The Darkest Night

by Mike Ramon

Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tom stood before the black wall, running his eyes over its surface. It looked like a smooth, solid slab of obsidian, so dark that light didn’t bounce off of it, but rather was swallowed by it. When Tom ran his fingers along its surface his fingers came away moist, the tips stained black, as if the wall had recently been coated in black paint that hadn’t quite dried yet. He rubbed his fingertips together, spreading the faint wetness across the tips.

  “I’m not going that way,” Frankie said behind him.

  Tom turned to see the boy talking with Patricia. Patricia was giving Frankie that look that grown-ups sometimes gave kids when they were trying to calmly explain to them that something was for their own good, like getting a shot or going to visit Great Aunt Gertrude with the creepy eye.

  “We have to Frankie,” Patricia said, trembling with the effort it took to keep naked panic at bay.

  “What’s going on?” Tom asked.

  “I was telling Frankie that we need to take the other hallway to find a way out of here.”

  “I can’t,” Frankie insisted, looking at Tom with pleading eyes. “Not after what happened in the Special Room.”

  “Guys, somebody please make a decision,” Kate said. “I want to get the hell out of here.”

  “Frankie, we’re going, and you’re coming with us,” Patricia said. “There’s nothing left to discuss.”

  Frankie’s hands had taken on a life of their own, clenching and unclenching and making erratic movements. Tom could see the boy was closer to breaking than any of them, and thought forcing him to go down that hallway might cause him to crack, and he knew that that wouldn’t be good for anybody.

  “Wait,” Tom said. “I have an idea.”

  He walked to the center of the “camp” and searched around for the right tool. He lifted one of the suitcases, but it was empty and not very heavy. He tossed it aside, looking for something else. He picked up one of the broken lights and inspected the base: four curving legs with straight ends, with pieces of rubber fitted over the feet. Tom gripped one of the rubber ends and pulled on it, twisting as he pulled, and the thing came off, revealing the open end of a hollow metal leg.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Kate asked.

  Tom didn’t hear her; he was too absorbed in his own actions. He disconnected the light stand from the big, portable battery, and walked over to the wall, then lifted the light stand up, angling it so that the exposed edge of that one leg would connect with the wall, and brought it down hard. As the metal scraped against the wall there was a harsh squealing sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  Tom stepped back to take a look at all he had accomplished, which was, in a word, nothing. The wall was still perfectly intact without any visible scrapes or dents, not even a scratch. On the bare metal edge of the light stand’s leg there was that same black residue that had come off on Tom’s fingers when he had touched the wall.

  He tried three more times, and each time there was that screeching nails-on-chalkboard sound. Still the wall stood before them, just as imposing and forbidding as before. Tom threw the light stand to the ground, where it clattered around before coming to rest against the side of one of the suitcases.

  “Tom, you’re not going to bust through that wall,” Patricia said. “We have to find another way out.”

  Tom turned to face Frankie, who now had a look of reluctant resignation in his eyes.

  “Frankie, she’s right,” Tom said. “I know you’re scared, but we’re going to have to--”

  His voice froze in his throat when he saw a shadow move away from the wall and move near the edge of their camp. Frankie turned and saw it, as well, and he backed away from it. Patricia and Kate backed off, too.

  “Everyone stay calm,” Tom said.

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Kate asked, her voice rising with tension.

  “No sudden moves,” Tom said. “Let me handle this.”

  He took a step closer to the thing, and it turned to face him. At the top of its form there was something like a head, and it was this that he stared at.

  “What are you doing?” Patricia asked nervously.

  Tom didn’t answer her. He took two more steps toward the living shadow, Harry’s words echoing through his mind.

  They were scared, they were in pain, and they were lashing out like a wounded animal. They were not evil, or bad; they were angry at the things that had been done to them during their short, sad lives.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to you,” Tom spoke.

  Behind him Patricia and Kate exchanged an incredulous look.

  “Tom, I don’t think that will help,” Patricia said.

  “We’re all sorry,” Toms said, ignoring her. “But we aren’t the ones that hurt you.”

  The shadow showed no signs of having understood any of what he was saying; it just looked at him (or so he figured; he could see no eyes).

  “If you are in pain,” he continued, “hurting us won’t stop it. We’re not the ones to blame. We--”

  “Tom, are you there?” a voice crackled.

  “What the hell is that?” Patricia asked.

  The voice had come from Tom’s back pocket. He remembered--it was the walkie-talkie that Harry had given him, keeping the other for himself.

  “Tom, answer me if you can, damn it!”

  The shadow did not move; it was still as a statue. Tom reached one hand behind him slowly and grabbed the walkie from his back pocket, bringing it up to his mouth and clicking the button on the side.

  “This is Tom. We sort of have a situation here. Over.”

  He released the button.

  “Tom, thank God. I was wrong; I was so wrong. Over.”

  Still the shadow did not move.

  “I’m going to have to get back to you, Harry. Over.”

  “The entities--they aren’t the kids,” Harry said, his voice scratchy and hollow as it came out of the walkie.

  “Come again?”

  “In 1939 a couple of kids put rat poison in the staff’s food. Three of the staff members died.”

  Some deep part of Tom went cold.

  “The entities aren’t he kids,” Harry said. “They’re the staff.”

  That was when all hell broke loose.