Apocrypha Sequence: Insanity Read online

  He gulped. The rising dread defeated any attempt at reasoning or psychological manipulation he tried to muster.

  "I'm not going through that door," he repeated.

  "I may change your mind."

  An uneasy silence settled on the room. The black door waited.

  "What makes someone such as yourself lie in wait for strangers in this basement?" As with countless client sessions, the sound of his own voice had a settling effect. Craig slipped on his professional veneer.

  "There is nowhere else I would rather be."

  "Surely not. Don't you have family? Friends?"

  "I did, they are all here, now."

  "Here in this room?" he probed.

  "Through the door."

  "Don't you want to join them?"

  "I am already with them."

  "How do you mean?"

  "You will find out, Craig." She turned to face him again.

  "What's your name?"

  "My name does not matter. It is you who matters for now."

  "Look, I think you have me confused with someone else. I don't know you and I've never been to this neighbourhood before." He waved the gun to make his point.

  "You are Dr. Craig Innes, the psychologist?" She fumbled over his title as if the word psychologist were a foreign term.

  "Yes."

  "Then there is no mistake."

  Another silence filled the gulf between them as she continued to study him from behind her veil.

  "Tell me about Kathy, Craig," the lady asked.

  "Kathy, what does she have to—"

  "Tell me."

  "More games." Craig allowed a slow exhale before continuing. The lady's stare weighed heavy on his skin. "We were married eight years. She walked out. End of story."

  "Not entirely." She tapped the side of her nose, or so he guessed—it was impossible to tell through the black cobweb layers covering her face. "When did Amanda intrude on your relationship?"

  "How do you know all this?"

  "Your life is like an open book."

  "But—"

  "Continue."

  He sighed but his eyes continued to dart, always looking for another option, another out. "Kathy and I were over by the time Amanda and I ... look, you seem to know everything about me already, so this probably isn't news to you. Amanda was a close friend of ours. Amanda and Kevin, her husband. She and I have only kissed. Just the once."

  "Yet you dream of her almost every night."

  "What of it?"

  "When they visit you, all alone in your apartment," the lady stressed each syllable of the final word, "do you ever feel awkward or ashamed?"

  The pause this time was filled with brooding and an unarticulated protest.

  "Why me? What use am I to you?" Craig asked.

  "Of the people we considered, you had the right mix of characteristics, and shall we say, the appropriate level of persuasion?"

  "You said we?"

  "Yes. I did."

  "What do you mean by persuasion?

  She reached down beside her chair, beyond his view. A moment later, she held a small piece of paper, half-concealed by the lace of her sleeve. She leaned out of her chair and reached across to hand it to him. Her reach was long, subtly turning into a stretch. She continued to lean forward like a spider unfolding its leg, her thin arm stretching ever forward, beyond his reckoning of a normal human arm. Her hand moved closer and closer, threatening to touch him from across the room, moving closer still—until he snatched the paper from her grasp. An instant later, her hand was resting in her lap again.

  He fought the shiver in his spine as he read the piece of paper, the image of her stretching arm still vivid. The paper was a bank cheque, similar to the one sent with the invitation, except this cheque was for twenty million dollars.

  "Is this right?"

  "It is."

  He studied the cheque carefully, allowing a long breath to escape, while he looked for any obvious signs it was a forgery. It appeared authentic.

  "You may keep that if you step through the black door." The sound of her voice startled him out of his reverie.

  "What's to stop me just taking the money and leaving?" He stuffed the cheque into his shirt pocket.

  "You know you cannot leave, Craig."

  The dread that he was holding at bay came home to roost in his heart. "No, I won't do it." He sounded pathetic even to his own ears.

  "You merely need a little more persuasion."

  He locked eyes with her—or as best he could through her veil. Minutes passed as he stared at her, focusing as much hate and determination as his rattled will would allow.

  "Tell me of your career, Dr. Innes." As before, she enunciated doctor as a word split in half.

  "I treat people for their mental illnesses—schizophrenia, mostly."

  "People like Stephen?"

