The oppressive darkness of the creature that walked out of the car swallowed Hunter. Why couldn’t he get his legs moving? He wanted to bolt, but it felt so futile.

“Give me the book, child.” The Void stepped forwards.

“Marcie. Run.” Hunter said

She looked at him conflicted. It was obvious she’d heard its words too. “What? I’m not leaving you with this thing. You take the book and run.”

“No. You can run way faster than I can. Just go.”

“No!”

“Cease your bickering.”

A black mass of darkness, the Void’s emanating aura separated and rushed forward like an attack dog.

Without time to react, Marcie turned to bolt away from the road. But she was too late. The black mass enveloped her in pitch darkness and she vanished.

“Hunter!” She cried.

Marcie was terrified, but she was fighting. For a moment, her hand thrust out of the mass of writhing dark. Another moment, the book-bag, still in her arms, was briefly visible.

Hunter knew had to act, but the shaking in his legs and the muffled blood curdling screams from within this creature were chains against his control. He cursed his fear.

“Hunter.”

“Hunter.”

“Hunter.”

She was sinking. She was drowning. She sounded like someone took a pillow to her airways to suffocate her.

He broke the chains of his self-preservation, threw himself at this unscalable wall of terror, and grabbed a hold of Marcie as she was lost in nothing.

Marcie’s arm emerged from the void once more and he pulled. He pulled and pulled until he could see the light of her one hazel eye. And then he pulled harder. She clung to him, trying to kick herself free of the darkness.

Hunter saw more of her body. Torn skin revealed the flesh underneath her nails. Scrapes against the concrete had shaved layers from her. Several of her fingers were cracking back into place. The Void hadn’t just wrapped its darkness around her, it was tearing her apart.

“It really is such a shame. She would’ve made a delicious meal. Alas. I have what I need.”

From behind them, the book-bag floated up towards The Void’s hand. It threw the bag aside, then tore the duct tape off the Necronomicon in one clawing swipe. The moment the book was freed of that black binding, the tendrils exploded from it. They flailed in furious vitriol, grasping and slashing the air.

“Shhhhhh,” the Void comforted the book. The tendrils relaxed and began to slither back into the pages.

His hold on Marcie was slipping. The book had been taken from them.

Frantic spirals of thought were overtaken by a refusal to fall prey to his freeze instinct. Marcie had asked him to trust her more. Not in those words, but she was no longer destructible. She had the strength of a superhero and more resilience than he could have ever imagined. But, without the book, there was no Marcie. He’d have to have faith that she could handle herself.

He gave one last reassuring look to her and then let go.

Pushing through the fatigue and exhaustion, he pounced for the Necronomicon.

Shadows clawed at him as he got closer and closer to the Void’s body. It was trying to swallow him too. It first grasped at his ankle, and the wash of dark removed all warmth from his veins. Hunter stumbled.

Before the shadows swallowed him further, they retreated. And when he turned he saw it wasn’t by choice Marcie had somehow found purchase on the darkness. She held the absence of light in her grasp and was pinning it down with her.

The momentum of Hunter’s leap and stumble had unexpectedly brought him crashing into something solid. The Void wasn’t just person shaped. Someone was in there, tangible and real. They had discernible clothes and skin that was as chilled as the shadows.

He’d caught The Void off guard and grabbed for the Necronomicon but was barely too slow as The Void yanked it out of reach.

“Well if you'd like so much to volunteer, my brother needs a host. I’d prefer someone less INSOLENT, but you’re practically THROWING yourself at me.” There was a vile glee that emanated from this creature's voice.

The Void caught Hunter’s arm in its offhand and pulled him close. Its touch was so cold. A chill ran through his nervous system, through his bloodstream, and fatigue overtook his entire body. Sleep washed over him like the slow creeping of high tide. And he saw visions.

Pure darkness. But not darkness like an empty room at night or even what he imagined was the vacuum of space. This blackness was dense and crushing like the bottom of the ocean. He was pulled towards the surface and came face to face with an abomination.

A disgusting sphere of organic material. Anemones and barnacles attached to a writhing mass of aquatic limbs. Octopus and squid tentacles protruded out of shark torsos and whale blubber. Part of the mass seemed to be a school of decaying fish. All kinds of fish in different states of death. All of them still circling rapidly, despite their decomposition.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

As he was presented before it, all of the limbs and heads jerked towards him. And then he was pulled further up until he surfaced in the waking world.

It took Hunter moments to regain his senses as he slowly grasped what had happened. The Void no longer had its fingers wrapped around his arm. Had seconds or minutes passed? He couldn’t tell.

Marcie had broken free of the dark aura and was wrestling with the Void. The Necronomicon’s tentacles still had a loose grip on his shoulder, which Marcie ripped off as well. As soon as the figure was put off kilter, she threw herself back, standing in front of Hunter in a defensive stance.

Hunter tried to stand to meet her, but found that he couldn't find the strength. Whatever the Void or the book had done to him had left his legs badly bruised. Patches of epidermis all over his body had been scraped off. Throbbing aches reverberated through his nervous system. And so all he could do was watch.

The Void rose in a disturbingly human way. “Very well.”

It creeped slowly down the street, Necronomicon returned to its hand, towards Marty’s motionless body. Hunter couldn't help himself from starting after it, but Marcie held him back.

Marcie should have known how much he needed that book. How much they needed that book.

