E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
LaRocca Everything the Darkness Eats
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80336-640-1
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80336-640-1
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Eric LaRocca (he/they) is the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of the viral sensation, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. A lover of luxury fashion and an admirer of European musical theatre, Eric can often be found roaming the streets of his home city, Boston, MA, for inspiration. For more information, please visit ericlarocca.com.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
ONE
PRESENT DAY
If by some inexplicable force of sorcery, Ghost Everling’s skin suddenly became as transparent as a sheet of cellophane, the young man wouldn’t even consider objecting. He wouldn’t seek out a cure, wouldn’t consult with physicians or skin specialists to remedy his peculiar ailment. He wouldn’t even act surprised or feign terror the way others might.
For Ghost, invisibility had already claimed him long ago.
He conceded there was something uniquely strange that occurred when you lost a loved one. Something that wasn’t in the literature he had read in despair or the self-help podcasts he had listened to on his morning walks throughout his neighborhood. Something that had hollowed him out and rendered him as “unusable goods” to any woman or man that would have him.
Although it had only been three years since his wife, Hailey, had passed, Ghost figured he knew all there was to know about invisibility. More specifically, he knew all there was to know about being left behind—the phone calls of condolences from family that became less and less frequent, the friends that had shied away from him as if fearful they might be touched by the same sorrow too. Everyone around him seemed to move on, while Ghost remained trapped in place.
Yes, trapped.
Ghost knew everything there was to know about traps, too.
Some of them don’t appear until later in life, as if secreted beneath underbrush like the iron mouthpiece of a hunter’s snare.
He couldn’t go a day without glancing in the mirror and being reminded of the trap that had demanded his body three years ago—a wraith of guilt wrapped around his neck the way an infant chimpanzee clings to its mother. He could scarcely forget the moment when he first realized it was there— a thin wisp of white smoke curling about his throat, claws of vapor as finely delicate as Chantilly lace plugging his nose and ears.
From there, it only grew.
Although invisible to others, the tiny nymph-like parasite constantly made itself known to Ghost. Whether it was ladling thoughts of despair into his mind or suckling from the roots of sadness it had planted deep inside him, the spirit clung to its gracious host without thanks and the two lived as if they were one—as if they were somehow welded together by some complex, invisible arrangement made of bone and any separation would prove fatal.
Ghost seldom complained when the tiny spirit that owned him would nest inside the scar across his face that never healed— a dark line, rusted brown with dried blood, as though he had been struck by lightning. He hardly had the energy to object when his little companion would circle his permanently bloodshot right eye, coiling in there and lazing like an earthworm in a bed of dirt.
For Ghost, his body was nothing more than a compost heap—a crude patchwork of abused anatomy that even the most impulsive surrealist wouldn’t dare commemorate on canvas. Ghost knew full well he was a monster, a horrible mutation handmade by grief. At least much of the sorrow he carried was invisible to most.
He thanked God for that.
After washing himself and drinking his morning coffee, Ghost swiped his cane from the coat rack and limped out to the garage where his old Chevrolet had remained parked and lifeless for the past three years. He eased himself into the driver’s seat and sat there for a moment, swirling the keys in his hands and deliberating whether or not to use them.
Of course, he had had the dreadful thought before— jamming the keys into the ignition and waiting for the garage bay to fill with smoke while he gasped for air. Something in him had whispered that it would be painless, that he would be reunited with his love and all would be forgiven— all would be as it had been before. However, there was a smaller, quieter part of him that had challenged him, that had warned him it would be pointless because, even to God, Ghost was invisible.
If that was the case, where would he go? Ghost certainly never wanted to find out.
After calling the local taxi company and waiting for half an hour, a yellow cab pulled onto the lane’s shoulder and idled in front of his house. Propped up by his cane, Ghost limped out to the cab, exchanged a few polite greetings with the driver, and then directed him to the Henley’s Edge Memorial Hospital.
As he sat in the back seat, he gazed out the window and watched as they passed people and houses he had known all his life—things he had once found comfort in for the mere sake of their familiarity. But somehow the houses began to look different, as if brick, stone, and stucco had been miraculously replaced with rubber or elastic—as if they were slowly melting away like burning candles. Even the people he once knew looked strange, memorable faces now thawing until almost unrecognizable as if forever caught in a blurred snapshot.
Ghost had quickly realized that grief had not only changed him but had remade the world the same way a child might manhandle a clump of wet clay.
Although things in the town of Henley’s Edge hardly ever changed, the way in which Ghost saw certain things could never be undone.
It wasn’t long before the taxi pulled up to the hospital entrance, Ghost tipping the driver a few extra dollars before climbing out of the idling car and limping into the already packed waiting room. Passing through rows of chairs filled with patients, Ghost approached the front desk and was greeted by a petite receptionist with a face caked with so much makeup that only an embalmed cadaver could compare.
“Name,” she barked at him.
“Ghost Everling.”
“How do you spell it?” she asked, fingers already flicking across her computer keyboard.
“Like the thing that goes ‘boo.’ ”
The receptionist scowled at him, clearly not amused. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“I came here last week because I kept getting these intense headaches,” he explained, shoving his index finger between his front teeth out of nervous habit. “They gave me some meds for it, but they’ve started up again and I’m getting a little concerned. This is the second time this month and I just want to be sure it’s not something serious.”
The receptionist grabbed a nearby clipboard and pen and slid them across the counter toward Ghost.
“Fill this out,” she said, snatching the phone as it rang and pressing it against her ear. “We’ll be right with you.”
The tiny spirit perched on Ghost’s shoulder orbited his head for a moment and then pulled his ear down to its mouth.
“She probably thinks you’re just another pathetic junkie,” the spirit hissed at Ghost until he swatted it away, its shapeless form dissolving as if it were made of wet cotton.
The little wraith rematerialized not long after, sprouting from beside Ghost’s other shoulder and whispering into his ear: “Looking to score some dope. Typical trash.”
Ghost, face heating red, glanced back at the receptionist, as if fearful she had somehow heard.
She couldn’t have.
But what if she did? he worried.
“I’m not looking for new meds or anything like that,” he assured her, sensing the muscles in his throat flexing as he swallowed nervously. “I’m just—I just want to make sure everything’s OK.”
The receptionist stared at him blankly, perhaps more annoyed than anything else. “Sir, have a seat. We’ll be right with you.”
Of course, it wasn’t the assurance Ghost had longed for, but it would have to do for now. The little spirit was hardly tempered, winging about his head the same way blackflies circle a horse’s snout.
Ghost retreated from the front desk and found an empty seat near the waiting room window. Glancing up from his clipboard, his eyes were caught by a young mother and daughter seated across from him.
The little girl was perhaps no older than seven or eight—a frightening age as the nightmarish specter of adolescence hangs just overhead. He reasoned that innocence had already deserted the poor child as he saw the girl’s arm had been broken and bound in a cast scrawled with messages and drawings from her friends and family. Even worse, when she lifted her head, he noticed how both of her eyes were dim and clouded milky white. If any innocence remained in the poor child, it was as shriveled and desiccated as a flower abandoned beneath a heat lamp.
Ghost marveled at her. There was something about the child, something that quietly told him she knew she was a monster just like him—something that confessed to him she felt invisible, too.
He watched her as she coveted a small balloon in the shape of a seahorse, looping the balloon’s string around her index finger and pulling tight until the end of her finger was swollen blackish purple. He watched as she squeezed the balloon tighter and tighter until—pop.
She jumped, startled at the noise. Then shrank and began to cry when she realized, as little tattered pieces of balloon showered her like confetti.
Ghost leaned forward in his seat, debating whether or not to...
