by Mike Ramon
Chapter Three
Frankie tried to stay awake. Since the night of his sister’s disappearance sleep had become something of an unwelcome guest that came to visit him every night. Before, he had rarely been able to remember his dreams upon waking. And that’s how he thought of it--Before with a capital “B”--there being now a Before and After, Before that night in the Home when he saw what he saw, and After, where he lived in a world that he knew he could not hope to ever fully understand. Before his dreams had been fragile, insubstantial things, like strands of gossamer, and they would fall apart and fade as soon as his eyes opened to the light of a new morning. But since the night at the Home, in the After, his dreams had gained substance. Now they were like a slick of oil that stuck to him throughout his days, or a heavy, oppressive weight that he could not shake off.
Now he lay awake, staring up at the ceiling above his bed, watching the play of shadows as the tree outside his window swayed in the wind. For a while the dark had held a power of claustrophobic terror over him, but he had refused to leave on a light. He was afraid that if he did so his parents would see the light in the crack beneath his door, and he didn’t want them to know that their twelve year-old son needed a light on to go to sleep.
His next plan had been to take some money from his money box in the bottom drawer of his dresser (the piggy bank he had named Ham-ster had been discarded three years before, when his cousin Lyle had made fun him for using it), and going down to Chester’s General Store to buy a nightlight. He figured that the light wouldn’t be strong enough to show beneath his door. The problem with this plan was that Chester knew his parents, and his father dropped into the General Store regularly. Chester might inquire about Frankie’s purchase of a nightlight. There was also the very real possibility that one or both of his parents might check on him in the night, which is something they hadn’t done Before, but had started to do After. If one of them opened the door and peeked in, they would see the light.
So he braved the dark. The first two nights had been the hardest. He had broken out in a sweat while lying in bed, and every shadow, every inky pool of darkness, seemed to hold great menace. After those two nights, the fear of the darkness has lessened in severity, even if it had not disappeared entirely, but the fear of the dreams had persisted. If anything the dreams themselves had gotten worse.
So he lay awake, not wanting sleep to come but feeling it sneaking up on him nonetheless. First his eyelids grew heavy, and then came the yawning. Itching, burning eyes told him it was time to sleep. He balled his hands into fists beneath the covers, digging his nails into the tender flesh of his palms. He just wanted to stay awake, to ward off the dreams for one night.
Thinking these thoughts, he fell asleep. In the dream he opened his eyes and found himself inside a room. He had dreamt of rooms like this one before, but each time it was a different room, with a slight difference in dimensions, or some other thing that let him know that each room was different than the last. The only light was weak blue-white light coming through a window set high up on one wall; it illuminated the wall opposite the window, a bright arc of light that tapered to shadow a full foot above Frankie’s head. In the light he could make out scratch marks on the wall. He couldn’t divine any meaning from them; they were just random scrapes in the chipped paint. He turned around and found a door. The wood was midnight black, and the tarnished brass doorknob gleamed dully in the dimness.
He moved closer to the door, his shoes scraping against a bare cement floor. When he reached the door he placed his left hand against it. The door felt smooth. He felt something like a faint pulse, a double thump that he felt first in his hand before it traveled up his arm and into his body. It thudded in his head, a sluggish, pounding rhythm that made his teeth hurt. He took his hand away from the door and the pulsation ceased.
Frankie reached slowly for the doorknob, afraid to feel that awful heartbeat once more, but when he gripped the brass knob he felt nothing out of the ordinary. He turned the knob and pulled gently; the door didn’t budge, and he thought it might be locked from the outside. This prospect caused his heart to beat a little faster; he didn’t want to be locked in that room. He pulled harder and the door gave way, swinging in. He peered out into the hall. It was darker than the room, but there was a window at one end that let in a little bit of light.
After stepping out into the hall he turned in the other direction, away from the window and toward the dark. His skin felt all prickly, and he had the feeling that he was being watched. He shuffled forward, his hands held out in front of him like a blind man trying to find his way in an unfamiliar space. It was almost as if he could feel the darkness with the tips of his fingers, soft and velvety. His breathing was slow and even, the air cold in his lungs. His eyes strained to see something, anything, through thick veils of gloom.
Frankie swung his right arm off to the side, making contact with the wall just to reassure himself that it was still there. He stopped and turned back. The square of light that represented the window at the other end of the hall was smaller now, and fainter. He turned back to the void in front of him and continued forward. The feeling of being watched intensified, and there was a sick, sour feeling in the pit of his stomach.
A gust of wind blew past Frankie, and it carried a dank, rotting smell. He thought there must be a busted window up ahead somewhere, which would explain the breeze. As for the smell, he had no idea; it was a mixture of spoiled milk and rotting meat. Frankie kept on, staying in contact with the wall to his right, his left hand waving in the air before him like a divining rod, leading him not toward water or oil but to something unknown and unknowable.
After a few more steps he stopped and looked back again, and he stared in wonder at the square of light at the far end of the hall. It much smaller than before, too small actually; he knew he hadn’t taken many steps since the last time he checked, but somehow he was much farther from the light than before. The box of light was now just a faint glow in the dark, so small that it looked like a postage stamp floating in the air. Frankie thought about turning back, getting closer to that light. The light seemed so much safer than the dark that pressed down upon him. But something pulled him on, pulled him further into the bowels of that rough beast he found himself in.
