Piercing the Darkness: A Charity Horror Anthology for the Children's Literacy Initiative

by Joe R. Lansdale

  And then its power.

  Slush and snow painted the bedroom windows, reminding her of how it had clung to tree branches that day so many years before. The forest behind their home transformed into a frosty landscape of ice and snow—barren, silent, still, pale. Like the dead. A day when school had been cancelled and children took to the streets to build snowmen, to sled, to ice skate on nearby frozen cranberry bogs, and a day when she had decided to venture into the forest with her new camera, hoping to capture it on film. A day when she had positioned herself on a large boulder, and, inhaling the crisp fresh air, scanned the surrounding trees in search of her first shot.

  How did it start? Where did it all begin?

  Lydia set the album aside with a sigh and stared at her hands. Rings on nearly every finger, nails natural and void of polish or color, ashen skin stretched tight over bone. Narrow wrists cloaked in countless silver bracelets, which led to thin arms and delicate shoulders. She slowly brought her hands to her face. Where had the time gone in those twenty years since her thirteenth birthday? Glancing at the portfolio, her question was answered. A quiet moan seeped in from the living room but she ignored it. Devon, still only twenty-two, would never experience a moment like this, a moment where one still felt relative youth and vibrancy while afforded the luxury of gazing back over the course of many years. But she had given Devon a gift of greater depth and lasting value. “We know the truth,” she said softly, fingers tracing the edge of the album. “Don’t we, Dev.”

  ««—»»

  Footsteps crunching the snow and leaves beneath echoed through the forest, the sound intrusive in an otherwise hushed atmosphere. Sitting on the boulder, cradled by a ring of birch trees, spindly branches stripped and weighted with frozen snow, Lydia cocked her head, watching, listening and even then knowing there was something about the sound that signaled urgency. She held her position, her hiding place, and focused on two indistinct forms darting through a dense patch of trees in the distance, their breath escaping them in billows of rolling steam. The smaller of the two, the one in the lead, staggered into the clearing, nearly lost his footing then looked around in a frantic spinning motion. Lydia squinted through watery eyes at Kyle Watson, a boy from the neighborhood two years younger than she. Even at a distance of perhaps fifty feet, she could see the fear in his eyes and the frenetic rise and fall of his small chest. From behind him emerged the second figure, and Kyle made a break for it, but caught his foot on something and lurched forward, face-first into the snow.

  Todd Mantrich grinned and sauntered triumphantly toward his fallen prey. A boy she had grown up with and gone to school with, Lydia knew Todd as the violent and sadistic bully he had always been. Held back twice, he was fifteen while the rest of his class had just turned thirteen, and Todd lived on the wrong side of town, the poor side, where the houses were not neat and proper and presentable, with manicured lawns and paved driveways. His home was more a shack, with a dirt patch for a front yard. His clothes bore none of the designer labels the rest of the children of Potter’s Cove wore like badges of honor, and his parents didn’t frequent the yacht clubs or private golf courses most others did. His father pushed a broom for a living and his mother drove a school bus. There were rumors, always spoken in hushed voices by adults at cocktail parties and children in the school cafeteria, that his parents abused him. They were alcoholics, and Todd had “problems” which accounted for his low grades and constant suspension from school for fighting or smoking or brutalizing other students.

  Lydia knew him as the boy who always called her “Skinny Lydie”, the boy who had cornered her one morning in the hallway just outside the boy’s bathroom. The boy with breath like cigarette smoke and eyes like she had never seen before, eyes that appeared calm and controlled at first glance—almost lifeless—but that harbored something else. Like snake eyes, just before the fangs are exposed and it lunges for you. There was gleeful rage behind those eyes, something she had seen firsthand when he’d pinned her against the wall and run his hands first across her breasts and then around to her back.

  “Shit,” he’d laughed quietly. “Your shoulder blades are bigger than your tits, Skinny Lydie, may as well walk backwards.”

  And upon seeing the tears fill her eyes he had walked away, satisfied.

