“Thanks for the ride.”
Mitch gave her a small smile. “Yeah, anytime. I have to work tomorrow at seven in the morning, but if you want, I can swing by here afterwards and help you look for your dad. Or you can meet me at my place. It’s the only white trailer with yellow awnings.” When he noticed her face fall in dismay, he quickly added, “If he doesn’t come back tonight, of course. I’m sure he’s fine. They’ve probably got him doing double shifts at the mine or something. You know they don’t get cell service out there.”
Olive shifted back and forth on her feet.
“Yeah, okay.” She chewed her lip with uncertainty. “You sure you don’t mind?”
Mitch remembered what he’d been told earlier that day and realized it was true. “Around here, we’re all family. We take care of one another.”
Olive nodded appreciatively, then closed the door.
Mitch watched her leave, waiting to be sure she got into the home alright, then finished the drive to his trailer.
Olive finally crawled into bed at two in the morning. She wanted to believe her father was working overtime like Mindy and Mitch had said, but deep down, fear gnawed at her insides. The man she had seen on the road left a heavy pit in her stomach. Had he been a figment of her imagination, a ghost that vanished in a flurry of wind and snow?
Olive couldn’t trust herself anymore after the things she had done to ravage her mind and body. After all, that was why she was in Wichita Springs.
It was just her imagination, her conscience insisted firmly. Her father would be back in the morning.
Chapter IV
THE VALLEY OF ASH AND SHADOWS
December 24th, Christmas Eve
O live opened her eyes abruptly and sat straight up in bed. The sheets were damp from the sweat on her body. She pulled away the wet hair stuck on her neck and back in disgust before throwing the covers off.
Olive always slept in a sports bra and panties with an oscillating fan on her nightstand, even in the dead of winter. The fan not only kept her cool, but served as white noise, helping her fall asleep when her mind wouldn’t shut down at the end of the day.
Some would think that was strange, trying to keep cool in December when most people would be wrapped in flannel pajamas to stay warm. But back in Indiana when she was at Fairbanks, the drug treatment center she was confined to for several weeks, she couldn’t sleep without stripping down and turning on the fan. Maybe it was because she had been in withdrawals. It had been several months, but her body still reacted as though she was weaning herself off of the drugs that had almost killed her.
Oddly enough, even though Olive had turned it on before going to bed, the fan was idle on the dresser. She went over to investigate, saw the fan was still plugged in, and pressed the buttons. When the fan didn’t start, Olive groaned, thinking it was broken, and that she’d have to buy another one in its stead.
Growing up with a drug addict for a mother, Olive had gotten involved in the wrong things with the wrong people. After a while, her life had become the definition of chaos, and no one could pull her out of the downward spiral. It was a dark period of her life that she would never forget, the reason she was in Wichita Springs with her father. Olive had to flee from what was killing her and pick up the broken pieces and rebuild somewhere.
She peeled off her sports bra and grabbed a t-shirt from the partially unpacked suitcase in the corner of her room. Her father had given her his bedroom and had taken the couch so that she would have a modicum of privacy.
Olive had struggled with feelings of abandonment her whole life after her father left, but in spite of this, she felt guilty for imposing on his life now. He was too old and poor to be worrying about her and her stupid decisions in Indiana.
Once the holidays were over, she was going to get a job and help him out. Maybe Mindy would hire her as a server at the diner.
She stumbled into the living room hoping to see her father sleeping soundly on the couch. Rubbing her eyes, she glanced around, but he wasn’t there.
Dad, where are you?
Olive realized it was still dark, but the darkness did not seem normal. Puzzled, she looked at the window, for the first time seeing that the blinds muted an eerie reddish glow.
She edged toward the window slowly, and with one hand, she pushed the blinds aside and peered out.
The sky was pregnant with crimson clouds, completely eclipsing the sun and coating the landscape in darkness.
She stepped back and returned to her bedroom, pausing at her nightstand where her cell phone sat plugged into its charger. According to her phone, it was past noon. She checked the Weather Channel website, trying to find reporting on an eclipse or some other natural phenomenon, but the website refused to load, indicating she had no reception. Olive waved her phone around in the air, even going so far as to stand on her bed in an attempt to get a signal, but she soon realized her attempts were futile.
She yanked on a pair of jeans, a hoodie, and her boots and rushed to the front door.
Olive looked up at the sky. Snowflakes fell around her eyes, and she wiped them off. When she pulled her hands away, she was alarmed to see that her fingers were black and sooty.
Her first thought was that she had touched something dirty in the house, or that maybe her black eye shadow had broken in her suitcase and gotten all over her clothes. But as she noticed more “snowflakes” land on her hoodie and not melt into the usual droplets of water, Olive swallowed hard.
Like her, others were standing outside their trailers gazing at the sky in confusion. They scratched at their heads and talked animatedly to each other, throwing out possible explanations and hypotheses.
Nothing made sense. Olive was looking up when out of her periphery, she caught sight of something white flashing across the top of one of the trailers.
A scream erupted causing everyone to whirl around.
Several houses down, someone no, something was barreling on all fours toward one of the female townsfolk.
