The Darkening_A Coming of Age Horror Novel

by Christopher Motz

  For the last several years it’d become a regular hangout, a place to get away from the other kids. It was their doorway to a forbidden world, a hidden place blasted out of the earth like the entrance to a secret hideout. If their parents had known where their children were playing, the boys would’ve been punished for their stupidity. Luckily no one kept a secret like a friend with a secret of their own.

  Near the tunnel, in the thick tangle of forest next to the tracks, was the local swimming hole known as The Falls. It’d been mostly abandoned since the Elmview Pool had opened three years earlier. All the snotty brats who once used The Falls had migrated to the pool, comparing swimsuits and bragging about their death-defying stunts from the high dive. It suited Danny and Brent just fine, they didn’t associate with many of those kids and preferred the added privacy they’d gained.

  Unfortunately, The Falls had lost its luster ever since the previous summer when Charlotte Benning chased them out of the woods, brandishing a large tree branch, threatening to beat them senseless. Her twin sons, Albert and Josh, hung out at The Falls often, usually smoking their father’s cigarettes and watching the young kids swim. As if it wasn’t creepy enough, rumor had it that they were caught jerking off down by the riverbank. True or not, it didn’t matter. What mattered was how quickly it spread around the neighborhood and how it heaped a huge pile of shit on their reputation.

  Charlotte had gotten wind of the vicious rumor and headed down to The Falls herself, confronting unsuspecting kids as they came for a swim. Rather than save her boys from future ridicule, her actions perpetuated the story, and The Falls became know as Faggot’s Forest. If the Benning twins wanted it, they could have it. Danny wasn’t about to be caught dead there. He’d always wondered what it would be like to have a brother and what cool things they’d do together, but masturbating in the woods wasn’t one of them.

  The Tunnel and The Falls were off the table.

  “Well,” Danny said, “if you have a better idea let’s hear it.”

  “Fine. You ready for this? The old shoe factory.” Brent crossed his arms over his chest, satisfied that he’d come up with the greatest plan ever.

  “The old Rimmel plant? What the hell are we gonna do there? Sweep the floors? Wash the windows?”

  “Maybe we’ll find something cool. I heard Bobby Sikonis went in there and found an old office safe with a hundred bucks in it.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you? Do you really think they would’ve closed the place without taking the safe? Not to mention Bobby is scared of his own shadow. He couldn’t look at the place without pissing his pants.”

  “You’re probably right, but we haven’t explored it yet. Who knows what we might find.”

  “Spiders. Spiders and bats and old dried rat shit.” Danny played devil’s advocate but was instantly intrigued.

  The Rimmel Shoe Factory was a sprawling, brick monstrosity that closed its doors over twenty years ago. It’d begun life in 1895 when Elmview was still considered an up-and-comer in the industrial boom. Like many towns in the coal region, the death of the mines meant the death of everything. People lost their homes, businesses were shuttered, and many of the locals found themselves out of a job with few options. The old factory was another forgotten remnant of bygone days, a sad reminder of Elmview’s glory years. It stood vacant and crumbling and overgrown.

  “Fine. Let’s do it,” Danny said. “We’ll get Eric and Charlie.”

  “I talked to Charlie, he won’t be around for a few days. His mom took him to his grandmother’s place in Virginia.”

  “Virginia? He must be bored to death.”

  Brent shrugged and walked down the front steps. Danny shaded his eyes with his hand, blocking out the sun. The cerulean sky was devoid of clouds and the air above the asphalt shimmered with radiating heat. At eleven that morning the mercury hovered at eighty-seven degrees.

  Oblivious to the heat, Danny smiled, reveling in his freedom. There was so much to do between now and the beginning of school, so much to explore and experience. Graduation was two years away. Two short years and all the prize amounts would double - the dreaded Whammy waiting around every corner. Danny filed that shit away. There was still a little life in The Wanderer’s Society.

