I drove behind Deputy Ellison, his patrol car’s lights forging us a path as we sped through town and out to the interstate. All we had to go were three words Sandra had said in the middle of her terrified screaming. “At Hideaway Lodge.” I didn’t understand the reference, but Ellison told me Hideaway Lodge was a large motel along the interstate. When I learned it lay somewhere between my town and where Sandra was living with the girls, it made more sense. It also drove home that it might not just be her in jeopardy, but our daughters Alice and Kristi as well.
Half out of my mind with fear, I was running out of the building when Ellison caught me. “You need to take a breath, man.” I tried to pull away, but he held me fast. “I know, and we’re going to go get them. But you aren’t good to anybody If you kill yourself getting there. Let me help.”
I shook my head. “No, no cops. I’m going to do what I have to do, and I can’t have someone between me and them. I can’t let this keep going on.”
Ellison smiled, his eyes hard but not unfriendly. “I’m not talking about cops. I know enough to know this is something special. Like when that thing got my brother. I’m not helping you as a deputy.” He glanced out the window to the parking lot. “Though I’m not above running the sirens to get us there faster.”
We pulled into the gravel parking lot in a cloud of grey dust, and Ellison was already in the office before I was fully out of my car. I almost followed him in, but held back out of fear that a harried civilian partner would only weaken his authority. In a minute he was back out and heading toward me.
“Guy said that two men checked in about two hours ago. He said there may have been other people in the car, but he never got a good look. Then, half an hour ago he saw a patrol car pull up.” He pointed down to the corner of the building. “That’s Minas’ patrol unit. The motel manager never saw her, but he said the car hasn’t moved that he’s noticed since it arrived.” Ellison glanced worriedly up at fourth floor of motel. “Based on how he described the men, I think we just found the last two of Jarvis’ workers.”
“What’s the room number?” I could hear the barely restrained anger in my voice. I had been trying to be patient, but I needed to get up there now and he was wasting time.
He glanced back at me. “I’m getting to that, but first you need to hear me. We’re likely walking into a hostage situation with two homicidal maniacs and a trained, armed officer with a monster in her brain. Best case scenario, I’m probably going to be fired. Worst case, most of us wind up dead or puppets for that damned thing. I’m not trying to be a hero here, but you need to follow my lead. Listen to what I tell you to do and stay out of my line of sight on them at all times. You clear?” I nodded and he patted me on the shoulder. “Okay, let’s go get your family back. They’re in Room 403.”
We went up the stairs slowly, looking around constantly for a nearby ambush or a distant threat. But there was nothing. If there was anyone else even staying at the massive motel, you couldn’t tell it by what we saw as we ascended to the fourth floor. We reached 403 and I went to knock, but Ellison shook his head. He gently pushed me to one side of the door as he moved to the other. Once in position, he drew his gun and quietly tried the knob.
The door opened easily into a well-lit room. On the bed was Sandra and the girls, their hands tied in front of them and pieces of ripped bedsheet tied across their mouths as gags. Standing on either side of them like bodyguards were the last two men from when the coffin was found. They were both caked with dirt and filthy, and I could tell from their clothes that they had recently urinated on themselves. As we stepped into the room, the smell of rotten meat and shit emanating from them made me gag. For their part, they barely even glanced at us as we entered, their eyes only ticking in our direction briefly as they continued their slack-faced manning of the post.
Ellison gestured for me to stay back as he checked the small bathroom just inside the entry door. A moment later he was back out and into the room proper. Looking around, he saw what I saw. No Deputy Minas. Holding his gun on the men, he edged around them to glance out at the small balcony that looked out onto a dismal clump of scrub pines. She wasn’t hiding out there either.
Then I saw it.
“The rock’s back.” I pointed to the room's television stand. A couple of inches in front of the t.v. was the smooth flat stone. I had the crazy urge to pick it up, open the sliding glass door and hurl it out into the woods. But I knew it would do no good. There was no stopping this. Just containing it. I had to get it away from the others.
