I am Bexley: Love in the night chapter 22

The night has always had a sacred quality to me yet it has a strange sense of inbalance in how we perceive it. A shadow of a tree can appear like a sleeking boogie man. A creak of a bough is a creature crying out in the darkness. A raccoon hiding under a rotting wood looks like a feral monster ready to pounce.

I hold my wife. I sense something in her has changed. Tonight, I feel it in her hands. The moonlight has come through and seems to be moving around like a ghost. The ghost waves to me, beckoning me. It seems to show me movement in my wife’s chest. Bexley, my wife, my dream.

Her chest is heaving, moving, rolling like there is air in her lungs. I feel like I’m hallucinating. Everyone else is quiet as we try to recover from the earlier fight to get back Serena and India.

I remember how badly decayed the door on the cave entrance was, rotted with termites. It had hinges that were halfway off. It looked as though it was a place where many people would go to. For what reason, I had no idea. This door was really one of the most unattractive, unappealing and alarming features I’ve ever seen. To my wife, Bexley, it was a calling, (“I saw this door in a dream! We must go in!” She had told us). The outward cavern was white rocks, gray and blue, immense and beautiful with old, dilapidated signs that stated this was the Talking Rocks Cavern.

We saw a clear, turquoise stream nearby as well. Weirdly, Bexley said about the water in a sign, “I want to drink that, it looks so good.”

Hudson gave her a shocked look. So did Emma. “What the heck girl. Did you lose your marbles? You don’t drink water!” Emma said, taking out her hand gun.

Bexley shook her head. “I know, but it looks like a fresh thing to put in my mouth.”

I shook my head harder, signing, “I can’t say I feel the same, honey.” She shrugged and took my hand.

Bexley signed to me, “Stan, I think there’s something different with me.”

I am unable to respond as we all suddenly shoved ourselves into the cave.

It was extremely bright outside as we all walked inside the stuffy, cramped cave. My zombie eyes can literally look at anything and I don’t feel the burn, sting or itchy feeling I used to get from allergies, pollen or staring directly at the sun. I sense that day and night are different times because of the way shadows shorten or get longer. Colors don’t look the same as they used. Noises that used to scare me—

“Aggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

I jumped so high I tripped and hit Clara.

“Sorry. Sorry for hitting you. I’m sorry, did you hear that?” I signed to Clara, I was fumbling, being so nervous.

“That screaming sounded more inhuman than the most insane Bloodletter,” Clara signed back, her eyes wide. I nodded as we continued into the hellish cave.

There were bursts of smoke, shots and screaming as we entered past the murky puddles of water, stalagmites and rock formations. There was definitely signs of humans here. Rotten wooden bridges, signs, stairs.

“My dad once told me that humans were naturally afraid of unexpected, loud noises… but I didn’t know about zombies…” Hudson signed to me and I realized he was teasing me so I stuck up my middle finger. Hudson softly chuckled.

Emma got ahead of us and Bexley was brandishing her katana. They all looked worse for the wear.

Bexley turned to us, signing, “Where is Ax?!”

I shuffled as close to her as possible and looked around to see if Ax was nearby. He was hard to miss—being a nine-foot ax wielding machine of a zombie.

“I don’t think he is here,” Emma whispered. “Homie skipped out on us.”

Bexley looked frazzled. “He’s been totally zoned out lately.”

Clara nodded, signing, “That’s how Ax used to be sometimes. He would go into these zones of being completely out of reality. In St. Louis, he’d last like that for days.”

“At the baseball diamond in Saint Louis -…” Clara continued but a terrible wailing noise cut off her signing. She was trembling, I could feel her arm next to mine shivering like a leaf.

It suddenly got pitch black.

Most of us couldn’t communicate anymore because of how loud that darkness was. I take Bex’s arm as we trudge slowly through the darkness.

Suddenly, we all hit a patch of light that covers us all, and a strange, stagnant, blue pool.

“Stan…”

I hear this crystal clear voice. I try to find Bex but she ran off.

“Stan…”

Am I going more crazy than usual? I hear it and I think it’s Bexley, but how can it be?

Emma started screaming, “You all better get off of her!”

I started running toward the fighting as I see the zombies that attacked us before fighting with random Bloodletters.

“Staaaaannn…”

The persistent noise hits me like a buzzing fly trying to nest in my ear.

Hudson is helping everyone fight. India and a few Bloodletters seem to be helping too. What the heck is going on??

