still a way to go. She called out after the boy, but he was dozens of feet away now, his little shadow disappearing around a curve in the tunnel.

Then the light was extinguished, plunging the tunnel into total darkness.

“Hey! Hey!” Marla’s voice was cracked with fear, and with hurt from her fall. She could feel the clammy skin of the swimmer against her cheek, still pinioned beneath the weight of his slumbering body. Her breaths were quick and shallow, ringing out a heartbeat tattoo in the icy darkness. Another sound joined the frantic rhythm—a dragging, loping sound. Footfalls in the tunnel up ahead, drawing near. Her eyes widened, begging to admit light that simply wasn’t there. Then the weight of the swimmer’s body was gone from her. It felt as though he had simply levitated into the air like some theatrical illusionist. Blind instinct made her reach out for him, but he was gone. She heard a dull thud and a dragging sound. Marla scrambled backwards in terror, still on the floor, and her hand squished into something moist and spiky. Crying out, she pushed the thing away, smelling rotting fish. The curved wall of the tunnel met her other hand and she struggled upwards into a standing position. Her heart seemed to stop suddenly as she felt something clutching tight around her waist. She shrieked, and pushed at it, feeling the mop of the little boy’s hair between her rot-streaked fingers.

“We have to get out of here. Now.”

Behind her, heavy hot breaths. She jolted in fear again as a violent spark rang out in the tunnel and her vision was filled with viridian flame. A flare.

“Run!”

The boy was clinging to her too tightly. She looked down at him, intent on quelling his fears even as she felt her own terror falling over her like a tidal wave. But the boy was smiling up at her. His grin made her feel rotten to the core. A rapist’s smile painted on the face of a child. Even now she could feel his little hand at her breast, grimy fingers searching out her nipple beneath the fabric of her shirt. She felt the hard throb of his erection against her leg. As the light of the flare danced in his eyes she realized she was not looking down into the eyes of a child after all. An old man’s eyes were looking back at her, through her and into her, perversely knowing and horribly lecherous. How could a look so chilling and evil reside in the innocent features of a young boy? Her heart sank to witness such a perversion of all things holy. Hot tears flooded her eyes and she began to sob in deep despair. She waited to feel the touch of the giant’s hands on her neck, for it was surely he who was standing there hot-breathed behind her, just as sure as it was the hideous man-child at her breast that had led her right to him.

Vincent felt like driftwood, bobbing along on the crest of a cold, indifferent wave. His hand still felt the weight of the gun he’d used to shoot Chief of Security Fowler in the face. Even in his catatonic state he knew that he’d feel its weight for the rest of his days. Heavier still was the crushing pressure of seeing her again, his beloved Susanna. There she’d stood, so proud and lovely—majestic—on the jetty, like nothing had happened and not a day had passed since she’d been taken from him. His psyche had flipped cartwheels upon seeing her face. Was he mad? Had he been insane all these years, eking out damp days in the lighthouse? It didn’t matter. The events that he’d seen unfold recently, that he’d been a part of, would be enough to imbalance any mind however strong. Cold tears formed as he tried to shun the dread image of his son, crawling like a plaything across the rotting timbers of his home. Fear and anger curled his lip as the image was blotted out by the huge blackness of the giant who accompanied his boy and kept him to heel like a little dog. Vincent allowed the twin images to penetrate his brain in a pincer movement, like vultures pecking at the skull of a dead man. He chuckled through their assault, they couldn’t hurt him now; nothing could. He’d remembered everything. When she’d kissed him and held him like that and stroked his hair, hush little baby don’t say a word, it had all come flooding back to him.

And then they’d let him go, carrying his memories around him heavy as a cursed mariner’s albatross, back to his prison of guilt and madness and regret. Shooting Fowler had unlocked something buried deep inside the old man. His lover’s kiss had done the rest, drawing his memories out of him like poison from a wound. He knew she’d seen them too, had sensed that she was feeding on them. How was that possible—how was any of it possible? She’d be as old as he was now, minus a few years of course. But there she’d stood like Aphrodite with her golden hair and gleaming smile and perfect skin. Oh and the smell of her, like the faintest wisp of cotton candy framed by bee pollen. He’d wanted to dive into her along with his memories, for her to drink every drop of his futile life force until there was nothing left. But even as he’d wished it Vincent had seen the dark core at the heart of the woman, the taint that exists deep within every treasure. And from that moment he knew that she had not kissed him out of kindness, nor stroked his brow in sympathy. Her motive was to feast on his pain, to gorge herself on the endless loop of suffering that had defined his daily existence all these long years. He was merely a battery to her, a functional thing that existed only to sustain whatever cruel tastes she hungered for. He’d been glad to leave the jetty then, gathering up what he could of his memories, his pain and his old man’s pride, reclaiming them as his own.

