can’t do anything right? Like the world is nothing but a big pile of dog shit, and you’re just a smear in the fecal matter taking up space? That kind of sadness, that sort of despair—that’s what they leave you with once they’ve eaten enough of your soul.From there, it only gets worse.Because that sorrow…that unhappiness, it must smell good to them, draw them somehow.They’re always with you after that, like a pack of wolves, fighting over you, for their chance to latch onto your skull and drain you dry.”
I’ve been tending bar for a long time—for seven years, starting about the time my mother had died and my dad had first sworn on her deathbed that he’d go clean, and then had shocked the glorious ever-living shit out of me by sticking to that.I’ve heard a lot of stories, yarns woven by a lot of guys far more wasted and crazy and pathetic than John.But for some reason, I couldn’t just bob my head and cock that condescending smirk that I usually reserve for someone shitfaced and rambling.The in-one-ear-and-out-the-other look, I call it.
“They’ve fed from you, you know,” he told me pointedly.
I felt a chill steal down my spine, slithering and unnerving, like a live eel dropped down the back of my T-shirt.Managing a hoarse bark of laughter, trying my damndest to sound dubious, I said, “What?”
He nodded.
“How can you tell?”
His eyes found mine—round, sorrowful, nearly sheepish.“You knew the poem.You haven’t always been a bar maid.”
Normally, that antiquated and decidedly misogynistic term—bar maid—might have made me bristle.But this time, instead, it only sent another of those unpleasant little tremors racing down from the nape of my neck toward my ass.
“No,” I said in slow admittance.“I was a teacher.English literature.High school.”
“World civilization,” he said by way of introducing himself in ex-career fellowship.“At the university.Had tenure and everything.”
We studied each other for a long, quiet moment.
“Something happened,” he said.“Something that changed you.Maybe a moment you can’t quite put your finger on or remember, but it’s there.And in that moment, whether you knew it or not, a part of your soul was gone.”
“My mother died,” I said.“My dad’s on disability.He can’t get around.I have to be home in the daytime with him.There’s no one else who can take care of him.”
“Feels like your life’s being sucked right out of you sometimes, doesn’t it?” John asked, and when I nodded, hesitant, the corners of his mouth hooked in a brief, bitter smile.“Because it is.” A glance beyond my shoulder, split second but pointed.“There’s one behind you right now.”
I whirled, eyes wide, but saw only rows of liquor bottles and phalanxes of cocktail glasses lined up dutifully along the shelves.
“It’s not feeding,” he continued.“Not yet anyway.But it wants to.And there’s only one way to stop it.”
“How?” I asked.As ridiculous as this whole thing sounded, I couldn’t help but believe him.There was such a tremendous, sorrowful sincerity in his face, his eyes.It was as if all of the booze had been wiped from his system and he was sober again—brutally, helplessly so.
He leaned toward me.“You have to see them.” His hand draped against mine, his skin dry and warm.“If you can see them, they’ll leave you alone.” Another fleeting, humorless smirk.“No sport in it for them then.”
As he drew back his hand, he shifted on his stool again, letting his feet fall heavily to the floor.I shook my head as if snapping out of a trance.For the first time, I realized we were alone in the bar.The trio of pool players—along with their invisible, soul-sucking new friend—had left.
“You ever see movement out of the corner of your eye?” John asked, fishing his wallet from his back pocket and dropping a pair of twenties onto the bar.His glass still had vodka in it, but he left it alone, turning with a shuffling gait for the door.“A flash of shadow, maybe, like something’s there, just beyond your field of sight—only when you turn your head, it’s gone?”
I nodded and he said, “That’s them.The periphery people.”
He started to walk away, but paused when I said, “What about you? You said something changed me—the moment where one of these things fed from me.What about your moment? What changed you?”
He looked over his shoulder at me and this time when he smiled, it was something melancholy and lonely.His lips pursed, then parted, as if he meant to speak, but then he must have thought better of it because he closed them again.Still shuffling, the palsied gait of a man far older than his years, John turned again and walked away, leaving the bar without another word.
I locked up behind him, the heavy sound of the deadbolt sliding home as I turned the key as sharp and loud as a gunshot.I tried to laugh it off, to tell myself he was just a crazy drunk, that he’d been spewing vodka-infused bullshit he wouldn’t even remember come the morning.
But then, as I started to turn away from the door to face the bar again, I thought I caught a glimpse of something reflected in the glass—a looming shadow directly behind me, standing just along the peripheral edge of my vision.With a startled gasp, my heart jackhammering in sudden, bright fear, I whirled around, pressing myself back into the door.
I was alone.
At least, to my sober eye.
There’s one behind you right now, he’d told me.It’s not feeding, not yet anyway.But it wants to.
I thought of how he’d described them—their ghoulish mouths ringed with teeth so they could latch on and hold tight.Again, I wanted to dismiss it—and him—as utter bullshit, and again, I couldn’t suppress an uneasy shiver just the same.
There’s only one way to stop it, John had told me.You have to see them.
I returned to the bar and stood beside the seat he’d only recently vacated.His last shot of Ketel remained where he’d left it, and I reached for it now, lifting the glass in hand, giving it an experimental sniff.I’d never tried vodka before; had felt neither the urge nor desire to drink myself into a stupor.
If you can see them, they’ll leave you alone.No sport in it for them then.
Bracing myself, I drew the glass to my lips, tossed my head back and swallowed.Having drained it dry, I leaned forward, poured another and downed it.Then a third.Then a fourth.And after the fifth, as my mind started to grow murky, and the shadows in every corner of the room seemed to grow elongated and sinister somehow before my eyes—becoming nearly human in shape, creeping closer to me, slowly but surely—I took a seat on the bar stool.
And waited to see.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Definitely an author to watch.” That's how Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine describes Sara Reinke. New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards calls Reinke “a new paranormal star” and Love Romances and More hails her as “a fresh new voice to a genre that has grown stale.” Find out more about Reinke and her work at www.sarareinke.com.
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