Four Dark Nights

by Bentley Little

  “You’re in trouble now, Sammie,” he had said. “Watch out, ‘cause the shark’s coming and he eats little girls for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

  She had shrieked with giddy pleasure and turned to run for shore, but it was too late. Her father had lifted her up above the waves and then, over her protests, he had hurled her into the water. Sam’s eyes had widened with astonishment and she held her breath, stunned that he had actually done it. Her heart had gone wild and she’d squeezed her eyes tightly closed as she hit the water and went under. Part of her was furious, part of her terrified and part of her would never, ever be more in love.

  When she surfaced, it was to wipe the stinging salt water away from her eyes and then she had lowered herself into the water and began to hum the shark music, headed for her father.

  The grin on his face was full of mischief and joy.

  How was it that she had forgotten that grin?

  Freezing cold, her lower half soaked to the skin, Samantha shivered and gazed blankly at the unmoving feet clad in those black socks. The wind gusted again and she hugged herself. Despite the circle of stones, it blew the bedspread back farther and revealed her father’s legs. His suit pants had several strands of seaweed stuck to them. Samantha had no idea how they had gotten there, inside the spread, but it seemed very wrong to her and so she went to the sodden corpse and carefully plucked the stray seaweed from the fabric, then wiped her fingers on her sweatshirt near her shoulder where it was still dry.

  Snap!

  With a sharp intake of breath, Samantha glanced quickly around. Her heart hammered in her chest and she tried to peer between the stones again. A moment later she belatedly recognized the sound as the cracking of wood and realized that it must be Brian gathering kindling for the pyre.

  The pyre, she thought. Breathing evenly, she turned back to the altar. Slowly she went to the corpse again and began gingerly to unwrap it, to disentangle her father from the shroud that clung to him. When she was through she shifted him carefully, as though to keep from waking him, and removed the bedspread altogether.

  She brushed damp strands of hair away from his pale face.

  Something shifted behind her and Samantha turned to find Brian standing between two stones, arms piled high with splintered tree branches.

  “You’ll have to put him on the ground while we lay the wood out. Then we can lift him back up.”

  Samantha nodded and shifted her father’s corpse so that Brian could put down the armload of branches and sticks on the altar. They lowered the dead man to the ground together and then she helped him go back and forth to the pile he had made beyond the circle, carrying in more kindling and laying it out on the stone table. It took only a few minutes, and then they raised the body again, hefting it higher so that they could place it on top of the wood, which cracked and shifted under this new weight.

  Brian took a respectful step back. The wind seemed to die then. Either that or it had shifted so that the stone circle protected them from its chill.

  Samantha did not want to look at the dead man anymore. There were too many images in her head and feelings in her heart. She had to know how he had gone from being that man at the beach with her to some distant, hollow creature.

  Abruptly she stepped over to Brian, who flinched at her approach as though she might strike him. She reached down and grabbed the gas can that knocked against his leg and untied it from his belt.

  “I can do that,” he offered.

  “Thanks,” she said. But she knew that the offer was only half-genuine. Even if he was willing, they both knew that she had to do it.

  Samantha unscrewed the cap and heard gas sloshing inside, smelled the fumes that rose from within. The plastic container was maybe one-third full, but it was heavy nevertheless. She raised it high over her father’s corpse and carefully spilled it out in splashes that began at those black socks, lingered at his chest where the wet layers of clothing would need the most help burning, and then finished at his face. The pale dead flesh took on an oily sheen as the gasoline dripped from it onto the dry branches below.

  The gas can dropped from her hand. Samantha plunged her fingers into her wet pocket and retrieved a small plastic baggy. In the light from the moon and stars she held it up and peered at it. Within the plastic was a second bag, and inside of that, a box of matches from the Hardcover Restaurant. The plastic was wet on the outside, but when she opened both bags she found that the matchbox had been kept dry.

  Samantha stuffed the plastic bags into her pocket and then opened the box of matches and took one out. She struck it, and tossed it onto her father’s chest, where it landed, smoldering, beside a black button on his suit coat. The suit was soaked with more seawater than gasoline, but it caught fire instantly, on just that one match.

  Almost as though it wanted to bum.

  The fire spread quickly and in seconds Samantha and Brian had to back away from the pyre so that their backs were nearly to the stones. Oily black smoke rose from the burning gas and Samantha watched as her father’s socks caught fire. His face began to char a moment later, the skin blackening, stretching until it tore, a sudden, growling rush of fire erupting above his head as his hair caught and blazed up.

  The stink of burning flesh was like nothing Samantha had ever smelled before.