“Put your hands on your head and step to the front door. When you reach the outside of the door, get down on the ground. If you do anything else, I will fucking shoot you.”
I looked up and saw that Ellison was trying to get the workers out of the room. Sandra and the girls had been squealing with some mixture of joy and fear since we entered, but I had been so lost in looking for Minas and finding the stone that it was only now that I thought to comfort them as best I could.
“It’s okay. It’ll be okay. You’re safe now.”
I registered movement from the two men only a moment before the gun went off. They weren’t heading for the front door or even to attack me or Ellison. They were charging the sliding glass door. The first hit it with a crash even as the second was shot, but neither of them seemed to slow down. One more blow to the glass and they were through. At first I thought they were trying to escape, but they never slowed. Instead, they hit the waist-high railing hard, tearing it free as they tumbled over and past it before falling to the ground below.
Ellison stepped out on the ruined balcony and looked down. “Fuck, I think they’re dead or close to it.” He glanced up at me. “Get your girls free. I need to call this in now.”
I nodded and went to them, hugging them briefly before freeing their mouths and hands. They were all hugging me back, crying and asking if it was over. I lied to them and said it was. Hopefully it wasn’t much of a lie. I planned to end it all soon.
Pulling back, I focused on each of them for a moment, trying to burn their faces into my memory. I wanted something good to hold onto when I was alone in the dark with that thing. “I love you all so much.” I started to cry as I went on. “I know I wasn’t always a good person, and you always loved me in spite of my mistakes. There may be a lot of weird things you hear in the next few days, and I know you may never understand most of this…heck, neither do I. But always know how much I love all three of you. You were always the best part of me.”
Not wanting to prolong it any further, I turned to grab the stone, intending on taking it back downstairs and drive it far away from them. Find some secluded place to bury it and me, hopefully really forever this time.
But it was gone.
“Missing something, Papa?” Kristi was only four and still mumbled a lot when she talked, but this was loud and clear. The voice was hers and not hers. I felt my knees weakening as I heard its voice woven through. “Want me to help you look for it?” I turned back and saw a knowing grin on my little girl’s face as it mocked me.
Sandra and Alice knew something was wrong. They were frowning at Kristi, and after a moment Alice was sliding off the bed and coming closer to me. Sandra reached out to touch Kristi’s face and l moved to stop her, but I was too late. Our baby girl launched herself past the outreached hand and bit down on Sandra’s face.
Blood sprayed against the wall as Alice joined her mother in screaming in terror. Ellison came back in from the balcony and dropped his phone when he saw what was happening. We both moved to pull Kristi off, but she was impossibly strong. I was yelling, but I have no idea what. I was out of my mind with anger and fear, and as I watched, the thing in Kristi was crawling up Sandra’s face with its gnawing, questing mouth. It had started on her left cheek, but it quickly moved along its path of ruin to Sandra’s eye. As it bit down on the interior of her eye socket, a wet crunching sound was met by Sandra’s keen animal wail as she passed out. The goddamned thing was making her eat Sandra’s eye.
Anger flared brighter in my chest and I planted my feet. Ellison, seeming to sense my intent, braced against the slumping Sandra as I yanked as hard as I could to pull Kristi off of her, fearing it still wouldn’t be enough. Except it was more than enough. Just as I pulled, Kristi just let go.
We stumbled and fell past the carpet, past the broken glass door, to the end of the broken balcony. For a moment I stood on the edge, trying to tilt us back the other way, working against momentum and gravity and inevitability. And then we were floating through the air and I could feel the deep rumble from my little girl’s chest as we headed for the ground. It was laughing.
It was over the next moment. Pain flared through my body and I let out a scream of agony that turned to despair as I realized I wasn’t that badly hurt. I had landed on Kristi.
Dragging myself off of her, I rubbed dirt and blood off her face as I tried to wake her, to wake it. “Ask me your question. I’ll answer, I’ll answer!”
