Parker Thomas: Part III

The Shadow

Dark.

All of it was dark. Parker Thomas had felt himself stop falling what seemed like hours ago. One moment he had been transfixed, staring into the bleeding eyes of his girlfriend in a black-and-white spot-lit hill, cold sweat all over, and the next, the lights were out, the ground was gone and he was falling. He lay on his back, in the darkness, and wondered what all of this could possibly mean. He was too scared to move, and even if he could muster the courage, he wasn’t sure what he would even do if he did.

He drew another breath and choked on it. Parker Thomas was suddenly aware that he was in the deep embrace of something fluid, something viscous, something that tasted like metal. He sat up suddenly, sputtering and gasping for air, flinging the stuff everywhere, making a lazy, thick splashing sound which seemed to go on forever, without so much as an echo. He coughed and spat, trying to clear his lungs, panicking all over again when all he could see above the surface was still just pitch black and cavernous. He began to feel agoraphobic and claustrophobic all at once; his mind unable to decide if he was lost in the abyss or trapped in a box.

For all he knew, he was already six feet underground.

“He-hel—“ He coughed, and spat one last time, “Hello? Anybody?!”

His words went for miles, it seemed, and didn’t hit a single thing. He sat in silence a moment longer, still waist deep in the warm fluid. When he was just about to try again, he heard something: something was softly dripping just ahead of him. He moved to stand, but suddenly an orange flame erupted from the surface no more than 15 feet directly in front of him, springing from nothing at all. He sat, mesmerized by the dancing licks of flame, until he caught sight of his own hand, resting on the surface of the endless lake, and realized what he was sitting in was most certainly not water.

Blood. It had to be. It was crimson red, opaque, and thick. And then he remembered the taste; the awful mixture of warmth and rust. He began to gag, spitting in a desperate effort to return every bit of fluid in the reaches of his body into the lake.

In the midst of his struggle, Parker Thomas was suddenly aware that he was not alone. The orange light had been intercepted, a shadow cast over him. Slowly, he looked back toward the flame, eyes wide, afraid of what he might find. There was a figure standing directly between him and the flame. It was tall, maybe seven feet, he guessed, and thin. There was no discrete outline he could see; the flames constantly twisted the figure as they moved back and forth, rising and falling, giving it a bizarre quality of shapelessness. All Parker Thomas could conjure in his head were the drawings of the Grim Reaper, the hooded skeleton who ferried souls to whatever their destination was.

Each just stared at the other in silence. Parker Thomas could not make out any features in the darkness, but he could feel the figure watching him, motionless. “Who—Who are you?” he finally stammered.

It drew a rasping, cold breath, and spoke, its words sounding more like a hiss of steam than like an actual human voice. “You know why you’re here. You know who I am. I live here; I guard the misdeeds you so secretly conjure. Now you can join me here in the filth you created for yourself. There’s nothing keeping you from me now.” It drew another hideous, difficult breath. Parker Thomas finally stood up in the knee high crimson lake, not out of bravery, but out of the desire to be able to run in the all-too-likely event that this ghastly creature was about to attack him. The figure made no motion in acknowledgment.

“You did this all to yourself, made the bed you must now sleep in, dug your own grave; references all too appropriate for someone in your position. You and I have been especially close lately, haven’t we?” The figure emitted a rasping sigh that Parker Thomas could only guess was supposed to be laughter. He could feel the cold sweat breaking out again, and he wanted to run, but he felt himself rooted to the spot, paralyzed with terror. “The other girl, the other night, that was our best work yet, wouldn’t you say? We always thought of it before, I never missed a chance to show you what we could have done with her. Was it everything you always though it would be? She really was quite talented.”

Parker Thomas spoke, before he could stop himself, “No! No, no, no…” The terror seamlessly altered itself to regret. He could feel the memories of that lecherous, lustful night being forced into the forefront of his consciousness. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know why I did it.”

“Oh, yes, you do.” The shadow retorted. “You dreamed about it a long time. You knew you would break, you knew you would fall for it. I knew it for a long time, all it took was the proper persuasion, the perfect opportunity. Don’t deny it. You chose this.” It laughed hideously to itself again, each gasping chuckle more eerie than the last. “Every sinner wants so desperately to deny what he did was wrong. Tell yourself it will only happen once, promise you’ll make it up to Miss Sadie Parker, rationalize it all away, and convince yourself you still love her. After all, you can’t very well play the part unless you believe it first, can you?”

“I do still love her.” He whimpered, all of what little assurance he had completely drained. He could feel the doubt eating at the back of his mind even as he said the words. “I would never do anything to hurt her.”

At those words, suddenly the flame was extinguished completely, returning Parker Thomas into the arms of darkness. The air was suddenly frigid. His stomach turned, and he began to look around frantically for any sign of the ghoul. He heard the sharp, labored breath again, right where it had been before, and he tensed his muscles, and turned rapidly to face it, ready to flee. There was a long pause, punctuated only by the uneasy drip-drip-drip of the blood from his fingertips.

“Is that what you really think?”

“Y-Yes.” He choked out.

Two white orbs suddenly opened, right where the shadow’s eyes should have been, and before Parker Thomas could react, the shadow lunged through the mire with a sickening Whoosh! as it pushed through the sickly, coagulated solution, and clamped a cold grasp as tight as a vice around his neck. It lifted him off his feet and out of the lake, strangling him as it did. He instinctively grasped to hold onto its arm for leverage, but his hands found nothing. All he could do was stare into its blazing, round white eyes as they slowly inched closer to his own. He struggled in vain, his arms and legs flailing hopelessly in the darkness, the drops of blood flinging from his limbs the only thing which broke the utter silence around them as they pattered dully onto the surface. He felt its icy breath on his face; it smelled like rotten meat so foul it made his eyes water.

“See the truth.” It hissed, almost a whisper.

Parker Thomas tried to scream, but his breath was all used up.

The orbs pressed into his eyes in a flash of exploding pain, and all he could see was blinding white light.