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    The Words
    The Words
    The Words
    Ebook106 pages2 hours

    The Words

    By Douglas Clegg

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    About this ebook

    A novella of friendship, terror, gods & monsters from Bram Stoker & International Horror Guild Award Winner, Douglas Clegg. When teenager Mark befriends outsider Dash, he believes his new friend to be an outcast rebel. But a dark mystery unfolds as Dash leads Mark into dangerous games and rituals involving stories of the occult and a strange drug that allows Dash to see into another world -- a world of absolute darkness and terror.

    “Your flesh will remember the words even if your mind forgets."

    Never speak them.

    Never whisper them.

    The Words.

    The Words is a novella of otherworldly terror and madness from Douglas Clegg, the award-winning author of The Priest of Blood, Isis, Purity, The Hour Before Dark and many others.

    A tale of teen alienation at the crossroads of darkness and absolute brotherhood, The Words will get under your skin...and stay with you long after the lights go out.

    "Clegg's stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby." -- Dean Koontz

    "Clegg delivers!" -- John Saul

    "Douglas Clegg is one of the best!"-- Richard Laymon

    "Clegg is the best horror writer of the post-Stephen King generation!" -- Bentley Little

    "Clegg is the future of dark fantasy!" -- Sherrilyn Kenyon

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDouglas Clegg
    Release dateJul 11, 2012
    ISBN9780979686245
    The Words
    Author

    Douglas Clegg

    Douglas Clegg is a screenwriter, poet, and the author of dozens of novels, novellas, and short story collections. His fiction has won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He is married to Raul Silva and lives near the New England coast, where he is currently writing his next work of fiction.

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      Book preview

      The Words - Douglas Clegg

      1

      The End Is Like This

      After the last match goes out, he mouths the words to the Our Father, but it brings him no comfort. 

      He remembers the Veil.

      He remembers the way things moved and how the sky looked under its influence.

      He doubts now that a prayer could be answered. He doubts everything he has come to believe about the world.

      The echo of the last scream. He can hear it, even though the room is silent. It seems to be in his head now: the final cry.

      Hope it’s final.

      The scream is too seductive, he knows. He understands what’s out there. 

      It’s attracted to noise, because it doesn’t see with its eyes anymore. It sees by smell and sound and vibration. 

      He has begun to think of it by its new name, only he doesn’t want to ever say that name out loud. Again.

      Your flesh won’t forget.

      Prickly feeling along the backs of his hands, along his calves. In his mind, he goes through the alphabet, trying to latch onto something he can work around. Something that will give him a jump into remembering the words.

      He presses himself against the wall as if it will hide him.

      Rough stone. No light. Need light. Damn.

      He thinks he must be delirious because the goofiest things go through his mind: Michelle’s phrase, Unfrigginlikely, Spaceman Mark.

      Those aren’t the words. Spaceman Mark. Hey, Space! What planet you on today? Planet Dark, that’s what I’m on. Planet Midnight.

      And out of matches.

      The wind dies, momentarily, beyond the cracked window.

      The damn ticking of the watch.

      Someone’s heartbeat.

      The sensation of freezing and burning alternately — a fever.

      The sticky feeling under his armpits.

      The rough feeling of his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

      The interminable waiting.

      Seconds that become hours in his mind. In those seconds, he is running through sounds in his head — the words? What are they? Laiya-oauwraii…no. That’s the beginning of the name. Don’t say it again. It might call it right to you. You might make it stronger. For all you know. What the hell are the words?

      He clutches the carved bone in his left hand. It’s smooth in his fist. Like ivory, a tusk from some fallen beast. Slight ridges where the words are carved. Like trying to read Braille.

      If only I could read them. Need to get light. Some light.

      Distracted by the smell.

      That would be the first one it got.

      Over in the corner, something moves. Darkness against darkness.

      Someone he can’t see in the dark is over there.

      Eyesight is failure, Dash once told him. Perception is failure. All that there is, all that there ever will be, cannot be perceived in the light of day. At night, the only perceptions turn inward.

      The words? The words. Maybe if you remember them, you can stop it. Maybe it reverses. Or maybe if you just say them…

      Moves his lips, trying to form vowel sounds.

      The dry taste. Humid and weather-scorned all around.

      In his throat, a desert.

      Every word he has ever heard in his life spins through his mind. But not the words he needs.

      Not the ones he wants to remember tonight.

      A beautiful night. Dark. No light whatsoever but the ambient light of the world itself.

      Summer. Humid. Post-storm. One of those rich storms that sweeps the sky with crackling blue and white lightning, and the roars of lions. But the storm has passed — and that curious wet silence remains.

      Taste of brine in the air from the water, a few miles away.

      He remembers summer storms like this — their majesty as they wash the June sky clean, bringing a gloom on their caped shoulders, but leaving behind not a trace of it. The smell of oak and beech and cedar and salt and the murky stink of the ponds and bogs. Their years together, all in those smells. All in the dark.

      The night, summer, perhaps just a few hours before the sun might rise.

      Might.

      He wonders if he’ll ever see another storm. Another summer.

      Another dawn.

      Those damn words.

      Your flesh will remember the name even if your mind forgets, Dash had told him, and he had still thought it was a game when Dash had said it. The name gets in your bones and in your heart. Just by hearing it once. But the words are harder to remember. They don’t want you to know the words because it binds them. So, listen very carefully. Listen. Each time I say them, repeat them exactly back to me.

      He’s shivering. Sweating. Nausea and dizziness both within him, the pit of his stomach. Something’s scratchy around his balls — feels like a mosquito buzzing all along the inside of his legs. Twitching in his fingers. Tensing his entire body.

      Afraid to take another breath.

      A conversation replays in his head:

      It’s not that hard. Watch.

      I can’t. I just…

      All you do is take the thing and bring it down like this. Think of it as a game.

      I can’t do it.

      Don’t think of it like that. Pretend it’s a game. It doesn’t mean what it looks like. You’ve been trained to think this is bad by church and school and your parents. And the world outside. But it is not real. It is just a game, only nobody else knows this. They’re stupid. Nobody’s going to get hurt. Least of all one of us. Least of all you or me. I would never let it happen. You’re like my brother.

      I know. But I can’t.

      All right. I’ll do it. I’ll just do it. Just remember what you’re supposed to do. As soon as it happens. As soon as my eyes close. Promise? Okay?

      Okay, okay.

      And the words. After. If it’s too much. You know what to say. You remember?

      Yes.

      You know how to pronounce them? You have to know. If this gets out of hand, you can stop it. The name for me, and the words to stop it. If it’s too awful.

      I know, I know.

      Because it might get too awful. I don’t know.

      Sure. Of course. I remember how to say them.

      And the name?

      He has no problem remembering the name. He’d like to blot it out of his mind. The name is on the tip of his tongue, and he can’t seem to forget how to say it, how to pronounce it perfectly. The words have somehow vanished from his mind.

      He tries to remember the words, now. How they sound. The language was foreign, but he couldn’t read them off the bone. Especially with no light. But even if he had

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