Chapter Three
His fingers scrabble against the light switch. Nothing. Darkness oozes into his mouth, up his nose. The neon sign bleeds one last breath of red through the grimy blinds, then flickers, dies. No light, no mercy. Just the night expanding into a long, silent scream, swallowing Jesse whole. The mattress shifts beneath him again, a sick and heavy roll, more patient this time, more sure. Like something fully awake and stretching. Jesse chokes down a cry, still clawing for the light. His breathing comes fast, brutal. The air is thin and stinks of cigarettes. Stinks of old sweat. Stinks of him. It used to smell like her, but Jesse Morgan knows those days are gone. Something alive is under him. Something breathing. His bones fill with ice.
He yanks his hand away from the dead lamp, clutching it to his chest. “Goddamn it, Jesse. Calm down,” he whispers, the words cracking, dry as dust. Just a bad motel. Just a bad bed. He’s slept on worse, on the floor, in his truck, on her goddamn couch after another late night at work. But he remembers what it was like to be warm, to wake up next to someone he still loved, before everything fell apart. This place feels like punishment. The heavy dark presses in, sucks him into a familiar loneliness, back into himself, swallowing his cries. The mattress moves under him, but it’s more than that — it’s alive, wrong. He refuses to believe it. Just a goddamn nightmare. Just this shithole town, this shithole life.
A hum starts deep in his chest, his heart winding itself too tight. Feels like he’s being smothered, each breath a little smaller, each rasp cutting into him. The mattress shifts again, slower, confident, stretching beneath him like an animal uncoiling, a sick and happy cat. Jesse freezes, knowing this moment, the fear gnawing him open. Nothing good ever lasts. The light always dies. And he’s left in the dark with his useless heart, a shell waiting to be filled with something else. Something worse. He breathes heavy, pants through it, won’t let the thing in the bed take him. Goddamn it, Jesse, fight.
He thinks about bolting, lurching for the door. A man running. A man going nowhere. He grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut. You’re tired, that’s all. Get some goddamn sleep. The soft rustle, the weight of the thing, the cold certainty of it beneath him, inside him. “Just a bad mattress,” he mutters again, desperate, pitiful. Just another shitty motel like a thousand before. But even he doesn’t believe that now.
His spine presses against the thin, rotting sheet, and the mattress yields under him, warm and damp. Just like him. Broken and abandoned. He bites his lip, forcing himself not to scream. Goddamn it, Jesse, stay still. It’s waiting for him to make the wrong move. Always waiting. He chokes out a breath, opens his eyes to the dark. The sheets smell sour, the same wrong comfort of places he’s been trying to leave behind for years. The neon light is dead, a flatline on the side of a burned-out road. Only the sound of his blood pounding, of the thing beneath him breathing. Slow. Steady. His, but not his. He pushes against the mattress, bracing for what he knows is coming. The awful pressure. The awful dark.
His thoughts spin around his head like loose, rusted screws. They don’t hold. They never hold.
Get to the goddamn light, Jesse.
He claws across the bed, fighting the urge to collapse, to let the weight swallow him whole. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Out here, away from her. He drags his body toward the blind, each movement like shoving through wet concrete. No money. No friends. Just the road. He was free, once. He was stupid. Now all he has is this terrible, consuming dark.
His knees hit the floor with a dull crack, and the whole room swims around him. But he’s free of the bed. Free of the thing. It’s the only truth left. “Goddamn it,” he mutters, choking.
“Calm down. It’s nothing.”
His heart stutters. His mouth is dry and open, like the breath’s been punched out of him. Stupid. Weak. Failing. Just like his old man. He fights back a whimper, fights the sick and familiar memory. A pathetic, little boy afraid of the dark. No. He refuses to go back there. Jesse Morgan refuses to be like him. He drags himself up, crawls on hands and knees, the sting of humiliation as sharp as the pain in his spine. But the memory is a weight that drags, pulls, catches hold. She said the same things. His ex, laughing, calling him weak. Useless. Same as his father. He’s running from more than the bed, and he knows it. The thought makes him dizzy, sick. “Not like this, Jesse. Goddamn it. Not here.”