  "Stephen was beyond my help, especially after he stopped taking his meds."

  "So you shot him? Six times, I believe."

  "I had no choice." He sighed into his hands. "He had a knife. He was in the house. Kathy ... she—"

  "Firing once in self defence is no choice, Dr. Innes. Six bullets is murder."

  "I told you, I had—"

  A loud, urgent knocking shook the room—from beyond the black door.

  Craig jumped to his feet and swung the Glock at the door.

  The knocking grew in desperation. A muffled voice accompanied the pounding. With his gun held forward, ready to fire, Craig crept toward the door and the commotion coming from the far side. Within a step of the door, the thumping rose to a hysterical pitch until, without warning, it stopped.

  Heartbeats later, a massive thud rocked the door.

  The room fell deathly silent.

  His heart pounded in his chest as he scurried away from the black door. The carved runes danced before his eyes as if in delight. Nausea struck—he gagged but fought the sickness down. He braced himself against the chair. "Get me out of here, lady, or I'll kill you! I swear it!"

  "That will do you no good, Craig." Her aura of calm was impenetrable.

  He thought he could see a smile on her face through the veil.

  "Come on you smug bitch, open that fucking door!"

  A scraping sound, wet and leathery, seeped from underneath the black door.

  "What the?" Craig strained to breathe.

  "Dr. Innes, it is time for you to go through the door."

  Cold swept through his limbs. The sweat breaking out on his forehead and under his arms was icy. "I don't think so." He clenched his teeth, raising the gun level with her face.

  "The only way out of here is through that door." She gestured to the black door, which pulsed with un-life as though eager to accept him.

  "Well, you're gonna find another way out or else you're not leaving here alive."

  "Please look at the screen, Dr. Innes." She placed an emaciated hand on top of the security monitor. With a deft twist, she turned the monitor to face him. The shower of static flickered and then turned black for a moment. A second later, an image in tones of grey flared to life on the screen.

  Amanda.

  She was lying on her stomach, with her hands bound behind her back. A strip of cloth was wrapped around her mouth as a gag. She looked to the camera, sobbing uncontrollably. Her eyes stared directly at him, pleading with him. His heart thudded in his chest as he watched her writhe and sob. Her eyes widened, flickering from pleading to abject terror as she focussed on something off camera. A shadow moved across the screen, blocking his view. The image was cut dead, instantly returning to the haze of grey static.

  "You evil bitch! Where is she?"

  "She is beyond the black door."

  "Why?" The gun shook in his hand.

  "Persuasion, Dr. Innes. If you go through the door now, you have a chance to save her. If you waste any more time, she will die in terrible agony."

  "Fuck you!" He levelled the gun, trembling.

  The trigger clicked.
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br />   The gunshot boomed through the small room and corridor, hurting his ears. Black viscous blood gushed out of the hole in the lady's chest as she slumped back into her chair. He barely noticed the blood for all the dark clothing that covered her.

  On a whim, he bent to retrieve the discarded invitation near her feet. He kept his eyes focussed solely on the card, and did his best to ignore the blood dripping onto the stonework floor.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing the lady's ultimatum to echo through his memory, before turning for the black door. The squirming of the runes had abated, but he no longer cared about that.

  There was no handle or obvious way through.

  He prodded one side with a tentative, trembling finger. It was metallic and cold. Sapping. He recoiled, cradling his finger while trying to rub some imaginary slime from it.

  The door cracked open.

  The cold, sapping sensation lingered, expanded, and spread through his hand. He forced himself to ignore the feeling although he absently shook his hand as he peered through the door into darkness.

  Absolute darkness.

  He stepped back, almost stumbling over his chair, and pulled the nearest torch from the wall. Not wanting to touch the surface of the door again, he nudged it with his pistol.

  It slid open without effort, opening onto inky darkness. The void was cold and almost palpable, the stench fetid like an overripe greenhouse. He could practically inhale the darkness. He baulked, but had no choice but to breathe it in. The darkness infiltrated his lungs, his skin, his eyes, everything. His flesh crawled at the chill, at the moisture seeping into his pores.