  Lydia didn’t tell, never mentioned it to anyone because even then she realized Todd was capable of much more than mere intimidation, a cheap feel, and dirty words.

  And that morning, safely hidden and watching him slowly circle little Kyle Watson, she saw that same dead look in Todd’s eyes.

  “Get up, you little prick,” he said, pushing the smaller boy with his boot.

  Kyle rolled over, his padded snowsuit making maneuverability difficult, and pushed himself further away, still on his back, his body forming a trough in the snow. “Quit it, Todd!”

  “You think you could outrun me, you piece of shit?” Todd put hands on hips and laughed, an odd hollow sound, void of joy. Reaching down, he grabbed Kyle by the front of his snowsuit, yanked him to his feet and shook him so violently Lydia feared he might snap the boy’s spine. A punch to the gut followed, and as he released him, Kyle gasped, doubled over, and sank slowly to his knees.

  Lydia felt herself shrink, as if hoping the boulder would absorb and hide her. Breathing carefully, slowly through her nose, she clutched the camera in her lap, eyes trained on the scene playing out before her.

  Todd ripped the knit cap from Kyle’s head, tossed it aside, then pulled the boy to his feet and slapped him twice. Still crying, Kyle tried to break free, but Todd clamped a hand around his throat and leaned in so close their faces nearly touched. He spoke, but in a softer tone, and Lydia could not make out the words. Still holding him by the throat, Todd grabbed the zipper and ripped it down until the front of the snowsuit was open. That laugh echoing through the trees again, he spun Kyle around, and with one violent tug, pulled it down. He released the younger boy, shoved him to the ground, the suit tangling around his feet as he fell. Todd dropped the snowsuit and placed a boot on the small of Kyle’s back.

  “Quit it!” He struggled to rise, face pink, cold and streaked with tears. “I’m telling! I’m telling!”

  Todd slid his boot to the back of Kyle’s head and pushed down, grinding the boy’s face deeper into the snow. “You’re not gonna say shit, pussy boy.”

  Lydia wiped the moisture from her eyes with the back of a gloved hand, careful to move slowly, and no longer certain the tears had been caused by the chilly air alone. Her heart pounded in her chest and her mouth had gone dry, palms sweating beneath the knit gloves as shivers which began at the nape of her neck fanned out across her back and shoulders. Do something.

  Todd stepped away, and his eyes searched the nearby trees. With a purposeful stride he closed on one small tree in particular and snapped free a branch. He broke it over his knee, chose the shorter of two lengths and threw the other aside. Moving closer, he slapped the stick against his thigh, the sound mingling with Kyle’s sobs. Eyes wide, like that day in the hallway, Todd cocked back his arm and swung the stick down across the back of the boy’s legs. “Your mommy’s not here to save you this time, is she? Is she, pussy?”

  ««—»»

  Lydia reached out with a steady hand, slid her fingers beneath the album cover and flipped it open. Her eyes found the first series of photographs. The earliest traces of what would become her life, her art, stared back, a bit faded; corners brown with age but still potent beneath plastic sleeves.

  ««—»»

  Todd had hold of Kyle’s shirt collar. He jerked the boy to his feet and shoved him toward a tree stump. As he fell forward, flopping onto the rotted bark, a fine spray of snow exploded around them, joining the flakes still descending so gracefully. And then he was whipping the boy again and again with the stick, harder it seemed, with each arching swing as cries and laughter became one. Todd suspended his assault long enough to catch his breath, and then suddenly the waistband of Kyle’s long ther
mal underwear was in his free hand. Tugging them down, the pants were quickly around the boy’s ankles, the backs of his thighs and tiny rounded buttocks streaked with crimson blotches and scratches already spotted with blood.

  Lydia was certain, even after all these years, that Kyle never uttered another word. Even his crying had stopped, and silence returned to the forest. Only this silence was no longer natural, no longer one of peace and uninterrupted solitude.