The sound of the waves crashed into him as he approached the cove nearest the lighthouse and he began to weave together fragments of past like a spider rebuilding its web after a storm. He saw that night again, when he’d taken to the waves with his boy—intent on escaping the island and all its dreadful secrets. He saw himself as a younger man, saw what he’d done then just as he had tonight. He watched himself murder the security chief from years ago as he fought bitterly to stop them taking his boy away from him, saw the blood on his hands. He hadn’t meant to kill him, hadn’t meant for a lot of things. All these years he’d carried the guilt of what he’d done and buried parts of it in the dirt of the hole he’d been digging, only to find it uprooted and staring him in the face the very next day each and every time he buried it. History had echoed back on itself, sounding out death like the deep melancholy bass of a foghorn, and here he stood a murderer again. He felt his body folding in on itself, filled to the brim with cold despair and craving the grave. He was a man without hope. Let his mouth be filled with maggots, let his eyes burst like plums and his belly swell and split with the gas and bloat of his wasted life. He teetered on the rocks and saw a black shape ahead of him. All light had left him, he could not return to his tower nor climb the steep steps there. He gravitated toward the black hole, aching for its darkness.

Brett regained consciousness painfully and in near darkness. The surface he was lying on was hard, wet and covered in silt. He fancied that he could hear waves in the distance, crashing onto far shores. He longed to be back in the cool of the ocean. Anywhere but here. Turning his head toward the sound of the waves, he felt a lick of heat warming the sweat on his face. A dry crackle and a sharp spitting sound, like Hell’s inferno clearing its throat. He was near to a fire. He wanted desperately to get his hands free but they were tied firm behind his back, which arched uncomfortably. Kicking his feet out, he felt only hot air around them. His mouth was salty dry and he remembered the seawater as the boat had been torn apart by the explosion around him. He’d thought himself lucky to bail at the moment he did, just as the explosion had happened, but now he felt only a series of numb discomforts. He wondered how long he’d been lying here, and what had happened to his shipmates. That gorgeous girl. Where had she said she was from? That was it, Ibiza. Was she still alive, washed up on this island like him? Was she sweating hot and cold like him in a dark cave somewhere near? Then the memories came flooding back, a tsunami of eviscerated bodies crashing onto the shoreline of his sanity. He saw the girl’s head, Idoya that was her name, bobbing on the surface of crimson waves like a Halloween apple in a bucket of water, her bloodshot eyes fixated on him. Brett wanted to scream, but his mouth felt alien to him somehow. He tried to lick his lips but couldn’t. Something was wrong, very wrong. He attempted to cry out and heard his voice, disjointed like someone else’s voice, a barely recognizable impotent wet gurgle of a sound. Blood gagged his throat and his fingernails clawed behind him at the silt on the floor. His tongue was gone. Oh dear God his tongue was gone. Writhing now, he pulled in shock and fear at his bonds and felt his eyelids blinking wetly. The fire crackled somewhere close by. Perspiration dripped from his matted hair onto his cracked lips. More salt water for the drowning man. He blinked again, and felt the beginnings of a searing pain behind his eyes. If a fire was burning, then why couldn’t he see it? Brett cried out, loud as he could. His voice was like out-of-tune music, the desperate discord of a deafened man. Tears fell from his eye sockets. No, not tears. More blood. He shook his head violently from side to side, becoming maddened by the crackling of that damned fire. Even as he asked himself why he couldn’t see it he knew his eyes were gone too. All the breath left his chest in a dreadful rattling sigh and he laid there, a broken thing. His extremities had begun to conspire against him now. Each part of him was awakening and remembering what had been done to it, the nerve endings in his mouth and eye sockets reaching out in a kind of muscle memory for their lost comrades. Nearby, the fire flickered and its amber glow danced on the chrome surface of a surgical steel dish. Inside were his tongue and eyes. Then little hands were on him, attending his most private and tender parts, and Brett screamed a hot gargle of blood and bile until he died.

