The Long Dark by Billy Farmer (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

lamp from him. She wasn’t seated at that table like she had been just a couple moments ago. “She was sitting at that table, dammit. Right there!” I said pointing at the table.

“You are not well. Maybe you are suffering from delirium brought on by our current--”

“Shut up – please, just shut up for a minute.” I walked around to the back of the table. She was lying on the floor, obscured by the table and the dim light from Avery’s also battery-drained lamp. “I told you there was a woman sitting at the table. I’m not fucking crazy.” I said I wasn’t crazy, but I’m not sure I believed it.

The impact I felt when I wheeled the gun around was me bashing the side of her skull with the barrel of the rifle. I hit her so hard that I knocked her out of the chair and into the floor. The problem was she was lying in the same position she was while sitting in the chair. I grabbed her hand, but it rubber-banded back into the same pronated position it was when I first saw her.

“She is dead, William.”

“Unless I killed her when I hit her with the barrel, I don’t believe that to be true.”

“That is impossible.” He nudged her arm with the barrel of the gun, but as soon as the barrel was removed, her arm bounced back into position. “She smells dead. She has rigor mortis. She is dead.”

I’m not sure why I did what I did next. I spun her around on the floor until she faced me. I then bent over and grabbed her, but she slipped out of my grasp three different times. Determined, I wiped the slippery film covering her exposed skin on my pants and grasped her around her waist. Avery whispered a prayer, as I struggled to put her back into the chair. Sucking breaths and dizzy from my manic episode, I nearly knocked the lamp off the table as I placed it near her. Tears had formed in her eyes and watery trails ran down her cheeks.

I sniffed my mucous covered hands. It smelled like bad fruit. Not exactly terrible, but you wouldn’t want to wear it on your first date. There were some disinfectant wipes on the counter. I grabbed a ton of them and began violently wiping at my hands and coat, trying remove every drop of the slimy substance.

“Dead people cannot cry, William,” Avery said, snapping his fingers.

She began to whimper. “They don’t do that either,” I reiterated.

Avery dreamed of moments like we were experiencing: an authentic unexplainable incident, and what does he do? He tucks tale and full-on runs into the living room, uttering more prayers to God and all his saints. I followed him, hoping some of the prayers would be answered. I was desperate.

"Now what in the world is wrong with him? Hell, ya both look like you’ve done seen a ghost,” Sam said, as he finished cleaning up Titouan’s face.

“Try to kill him, too?” Titouan snarled.

“Not fucking now,” I told him.

“Son, what’s ‘at noise in ‘ere?” Sam asked.

“The dead woman,” Avery blurted, as he rocked back and forth on the couch.

Sam walked over to where Avery sat and grabbed the rifle. “Neither of you’ins gets to hold ‘is for a while. Stop being crazy, and I’ll give y’all ‘nother chance,” he said, eyeing both me and Avery. “Now, let’s see what the hell is goin on in the kitchen.”

Avery began to pray: first barely audible then growing louder and louder.

“What the hell are you doing, Avery?” Titouan asked.

“Currently, I am invocating my Lord God through his Son, God Dammit.”

I led Sam and Tish into the kitchen. Avery and Titouan stayed in the living room. One nursed his cut and burned face, while the other one, well, he apparently was busy talking to God through Jesus. Whatever kept them out of our hair while we figured what the hell was going on was fine by me.

“Oh my God,” Tish said, as the woman continued whimpering.

Tish moved closer to her, cupping her mouth with a bloody hand. She placed two fingers on the woman’s neck to check for a pulse. She shook her head, seemingly frustrated, before trying again. Finally, she wiped her fingers on her pants, and said, “Besides the mucous, the smell, and the catatonic state, she’s normal,” Tish said.

I gave her a long look. There had to me more.

Apparently sensing my apprehension, she said, “Her pulse is a little slow but normal enough.”

For whatever reason, I needed to let Tish know what I did. “I hit her with the rifle barrel before I shot Titouan.”

She gave me a quick once over, and then turned her attention back to the woman.

The woman blinked. This time, it was the other eye.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to control my breaths. I was hyperventilating.

Sam grabbed her hand and lifted it. It fell exactly back into place where it rested on the table. "I'll take her out back and put her out of her damn misery. ‘Is ain't right, son.”

Her mouth was still clamped shut, but the whimpers were getting louder and louder, apparently to the point of being heard in the living room. Titouan stood in the kitchen doorway. “Shut that thing up. Jesus!”

Sam, seeing that Titouan was going to cause more problems, firmly led him back into the living room. “Just shut the hell up and stay in here. ‘Ey dealin with it.”

“What do you think, Tish?” I asked.

Tish, no longer able to look at the woman sitting at the table, walked over to the kitchen window. I didn’t tell her, but one of the woman’s eyes seemed to track her as she walked past.

Wiping her eyes, Tish said after a few moments, “I don’t know.”

“We can’t just leave her in here like this,” I said.

“None of this makes any sense. This shouldn’t be happening like this,” Tish said, still looking out the window.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

Tish quickly turned her