Whatever it was moved so quickly that Olive was unable to make out definitive characteristics other than its alabaster skin, and that it was definitely not human.
It reared up on its thin back legs and began to viciously claw at the woman. She shrieked in agony, trying to block its advances with her hands, but her attempts to deflect its blows were useless. Blood spewed across the vinyl siding of the trailer beside her, and she clutched at her abdomen in desperation, weakly collapsing to her knees.
A few men ran to her aid, shoving the creature away from her, but it shifted its focus to them, turning with unfathomable speed and attacking each newcomer until all of them were scattered around it, impotently curled into the fetal position, moaning in protest and pain.
More screams came from the opposite end of the park, and without thinking twice, Olive turned and ran into the confines of her home, slamming and locking the door behind her.
Her hands were trembling, palms sweaty in spite of the cold. She drew in deep, shaky breaths, trying to soothe herself, but her heart was pounding so loudly she thought it would explode.
A high-pitched screech nearly made Olive jump out of her skin, and she pressed her palms against her ears, blocking out the ear-piercing noise.
It sounded close.
Too close.
Olive went over to the large window in the living room, carefully crouching down until she was just beneath it. She painstakingly inched her way up until only her eyes appeared over the window sill.
Mere feet from the steps leading up to her door, Olive saw one of the people who had been attacked earlier sprawled out on the ground. A broken pair of retractable bifocals hung haphazardly across his face.
The man’s chest rose and fell, but his breaths were shallow. He was unconscious.
Her eyes widened in horror when a pale, spindly creature crept ever so slowly from underneath her trailer, slithering forward from between the cinder blocks that served as the home’s foundation.
It
was naked, but had no distinctive male or female genitalia. Its limbs were little more than bones covered with white, translucent flesh and bluish veins. There was no hair on the creature’s head, and from its profile, Olive could see it had unnaturally pronounced cheekbones that jutted out sharply, much like a skull devoid of flesh.
It crawled atop the man, sniffing him as it moved along. With a satisfied grunt, it scurried back down to his feet and lifted a hand.
But it was not a normal hand. Instead of fingers, the creature had curved, razor-sharp claws. It spread out the claws and then in one deft motion, sank them into the man’s ankles.
His eyes immediately opened, as if shaken from his comatose state, and he howled in pain. The creature struck him once more across the face, and he was silenced. Its claws disappeared in the man’s flesh, sunken in so deep they were no longer visible, and it began to drag him away.
Olive gasped and shut her eyes, covering her mouth to muffle the sound.
When she opened them again, the creature was pressed against the window, hollow glowing eyes staring at her. Its claws scraped across the glass, and she screamed, backing away from the window until she was in the kitchen.
In an instant, Olive was running out the back door, not knowing where she was going, but only that she had to escape. Her arms pumped furiously in rhythm with her legs.
Of one thing she was certain… no amount of rehab would ever heal her mind from the images of motionless, bloodied bodies splayed across the ash-covered ground or the wails of despair that trailed behind her.
Chapter V
THE VALLEY OF ASH AND SHADOWS
O live’s legs were burning by the time she reached the white trailer with the yellow awnings. Panic and adrenaline rushing through her, she looked right and then left as she jogged up the steps to the front door. Her hand hovered over the doorknob.
A part of her felt uncertain she was making the right choice, running to safety in Mitch’s home when she’d only met him once. Olive had lived in Wichita Springs for a whole whopping week. Was her father alive, or had those things gotten him, too? She had nowhere else to go, no one else to help her, but she felt an odd connection to Mitch.
She gritted her teeth and turned the knob. The door was fortunately unlocked. Where she came from, people had deadbolts on their doors and bars over their windows.
As soon as she was in, she locked the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily. When she turned around, she noticed an older woman staring at her from a hospital bed in the center of the living room. The woman’s eyes were wide with panic.
Lifting her hands to show she meant her no harm, Olive slowly approached the bed. “I’m a friend of Mitch’s, ma’am.”
At the mention of her son’s name, the woman visibly relaxed. “Oh, alright then.” She didn’t seem to be entirely lucid. She looked Olive up and down. “I’m Luella. What’s your name?”
“Olivia. But everyone calls me Olive.”
“That’s an odd name. I think I would have remembered Mitch talking about a friend named after a food.”
Pursing her lips together, Olive fidgeted with a loose string on her hoodie. “I guess you can’t say we’re friends. We just met yesterday. He drove me home from Mindy’s.”
The older woman studied her a moment longer, then smiled. “Well, regardless, Mitch needs friends.”
Olive didn’t meet her gaze. She didn’t have any friends either, not anymore. If she was truly honest with herself, her friends had been toxic, and in order to get better, she had to let them go. She tried to focus her attention on the danger at hand. “Do you have a cell phone or anything? We need to call the police.”
Luella shook her head. “Just the landline.” Concern grew in her voice. “I’ve been hearing screams. What’s going on?”
Olive walked to the light blue telephone mounted on the wall in the kitchen. Picking it up, she held it to her ear, waiting for a dial tone. There was none.
“It’s chaos out there,” she replied, letting go of the receiver. “These… things… are killing everyone.”