  Danny and Brent created The Society a few years earlier. Their friend Eric joined soon after, and finally Charlie in the summer of 1984. The rules of the club were simple: no parents, no girls, and members must explore to the best of their ability and without fear. They explored the out-of-the-way places, the forgotten corners of Elmview hidden from those not looking. Abandoned buildings, mine tunnels, unknown ruins of brick and glass, overgrown entrances into places unseen. It not only gave them something to do, but it gave them something to be part of, a private club that was theirs. It’d served its purpose, and although they never mentioned the Wanderer’s Society these days, the goals they set forth remained. Sadly, Danny knew this could be one of the last summers they would be together. Summer jobs, college, and adulthood stood outside the door, and Danny wasn’t ready to greet what awaited them on the other side.

  “What are you waiting for, spaz?” Brent asked.

  “Sorry, just thinking.”

  “Can you think and walk at the same time? I’m gonna melt on the sidewalk.”

  They rounded the corner to Nicholas Street, making small talk, dreading knocking on their friend’s door. When Eric Rogers was seven years old, his father had died, leaving him with his mother, Joan, and his older sister, Jacky. They treated him like shit, an outcast in his own home. Eric didn’t talk about it, but the boys saw enough to know he had it rough.

  Jacky was the rebel, the one who got away with everything. She had a reputation as a pothead, booze-hound, and an easy fuck. She got stoned with her mother daily while Eric hid in his room trying to block out the sounds of their drunken partying. In the wake of his father’s death, his family buried themselves in booze and bad behavior. He never invited his friends inside and they were thankful for not having to tell him no. The stench that wafted from the open door was enough of a deterrent - a thick miasma of stale cigarette smoke, weed, dirty cat litter, and the sweetish-sour hint of liquor.

  As they reached Eric’s house, they played Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who’d knock on the door. It’d been an ongoing tradition for the last three years.

  They stood on the crumbling sidewalk, looking at the scattered junk on the front porch. The engine from his father’s Camaro took up most of the space, sitting in a brown patch of leaking oil. Two plastic lawn chairs sat upended next to the greasy V-8 amid a mountain of Guers iced-tea cartons and a dusty forest of cigarette butts. The support posts were covered in flaking white paint and scribbles of crayon, the faded aluminum siding crusted in years of dirt and grime.

  “Ready?” Danny asked. “One. Two. Three!”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Rock beats scissors. You lose.”

  “You always pick rock.”

  “Yeah, and you always pick scissors. I figured you would have learned by now.”

  “Every damn time.” Brent elbowed Danny out of his way and rapped on Eric’s metal screen door; someone coughed harshly on the other side. Jacky answered, gazing out with bloodshot eyes, surrounded by the stink of marijuana and body odor. She wore a dirty Dokken t-shirt and black sweatpants with a large hole in the crotch.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Jacky slurred, sticking her fingers through the hole in her pants and scratching absently. Brent tried not to look, but glanced anyway, spying a pair of dirty, blue underwear. He looked back at Danny with a grimace. Danny shrugged and stifled a laugh.

  “Is Eric allowed out?” Brent said.

  “Why? Is it show-and-tell at The Fag Farm?” Inside, Joan cackled.

  “We’re just gonna hang out, that’s all.”

  “Whatever, fuckface.” She slammed the door and retreated into whatever hell lay beyond. “Eric, your douchebag friends are here again.”

  Danny
and Brent exchanged a look and sat on the curb, waiting for their friend for almost twenty minutes. They listened as Jacky shouted at her brother, followed by Joan’s trademark raspy crackle. It was nothing new. Joan was likely in the early stages of a Jim Beam stupor.

  Several times, Jacky appeared at the front window, once to stick out her tongue, another time to flip them the bird, and a final time to press her tiny, naked breasts to the nicotine-stained window, making tracks in the filth with her nipples.

  It wasn’t the adventure they’d hoped for.

  Finally, the door banged open and Eric hurried out. “What’s up, guys?”

  “Same shit,” Danny said.

  “What in the actual fuck is wrong with your sister, dude?” Brent asked. “Was she dropped on her head? Repeatedly?”

  “That’s what you get on a steady diet of pot and vodka. I stay out of her way as much as possible.”