  Her eyes locked on Todd’s right then, until a shrieking howl fractured the stillness and she found herself choking back bile and trying desperately to remain still, even after her eyes had left Todd and focused on the stick now protruding from Kyle Watson’s backside. And as the boy whimpered, his body shaking but still bent over the stump, Todd staggered back and steadied himself against a nearby tree. He shivered, his body quaked, stiffened, then slowly went limp, and he leaned his full weight against the tree before sliding down into the snow on the seat of his pants, his face slick with perspiration, enveloped in clouds of labored breath.

  They remained frozen for what seemed an eternity, these three, until Todd finally forced himself to his feet and crouched down next to Kyle. He touched his back, tenderly at first, then seemed to realize it and instead grabbed a handful of the boy’s hair, yanking his head up and back so he could look into his eyes. “You tell anybody about this, you little faggot, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Todd released him, regained his feet and ran back through the forest, vanishing into the cluster of trees from which he’d come. Kyle Watson remained where he was, the slow rise and fall of his back the only indication that he was even still alive.

  Lydia felt a rush of relief, and granted herself permission to cry. But no tears would come. She slid off the boulder and moved cautiously through the trees.

  The boy lifted his head slightly, found her, and began to cry.

  She sensed movement, and for a moment thought she was falling, fainting dead away, but she had only crouched down next to him. Her hand touched his wet red cheeks—so cold—as she studied the branch, still inside him. “It’s okay, Kyle,” she heard herself say. “It’s okay. I won’t tell.”

  “Get it—” the boy gagged—“get it out.”

  Lydia pushed forward onto her knees, realizing only then the camera was still in her hand. Slowly, she lifted it to her eye.

  It spit free a photograph, and she pulled it loose, watching as the blank gray square gradually formed a picture, as if by magic, as if she had willed it to do so. Then she took another, and sat next to him in the snow, studying the results.

  Kyle’s sudden movement distracted her. He had reached back for the stick.

  She placed a hand on his back, and his hand fell free, flopping lifelessly next to him. “It’s going to be all right, Kyle,” she whispered, not even certain he had heard her. “We won’t tell anyone about this. It’s not that bad, it’s—it’s not that deep—you’ll be all right.”

  Now convinced that the boy had been more humiliated than physically injured, she rubbed his back for a time, studied his bare buttocks then returned the camera to her face. With her other hand, Lydia grasped the stick.

  ««—»»

  She turned the page.

  “My God,” Devon mumbled when she had allowed him to flip through her portfolio for the first time, “are these…are these real?”

  She sat watching his reaction as he dug deeper into the album, moving beyond her early pieces to those she had created upon arriving in the city. She smiled, able to see the portfolio clearly in his lap, recognizing the shift in maturity evident in her photographs, the progression of style and depth and skill. The shots of a homeless man she had taken while sipping her coffee, huddled beneath sweaters and a heavy winter coat. Her use of the single light from the street adjacent to the alley was masterful, cutting the shadows where the man lay draped in tattered and soiled clothes, toes exposed through makeshift shoes of plastic bags taped to his ankles, riddled with frostbite and black as the night sky. She had watched him for days, returning each night once she realized he had grown too sick to move, and had recorded with detached poignancy his gradual death.

  Next came pictures from the park she took after purchasing a wonderful night scope lens. Nights spent cruising for her next subject, shots of muggings and beatings and even a gang rape captured from the relative safety of nearby shrubs or from beneath one of the footbridges connecting the series of park streams and ponds.

  “Please,” Devon had said, looking up from the portfolio with tears in his eyes. “Please tell me these aren’t real. Tell me they’re staged, that these are actors or models or—please, Lydia, please tell me they’re not real.”

  “I’m just a witness, Dev. That’s all. An artist, nothing more, nothing less.”

  “No, you could have done something to prevent these things,” he said. “You could have helped these people.”

  Still a bit hazy from the wine they had consumed that evening, she watched him through eyes now blurred. “What are you saying?”

  “The world’s in flames and you just sit back and watch it burn.” He dropped the portfolio as if it were some rotting, maggot-infested thing, and stared at her. “And it turns you on, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?”

