One Step More

He heavily drug one foot in front of the other, as the weight of the heat danced on the distorted horizon. On and on the figure marched through the sweltering heat of the day. He had been walking for… He wasn’t sure. It had been two and a half days in truth. But the unrelenting sting of the sun had burnt the truth out of his mind. It had burned away the thought of her green eyes, and the last night he had spent in the company of human beings. It had burned away the nightmare that was the last two nights. Burned away the glowing white eyes in the darkness of the decrepit buildings they had taken refuge in. Burned away the screams of the children and the horrible thrashing and tearing sounds that echoed out of the darkness after they were silent. All of it, burned away by one of the only real things that existed here. Heat. With all of his thoughts gone there was only to walk. One step. Then, one step. On and on until… He thought he saw a tree.

He visored his brow with a dry and ashy hand trying to see clearly past the dancing horizon. He could see it there, in the distance. A tree. A tree meant shade, meant relief, meant somewhere to sit...somewhere to die. He licked his lips and felt the sharp edges of peeling skin drag against his dry tongue. He knew it was no good, but he licked them again. He took one step and then another. He took one step more, then his foot caught on less than a crack in the hard dry earth and he crashed to his knees. He tried to catch himself but crumbled as his left arm failed to catch him, so he lay awkwardly with his face in the dirt. He could feel his knees ache with a pain so sharp that it could only mean he had broken skin. He winced as he tried to lift himself and an electrical rippling of pain shot from his left arm to crumble him back into the dirt. He looked at it, almost as if it were someone else’s arm. A bone had been torn through his bicep to stick up like some white flag pole through a bandaged arm.

Suddenly, flashes of a pale humanoid hand reached out of a wall of darkness to him, grabbing his arm and wrenching it to bend the wrong way. Shocking him into a backward scramble, then he was standing and huffing with a sudden burst of energy. The image was gone just as soon as it had come and he was back, in the burnt shadeless landscape with nothing. Nothing, but heat baking his skin and the echoes of a child’s screams ringing in his ears. He blinked in his surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. Where was he going? He couldn’t remember. He felt something hot and heavy laying against his chest. At first it angered him and he reached to tear it off of his neck but the chain it hung on simply dug into the skin between the bones of his spine. He gasped with pain and almost collapsed again. He steadied himself and looked down to his neck and saw a black heart shaped locket.

He grimaced and could feel where his skin had begun to meld with the metal of the chain, peeling away when he lifted it from his neck. The locket felt so heavy in his hand. When... where had he found this? It was plain as far as he could see. But seeing, was becoming more difficult. He blinked with rapid savagery, trying to force his vision back into focus. He swallowed a hard dry swallow and closed his eyes for six seconds. He wasn’t sure why six. But when he opened his eyes he thought he could see a bit better. He looked the locket over and flipped it in his hand and saw where the backside flipped upward. He pressed open the back of it and saw a small...well he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. At first he thought it might be a bright stone. But upon further inspection it swirled and danced with a strange light. A light that poured from it’s center and off of it’s edges like water, then disappeared as it fell away. Light, like something from a dream pulled at the edge of memory. The light reminded him of something.

The lights had been bright that night. “The stars are out tonight, huh?” His wife Anna was walking over to him with a cold bottle of cider in hand. He could see the condensation misting the apple shaped label. “Daddy, is that it?” He was holding his daughter Aurora propped in one arm as she pointed to the bright night sky. She had two big puffs on either side of her head and her signature blue and yellow overalls and she was pointing with little fingers he felt very tempted to nibble on. He wrapped her up in his arms and proceeded to playfully nibble on those cute little fingers and listen to her scream in delight and surprise. “Come on now you two.” Anna said as she jabbed at his side with the cold bottle. “She did ask you a question.” “Ahh yes!” he said, placing her down and looking at his daughter in an overly serious manner. “What was your question again young lady?” She giggled and repeated, “Daddy, is that it?” He turned and looked into the part of the sky she was pointing to. “Yes, that’s Gemini. You can tell because it’s made of six stars and one of them called Castor, I think, is one of the brightest stars ever.” Her eyes lit up and grew wide with amazement as she stared into the starry night. “The fire is ready for smores, if you guys are ready for them.” Anna said, nodding toward the campfire. He turned to his wife as Aurora danced and sang her way over to the campfire ahead of her parents. “This was a great idea babe.” Anna said, looking at him with her green eyes. Her lightly freckled cheeks were bursting with approval and appreciation. As he reached a hand into her back pocket and squeezed her butt. She did the same for him. “Daddy?” Aurora’s voice was suddenly worried. “What’s that?” He and Anna turned to look into the starry night to find more than stars.