One of her eyes fluttered open, the other one crushed closed and tangled in a mass of welling blood. Her good eye couldn’t focus, but I knew she was searching for me. “Daddy?” She looked like she was going to say something else, but then she was gone.
I screamed and cried, beating the ground and hitting myself over and over. My arm was broken, and the pain that tore through me with each blow seemed like the least of what I deserved. Why hadn’t it taken me? Why hadn’t it just asked its last question?
“Because the questions were never the point, my boy,” Ellison was standing over me, and I saw now that Alice and Sandra were there too, forming a rough semi-circle around me and the crushed horror of our baby girl.
“I don’t need the questions to take you. Never did,” Alice said as it smirked at me.
“But I’m very old, and I get bored.” Sandra said, “It’s more fun if I spice it up. And it’s easier to take the special ones like you, my long-term hosts, if you have a bit of hope and a sprinkle of mystery to go with your terror and despair.”
“Ways you can fight me,” Ellison said.
“Rules that can protect you,” Alice added.
“Some noble sacrifice you can make to atone for being the stupid little waste that you are.” Sandra’s smile was thin and cold as she shoved me lightly with the toe of her shoe. “And what can I say? It makes you tastier too. Unlike the others, I’ll hold off a good long time before I eat you, but what can I say? I like to season my meat.”
I had no response to give, and apparently it needed none. The world exploded as I suddenly felt an enormous pressure in my skull. I had the image of the rock appearing there, tearing and pressing at the brain tissue to make room. I knew that was impossible—I’d be dead or in a coma from something like that—but I somehow knew it was still true.
It was like Emily described. I could feel it inside me now. Sandra, Alice and Ellison all slumped to the ground like puppets with their strings cut, but when I checked them they were alive. I didn’t have any way of knowing if they would ever be okay again, but then again, nothing could ever be okay again. I looked down at my shirt, covered in my baby’s blood, and I stripped it off before running for my car.
The Gravekeeper was quiet in its new home and didn’t stir as I drove away from the motel and the nearby town. I went deeper into the country for nearly an hour, searching for what might be a good spot to hide my car. When I found it, I left my car, cellphone and wallet behind, taking only a tire tool out of the trunk to use as a makeshift shovel.
I walked for another two hours when I came upon what had likely once been some kind of large animal’s burrow. It only took a bit more digging to make it large enough for me to fit inside and be out of sight. Not wanting to waste any time, I put Ellison’s gun to my head and tried to pull the trigger.
Except it wouldn’t let me. I cursed, I screamed, I tried using both hands, but nothing I did worked. It just sat silent, letting me try and fail over and over.
“Please just let me die. Please, please, please, please!” I knew I was growing hysterical, and I was fine with that. Maybe it couldn’t prevent a natural death by stroke or heart attack as easily. I had to find a way to…
“This is it?” It was a young man’s voice.
“Yes, he’s in there. I thought I was going to vomit half a mile back, but it is much stronger here.” This was an older, deeper voice. I was trying to decide how best to stay hidden or escape when a strong hand suddenly shot into the burrow and pulled me out. Blinking, I looked up as a large old man squatted down quickly and injected me with something. Almost immediately I felt blackness slipping in, but I still jerked when I heard the whir of an electric drill. I thought of Ellison's story and closed my eyes gratefully.
“Wait.” This was the younger man again. “I can sense something about this one too.”
“You can?” The older man sounded curious, but I still heard the drill drawing closer. “Interesting, but no time to risk it. Not with this one.”
“No, stop.” The young man again. “Don’t drill him. He’s different. It’s different I mean. I think it wants you to drill it. I don’t think it’s like the others. I think it is the seed in his head, or at least the seed is containing it somehow. Limiting it.”
The electric drill came to a stop. “How could you possibly know any of that?”