“Uncle Jack?! What the… why are you here??” Hudson suddenly yelled.

Everyone seemed to stop in their tracks. Bexley is looking at Jack in a wide-eyed stance, jaw dropped.

Jack garbled out an unintelligible response. He was clawing at the air. His skin was gray and covered in rotting, dead patches. His hair was falling out.

“He’s one of us now!” India suddenly signed, pointing at the once human Uncle Jack.

Hudson went over to the out of order Jack and said in shock, “Jack, uncle Jack, is that you? Why are you here? What happened to you?” Jack made no response of any kind.

A Bloodletter female stood up next to him, signing, “I bit him! He turned!”

A Bloodletter male stepped in front of both of them, “Get OUT of our cave! We found it first! All of you dirty zombies and humans leave!!”

The zombie hunters started communicating with their own sign language, then took out a shot gun.

“We are going to need you all come with us into custody. Humans aren’t allowed to have weapons. Bloodletters, you just shouldn’t exist,” one of the zombies signed.

A sudden, blood curdling and inhuman screech ripped through the cavern. I felt dazed as the natural lights and shadows scattered. I saw a vision of a burning demon screeching, laughing maniacally, saying in a low, deep, angry voice, “You’re all cursed now for your insipid fighting. Everyone of you until your last, undying breath. Cursed with a brutal chasm of hell. You’ll never escape.”

The laughing turned into tortured screaming and the lights went out, leaving us in a frigid air that felt like an icy stun gun. The pool turned black. In the chaos, I heard gun shots, screaming, fighting.

I keep hearing that ghostly voice in my brain. Was it Bexley? Was it that demon?

All I know was that Jack saved us all. He shoved his whole force, the last bit of himself that was left, into the group of zombie hunters, throwing them into the black water. A zombie placed a large knife into Jack’s neck, almost decapitating him. Bexley looked distraught as everyone scattered away, trying to remain with them but I grabbed her hand. I wanted to get the hell out of that cursed cave.

It distracted them enough where somehow the light that was there originally came back on, and then we all ran off. Hudson remained with Jack.

“I’m so sorry,” Hudson cried, holding onto the remains of his husband Asher’s uncle Jack.

A Bloodletter male with burns all over him signed, “He wanted to be ‘Letter.”

The female Bloodletter came in signing with ferocity, “He decided to give up his undead brains for us. Weird.”

Bexley seemed to tear up. Real tears! Something has changed somehow. I can’t understand it or put my finger on it. And India’s middle finger and pinkie got taken off by a zombie. Emma has been teasing her about not being able to flip anyone off with that hand but I know she was scared beyond death that she might’ve lost India in the fray. Emma uses humor and her singing to recover from her trauma, I’ve noticed. It has been a surreal nightmare of a day that has made our calm, sacred night.

Now as night turns into day, our shadows heave and taunt and fall. Serena is back with her girlfriend, Clara. Serena looks beat up bad, but is trying to rest next to her undead partner, who is vigilant about any intruders that may try to take her love again.

My love is here and though I want so badly to feel that everything is right, it doesn’t feel right. We have new Bloodletters here in our group, but that isn’t what is unsettling. Something feels wrong. Different, as my wife said. Bexley looks perfect yet there’s something ineffable I can’t quite perceive. Is she breathing? Is she alive? Why does the perfect night seem so unnerving all of a sudden?

Emma and Hudson started talking about the curse thing. I thought I had imagined it! They seem scared but I pretend I’m asleep.

The two new Bloodletters(other than the other scattered few with India), I believe they’re called Indigo and Amory, started arguing.

“It was Rhetha! She’s coming to claim me! I know it…” Amory signed to her, seeming to be agitated by Hudson and Emma’s fears.

Indigo signed back, “Your handler is dead! Remember? We killed… she died…”

Amory gave her a loud growl, bolting away once Ax started a fire for everyone.

As the night crumbles into day, I feel this intense fire running through my dear veins.

Can something be a shared illusion? A vision, a nightmare that could destroy us all? Can something unreal become real if we all believe in it?

I’m scared to answer these questions more than anything. The Bloodletters that turned uncle Jack are with us. They have gems. One looks like a rainbow. He gives it to Hudson for his loss.

In a whisper of night, the sun turns dark, blood red, flickering like a mad demon’s cursed laugh, the day feeling more unsettled than ever.