Marla dreamed of far forests and plains, of bright birds and of a wet humidity that penetrated every pore of her body. These visions were soundless and distant, and she fought to keep them for fear of what she might find when awake. The fight was already lost. She heard the sudden rush of wind through trees and felt herself returning to her body. The sound of the wind diminished and she opened her eyes to find she was on a cold, hard table in a large, dimly lit room. The walls were rough, hewn from the rock, which told her she was in a cave. But it was unlike any cave she’d ever seen. Spotlights and mirrors illuminated the scene, their sleek modern designs contrasting with partially melted candles that flickered brightly here and there. She was strapped to a large surgical steel table, a spotlight on a snake-like angle poise arm above her. She pulled at the bonds restraining her upper body and ankles. They didn’t budge, and caused little spasms of pain to prick at her skin the more she resisted them. So, she stopped resisting and looked around the room as best she could.

Everywhere around her were tables and trays of implements. Knives and saws and clamps, all gleaming. Shiny, shiny things. Jars and bottles stood on every available surface, some perched on nooks and crannies in the cave walls, filled with liquids of a stagnant yellow hue. Floating in the liquid were what looked like organs and tissue samples. Others housed bare bones, swimming above fronds formed of clumps of human hair. Marla could make out a row of teeth in one jar, sharing its glass home with part of a hand. She looked away from these unlikely bedfellows, feeling suddenly and acutely vulnerable lying there on the table. Then, a shadow and a movement from the corner of the room. Her body jolted and she tried to see what was over there, moving in the candlelight. She tasted acid spittle in her mouth, the fear once again holding sway over her body. The roof of the cave seemed to bend and curve as her eyes darted toward the other side of the room in reaction to another movement. She imagined rats scurrying beneath her, seeking out the source of her fear-smell, ready to gnaw at the delicious taste of her dread as she lay there bound and helpless. A chill ran through her hair, each follicle pinpricking icicle cold.

Then the movement was right beside her.

She turned her head and cried out in anguish to see the man-child gazing at her lasciviously not six inches from her face. This close, his breath smelled particularly foul—an undigested mess of seafood and rank rotting sweetness. He appeared to sniff at her, grinning and baring his teeth as he did so, and she saw the rot in his gums for the first time. The look of old man’s perverse delight on this child’s face was an abomination. His lips were flecked with saliva, which trickled down his chin. He savored the scent of Marla’s fear in the same way a normal child would savor the smell of candy. He voiced his enjoyment in little spasms of breathy laughter. Mirthsome little bubbles of snot formed and burst wetly in his nostrils. It was all Marla could do to stop herself from vomiting. He ignored her discomfort, reaching out into her field of vision with pudgy little boy hands then stroking strands of her hair as though she were a stray cat he’d found somewhere along the way. Marla shuddered at his touch, feeling sure it were those hands that had stoved that poor pussycat’s head in—the one Adam had found by the path that day. The old boy’s eyes were filled with dark mischief now and Marla pictured him at work in the loft of the big house, torturing and maiming his little playthings until they were all dead. The boy sprang up and climbed atop the table, straddling Marla and laughing that peculiar little circus laugh of his as he did so. His voice sounded like it was constantly on the verge of breaking, yet stuck in the shrill tones of a preteen youth. She tried not to look up at him as he knelt above her chest. Then she glimpsed the dirty syringe in his hand, the chamber filled with what looked like chicken fat and blood. He held the needle aloft and Marla winced, waiting for it to pierce her skin.

But then the boy took hold of his twitching member in his free hand and plunged the dirty needle into it, pumping the fatty contents into its head. He moaned in vile pleasure and, discarding the empty syringe, started to rub his newfound erection furiously. He kept rubbing as he nuzzled his face in her neck, cold snail trails of snot tracing across her skin. Then, like a rat, he began nibbling at her clothing, tearing it with his teeth and peeling it back to reveal her nakedness beneath. She struggled and kicked, feeling like one of the dead birds in that loft, pinioned and unable to fight back. The boy’s rubbing and biting and tearing was becoming frenzied now and Marla felt oily drips of sweat drip from his mop of hair into the valley between her breasts. He began to convulse above her, grunting like a beast, his little legs twitching and knees clenching as though he were riding a rodeo horse. Marla closed her eyes tight and cried out in disgust as the boy lurched into the painful throes of orgasm. His ecstasy at fever pitch, he continued rubbing himself frantically and Marla felt globs of cold leaden semen spattering her chest and face. His tepid ejaculate tasted of ruin, of heresy, and she spat it from her mouth. Still trembling from his exertions, the boy thing slapped his palms to her chest and began massaging his seed into her flesh. The act was functional and robotic and, daring to look, Marla saw disinterest in her abuser’s eyes for the first time. He’d done this before.

The very thought made her gag.

“Have to rub the lotion in. Have to get you ready for Daddy. All the king’s horses. And all the king’s men.”