I opened my eyes again and I could barely see anything. Everything was a blur. But I could hear the worry in the young man’s voice. “I don’t know. But I do. It’s like I remember it somehow? It’s weird. But we can’t deal with this thing like normal.”
The older man sighed. “Well, then we’ll have to…” But then I fell into the black.
I’m restrained in a small warehouse basement that the young man, Jason, told me they had planned to turn into “new living quarters”, but that this seemed a much more important use. They’ve told me what their plan is, and I can see how much the idea of it pains them. They never apologize for it, but I can tell they wish there was another way.
The older man, Dr. Barron, says they are letting me record this narrative, everything that happened from the beginning, both for their work and so that my story can be heard and remembered. I asked them how they found me, and they tell me that Ellison had called them when we were on the way to the motel. When I ask them why they aren’t afraid that the Gravekeeper might take them over or use me to hurt them, they share a glance before telling me that while there are always risks, they have some “unique immunities” to these kinds of things and are experienced with such matters.
Dr. Barron lightly gripped my chin then, and it was clear he was no longer talking to me, but rather the thing nesting in my brain. “Besides, I don’t think it wants to fight us. I think it’s exactly where it wants to be.” I saw Jason’s eyebrows go up behind him.
“What? Why do you say that?”
The doctor kept hold of me, looking into my eyes as though trying to peer through and behind them to the monster. “Because from everything we’ve heard of this creature, it is very old and cunning. Very good at getting its way.” I felt a dull thrill of fear as his face hardened. “And we may not know why yet, but we will. And when that day comes, the Gravekeeper may learn it isn’t quite as smart as it likes to think.”
I wish things had turned out differently. I'm scared of being alone with that thing and my only hope is that the burial carries me beyond its ability to keep me alive.
They tell me Ellison and Alice are okay, or as okay as they can be. They seem normal at least. Sandra is alive, but still in serious condition. My family will never understand what really happened, but I think that may be for the best. As bad as not knowing might be, the truth is so much worse.
I’m at the end now. Jason has stayed with me to record my story, and I hope he takes to heart what I say next. These men are good men, and I bear them no ill will. They’re just doing a better job of what I already tried to do. Up above, I can hear the beeping noise of the cement truck as it approaches the edge of the subterranean room I’m in. I hope that it’s enough.
So listen to me before you go, Jason. Listen, whoever hears my story. Keep me buried. Buried forever. Do not ever let the Gravekeeper out again. Please. Don’t…
“We both know that’s not the way this will play out, don’t we, boy?” I turned off the recorder and looked down at where Mark Sullivan was chained on the floor. The voice coming out of him now was rough and hard on the ears. “We both know we’ll be seeing each other again.”
I thumbed the button to back the tape up to before the Gravekeeper had spoken. “Yeah, I suppose we do. Sweet dreams, you evil fuck.”
Moving up the steps to the surface floor, I nodded to my grandfather’s reflection in the side mirror of the truck. “Looks good, grandpa.” With that, I started the flow of concrete into the room below. The thing down there was chuckling to itself, but soon the flow of liquid rock silenced it, and within ten minutes it was done.
I turned around at a hand on my shoulder and smiled at my grandfather sadly. “I really hate this.”
He rubbed his mouth and puffed out a long breath. “I know. I do too. But it’s the best temporary solution we have.” He glanced down at the slowly hardening concrete. “Did he get to finish saying his piece?” I nodded. My grandfather studied me a moment. “Did the Gravekeeper ever come out to talk?”
I hesitated, but I didn’t forget who I was talking to. He most likely already knew the answer. “At the end. Just ‘I’m going to get you, my pretty’ bullshit.”
He shook his head. “Don’t do that. We’re right to be afraid of that thing. You were right when you realized it was different somehow. Even down there, we’re not done with it. It’s still very dangerous.”
I stuck the recorder in my pocket and suppressed a shudder as I stepped back from where Mark Sullivan and the Gravekeeper lay entombed. “Yeah, I know it is.”
---
Credits
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