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Chapter Twenty-Four
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Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVEThere wasn’t anything else I wanted to see here. I stepped over the shrieking, crawling starfish and headed deeper into the house of horrors. What was it Mouth had said? This house was full of illusions and deceptions. Starfish didn’t scamper around like that. Water didn’t turn into blood. This wasn’t real.Still, I wasn’t going to chance fate by standing around and declaring shenanigans. I was here to find Lydia, and that’s what I was going to do.Blood wet my boots with every step. The carpet was no longer merely soggy but was drenched with more liquid than it could hold. The place smelled like a slaughterhouse. I pressed on.There were two doors on the back wall. One was painted yellow and one blue. I hate yellow, quite honestly, so I reached for the blue door.“I wouldn’t do that,” said a voice. I whirled around.“Who said that?” I demanded angrily. I couldn’t see anybody.“It’s a trap. Both doors lead to Hell.”A small girl appeared out of the gloom and
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXI woke up with something long and leggy skittering over my mouth. I sat up, spitting and sputtering, and the dark thing faded into the darkness. There’s nothing like tasting demonic viscera when you’re coming to. My life rocks.The hateful necklace of death was charred, blackened, and crumbling around my neck. I tore it free and threw it against the wall. Whatever that thing in the other room had been, it apparently didn’t have any hold here. Now whether that was because the prize truly was behind Door Number One or because there was something even scarier in here, I had to find out. I staggered to my hands and knees, still unable to get to my feet. My head was killing me, but the frantic pounding in my chest hurt even worse.It seemed quiet enough. I squinted through the dim light, taking in the small room packed to the gills with junk. Old bureaus and broken chairs were covered in so much dust that I instinctively covered my nose and mouth with my arm. Several m
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Twenty-Seven
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENThe picture fell from my hands. I heard glass shatter as it fell to the floor, but I was busy trying to keep myself in check. Was this it? Was I finally going crazy like my father? Was Seth going to find my body next just as he had found Dad’s?I heard my name again, slightly muffled. I closed my eyes, but it was distinctly my father’s voice.The demonic me grinned from the mirror, reaching a hand from the glass, almost brushing my hair with groping fingers.What was a demon compared to my real fear? Demons were nothing, just sad beings that had it in for the living. But the things that lurked inside of my own brain were what scared me the most. My outer toughness was a lie. It was a shell. I was horrifyingly vulnerable underneath.I looked down at the shattered glass around my feet. The shards glistened like stars. I had never seen anything more beautiful.“Luna!” My father’s voice was a sharp command, and it brought me back to myself.Demonic Me had steppe
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTI have to admit I was taken aback.“Help me, huh? That’s a new one. And why would you want to do that, demon? Picking up some brownie points for the afterlife?”He snorted. “That’s a good one. It would be nice if I could do that, but no. Truth is, I was a friend of your father’s.”Now it was my turn to laugh, but it sounded ugly to me. “A friend, huh? I’m sure you were. You were all lovely friends, weren’t you? Hanging around Dad until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Taunting him and luring him until it was easier to take his own life than to listen to you any longer. Some friend. No thanks.”I dropped the picture on the ground and turned away. Although I was loathe to head back into the room with the burning girl and the two doors, at least it was better than being here with this nutcase who claimed to pal around with my father. Ho ho, that’s rich.“Luna!” he shouted from the floor. In his desperation and fury, all former trace of my father’s voice had disappe
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINEThere wasn’t a charred and burning little girl in the room, and I was undeniably grateful for that. I was still trying to get over seeing a charred and burning demon-father in the last room. Mouth was right: This place was awful. I wanted nothing more than to get out and burn this place to the ground. Seems like there was an awful lot of burning going on as it was.“Hey,” said a voice. I grit my teeth and dashed for the yellow door. The knob turned easily in my hand, but the door itself was stuck.“Hey, Luna. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”“I’m not listening,” I shouted back and braced my combat boot against the wall. I pulled on the door as hard as I could, but it still wasn’t opening. Unreal.“Luna, let me help you,” the voice said, and a hand rested on my shoulder. I whirled around and slapped it off.“Don’t touch me, demon!” I shouted. I was surprised to find tears rolling down my face, but I was too angry to care. Reed Taylor’s gorgeous green eyes
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTYMan but kicking Reed Taylor Demon in the head felt good. It revved up the anger in me, and I had a feeling that anger more than anything else was going to save my life today.The room was different than the others. It was large and cavernous, made completely of stone, both the floors and the walls. A mist blew through it like we were down at the dock. Come to think of it, it smelled alive, like forest and trees and something older than time.I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.There was a chuckle that made the hair on my arms stand up. I recognized it immediately.“Mmm, Luna,” the voice purred. My head rocketed around the room, looking for the source of it, but it wasn’t to be found. This was my least favorite demon trick ever, I swear. It got old, fast.“Mmm, Sparkles. Where are you hiding, you coward? Are you saying you’re afraid to face little ole me?” I batted my eyes. “I’m flattered. I didn’t realize I was such a powerhouse.”The voice laughed, and I h