His casual, sing-song tone was too much for Marla. Her eyes gave way to tears and her breasts rose and fell with great sobs. She felt betrayed by her nipples, which stood erect from the sensation of the semen as it cooled like porridge in the chill air of the cave. She looked straight at him, defiant, as he went on rubbing his filth into her. The boy averted his uncaring eyes, idly distracted by the crackle of a damp candlewick as it sputtered and died in its own puddle of wax. As he turned his head, Marla saw a figure standing over both of them. Heart in her mouth, she recognized the face. Vincent. His arms were stretched out above his head. What on earth is he holding onto, thought Marla as if in a dream. She soon realized it was a huge glass jar as it came crashing down on the boy’s head, knocking him sideways from the gurney. Vincent released her from her bonds and quickly pulled her tattered clothing over her nakedness as best he could. Only the aftershock of fear and disgust stopped Marla from grabbing the old man and kissing him in gratitude. Once we’re out of here I’ll do just that she promised herself as Vincent helped her to her feet.

They were almost at the opening to the cave when the scurrying boy-thing began to wail. The sound was an affront, only serving to encourage Marla on her unsteady trajectory to the tunnel beyond the cave wall. She turned, sensing Vincent’s distance from her and saw that sure enough he’d stopped dead in his tracks. The vile thing’s cries were escalating, in that way children cry after a series of sharp intakes of breath when they take a tumble and graze their little knees. Their little knees. Marla shuddered, becoming all-too palpably aware of the child’s ooze drying and forming a crust on the skin of her chest. She wanted only to be away from here and washing herself in the sea. Even if the waves dashed her onto the rocks bludgeoning the last breath from her body, that was where she wanted to be, not loitering in this cavernous rattrap. But even now Vincent took a faltering step towards the boy-thing, then another, his arms held out in supplication and his unblinking eyes saying I didn’t mean to strike you little man, I’m so sorry, let me hold you, I won’t hurt you again! For Vincent’s eyes saw this wretched thing as a child once more, the son that he’d lost so long ago in the stark negative of white foam on black waves. His arms yearned for the embrace of that which he’d lost and he stooped to comfort the boy. Don’t.

“Don’t! Don’t go near him! He’s a fucking monster!” Marla screamed, giving voice to all that she’d endured at the fat wormlike digits of those little hands.

But it was too late. Vincent looked back at her, his eyes veiled with the membrane of his memories. A single tear trickled from his eye, a pure thing winding its way down the crags of his face.

“But he’s my son.”

At this, Marla reeled.

“How can that be…your son?”

“He’s my son,” the old man repeated with sorrow in his voice, “The island took him. The island changed him. But he’s still a boy inside.”

The notion rang with bitterness in Marla’s ears. A boy? No. A boy thing that kills, that poisons and maims and despises. An inversion of all that is pure and good about a child. That’s no boy, she was about to say, when a great jet of blood punched out of Vincent’s throat. A huge shard of jagged glass from the jar emerged from his neck. The boy-thing rammed it further through the gruesome hollow where the old man’s throat used to be until his little fist began to emerge too. Vincent spluttered and fell to the floor, head swimming in a fountain of his own blood.

“No. No, no, no, no!”

Marla backed away from the murderous thing and bolted for the opening in the cavern wall behind her. She’d been stupid to linger here, but her empathy for the old man had made it impossible to just abandon him. But abandon him she should, even as she heard the sound of sharp glass scraping on old bones as the child began his playtime.

“Pop! Goes the weasel…”

For the love of God, the boy was singing—a vile distorted sound like the nursery tapes she and Jessie had found at the Big House. A wet popping sound and a guttural giggle followed and Marla turned to see the lad pulling one of Vincent’s eyes from the socket, making silly string of the stretchy optic entrails connecting orb to socket.

She ran. Behind her, the shrill laughter and sputum nursery song of the boy as he got to work on his father’s tongue.