The sudden light brightened the world into a mock daylight. But the light poured from a source of pale milky brightness that seemed to be descending from nowhere. The sight captured their whole being. Birds were chirping and cawing wildly as crickets and frogs sang a raucous chorus and Aurora was saying something over and over and over again but all of it was barely audible over the visual spectacle of what they were witnessing. Neither he nor Anna could speak as they watched the light descend onto the world changing it from day to some strange alien brightness. Then just as suddenly as it came, it vanished. Silence. “What the fu-” “Six! Six! Six!” Aurora was screaming now and staring at where the light had seemed to land. “Aurora, Aurora honey what’s-” Anna was suddenly transfixed on a spot just outside of the light of the campfire. He was peering where he thought she might be looking but everything in the shadows seemed to be darker than it had been somehow. Much darker. All he could see against the flickering darkness beyond the trees were pale glowing dots. He was blinking furiously trying to get the dots to go away when Anna grabbed his arm, hard. He looked over at her but he couldn’t see her face past her afro but could see her lips. She was saying, “Get the gun.” He looked back into the darkness confused. Had he missed something? The dots were still there... but then it clicked. Those weren’t dots. They were eyes. Strange eyes, all around them in the darkness.

He looked back up the hill to the cabin lights which seemed to stretch further away as he looked. He pulled his pistol from the waist of his pants and cocked it. He was breathing hard and could hear the thud of his heart in his chest, there were no other sounds. The pale wobbling circles began to dart around, always just out of view. “Six. Six. Six” Aurora said transfixed on something neither of her parents could see. “Grab Aurora.” He whispered to Anna. She grabbed up her daughter with a smooth calmness he knew she wasn’t feeling. They turned and ran! The light of the campfire at their back no longer lit their way forward and so they knew it was gone, swallowed up by the darkness. They ran against the hill and he fired shots behind him, never quite looking to see if, or what they hit. They had finally reached the cabin and the lights were on just inside. He took the four porch stairs in a leap, Anna jumped but the last stair caught her leg. She fell awkwardly twisting as she shielded Aurora from the ground. He reached down for her and she screamed as a pale hand with impossibly long black fingers grabbed the waist of her pants. She screamed and pushed Aurora into his arms. Then she was gone. He fired the gun, feeling like a complete fool for having not shot immediately. He couldn’t see anything and all he heard was his wife’s screaming, getting more and more distant. Another pale hand reached from the darkness and grabbed at Aurora. He grabbed his daughter and snatched the door open but couldn’t get inside. Something was holding him back. He saw that long black finger clawed through the loops of his daughter’s overall straps and his heart dropped into his feet. He pulled with all his might against that hand as she screamed “Six! Six! Six!” The black fingers had closed around her small body and began pulling with inhuman strength. He Propped his feet into the door frame and pulled with his entire body. He was gaining. “Reach for me baby! Reach!” Her tiny hand was reaching for him and grasping at his arm. He pulled harder and harder. Until a white hand grabbed his left arm from the darkness.

His arm had snapped like a twig and he let go to fall and then everything went to darkness. He dreamt then, of a strange face, with eyes like floating orbs of light and an unmoving mouth telling him something. The face stared at him and whispered. He couldn’t understand the words and the face looked impassive, but the unheard words gave a sense of urgency. “What!? What are you saying?!” He yelled at the face as it shrank away into darkness and was replaced by the orb in the locket. The light was shining and swirling in it’s locket and had brought all of this back to him. He didn’t know what the thing in the locket was. But he knew it was important. He thought of Aurora’s small fingers and of Anna’s green eyes. He closed the locket and squeezed it. He couldn't cry, the heat had taken his tears already but he wailed in the pain of his loss. He looked up and saw, on the waving horizon more clearly than he had. There was a tree there. He clenched the locket in his fist and took a step. His legs were numb and he stumbled. He clenched his fist tighter and said to himself, in a voice deep and raspy of none-use, “Keep your black ass moving. Just take one step more...”

END