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONEI wasn’t stupid enough to think I could shout out the demon’s name a time or two and have it collapse at my feet. But it was certainly hurting enough that I could scramble through the ragged hole in the stone and escape that ancient room. Their names have power. Exactly how much, I wasn’t sure. But it was enough, at least for now.I used both hands to pull my body through the hole, and then I shakily got to my feet. I still felt the ground heaving and hoisting under me, but I leaned against the wall while I got my bearings.“Lydia?” I called. “Sweet Girl?”The cries were faint, but they were definitely her. I looked around me in shock. Instead of the nice, postage-stamp-sized backyard I had expected, I was standing in the middle of what looked like The Black Forest. Not to mention it was suddenly the middle of the night when it should have been closer to 3:00 pm. How could this be?I needed to stop thinking about it before my mind broke. Demons liked the dark an
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Thirty-Two
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWOI thought I had experienced despair before. Finding my father swinging inside of our very own home nearly broke me. Finding Seth in the bathtub drove me closer to the brink than I had ever been. I didn’t think it could get any worse than that, really. I thought your mind had a threshold, and once you hit it, you were somehow immune to the horror. Like the universe would somehow say, “Congratulations, my dear, you have officially hit your allotment of misery. Now destruction will pass you by.” I thought if I was tough enough, and dealt with everything well enough, and kept a positive attitude, well, as much as possible, then somehow I would be rewarded. Everything would end up all right. Evil will fall and good will prevail, and there will be some glorious shining prize at the end of this terrible game, something that will make it worth the constant struggle that we call life.But I was wrong. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. No reward for living a good l
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Nameless: The Darkness Comes Epilogue
EPILOGUEI wish I could say I had imagined everything. For once, I wished that I was crazy, but that isn’t how life ends up. I’ll tell you how it ends up: It finishes out in its own fine way.After Seth bailed out of the House of Horrors, he headed straight for the police department. Half of what he said didn’t make sense, but they managed to piece together something about the mother of his child being totally strung out and unresponsive, and his daughter was missing, and demons were frickin’ everywhere. “Demons everywhere” is usually code for “Holy crap, everybody has gone nuts in that crack house” so they loaded up their gear and came. They made Seth wait outside while they came in and found me sobbing over Cecilia’s boyfriend, who had overdosed on heroine. Poor little me, I was absolutely traumatized by seeing death so up close and personal, they thought. They carted Reed Taylor off and took Sparkles away in an ambulance. Then they turned their attention to Seth and me. Good, hard
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Fifty
CHAPTER FIFTYI opened my eyes and gasped. The stabbing between my shoulder blades was too much to take. Every nerve was raw, a silver blade raked down each centimeter of skin. It felt right somehow, like hitting somebody on the head and killing them felt right, like running your car into a retaining wall felt right.“Let me die let me die let me die!” I screamed. I writhed on the floor, trying to cover my head and curl my body into a protective ball.“I have you,” Reed Taylor shouted to me over the noise. Wind roared and howled. No, not wind. The Tip-Toe Shadow. The shadow and somebody else.Mouth.My eyes were rolling up in my head. Reed Taylor gently shook me.“Luna, stick with me. I have to tell you something, okay? Okay?”My lips were pulled back from my teeth and my body convulsing from the agony, but I struggled to meet his gaze, blinked.He tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Baby, I’m sorry. About everything. All of it. But I have to tell you something very
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Nine
CHAPTER FORTY-NINEIt hurt me to see the ones I loved damaged like this. Seth chased away, Reed Taylor broken, Mouth angry and helpless. All of these people brought together involuntarily because they cared about me in one way or another. Each, in their own way, only wanted to help.“Luna,” Mouth said, and he sounded worried. “Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking?”I reached for his hand, smiled. I ran my fingers down his cheek. “Thank you for everything, Mouth. I hope you know how special you are to me.”“Luna,” he said warningly, but I had already turned to Reed Taylor. “Reed Taylor, I . . . ”There wasn’t anything more I could say. His wild hair, his gorgeous greens that had gone frightened and worried and were now narrowed with resolve. He was perfect. He was my everything. How can you explain that to someone?“I love you,” I said simply, and then I turned to the Tip-Toe Shadow. “Demon!” I screamed and spread my arms wide. “Taste The Mark! I invite you i
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Eight
