He somersaulted on the wet ground before sliding to a stop. His spine was crushed, he was sure of it. The storm bared down on him, forcing an icy whip of wind across his skin, bitter rain into his mouth and eyes. The gun, where was the gun? He raised his right hand and found that he still gripped the weapon, though he couldn’t feel it. The thing in the solarium punched out two panes of glass and climbed through, its snarling face there and gone in the storm. Quinn sat up and fired a shot that went wide, blasting the window above the monster. A large piece of glass slid free from the broken frame, as it tried to struggle into the open, and sliced into the thing’s back behind its jutting shoulder blades. Its cry cut the night and overrode the thunder that cracked in the sky. It flailed first one way and then the other, the heavy chunk of glass in its back snapping off as it hauled itself free of the building. Quinn steadied the gun with both hands, flipping the light on as he squeezed the trigger.
The pistol kicked, and the bridge of the thing’s nose collapsed inward. Matter flew free of the back of its head, spattering the remaining glass with bits of bone and flesh. It wavered there, wobbling on its stringy arms, nearly free of the solarium for a long heartbeat, and then tipped forward onto its side. Quinn kept the gun trained on its still form as he counted. When he reached a hundred he managed to stand, his legs barely holding him. There was a hornets’ nest buried in his back that sent a thousand stings up his spine as he took three shuffling steps forward then stopped. Training the light on the creature’s ruined head, he stood unmoving as the rain came down around him, stinging in scrapes and cuts.
The storm faded away completely as he stared, disbelief pressing down on him until his legs finally gave out and he crumpled beside the skeletal figure, the gun’s light glinting off the gold earring in the thing’s left ear.
Chapter 9
Revelations
He spent the night in his own bed with the door shut and locked, a chair shoved beneath the knob.
Sleep was fleeting, coming in short spans that he woke from shaking and clutching the pistol so hard his fingers ached. The storm continued to crash around the house, howling through the destroyed solarium with a hollow voice. Near morning it moved off to the east and burnt out over the ocean, leaving the sky clear enough to see the gray edge of dawn creeping up from the water like fog.
As the room lightened by degrees, Quinn lay on his side, his back throbbing, hand pulsing in dull strobes with each heartbeat. He stared at the wall, glancing occasionally at the painting his father had given him when he was twelve. It was a vibrant watercolor of a river valley filling with the first light of day. Rolling hills speckled with trees holding the orange and reds of fall on their branches fell down to a blue river, its surface cut by the heads of rocks peeking from its depths. His father had told him it was a real place, that he’d seen it firsthand. He’d commissioned an artist to capture it on canvas, saying that a photo wouldn’t have done it justice. You have to feel it, Quinn, and the only way to feel something that you haven’t seen in real life is through art.
Quinn rose from the bed, his joints full of spiked rust. He hobbled across the room, his ankle flaring like a hot coal each time he put weight on it. He reached the painting and stood looking at it for a long time until the brushstrokes blended together into a haze.
He tore the painting from the wall and flung it across the room.
It hit the foot of his bed, the glass shattering and sprinkling the floor. The frame shifted and released its hold on the colorful canvas. The picture folded beneath itself and lay still. He breathed hard, each inhalation painful. He could still feel a giant hand squeezing his chest.
He made his way downstairs to find the sun coating the floor in the living room gold. A cool draft leaked from the direction of the solarium and he shivered, pulling on a sweatshirt hanging in the closet. He opened a can of smoked herring and sat eating it at the counter, staring into nothing. The XDM lay beside the warm can of pop, its grip in easy reach. He would never go anywhere without it again.
After choking down the last of the salty fish, he rinsed the can and threw it in the trash, which was almost full. It was starting to smell.
He stood at the kitchen window looking at the puddles shining on the drive. They were splotches of blue, reflecting the faultless sky. A chill ran through him. The puddles were the same color as the thing’s eyes outside. Graham’s eyes.