He crawls forward, toward the window, toward the useless blood red glow, casting the motel room in shades of hell. Maybe the road’s better, maybe this room is just another shithole waiting to devour him, but he’s Jesse Morgan, and Jesse Morgan doesn’t back down. He takes it. Takes it until it takes him. That’s what she never understood. That’s what no one ever understood. He’s alone. He always was.
His chest is tight and his throat is raw.
The mattress shifts again. The sound of something waking up, uncoiling, soft and wet. Something alive, Jesse thinks. Something breathing. Goddamn it. It’s in his head now, the way the dark is in his lungs. He collapses at the window, his mouth a useless shape. No sound comes out.
Then he forces himself to stand, biting back a scream. He pulls himself up the wall, old plaster and stale nicotine flaking under his fingers, catching in his nails. No light. No mercy. Just Jesse Morgan, stupid, lonely Jesse Morgan and his racing heart. He sways against the window, fighting for balance. It’s hopeless. Pointless. Just like him. He can’t fight this, the awful pressure of it pushing down, and he can’t stop it, and goddamn it he can’t even get his head straight enough to—
To breathe. The whole room is a beating heart, an organ made of wood and rot and dust, but he’s still alive. The blinds hang limply, useless strips of stained cloth. His shadow against the wall: a ghost, a hollow thing that used to be a man. He thinks he might be screaming, but he doesn’t hear it. Only the thud of blood and the night coming in too close, and the air too thin and the light too weak and his legs too slow and his hands too empty. He stumbles back to the mattress.
“Jesse… Jesse… Jesse…” the dark whispers, laughing at him. He can’t tell if it’s in his head or in the room, and it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. He presses his hands to his ears, squeezes his eyes shut, won’t let it in, won’t let it get him.
But the memory is a living thing. It crawls.
Her face, bright with anger. All the chances he never had. The emptiness stretching out, unending. The kind of warm, full life Jesse Morgan never deserved.
The room spins again, soft edges, too familiar. Maybe the only thing he deserves is this bed, the silence and the sheets. The sheets. He’s back on the bed, a second alone in the dark that feels like forever, a moment that opens up like a grave.
The light from the window flickers, a pulse, blood-bright. The mattress presses up against him, patient, an awful imitation of an embrace.
“Jesse…” the room sighs. The sound of the woman he left, the mother he lost, the dark thing that’s always waited for him, a cold seed in the pit of his chest.
He opens his eyes and screams.
He swings his legs off the side, scrambling. The breath’s been knocked out of him, like the hand of a sick child punching through his chest.
His blood runs thin and cold. He can feel it leaking from him, wet, terrible, alive.
It moves up his spine, a small and intimate stroke, a lover’s touch or a curse.
The air fills with red, fills with black, fills with him.
Jesse Morgan knows it won’t let go.
The floor stretches away from him, miles of bare wood and cold distance. The room twists, a nauseating turn of vertigo and heat. Jesse gasps, clutches at himself, but the mattress clutches harder. Sags under him, pulling his legs deep. Clinging to him. He tries to stand, tries to break free, but the bed won’t let go. His blood rushes through him, a wild and terrible race. Shhhrrckk. Old fabric splits beneath him, a low, wet groan of a sound. Jesse looks down, vision spinning, heart twisting, and sees the bulge under the sheet. A body. Another body. Pressing up from beneath him. The mattress is thin as skin now, and the shape shifts under it, frantic, like it’s suffocating, like it’s alive. His stomach churns. His head swims. A breath of sour air rolls up, filling his mouth, filling his lungs. He feels it crawling inside him, slick and warm. The sound again: shhhrrckk. The sheet tears open and he screams.
But his voice is small, hollow, empty as he is. The room fills with heat, sweat running into his eyes. Blinding him. Burning him. Jesse claws at his face, shakes his head, won’t let it break him. The thing beneath the sheet, the thing inside the bed, the thing inside him. Pressing, pushing, trapping him like everything else. A lifetime of getting stuck. A lifetime of goddamn things he couldn’t outrun. His mouth works around a curse, a prayer, a useless noise. It comes out strangled, a dying thing in his throat.
