Page 43 of Outside the Veil
Home, where people needed him. Home, where all the sounds had names and the nights were never half so dark.
Home, where the oppressive silence of his empty apartment waited for him.
With the afternoon well underway, he couldn’t start for home until morning. He packed instead, trying not to think about each thing Finn had worn or touched. His eyes stung when he picked up Finn’s sneakers. Those beautiful feet. Maybe he should leave Finn’s clothes, just in case. And the food in the fridge. He’d leave that out, too. Someone would eat it out in the woods.
That evening he gagged down a piece of dry toast, sat down to read the offer, and choked on his water when he reached the proposed figures. A fair deal, Miriam had said. For him, the sum represented a king’s ransom, a nice parcel of isolated land and a comfortable cottage’s worth. Without Finn.
He buried his head in his hands and wished he could cry.
Three-quarters full, the moon glared at Diego through the front room windows.Why are you still here, it seemed to say.You’re an idiot twice over because you never belonged here or with him in the first place.
He entertained thoughts of suicide. In a purely theatrical sense since he could never carry through with it, but the morbid scenes persisted. Park Rangers arriving days too late to find his body stretched out on the front steps in a pool of dried blood, flies buzzing around his sightless eyes. Finn’s return greeted by the dry sound of his feet scraping the side of the kitchen stool he’dstepped from, his body swinging in a slow circle from the rope tied to the rafters.
There were practical issues, of course. He didn’t own a gun and wouldn’t know how to use one. The thought of slitting his wrists and leaving all that blood for someone else to clean up made him ill. The ceilings were too high here for him to reach the rafters, and he didn’t think the ceiling fan in the kitchen would support a man’s weight.
Most of all, his father had been through enough and how would his sister explain to her children that Tio Diego had committed such a cowardly act?
A scratch at the door jerked him from his brooding. He stood in the dark, heart pounding, and listened. There. Another hissing scratch, as if fingernails were being drawn across the wood. He held his breath and eased toward the door, not certain why he tried to walk so quietly.Probably a raccoon or a few leaves.
He flipped on the houselights, porch, side spot and garage. A hasty scrabbling followed, and the retreat of heavy feet down the front steps. Two feet, not four.
“Finn?” The word escaped as a whisper. But Finn would have said something, wouldn’t he? Something terrible must have happened. Hurt and frightened, he might not be able to speak.
Diego’s hand trembled on the doorknob. Gripped by unreasoning fear, he stood paralyzed. What if it was someone else? Something else? But, damn it, he couldn’t let Finn slip away again.
With a low sound in his throat, he rushed to the fireplace, grabbed the tongs then flung open the door. The porch stood empty. He took a step out. The tongs rattled in his shaky grip. He reached back and eased the door shut behind him.
“Anyone out here?”
The wind whipped in a sudden gust, its voice through the porch columns a bestial moan. Movement caught the edge of his vision and Diego spun to his left toward the garage. A pale, naked figure stood just outside the circle of light, staring up at him. Wild ebony hair twitched in the wind.
“Dios. Finn.” Diego’s lungs restarted and he held a hand out at he walked, one careful step at a time, toward the garage. “Stay there, please. Don’t move. I’ll come to you. What’s happened? Are you hurt? Finn? Talk to me…”
He placed the fire tongs on the grass, realizing belatedly how threatening they would look. Finn made no movement toward him, or away, as he edged closer. The sense of something profoundly wrong escalated with each step. Finn’s skin stretched taut across too prominent bones. Dark patches mottled his arms and chest. His eyes, half hidden under his matted hair, stared unblinking from sunken hollows.
Diego stopped out of arm’s reach. “Give me something here, Finn. Anything. You’re scaring the hell out of me.”
Finn’s lips stretched into a chill smile, exposing yellow, pitted teeth. Diego staggered back when a wall of carrion stench slammed into him.
Oh, God, not Finn. This thing is not Finn…
The thing’s mouth never moved from its obscene leer, but as the wind rose, saturated with the stench of decay, it whispered his name.
His limbs leaden and trembling, Diego stumbled back another step. He had to get away, to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey.
A shrill scream ripped the air, far from human. He jerked his head around toward the trees. Blacker than the shadows, a huge horse erupted from the woods. Riderless, sparks flew with every strike of its hooves on stone. Its eyes blazed crimson flame as it bore down on him. Caught between nightmare and nightmare, Diego lost the ability to move in any direction.
A thousand tortured voices shrieked on the wind. The Finn-thing’s mouth stretched further, opening wide enough to swallow his head, as if its jaws unhinged like a serpent’s. With an impossible leap, it sprang upon him and seized his arms.
The night shattered into a thousand jagged splinters.
Chapter eleven
Awakening
Warmth on his face. Sun. Too bright.
Diego rolled away from the light with a groan. Small construction crews had set up worksites in his head, complete with jackhammers and excavators. Fire skewers shot through his back and limbs with every small movement.
