Roy was hollow, but he hadn’t always been. If he would have never bought the cabin life could’ve been a lot different. He sure as hell wouldn’t have found that book. It was the book that made him that way, didn’t change him any other way he could tell, just scooped him out and installed the thought-speaker.
Whenever he considered the thought-speaker, he would reason that hollow was how he felt, not what he was, because the thought-speaker – the thing that communicated by injecting words into his brain like a needle puncturing his grey matter – the thought-speaker was infinitely deep. Days when he would look inward, when his hollow feeling faded, he would find darkness that stretched on forever, and the thought-speaker was its voice.
It won’t work, Roy. The alien thought formed in his brain like an itch he needed to scratch.
“Keep quiet,” he hushed.
Roy stood in the doorway, the glow of the moon streaming through the front screen door. A stifled breeze made its way between the pines stirred itself across his skin, but it was late summer, and the nights were as sticky warm as the days. Leaning against the wall beside him was a double-barreled shotgun.
The noise that woke him shuffled again, it was the sound of an animal rustling in the dirt and jingling a chain. Its snarl echoed in the clearing surrounding the log cabin. Roy picked up the shotgun and left the cabin, easing the screen door behind him rather than letting it slap shut.
Thu’irna burns the world in tender boxes of flesh called man.
Roy hissed again at the thought-speaker, to anyone else it would have looked like he was talking to himself. The thought-speaker spoke about ancient creatures bubbling from the depths of who-knows-where, and how they wanted to enslave or massacre humanity. Thu’irna, Roy had learned over time, was one of the more dramatic elder gods – certainly more than Ymrit, though less malevolent than G’Klirrnan.
Roy moved to the cabin years before knowing he’d spend the rest of his life there, shut away as a recluse. It was sold to him for cheap by Benny Farris and was, by Benny’s standards, a real shithole. Benny ran the only tavern in the area and was surprised when he was notified that one of his regulars – Winston, a wrinkly old man who showed up every Friday night for cocktails wearing a shit-colored suit older than Benny himself – left him a piece of land. Benny hoped some yuppy looking for a vacation spot would come through and take it off his hands, but no dice. Worse yet, the tavern was drying up, and the cabin’s property taxes were a financial burden, which made him more than willing to sell it to and out-of-towner like Roy.
The gods were imprisoned in a book by lines written in ink – not blood – just like any other book. But this book, by sheer circumstance, found itself shuffled around garage sales and donation bins long enough that it ended up being bought in a bulk discount box and put in Winston’s cabin as decoration by his grandkids. As luck would have it, not a single soul had read the book since the gods had been trapped there, largely due to its bland exterior, until finding itself in the possession of Roy Krist. So, when he read it and unlocked their prison, giving them the power to enter his mind, the ancient gods found themselves trapped again. None of it – not the cosmic pits of soulless dark where gods of terror and hatred burned like so many stars – none of it mattered to him or to the rest of the world, because they had entered his mind, and he wasn’t going anywhere until death took him.
He turned and followed along the side of the cabin, raising the gun as he left its protection. The animal’s noises were closer with every step he took. When he placed the trap within compost heap, he expected he’d catch a raccoon, maybe a turkey or a fox. But when the animal was finally fully in view, he stopped short. Struggling in the decaying food, its leg caught in the metal jaws that were chained to a post, was a boy.
A fresh mind! It is yet unsoiled by time.
The boy wore dirt like it were clothing, covering nearly his entire body and the tattered rags that hung from him. His hair stuck out in matted twists, and his leg was bloodied, bent in a crooked way where the trap held him.
“Who are you, what’s your name?” Roy asked.
The boy stared widely at him, eyes moving from him to the gun.
“Well, what is it?”
Take us to it, introduce us. Roy felt the thought-speaker giggling in the dark space. Open its mind.
The boy huffed and grunted loudly, either trying to scare Roy off or get him to free his leg.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Roy said, setting the gun on the ground. “It’s not an animal, it’s a boy.”
You must, we will never let you escape our grip. You will never be free.
Roy wished it were any other animal, why couldn’t it have been a raccoon? He would have given this curse to a raccoon, sure, but not another human. He’d be damning the boy to a hollow life of unending darkness. Plus, an animal wouldn’t spread it, a boy could.
But he’d be free – free to die. He wanted to die more than he wanted this boy to live.
Roy showed his hands, holding them up hoping it would calm the boy. It worked for the first few steps, but when Roy put his hands on the boy, he fought back. The boy reached and dug his fingers into Roy’s eyes, then bit his arm hard enough that blood ran from his mouth. Roy shouted for him to lay still but the boy refused, and he flipped Roy back into the compost.
When Roy turned, he saw the boy diving for the shotgun. The boy’s trapped leg yanked harshly, and his hip made a loud knuckle-pop like when Roy would twist apart chicken legs for dinner. But the post that held the trap leaned just enough for the boy to get his hands on the gun. He lifted it awkwardly, the barrel’s black eyes staring at Roy in the moonlight.
“Don’t-”
The gun barked and the shot tore through Roy’s face, spraying blood and brains out the back of his head. He was dead before he hit the ground.
The boy, whose junky dad overdosed early in his life and homeless mother had no interest in supporting him, had grown up a child of the woods. Before his mom disappeared, before he found peace in the trees instead of the city streets, he would follow her around town to the spots where they’d hold cardboard signs that said Anything helps, God bless!
He once found a tossed cellphone while dumpster diving that mom kept with her, even though they couldn’t afford to make calls. Sometimes, if they could find free wi-fi, she would let him watch old movie clips online. His favorite was Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and he loved the effects when Arnold shot chunks out of the liquid metal cop.