“Goddamn it,” he gasps, but the words are nothing, the sound is nothing, just like Jesse Morgan, man and ghost, hollow bones and empty heart. The bed clings tighter, sagging under him, pulling him down, the only thing that ever wanted him, the only thing he ever deserved. It has him, and he knows it, and it feels like every rotten memory of the life he’s never lived.
He shakes his head again, dizzy and sick. Blood pounds, a drum in his ears, louder and louder. He sees the bulge under the sheet. A body. A dead and living thing. A voice, his own voice, echoes. “It’s alive,” he thinks. “It’s me,” he thinks. His world narrows, spins.
Faster now, wild and everywhere, and Jesse chokes on his breath, on the awful pulse, the terrible rhythm, the goddamn thing that feels so much like life.
His vision twists, sick spirals of red and black and fear. He should have kept driving. Should have stayed on the road. The thought punches through his chest like a bullet. His ex. Her voice. Her accusations. He should have never left. A choked sound crawls out of his mouth, a lost and lonely noise.
A whimper.
Her words echo. Weak. Just like your old man.
It cuts him worse than the memory.
It cuts him clean through.
A sour smell fills the room, the same smell that fills his old truck, the same smell that fills his chest. Rotten, terrible, like everything he’s become. The bulge under the sheet, the shape, his shape, and the breath comes ragged, foul, and it crawls inside him. His nose. His mouth. Up his lungs and into the black spaces of his brain. Jesse Morgan, small and scared and swallowed by his own miserable life.
Shhhrrckk. The sound of the old fabric splitting, the sound of the awful, heavy dark.
He’s dizzy. Can’t get away. Can’t even get his goddamn balance.
“Please,” he chokes. He’s forgotten what he’s begging for. He’s forgotten why it matters.
But Jesse Morgan still breathes. He breathes and breathes and breathes.
The bed breathes with him.
It holds him like a curse.
And still the room spins, wild spirals of motion, his eyes useless in the awful dark. He squeezes them shut, a child hiding from his own fears, the echo of an echo, nothing but noise. Nothing but Jesse.
The floor miles away, the ceiling miles away. Everything too far, everything too close, the room too much like himself.
Shhhrrckk. The sheet tears open.
He lurches, staggering, choking. He won’t let it take him. Not like this.
It’s taking him.
His stomach twists, the memory of his father and the memory of the old house and the memory of nothing good lasting. He can’t stop remembering, he can’t stop moving, everything all at once.
Everything him.
He stumbles to his feet. Fights for balance. He’s got nothing left.
The smell is thick and wet and warm, filling him like blood, drowning him like old, dark dreams. The foul air, a tongue and a promise and a memory that’s always been waiting, rolls up and heaves out of the terrible shape under the terrible sheet. The bed. The bed. His heart. His life.
Shhhrckk. The room is a wound, open and deep, and Jesse Morgan is its thin and fragile skin. He feels it burst inside him.
He stumbles. Falls.
A broken noise.
His last goddamn chance.
His mouth works. His heart works. His voice works. He can’t hear them anymore.
The nightstand crashes to the floor.
Jesse Morgan, torn open like a bruise, sags against the wall.
He thinks he’s fighting.
He thinks he’s not.
He thinks.
He’s sure.
He’s lost.
A dry noise in his throat, shredded hope. Shredded fear.
The whole bed moves, alive and impossible. Breathing with him. The entire room a terrible heartbeat.
He backs away, useless limbs, the ghost of a ghost.
It has him, and he knows it.
And still he tries to run.
Jesse stumbles back, collapsing into the farthest corner of the room. His heart is a drum.. Pounding and pounding. Sweat pours down his face, a wash of salt and fear, stinging, burning, the whole world blurry and slick. In the jagged pulse of red light, he sees it. He sees it all. The mattress’s center splits open, fabric tearing with revolting patience. A hand emerges. A sickly, grey hand. The fingers long. The knuckles bruised. They stretch toward him, drag slowly across the ruined sheets, beckoning him back. A second hand. A low, wet laugh of a noise. Another tear opens, and a face presses outward. Flesh pulsing and raw. Slick. Hungry. The shape stretches the thin fabric, stretching until it finally bursts. It hangs there, turned toward him, a grotesque vision. Its mouth a gaping maw. The words a long, wet whisper. “Stay… stay… stay…” Jesse’s mind goes white. He bolts for the door, terror chasing every step.