She gripped his arm harder than the Void had. She was cutting his circulation. He tried to pull his arm away swiftly by instinct, but she held tight, knowing that he wouldn’t back down. He kept fighting it, but it only made her squeeze her fingers tighter around him. Hunter yelped in pain.

When he looked at Marcie, she looked horrified at what she'd done. Hunter realized the look of terror he must have had on his face. He was scared, not just of the Void, but in that moment, Marcie too.

The Void crouched down, tilting its head down towards Marty. Hunter could still hear its awful voice. “Barely alive,” it said to the poor boy, “But you can feel yourself slipping, can’t you. Oh, you must be so scared. Fear not. We’ll make do with you”

Using its black mass, it lifted Marty’s body. He was limp, but his eyes still held a light, faint as it was. The Void shoved him into the car it’d struck him with and then they were gone. The engine roared away like the bellowing of a beast.

Marcie let go of Hunter’s arm. An unsettling calm returned to the back streets of the Wharf. Crickets began their chirping again, and distant howls of a boat horn sounded in the distance. In an instant, it was just like any other night. It was as if the pick-up had ended and Marty had merely gone home. All the traces of the monster that remained were the asphalt stained red under their feet.

Hunter met Marcie’s eye, careful not to portray any of the fear that still shook him.

He didn’t even remember how he ended up flopping onto the side of the road, out of the way of any on-coming traffic. Sandy dirt crunched under both of them as they let their bodies crash to the ground.

“What the fuck just happened?” Hunter said, the question slipping from his mind in a shell-shocked stupor.

Marcie was holding a staring contest with a stream of blood that trickled towards her. No sound passed her lips. They both just sat with the question lingering.

There were no sirens in the distance. Nobody lived close enough to have heard the violent altercation. And no one else was around to witness the horrific things they had.

He considered trying to move. The anxiety in his chest was screaming at him to run back to the car and speed home. But, he couldn't connect that urge to his muscles. Despite how little he wanted to, Hunter felt like he could lay on the side of that road until morning, through tomorrow, and maybe forever.

“Why did you go for the book, Hunter?” This new question rang out like a gunshot and then it too, lingered in the air.

“Because,” Hunter answered slowly, piecing his words together, “If something happens to you, that's the only way I'll know how to fix it.”

“You don't have to fix me. I pretty much fix myself,” Marcie said. Despite an even tone, Hunter could feel the frustration from her.

“That's not what I meant. You know that's not what I meant. I knew you would be okay. Or at least if you weren't I'd have the book so I could figure it out,” Hunter responded, attempting to keep his voice level as well. He wasn't sure how well he was doing at that.

Marcie was whimpering quietly by then and Hunter had to push his body to its shallow limits to move over to cradle her. Her body was rigid, the limp corpse-like nature of it replaced with something akin to rigor mortis. It seemed she was caught between two opposing desires, one of which wanted to push Hunter away. But as her arms stretched out to do so, Hunter closed the gap, allowing her to sob into his shoulder.

The pent up fear, confusion, and adrenaline was beginning to wear off. It left Hunter feeling empty. With a soft hand he pet Marcie’s hair. He could feel the shaved stubble on the back of her neck where he’d trimmed a little too much off. Where her long hair used to weigh down his palm was now empty space.

“I gotta go,” Marcie said like she was ending a brunch meeting or about to board an airplane.

The intent of her statement hit Hunter. “What?”

“I’m gonna take a walk. I need to clear my head.”

Hunter worried when she started to sound like this. Her evenness portrayed none of her deeper emotions, leaving him guessing to where her mind was. “You can’t–”

“–I can’t?” She repeated.

“What if that thing is still out there? What if someone sees you?”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Marcie said with eerie placidity. “I’ll be okay.”

She pushed herself away from him and despite any efforts to hold on to her, to get her to stay, to stop her from abandoning him there alone, she walked into the distance.

Hunter spent all his strength trying to stand so he could run after her. Instead, he faltered, placing too much pressure on his bruised arm and crumpled to the ground. His consciousness slipped. It would be horrible to be found here. With his battered body and fading awareness, he didn’t think he’d catch up to Marcie, much less find his way back to his car. He couldn’t remember when he stopped crawling to reach after her and a different darkness clouded his eyes. He collapsed.

He woke to a hand on his shoulder and a rancid scent that clung to the inside of his nostrils. A man was shaking him. Day had not broken, and so it took Hunter time to adjust his vision and focus on who or what may be in front of him. Hunter looked up to find a sunken face outlined by a wiry beard. The man from Vinny’s market looked down at him dispassionately.

“Come on satanist, let’s get you home.”

The man took a pocketbook, no larger than his palm, from his dusty coat and began reading something in Latin. Hunter recognized the language by the syllables but could barely pick out the words. The blood that had splattered across the road shifted with his speech,moving rapidly towards the two of them before enveloping them in a coagulated cocoon.

When the blood thinned and released Hunter from the mass, he found himself in his car, blood staining the seats and dashboard.

Moments later the man spoke the spell again, though it sounded slightly different this time. Blood washed over the vehicle, and by the time it cleared, the scenery outside the windows had changed. The two of them—along with the entire car—had been transported to the road outside his private drive.

“How did you–” Hunter began to ask. But with another repetition of the spell, the man was gone, along with all the blood of Martin Gillman.

And for the first time since he spread Marcie’s ashes over the carousel, Hunter found himself in his room alone.