  It was night, and since Devon had first moved in, she felt alone.

  Again.

  “My God, that—that first one is just a child, he can’t be more than—”

  “I only recorded it.” She blanched, having never heard him even raise his voice.

  Devon struggled to his feet, blinking rapidly, looking like an animal cornered and aware that its days of freedom were over.

  “Do you know why Todd did it?” she asked.

  “Why does anyone do something so brutal?”

  “Because his father was doing the same thing to him.” Lydia took the portfolio in her arms, cradling it tenderly, like an infant. “That’s what we do, isn’t it, Dev? We learn.”

  He shook his head as if hoping to dislodge her words from his ears. “If this other boy was abused by his parents then I’m sorry for him, but—”

  “I did the same, Dev, no different.”

  “What are you talking about? You came from a good family—with money—you never wanted for anything.”

  “I learned to accept, to be obedient. I did what my parents taught me.”

  He staggered back a bit, nearly tripped and then settled. The silence between them was deafening until, after a fitful swallow, he whispered, “What did they do to you?”

  Lydia’s eyes died, and she wondered if at that moment they looked like Todd’s had that day in the forest, that day he’d cornered her, that day she’d seen his picture in the local newspaper after he’d been arrested for slitting his parent’s throats while they slept. “They overlooked me.”

  ««—»»

  The wind picked up, and the old apartment building creaked and groaned. Lydia closed the portfolio, carefully returned it to the box and locked it shut. After putting it away in the closet, she hesitated near the window and watched the empty street for a time, a profusion of thoughts spinning through her mind like the snow squall just beyond the foggy pane.

  It was time, there was no avoiding it.

  The living room was quiet, the soft light from a nearby lamp framing Devon’s prone and sleeping form in shadow. Watching him, she breathed slowly, waiting to see if her presence would cause him to stir.

  The faint touch of something foreign caught her attention. She raised her hand and glanced down to find a large housefly squatting atop it. Bringing her hand closer, she peered at the creature, watching it move in a gradual circle across her skin, its tiny legs barely registering sensation. Turning her wrist slowly, she opened her palm and allowed it to crawl to the center. Lethargic and subdued, it had lived far longer than it should have, and like Devon, was approaching death. The result seemed unnatural and pointless, beings reduced to something other than originally intended.

  ««—»»r />
  He had stormed off, leaving Lydia behind as he ran to his bedroom and began to pack, muttering incoherently, slamming things, frightening her.

  Lydia made for the walk-in closet just off the hallway she had converted to a makeshift darkroom a few years prior. Once inside she scanned the recently developed photographs dangling from a cord strung from one corner of the room to the next, the trays and bottles of chemical solutions…and something else she kept there.

  Devon had been so distraught he hadn’t noticed the razor when Lydia entered the room and threw herself at his feet. Begging him to understand, to stay, to just listen and to let her explain, she wrapped her arms around his legs, feigning tears.

  Ignoring her, he continued stuffing his belongings into a suitcase. “You need fucking help.”

  Tightening her grip, she drew the blade quickly—deeply—across the back of his ankles. His Achilles' tendons severed, Devon collapsed even before he’d had the chance to scream. Then she was on him, pummeling him with her fists, releasing a rage on his small frame that had been trapped within her for decades.

  ««—»»

  Lydia, her new companion still perched on the soft flesh of her palm, shifted her eyes to the roll of duct tape on the floor. She’d sealed Devon’s mouth with it in the past, but over the last few days it had no longer been necessary. He barely had the strength to raise his head, much less muster a scream or cry for help. Despite it all, she still loved him. He had taught her that a true artist was not a silent voyeur, rather a creator—an instigator—a god, in a way. She carefully reached out with her free hand and pulled the blanket down.

  His ankles were still wrapped in gauze, but the skin beneath and around it had turned a peculiar shade, and the stench was overwhelming. Although she had done her best to dress his wounds, the others were even worse. The area of his inner thigh, where she’d extracted a piece with a carving knife days before was still leaking blood through the dressing. She sighed. It had stained the couch.