  His shoe met solid ground on the first step. He glanced over his shoulder to take one final look the corridor, his launching pad into this insanity. The flaming torches sputtered and glowed on the stone walls, their shadows fierce and menacing. The lady in black lay limp in her chair. The security monitor haloed her and much of the chamber in a static glow. She sightlessly stared at the door through her veil. Now he was in the doorway, he was the spectacle.

  Steeling himself, he took two deep breaths and pulled his other foot over the threshold. The darkness engulfed him.

  The black door behind him snapped shut, snuffing out the sliver of light from the corridor and the rational world.

  He stood at the centre of a tiny circle of flickering flamelight, surrounded by an endless black void.

  Slithering sounds, like eels climbing out of a rock pool, scraped nearby. Ragged breathing, mirroring his own, wheezed from somewhere in the darkness. A thousand whispers tore at his ears, begging him to heed their voice. Huddling around the torch, he tried clamping his hands to his ears, but the whispers continued their lunatic mantra. He squeezed his eyes shut and took another step forward, and another, and another. Images of Amanda flickered in his mind's eye, the only beacon of sanity as he descended deeper into the darkness. His love for her would save him, save them both.

  #

  The lady in black propped herself up and dabbed at the blood that oozed from the bullet hole in her chest.

  "I told you that would do no good, Dr. Innes." She rose to her feet and smoothed out her dress.

  She paused to regard the black door.

  "Your love has damned you, Dr. Innes, but I hope your journey will be shorter than mine," she whispered, "for your sake."

  She turned from the door, and with the ceremony of a matron at a royal ball, she made her way towards the exit at the far side of the corridor. As she passed the torches, they dimmed for a moment, as if in salute. With her head held high, she reached the door and pulled on the iron ring. Without a hint of protest, the door swung inwards, allowing the chill night breeze to sweep into the corridor chamber. She breathed in the scents of the city carried on the breeze, savouring every aroma. She wavered for the barest of moments.

  "Free, at last," she sighed as she stepped across the threshold and crumbled to dust.

  * * *

  About the author:

  Shane Jiraiya Cummings lives in Perth, Western Australia. He has been acknowledged as "one of Australia's leading voices in dark fantasy", had more than sixty short stories published in Australia, USA, and Europe, and his work has been translated in Spanish, French, and Polish. Shane has won two Ditmar Awards, and he has been nominated for more than twenty other major awards including Spain's Premios Ignotus.

  Shane is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and former Vice President of the Australian Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing, Shane is an editor and journalist by day and sword fighting instructor by night.

  In his youth, Shane was trained in the deadly arts of the ninja, and the name Jiraiya (lit. "Young Thunder", after the legendary ninja Jiraiya) was bestowed upon him by his sensei.

  More information on Shane (including his free fiction) can be found online at http://www.jiraiya.com.au.

  Interact with Shane on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shane-Jiraiya-Cummings/401910315831) or rate and review his books on Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/jiraiyac).

  #

  You can find Shane's other e-books at all good online retailers:

  Novellas:

  Phoenix and the Darkness of Wolves (Damnation Books). ISBN: 9781615720552

  Requiem for the Burning God. ISBN: 9780987076809

  The Smoke Dragon. ISBN: 9780987076823

  Collections:

  Apocrypha Sequence: Deviance. ISBN: 9780987076830

  Apocrypha Sequence: Divinity. ISBN: 9780987076847

  Apocrypha Sequence: Inferno. ISBN: 9780987076854

  Apocrypha Sequence: Insanity. ISBN: 9780987076861

  Shards. ISBN: 9780987076816

  Print version, illustrated by Andrew J. McKiernan (Brimstone Press). ISBN: 9780980567724

  Available from Brimstone Press: http://www.brimstonepress.com.au

  Chapbooks:

  Shards: Damned and Burning, illustrated by Andrew J. McKiernan (Brimstone Press). Free download from Brimstone Press: http://www.brimstonepress.com.au