It has him. It already has him, and Jesse Morgan knows it.
He’s out of time. He’s out of breath. He’s out of his mind, of his useless and wasting life.
But still he backs away, still he staggers, limbs failing, eyes wide and seeing it all.
The slick grey hand stretches toward him, the long fingers curling in the air. So slow. So terrible. So sure. Jesse watches the thin arms reach, the bones stretching beneath the skin. The corners of his vision flicker with failing light, a television set at the end of its life. His world dissolving into noise. His mind dissolving with it.
He thinks he hears a laugh. A low, soft, horrible laugh. But the world is already collapsing, the air is already folding in, every piece of himself folding and bending, folding and bending until he thinks he might break.
“Stay… stay… stay…” it whispers.
His panic surges, a flash flood through every dead town of his soul.
Jesse Morgan tries to escape.
Jesse Morgan tries to live.
His legs are useless, but he moves them. He was a man, once. A proud and failing man. He is less now. A thin sheet stretched over thin memories. “Please,” he gasps, begging for himself, begging for something that never was.
The shape is just a heartbeat away. He hears it. His. Theirs. The whole goddamn world’s.
He watches in slick horror, his own bloodless form stuck to the walls, useless limbs flailing.
The grey hand drags across the ruined sheet. He thinks he can feel it dragging across his heart.
A second hand. Reaching. Stretching. Reaching for him.
Reaching through him.
A low, wet laugh.
It’s got him, and he knows it, and still he tries to fight, still he tries to live.
The bed. The shape. The grey thing pulsing, knowing, wanting.
The entire room filled with it. The entire room filled with him.
He thinks he might be dying.
He thinks he might be alive.
He thinks.
He watches.
His body won’t move. His body is a mess of nerves and sweat and pounding heartbeats.
His body is a collapse.
And the words slip directly into his mind.
Jesse Morgan fights the only way he knows how. He fights with broken hope and failing heart. He fights the way he fights everything, by running.
His heart a drum. His skull the skin. Panic the sticks. Pounding and pounding.
He bolts for the door, terror chasing every step.
The door won’t open. He rattles the lock, the handle. His own heart, the real lock, the real enemy. Useless fingers clawing and clawing. Desperate. Bleeding. Melting into the soft, wrong wood. Jesse spins around, back against his escape, and the creature is there. Out of the mattress now, out of his nightmares, out of his hollow chest. A trail of black sludge and old stuffing, wet and thick as his own fear. Tall. Dripping. Grinning. It doesn’t have to lunge. It doesn’t have to hurry. It knows what he knows, and that’s the worst of it. Jesse Morgan was always caught. Jesse Morgan never had a chance. The creature stretches toward him.
His heart fails.
He claws at the door until his fingers bleed. But the room closes in. He knows this moment, this failure. He knows it more than he knows himself. The soft walls. The soft ceiling. The soft man. The breathless terror of getting caught. The breathless terror of his life.
He thought he could run. He thought he could hide.
The room collapses. The world collapses.
He collapses with it.
He can feel the whole thing taking him in. The whole thing always taking him in. The years and the miles and the motels and the empty rooms. He should have stayed. He should have left.
He should have known.
The creature, out of the mattress, out of his mind, out of his own bad dreams. The creature, a wild infection spreading, a cold black sickness bleeding through.
It turns toward him, turns him inside out, his fear like a wet skin.
He thought he could be something. He thought he could be someone.
Tall. Dripping. Grinning.
He thought he could escape.
Jesse Morgan was always caught.
The air so thin. The light so weak. The night so wide.
The creature stretches toward him. Jesse Morgan never had a chance.
He thought he could escape.
He thought.
The thought dissolves, a small and weak and breaking sound. A sound that sounds just like him.
He breathes.
He breathes.
He breathes.