Struggling to sit up, Luella starting searching for something in the folds of the blanket on her bed. “What things? Wild dogs?”
“I’ve never seen a dog that looked like that,” Olive answered truthfully.
Finally finding what she was looking for, Luella lifted the television remote. “Maybe there’s something on the news. I saw the red sky. In all my years, I’ve never witnessed anything like it. Do you think it’s related?”
“It has to be. Everything happened at the same time.”
When Luella hit the power button on the remote, nothing happened. She jabbed the button again. “Hmmm. How peculiar.”
Olive wasn’t surprised. “That seems to be the trend today.”
Outside, aside from the red sky and falling ash, all was quiet. From a distance, she could see the bright Christmas lights in the windows of Mindy’s diner.
“We need to get to Mitch,” Luella insisted.
“Mitch is at the gas station, and the phone doesn’t work.”
“How did you get here?”
Olive shrugged and pushed her hair behind her ears as she paced back and forth. “I ran. I don’t have a car.” As if a light bulb went off in her head, she snapped her fingers. “Wait. Do you have another car here?”
Luella looked at her like she’d grown three heads. “I haven’t driven a car in at least ten years since I got sick. Anywhere I need to go, Mitch takes me. But I don’t get out very often on account of my condition.”
Weighing her options, Olive walked to the window once more. She didn’t want to go outside again and risk running into one of the creatures. She looked around the room, struggling to see in the dimly-lit space. There were photographs hung on the wall, photographs of a little boy, of a couple smiling on their wedding day, of old black and white portrait shots of a man and a woman with somber expressions on their faces. When she noticed the hunting rifle a little further down, she ran to it and pulled it from its mounting.
“Does this work?” she asked Luella excitedly, turning the weapon over in her hands to inspect it. Olive didn’t know much about guns, but she could see it wasn’t loaded. “Where’s the ammo?”
“No, no,” Luella told her. “That’s Mitch’s dad’s hunting rifle. Hasn’t been used in over two decades.”
“Oh.” She returned it to its mount on the wall. Her shoulders were tense, and her jaw was taut. She could hear screaming from far away.
Luella grabbed a glass of water from the table next to her. “My hip is bothering me something fierce again. Can you hand me my pills, Olive? They’re in the kitchen.”
Olive went to the kitchen and took the pill bottle from a shelf near the sink. There was faded, nearly illegible hand-writing on the label of the bottle, but Olive didn’t miss it.
OxyContin.
It used to be one of many narcotics Olive had abused before going to rehab.
She wetted her lips.
Maybe just one.
Just one to take off the edge.
Olive pressed her palm into the cap, ready to open the bottle.
But she didn’t. She was drawn to something else.
A photo was on the refrigerator of a little boy wedged between two smiling adults in Times Square. Olive instantly recognized Mitch and Luella. She released the pressure on the lid, and her hand fell to her side.
She took the photograph off the refrigerator and went back into the room. “I thought Mitch had never left Wichita Springs.”
Luella smiled when she saw the photograph. Taking it from her, she pointed to it. “That’s Mitch’s favorite picture. Took it when we all visited New York for Christmas. Mitch was just seven here.”
Olive studied the photo with her. “Is that your husband?”
Luella nodded, and her eyes became moist with the promise of tears.
“What happened to him?” Olive asked. Realizing her impudence, she corrected, “You don’t have to tel
l me if you don’t want to.”
Luella reached for the pill bottle from Olive, who reluctantly handed it over. “He died of a brain tumor shortly after the trip. That’s the last picture we got before he died.” She placed a pill in her mouth then took a sip of water. “I think it’s why Mitch doesn’t like celebrating Christmas anymore.”
Olive set the photo down and glanced at the door.
“What is it?”
She tilted her head and strained to listen. “That’s just it,” Olive murmured. “I don’t hear anything.”
The screams had vanished, and all that remained was silence.
“Maybe the police took care of it,” Olive suggested.
“Honey, we don’t have police here. We’d be lucky if a sheriff came out a couple times a year.”
Olive quietly went to the window.
There were strange prints in the ash outside. Not human.
The markings seemed to circle around on either side of the trailer.
“Luella, we need to hide,” Olive whispered. “Can you walk?”
The older woman shook her head. “Not with you as my support. Mitch always helps me get around. You won’t be strong enough.” She pointed to the wheels on her bed. “Roll me into his room, and we’ll lock the door and hide.”
Olive complied and wheeled the bed past the kitchen and through the narrow hallway into the sole bedroom in the trailer. The room was small with a neatly-made twin bed pushed up against the wall.
Luella’s hospital bed almost didn’t fit, but Olive managed to maneuver it in front of the closet. She had barely locked the door when she heard a crash in the living room.
Wide-eyed, she looked at Luella, raising a finger to her lips.
The cheap wood door wouldn’t keep a mosquito out. She placed her hands on either side of a dresser and scooted it against the door. As soon as she did so, a screech sounded from the living room, and something scrambled across the wood floor until it was just outside the bedroom.
Claws raked the wooden surface of the door, coupled with intermittent pounding. Olive didn’t have to see it to know it was the same creature from earlier.
And Soon Comes the Darkness Page 13