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHTMouth wasn’t happy. I could tell it by his wispiness. I could tell it by the way his mouth set itself into a firm line.I didn’t care.“Dolly, dolly,” sang the Tip-Toe Shadow, and he ran his long fingers down my hair, twisted them around my neck. They went around several times.“Can . . . can you let Reed Taylor go now, please?”I wanted to sound strong, but the feel of those dark fingers on my skin made my mouth go dry.“Reed Taylor, where is Lydia?”“There’s magic in the water.”Reed Taylor’s voice but not his words. I reached for him, but the demon pulled us further away.“No, dollies. Bad dollies.” He shook us, and I choked, grasping at my neck. Mouth clenched his fists but did nothing.“Hey, knock it off,” I hissed as soon as I had my voice back.The Tip-Toe Shadow giggled. “You want to talk to the puppet? Hear what the puppet has to say? Okay. Okay okay. Oh, it will make you cry. Big, soft, sad tears, and I will lap them from your face, and I will b
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Seven
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVENSeth was crouched over somebody on the floor. My heart sunk. It’s Reed. It’s Reed. It’s Reed.“It’s Sparkles,” Seth said, checking her pulse and breathing. She looked like she was barely conscious. Her demon twined around her arms and legs. “I heard her moaning in the back room.”I narrowed my eyes at the sight of her and spit on the ground. “What’s she doing here?” My eyes widened. “Wait, if she’s here, where’s Lydia? Is she here too?”Seth shook his head. “I didn’t see her. I looked everywhere.”I knelt by Sparkles, tried to make her eyes focus. “Sparkles! Where is Lydia? Lydia?” Her eyes rolled. I slapped her in the face, but she didn’t even react. Even her demon was moving slower than usual.What was going on here? Suddenly I had a thought. I yanked up the sleeve of her shirt. Fresh track marks. She was using. Disgusted, I let her arm fall to the ground with a thud.“You’re useless,” I spat. “You’re a waste of a person and a mother. You deserve everything
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Six
CHAPTER FORTY-SIXSeth opened the door from the inside.“I don’t see him,” he whispered. “I thought maybe he’d come to investigate the window.”I stepped inside and was immediately assaulted by the stench of rotting meat. Flies buzzed around the room in a swarm, blackening the broken window.“Ugh,” I said and covered my nose with my hand.“What? What is it?” Seth peered around me anxiously. “What do you see?”Something that looked suspiciously like entrails hung from the walls. Spider webs made out of skin covered the ceilings. I noticed my feet soaking in the familiar, bloody carpet.“I see a slaughterhouse. How about you?”He touched the walls gingerly. “This wallpaper is atrocious, but that’s the worst of it. That’s it. It’s not real, Luna. Let’s go.”I nodded and removed my hand from my nose. If it isn’t real, it isn’t real.A small boy swam through the air. He kicked his feet and splashed in nothingness. His dark eyes ran over Seth curiously.“Soul surfer?” I asked and
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Five
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVEThe sun was starting to rise by the time we bailed out of the hospital.“I am so tired,” Seth told me. He yawned as he got into the car. “I can’t wait to go to bed.”“Spill,” I demanded. “You said I wasn’t astute about Reed Taylor. What was I missing?”“Cripes, Luna. You sure you want to do this? You’ll be wound up, and we’ll never get any sleep.”I grabbed the lapels of his shirt and yanked him halfway out of his seat. “Seth Masterson, if you don’t tell me right this minute, I swear I’ll . . . ”“He was high, okay? He was high. Or coming down from it. That’s why he couldn’t bring you in or risk the ambulance. They would have known.My fingers went slack. Seth pulled himself gently out of my grip. “Listen, maybe now isn’t the time to talk about it. We already have a lot on our plates, and there’s nothing you can—”“He’s using again.”“Looks like it.”“After being clean for so long.”“It happens. I’m sorry, Luna.”“Because I broke up with him?”He shrugge
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Four
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR“Oh, Luna,” Reed Taylor said and squatted down beside me. I was too dazed to move. I noticed the blood running from my face and soaking into the porous stone steps. Nice color, good body. I wasn’t as iron deficient as I had told the counselor.“Sorry,” I tried to say, but the word came out funny.Reed Taylor cupped my face gently, turning it tenderly this way and that. I closed my eyes.“I haven’t seen you attacked on the street like this before,” he said finally. I missed his hands when he pulled them away.“They usually don’t . . . ” I stopped talking, tried to touch my mouth. The mere thought of my own searching fingers made me cringe, and I blinked tears out of my eyes.Reed Taylor stood up. “You need to go to the hospital. Is Seth home? I’ll give him a call, tell him to pick you up.”“Can’t . . . you take me?”My words were slurred. I suddenly felt very tired and cold. I shivered, and Reed Taylor looked away.“I can’t,” he said. “And I can’t have an amb
Nameless: The Darkness Comes Chapter Forty-Three
CHAPTER FORTY-THREEMy thoughts were going wild as I drove to Reed Taylor’s house. Anubis had very nearly stolen my soul as well as breaking my face, and I was still cursing myself for that. I had misjudged him. I thought about Seth’s confession about the Tip-Toe Shadow, and my eyes narrowed. I had misjudged everything.Well, if I was so great at misjudging, perhaps I had misjudged Reed Taylor.I pulled into his driveway and felt like pulling right out again. His house was perfect. His lawn, although more overgrown than I had ever seen it, was a thing of beauty. The flower bed was blooming with more flowers and . . . wait, are those actually weeds? Real weeds dared to invade Reed Taylor’s yard? Suddenly, every sense was alert. I slammed the car door and scanned the area. Something creepy and relatively harmless hovered around the backyard, yes, but that wasn’t alarming. But weeds? And the too-long grass? For such a cool, laid-back guy, Reed Taylor usually kept things surprisingly ti