  Danny noticed that Eric had showered that morning. For most people, it was a given, but here soap and water were a privilege, not a rule. His hair was shampooed, and he smelled of Irish Spring.

  When they first met Eric at school, people called him the ‘dirty duckling.’ He sometimes wore the same clothes for days at a time, wrinkled and reeking of cat urine, his hair greasy and unkempt. He was a smart and funny kid; Danny noticed it right away, and it wasn’t fair he had to pay for his circumstances. Especially not from over-privileged assholes who showed up to school in their daddy’s BMW. Danny and Brent let him shower at their houses, gave him deodorant and toothpaste, let him enjoy being a kid for a change. Now he was one of them, and always would be, no matter how fucked up his life was at home.

  Danny said, “Our friend here wants to check out the old shoe factory. You in?”

  “Sure, at least it’s something we haven’t done yet. I’ve been so bored, I thought about killing myself.”

  “That’s a bit dramatic,” Brent said.

  “Nope, I was literally seconds away.”

  They rested on the steel railing along the bridge and smoked cigarettes from a pack Eric had stolen from his mother. Donnelly Stream trickled sluggishly below, rocks jutting from the water. A handful of younger neighborhood kids played along the bank, throwing mud at one another while laughing and swatting at swarms of gnats. Human detritus bobbed along the river’s edge.

  The boys didn’t speak while they palmed their cigarettes, hiding them from passing cars. The trees lining the river were alive with the sounds of birds and insects. The steeple of the Grace Methodist Church towered over them, casting a shadow that gave them a sanctuary from the glaring sun.

  They finished their cigarettes, flicked them into the water, and walked to Dutch Hill where the factory awaited them. They stopped for a few seconds at the top of the hill, breathing heavily and bathed in sweat.

  “Brent,” Eric said, “no offense or anything, but I thought with all the exercise you get, you would’ve stopped being a fat ass by now.”

  Brent flipped him off and Danny barked a quick laugh. “Good one.”

  “So what are we doing, smartass?” Brent asked. “We going or not?”

  “Sure, we just gotta watch out for old man Moyer.”

  Danny groaned and threw his hands up. “I forgot about that old prick.”

  The Moyer house overlooked the factory. The elderly man had worked there as a security guard in the 40’s and was obsessed with watching over the property. Eric gestured for the boys to follow him. “I know a way around back, maybe he won’t see us.”

  “Lead the way,” Brent replied.

  It didn’t take long to walk around the block and reach the dirt access road. They stopped and stared. Even in broad daylight, the factory was intimidating. Row after row of cracked and broken windows lined the side of the building, the remaining glass milky with age. Five large garage doors and three employee entrances remained closed, chained with rusting padlocks. A large, round chimney rose fifty feet in the air, leaning to one side and threatening to fall over in the next stiff wind. A variety of spray-painted graffiti covered every inch of the brick surface of the wall: The Dutch Hill Gang, RaduKnowsU, drawings of skulls and crossbones, dozens of bands like The Rolling Stones, Styx, Poison and others, and several involving people’s mothers or sisters who offered blow-jobs for pocket change.

  The boys each placed their arms on the top bar of the chain-link fence and rested their chins on them as if admiring a work of art for the first time. A turkey buzzard shrieked nearby, breaking them from the spell they were under. Somewhere a lawnmower growled to life; a Beagle bayed a few blocks away; hot wind soughed through the trees; a worse-for-wear Trans-Am cruised along on the street above them, blaring REO Speedwagon.

  Clouds passed across the sun, casting a shadow on the building, shrouding it in semi-darkness. Danny jumped as if he’d been pinched. A figure watched them from a second-story window. It raised one abnormally long arm and waved before disappearing like mist. Danny backed away from the fence, suddenly cold, goosebumps breaking out on his exposed flesh.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Brent asked.

  “Uh, nothing,” Danny said. “I thought I saw something.” He pointed at the window and avoided eye contact. “I’m sure it was nothing, just a reflection.” It was not nothing. Danny was sure of it. It certainly wasn’t a fucking reflection.

