The Darkest Night

by Mike Ramon

Chapter Twenty-Five

  Harry’s flashlight was dying. He didn’t know if it was the batteries, or if the flashlight had taken some damage during the ruckus. Every time it started to blink out he hit it with the flat of his hand to bring it to life again; he didn’t know how long this technique would continue to work.

  When he fled the cafeteria he had run blindly down several connecting hallways, eventually losing all sense of direction in the dark. He felt like he couldn’t get enough oxygen, even as he breathed in great gulps of air. He leaned up against the wall and tried to get his bearings. The halls all looked the same, and he didn’t think he would be able to find his way back to the lobby, where he was sure the others would have fled. Getting back to the lobby wasn’t his goal, though; his goal was escape, and he knew that he wouldn’t find that in the lobby.

  Harry swung the flashlight left and right, shining it down the length of the hallway he now found himself in. Other than the harsh wheeze of his breath the hall was deathly quiet. He walked to the nearest door and tried the knob; it was locked. He backed up a few steps and launched himself at the door. His shoulder connected with a dull, painful thud, and when it did he heard a sharp splintering sound from the door. The door held, however. He scratched as his face, looking at the stubborn door with something approaching hatred.

  Harry backed up again, this time not stopping until his back brushed the wall facing his target. He rushed forward and slammed into the door. The frame shattered, and Harry was sent sprawling across the floor. He lost his grip on the flashlight, and it rolled underneath a desk that was pushed up against the wall.

  He lifted himself up to his knees. His left elbow was a hot nest of pain, and he twisted his arm to get a look at it; it was bleeding, but not too badly. He looked over at the desk; a faint light shone out from underneath it.

  “Crap,” Harry grumbled.

  He looked up and saw that there were wooden slats covering the space where a window used to be.

  “Ah, crap,” he repeated, the repetition sounding even more pathetic than the first utterance of the word.

  He crawled on hands and knees to the desk, got down on his stomach and reached one arm into the narrow space between the bottom edge of the desk and the floor. He flailed his hand about, searching for the flashlight. He reached deeper, the bottom edge of the desk grinding against his shoulder, biting is lip as he stretched, and his hand found the flashlight. He grabbed it and pulled his arm back slowly.

  The light flickered a bit as he got to his feet, but it didn’t go out. Harry held the light in one hand as he used the other to drag the desk away from the wall so he could inspect the boarded-up window. Each board was nailed to the wall on both ends. Harry set the flashlight on the desk and worked his fingers in the gap between two boards, gripping one of the boards from the top. The board held fast when he pulled. He moved one hand to grip the bottom of the board, leaving the other hand at the top, and pulled again. There was still no movement. He tried a second board, but made no progress.

  He stepped back and sat on the edge of the desk, inspecting a splinter in his right hand, the only reward for his efforts. He picked up the flashlight, holding it between his chin and chest so he could get a better look at his hand in the light. He picked out the splinter and flicked it away, then took the flashlight in hand.

  He looked around the room, searching for anything that could be used to pry the boards away from the window frame. Besides the desk there was a rickety-looking wooden chair with half of its back slats missing, a metal file cabinet that looked like it weighed about a ton and a half, and an empty wooden crate that had no lid. Harry got up from the desk and went over to the file cabinet. He tried a few of the drawers, but they were all locked. When he banged on the sides of the cabinet the sound reverberated hollowly, and he figured the drawers were either empty or nearly so.

  A low chirping disturbed the silence. The sudden noise made Harry flinch away from the file cabinet, as if he thought that this was the source of the noise. The chirping came again, and Harry realized what it was. He set the flashlight on top of the cabinet and dug into his pants pockets. Both hands closed around something that felt like a phone, and Harry pulled the objects out of his pockets. The left hand was holding his cell phone, and his right hand was holding the walkie-talkie he had put in his pocket a thousand years ago, before the night went all to hell; it was one of a pair, and Tom had the other one. Harry stuffed the walkie back into his pocket, then punched the green RECEIVE button on his phone and held it to his ear.

  “Hello?” he said, and it felt weird to utter such a mundane word into his phone, given the present circumstances.

  “Harry, it’s me.”

  “Wh-who?”

  “It’s Brian, man.”

  “Brian! Jesus Christ.”

  Harry had never met the man, but he considered him a friend. Their friendship was conducted through emails and chatroom exchanges, and Brian sometimes helped Harry find information on the web that didn’t want to be found. Harry had been surprised when even Brian had not been able to find more than a little paltry information on the history of the Home.

  “Harry, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. I’m sort of in the middle of a situation here, Brian.”

  “It’s about that place you call the Home.”

  Harry’s breath caught in his throat.

  “Brian, I’m here.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m inside the Home right now. The whole thing has turned into a clusterfuck. Jack…I’m pretty sure he’s dead. I don’t know about the others. I hope they’re okay, but…”

  He left the other possibility unspoken.

  “This isn’t good,” Brian said from his home a thousand miles away. “This isn’t good at all.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, buddy.”

  “Harry, I found some more stuff about that place. I was sifting through a site that contained archives for a defunct weekly paper call the Juniper County Gazette, which was published for a little more than a decade, from 1928 to 1940. Harry…I think you’re theory was wrong.”