Arnold made it look easy though, shooting a gun one-handed like that. The boy wouldn’t have known the ass from the business end without that movie. Unlike the movie, the man’s body hadn’t opened to reveal a silvery sheen like the cop in the movie. The way the man’s body opened was dirtier.
Adrenaline pulsed through him now, and the only sound outside of his ringing ears was the thumping of his heart. He stared in shock at the man’s body, catching his breath with air that had the burnt flavor of gunpowder. The bars clamped against his leg had torn through the skin and pulled down near his heel, if he could just get it down a little farther, he’d be free. He reached for the trap and cried out, pain pouring from his hip. His foot was beginning to slide out, the skin stretching just enough to move the trap’s jaws under his heel, then down and off his foot.
The man moved.
It was an arm that lifted first, limp and rising into the air, like something lifted him by the wrist. The other arm rose, and the boy could see where the second shot had gone wide, leaving only a few stringy strands to keep it connected. The legs were next, pulled by the knees, everything below the knee dangling. Then, the body lifted into the air like a floppy marionette rising to dance. The man’s head – what little was left of it – glistened in the moonlight, chunky bits littering his shirt, blood soaking his body.
The boy tried standing but, even with the adrenaline shielding him from the worst of the pain, that seemed impossible. He fell back to the ground and crawled as fast as he could. Without looking back, he knew the man followed by the sound of feet dragging out of the compost and into the leaves.
It wasn’t the first time. Being alone in the woods, the thoughts his only company, can drive some men insane. Roy would have been fine in the cabin by himself had it not been for the thought-speaker and the elder gods, but after they crawled inside his mind, he knew his existence meant all of humanity was at risk. He eventually decided he should no longer exist.
The first time was with the shotgun in the bedroom. Took him an hour to come to terms with the end of his life and pull the trigger. Hurt like a sonofabitch. Waking up was worse though. His best guess was that the elder gods reached from their secret nests to string up his corpse and send him on autopilot while they healed him, then he’d regain consciousness. He didn’t remember anything immediately after the bedroom attempt, just suddenly began to feel pain again, and opened his eyes to find he was halfway through scrubbing bits of brain and skull off the ceiling.
He tried several times after that in differing ways – drowning, hypothermia, even tussled with a black bear in the woods and let the bear win – but none of them took. His eyes always opened again. The elder gods didn’t want him dead, so he couldn’t die, simple as that.
Roy even found he’d stopped aging. He felt more energetic than he had in years. His joints didn’t hurt quite as bad throughout the day, he didn’t get so winded on hikes, and “little Roy” came to attention as good and strong as when he was a teenager. But he wouldn’t die – not from his hand, not from age, not from anything.
It was soon after the bear attempt that he considered other animals of the forest. That’s when he thought that he might be able to trick the elder gods by trapping an animal and making it their new host.
But he never wanted it to be another human. Roy wouldn’t wish this curse on his worst enemy.
But Roy was no longer in control.
The boy could hear cars. There was a county highway he’d followed many times when squatting in crumbling farmhouses and cabins, walking beside it on the way to the next encampment. There would be help there.
He fought for every inch of ground he covered, and his forearms bled from pulling. His leg was dead weight, hooking on ground cover and slowing him until he tugged free. He could smell the man following him, the lingering stench of viscera reminding him of highway roadkill. The boy didn’t want to look back again because last time he had the man was closing the distance between them.
Then, as he crested a hill, the highway came into view. The torn asphalt, lit by moonlight, shone brightly between the trees, cutting through the woods like a river. Excitement ravaged him and he pulled faster. He was nearly there. Someone would help him-
The man’s hand gripped his side and flipped him onto his back. Even in the dark he could see the rough outline of the man’s head grown back in lumpy form, like what he thought an aborted baby must look like. Undercooked. The heavy thump of the man’s dangling arm whapped against his chest, and it knocked the wind out of him. The boy fought back best he could, connecting a solid kick with his good leg, but it did little to stop the man.
“No, stop, no!” the boy screamed.
The man pinned him, the knee on his chest like a boulder, and leaned forward. The boy felt a rib crack under the pressure. A dark cloud poured from the man’s half-formed mouth, engulfing the boy’s face. He tried holding his breath as long as possible, but the cracked rib was like a knife in his side, and the boy choked. From the mouth, as it split and widened, came creatures worse than any nightmare he could have dreamed possible.
You have been useful.
Roy heard the thought-speaker as he came to, but it felt hazy, like a memory. His eyes were puffy, and in the little slits he could open he saw the boy beneath him. He felt the darkness leaving, an infinite void spewing forth from him.
One by one the gods tore themselves out, ripped from their shadowy nests, raking his mind as they left and taking what they wanted. Memories were suddenly gone, abandoning others without context. He was a man, yes, but his name escaped him. The cabin and the book and the gods all disappeared. He and this boy were in the woods, yes, but how had they gotten there, what was his age, what happened during his life?
A thought formed, one last injection from the thought-speaker, but words no longer made sense to him, so it passed without comprehension. Everything he had once been, now gone.
Whatever held him up released its grip and he fell to the ground, letting gravity pull him down the hill into the ditch near the highway. He lay there, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to live any longer. Now hollow, he was finally happy as death took him away from the where the dark things lurk, into nothingness.
The boy walked along the highway. He no longer hurt, felt good as new even. An itch of a thought ran through his mind, unfamiliar and dark, but he wrote it off as lingering adrenaline. His only goal was to get the hell as far away from this place as he could, either by walking or hitchhiking. Maybe, the city would be safer.