The tunnel outside stretched out into black in both directions. Left or right? It was a tough call, Marla had no idea which direction she’d come from when he, when it, had brought her in here. The boy’s shrill laughter urged her on and she banked to the right. Fifty-fifty chance, deeper into this hellhole or out onto the beach. The tunnel snaked, forming a sly corner and Marla was considering doubling back on herself when she saw a distant light up ahead. That was it, must be, the way out. She ran full pelt, her wet footfalls echoing off the bare rock like mechanical applause. Nearing the light, she saw it was coming from a doorway in the side of the tunnel. Slowing down to a trot, Marla approached the lip of the doorway cautiously and stopped. Back pressed against the wall, she took a deep breath and peered around the doorway. Inside was a large chamber, lit with dim sepia lamps that hung from wires bolted to the walls. The room was lined with rows of shelves that formed an avenue to the other side, and there—another door. Marla looked back the way she came. She could no longer hear the maniac boy-thing and no footsteps were coming from the tunnel behind her. Into the room then, oh please let that door be an exit. She stepped inside, struck by the strong smell of mold and dust, and began walking the avenue of shelves to the door. Now she was inside, Marla could see what lined each shelf. The lower ones were stacked to bursting with plain plastic containers, just like the ones filled with cleaning products back at the white stucco house. The containers were neatly grouped according to shape and size and as she walked on, Marla saw further shelves cluttered with the smaller toiletry containers of the type she’d found waiting for her in the summerhouse filled with shampoo, shower gel, toothpaste and the like. Puzzled, Marla paused for a second and took one of the containers from the shelf nearest to her. It was empty. She placed it back on the shelf and saw a stack of screw cap lids waiting next to it—waiting to be twisted on when the container was filled, but with what? Larger shelves up ahead glinted yellow and Marla walked on to better see their wares. These shelves were larger because the vessels that stood upon them were larger and heavier than the plastic containers. Marla was looking at a wall of large glass jars filled with what looked like goose fat. Many of the jars were covered in thick layers of dust, their contents separating like spoiled milk. They must have been here for years, and there were so many of them. Walking further on, Marla was dismayed to see that more of the jars were filled with body parts and tissue specimens, just like the ones she’d seen in the cave before the boy thing had his way with her. She grimaced as her eyes focused on a jar containing the thick tube of a belly button cord, swimming in a dark amber jelly, little flaps of pink flesh surrounding the orifice like a collar. Peering closer, she realized her mistake—this was actually someone’s anus, complete with the fleshy rectal opening she’d mistaken for a navel. Dread connections crept into her mind as she equated the contents of these jars with the expectant spaces within the plastic containers. Shampoo, shower gel, toothpaste. Oh dear God no. Marla felt suddenly sick, desperate to wash herself inside and out. Her flesh squirmed sticky cold where the boy had violated her. She backed away from the jars and their disgusting contents and fled for the door, grabbing at the handle with one frantic sweaty palm.

But the door was locked. It was made of old metal, heavy and immovable.

Tears of despair welled up in Marla’s eyes. She’d have no choice now but to go back the way she came, and to face whatever lurked in the darkness at the other end of the long tunnel. No, she couldn’t do it; she’d be driven mad by fear before a hundred paces, before a dozen even. Nothing else for it, she’d have to break open the door somehow. Studying the door she saw there was no discernable locking mechanism, just the age and rust that made it looked fused into the rock that surrounded it. Maybe if she could break the door handle with something—that might just do it. She began looking around for an object heavy enough to do the job. The jars had been amassed here over months, years or even decades. They had to be important to someone. Surely they’d keep a fire extinguisher down here, in case of fire? Marla darted to the nearest corner, desperate to see red. But she found only more jars, great stacks of them, each filled with fleshy objects she had no desire to look at any longer. She continued her search, aiming for a gap in the shelves that formed a kind of deep avenue within the tall rows a little way from the door.

She froze. Ahead of her was a dark shape, terrifyingly large and horribly familiar. He’d been here all along, watching her. Marla’s head swam, drowning beneath the weight of this new horror. She backed away in slow terror, realizing that she’d run straight into the massive clutches of the giant who’d pursued her through the trees. The candles flickered and she saw him clearly for the first time—a massive Skin Man. His huge physique was clad in black oilskins, but now she saw they were stitched together with a network of leathery off cuts. Horribly, she saw an eyelid forming a buttonhole, the flap of someone’s cheek (still with beard hair) grafted onto a pocket at his hip. His greatcoat was literally held together by human skin and sinew. She looked up and her terrified eyes were reflected back at her from his goggle eyes. They were indeed housed in goggles made of bone, eye sockets expertly extricated from a human skull, filled with obsidian glass, then strapped to his head with sickly yellow surgical tubing. The dark lenses bore into every corpuscle of her being, reflecting her horror like hideous inverted scrying mirrors. Marla choked as his great hand clutched at her throat and she felt herself lifted off the ground onto the very tips of her toes. She looked down in terror at the endgame of those black goggle eyes and felt herself falling into their nauseating curves. Like a terrified, naked child Marla slipped beneath the cold black ripples of her fear and gave herself over to oblivion.