He took another step, and still another, and the postage stamp of light fell farther behind him. A strange grinding noise speared the dark, but it sounded far away, in some other part of the building. Frankie’s heart thudded in his chest, beating out of time in some peculiar rhythm. He stopped dead in his tracks when he felt something wet hit his face. He could feel it dripping down his cheek. He took his right hand away from the wall and wiped the faux tear from his face. The substance felt warm and sticky to the touch, but it was too dark to see what it looked like on his fingers. It was thicker than water, but thinner than oil. He thought about raising his fingers to his mouth to taste it, but the thought immediately sent a roiling wave of disgust through his belly, so he wiped his hand on his pants instead.
He took another stop and another drop of the viscous fluid dripped onto his face. Frankie wiped it away and looked up at the ceiling, but it was too dark to see the source of the drippings. He moved a little to the left, hoping he was out of the path of whatever was leaking from the ceiling, and stepped forward. After two steps his feet splashed in a shallow puddle of liquid. Not wanting to think about the liquid and what it might be he hurried forward, wanting to get to somewhere where there were no leaks of mystery fluid.
At first he quickened his pace, but as he moved further along he had to slow down; the floor was completely wet, but rather than being made slippery, it had a clinging effect, and his shoes were starting to stick to it. At first it was like stepping on a gooey mass of gum, and not too bad. Then it got harder to move, and it felt like he was walking across a pool of tar. With each step it became harder to pull his foot free from the ground, and Frankie thought that both of his shoes would soon be pulled clear off his feet. His breathing became la
bored as he moved forward one slow step at a time. For the first time the thought struck him that he might become stuck there in that hallway, and the idea terrified him.
A few more steps and the pull of the sticky substance abated somewhat, and his steps became easier to take. A thrill of relief shot through him, a slim but glowing hope that he would not get stuck in that dark hall after all. Two steps and it was back to the sensation of stepping on gum, six more steps and it was like stepping on dried puddle of spilled juice. Seven stapes later and the floor became smooth, not sticky at all. Frankie sidled over slowly until he could feel the wall, and he leaned against it for support, his breath coming in harsh gasps as raw adrenalin coursed through his body.
His back was to the wall. As he stood trying to get control of his breathing and the brutal beating of his heart he felt something moving against his back. He ignored it at first, but the sensation persisted, an undulating pulse that seemed to ripple against him. Frankie stepped away from the wall and turned to look at it. He hadn’t expected to see much due to the lack of light--the postage stamp at the far end of the hall having disappeared entirely--but the wall itself was aglow with some internal light. The faint light had a sickly greenish tinge to it, like a distant light being refracted through a piece of smooth green glass.
A small black circle appeared on the wall at the center of the light; it grew larger, and larger still. When its growth finally ceased the circle was wide enough for two grown men to walk through side-by-side. The gaping hole in the wall reminded him of a giant, toothless mouth. Then a wispy, smoky substance began to pour forth from the mouth and out into the hall.
Frankie stepped back until his back touched the opposite wall. The smoke started to take shape, and Frankie wanted to scream, because he knew that shape; he had seen it before, on the night Jessica had disappeared. More smoke spewed from the mouth, and it also took a shape, similar yet unique. And still more smoke wafted out, and then more. Frankie stood frozen, wanting to run, but not knowing where to run to. Back down the way he had come there was the patch of tar-like stuff, and he was certain that this time he would get stuck. In the other direction was more darkness, and he had a feeling that taking that path would lead him to something even more terrible than the living shadows that stood before him.
Dark arms grew from the wall at this back and took him in a rough embrace, and the option to run was taken away from him. So instead of running, he screamed. As the shadows moved toward him, his scream reached a new register he didn’t think himself capable of. He screamed until one of the shadows reached out with a malformed shadow-hand and reached into his mouth. He gagged as a hard, cold claw reached down his throat, and he knew what it was reaching for--it was reaching for his heart, which it would pull out through his throat, and he would then get to see his heart beating in front of his eyes for a split second before he died. Hot tears streamed down his face as the shadow-thing opened its mouth in a sneer; the mouth had teeth, so many teeth.
Frankie woke with a scream, which he stifled immediately by placing his hands over his mouth. He was afraid that his parents might have heard, but after a few minutes he knew they weren’t coming. He took his hands away from his mouth tentatively, as if he didn’t quite trust himself not to scream again. To his surprise he was able to remain silent. He took a measure of pride in this small victory.
It was still dark, and he sat up in bed, his clothes drenched with fear-sweat. He sat in bed, staring out his bedroom window until the light of a new day arrived to banish the shadows of the night, and birds filled the morning with their song. When his mother called him to breakfast he sat at the kitchen table and ate his bacon and eggs just like he would any other day. He made sure to thank his mother for the breakfast, and to tell her that it was really good. When she asked him if he had had sweet dreams, he smiled and lied, telling her that yes, his dreams had been sweet.