  “We didn’t go near the place and already you’re pissing in your pants,” Eric said.

  “I’m not pissing in anything, I thought I saw something. It’s no big deal.”

  A loud voice broke the silence. “Hey, you down there!” Old man Moyer stood on the hill above them, shaking his finger at them. “You boys! What are you doing? Get away from there before I call the cops.” The boys ran toward the tree line, afraid to see if the miserable bastard had his shotgun.

  “Fuck you asshole,” Eric yelled over his shoulder. “You suck dirty balls.” He stumbled and nearly fell on his face before recovering. They disappeared into the woods, laughing and shouting and gasping for breath. They knelt in the thick brush, watching the path to make sure they hadn’t been followed. When the coast was clear, they collapsed in a pile of dead leaves and tried to catch their breath, listening as cicadas chittered in the trees overhead.

  “I guess we should pay attention next time,” Brent wheezed.

  “I told you, he’s like a hawk,” Eric said.

  They remained in the shade for some time before getting up and finding the path leading deeper into the woods. They fought their way over washed-out gullies and through wide expanses of fern and Spoonwood before coming out along the edge of the Smoke Creek, named after the misty, gray tint from polluted mine run-off. It smelled of chemicals and the noxious stink of sulfur.

  Further up the creek stood a small wooden shed popularly known as the ‘Crack Shack.’ This local hotspot for teenage boys had been there for as long as anyone remembered, hiding a large quantity of porn stacked in cardboard boxes. Hustler, Puritan, Cheri, Playboy - a fine selection for any discerning young man in need of variety.

  Danny no longer went there. He didn’t want to think about that place ever again. He hadn’t been there since he was twelve, and for once he wished that he’d listened to his mother and hadn’t gone into the woods alone.

  ***

  It was a dismal Saturday afternoon in March.

  Brent had gone out shopping with his grandmother, Billy Grenadine was in Philadelphia visiting his aunt, James Laudner had the flu, and Albie Beck had been grounded for putting laxatives in his sister’s hot chocolate. It was one of those shitty days where it seemed like the world had left Danny behind.

  He wandered aimlessly for an hour before he wound up at the ‘Crack Shack.’ As people tired of their personal collections, they’d dump their unwanted smut, allowing for a different experience each time. It’d started drizzling, and the air had grown damp. He jogged toward the shack and entered, thankful to be out of the rain.

  The small, wooden building was lined with soggy cardboa
rd boxes full of well-worn magazines with everything from S&M to anal to lesbian encounters. Three wooden chairs sat in the center of the room. The walls were plastered with nude centerfolds and heavy metal posters. The air smelled of wet wood, mildew, and a musky stink Danny couldn’t identify.

  He’d just taken a seat and began rummaging through one of the boxes when the door creaked open and a man entered.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Danny said, standing. “I’ll get out of your way.”

  “Don’t worry about it kid, no biggie. Sit and stay a while.” He walked in and closed the door behind him. “Getting cold out there.”

  Danny nodded in agreement.

  The man walked to the back of the room, opened a cabinet, and pulled out a few candles. “Let’s shed some light on the situation.” He lit them, removed a pack of smokes from his pocket, and offered the pack to Danny.

  “No thanks, I’m good.”

  “What are you doing here alone? Wanted to rub off a quick one before dinner?” he laughed, inhaling deeply on his cigarette and filling the room with smoke. “That’s it, isn’t it? Don’t wanna get caught jerking off, huh? Don’t worry, I know the feeling.”

  Danny nodded again.

  “Shit, you and I are friends now. We share a bond, am I right?” The man removed his jacket and baseball cap and put them on the chair. His hair was greasy and speckled with dandruff. His stained tank-top had several holes, revealing the pasty flesh beneath.

  “I really have to get going.” Danny’s hands shook. He began sweating even though it was cold enough inside to see his breath.

  “It can wait,” the man said. “We’re friends now, remember?”

  Danny stood up so quickly, the chair fell backward and slammed to the floor. He reached out for the door when the man grabbed him by the hood of his jacket and pulled him back. The collar dug painfully into Danny’s neck.