  -Brian did not leave the circle, but he turned away, unwilling to watch the body bum. Samantha did not look away. Not once. But though her gaze remained constant, watching the branches blaze up and the limbs and digits and face shrivel and be consumed by the fire, her eyes saw other things as well. She saw inward, and she remembered every time he had brushed her off or forgotten she was there, every birthday that had passed without notice, every opportunity that had come where he might have expressed even the most remote fondness for her, his only child, his little girl.

  Her eyes were dry as she watched her father’s body bum.

  8

  For long minutes she waited breathlessly, feeling the skin on her face tighten with the heat from the pyre. It seemed to her that the fire blazed higher than it ought to have, and that its color was unnaturally red, with streaks of orange that were too bright. She recalled the flickering glow in the sky above the island that night five years ago and the ethereal women who floated on the waves.

  It was real.

  It was true.

  It had to be. Samantha had not been the only one to see the fire and those women. Brian had seen them as well. It had to be true. Samantha stood within that stone circle with Brian at her side and the acrid stink of charred meat in her nostrils, and she stared at the pyre with an acidic churning in her gut. If it wasn’t true … she would never meet him face to face again, never be able to confront him. She had defiled her father’s grave for nothing.

  Minutes whispered by on the wind and the burning branches cracked and popped and flared, and soon the rage of the flame began to diminish. Slowly, Samantha slid her back down the rock and sat heavily at its base. Though she had not eaten any of the Chinese food in the van, she suddenly remembered it and the smell of it, and she turned to her right and threw up on the hard ground. Her stomach convulsed as though she might be sick a second time, but after a moment it subsided and she was able to sit upright again. Disgusted, she wiped her mouth with the back of her left hand and then dragged it along the ground to clean it, as though she were wiping dog shit off the sole of her shoe.

  Without a word Brian sat down beside her. Samantha could not look at him; she had just begun to understand what it must have cost him in his own mind to do this with her tonight. What the hell are you doing here? she thought to herself, but still she did not look at him. The guilt she felt in those moments was as powerful as the grief and anger that had been warring within her since her father’s passing.

  The fire smoldered. Through the flames she could see that the corpse was a withered, blackened thing, most of its mass burned away in the pyre. Branches had become little more than embers. Gusts of wind carried them off
like the glowing ashes on the tip of a cigarette. It would be miraculous if they didn’t catch some of the trees outside the circle on fire.

  Miraculous. Samantha tried to laugh but it came out a silent sneer. That was funny. There were no miracles on Monument Island tonight.

  “Her right hand slipped into Brian’s and though he caught his breath, he did not pull back. Samantha put her head on his shoulder and watched the fire burn down. Though her clothes were dry in the front now, they were still damp beneath her and at her back, and the combination of that chill and the warmth of the dying fire was uncomfortable. Still, that did not keep her from succumbing to the heat on her face and her near complete exhaustion. Samantha’s eyes began to close.

  A gentle nudge awakened her, and a raspy voice spoke her name. Somewhere lost in her mind she had been dreaming, but the dream was already gone. Even as her eyes fluttered open pieces of the day’s puzzle came back to her and she had a tiny spark of hope that it was her father nudging her.

  “Sam,” Brian said again.

  She gazed into his eyes. They were red and puffy, for he was just as exhausted as she was.

  “It’s going to be light in a few hours. We should get out of here.”

  The will to argue had left her. She glanced at the altar, saw that the fire was completely out now save for a few embers that gleamed like red eyes from the darkness. Nothing. For an instant her mind began to follow the thread of this fact out to its natural conclusion, to the heartbreak her father’s family would feel, the honor in her mother’s eyes, when they all learned what had happened at his grave and had to wonder what had become of his remains.

  Her lips quivered and she squeezed her eyes shut to hold back tears, her face contorted in a snarl of grief and self-loathing. Then Brian reached up to gently stroke her face, to push her hair away from her eyes and all the emotion drained out of her. Weak and empty, Samantha took his hand and let him help her up. Brian slipped an arm around her and they walked out of the circle.

  It felt wrong to her to be returning without the burden they had transported up there, but the way was much easier going down through the trees and the thick undergrowth. Branches tugged at her clothes, but Samantha barely noticed. She let Brian lead her and tried to think about nothing, numb to the cold and the world. The sound of the waves made her want to sleep some more, but she kept walking, one foot after the other, the simple motion a rhythm she could lose herself in.

  “Brian, I—”

  “Ssshhh. Don’t, Sam. Really,” he said, pausing in a tangle of trees to meet her gaze. “We’ll be okay. Let’s just get through the night. In the morning we can talk all you want.”

  After a moment’s hesitation she nodded and they kept on. When they emerged from the trees and only the thick brush was left, Samantha saw the gulls’ roost. The path that had opened to allow them to pass was gone. The trilling of the birds and the rustle of their feathers seemed to fill the air as though the sounds were all around her, too close. Their white and gray feathers had a ghostly sheen and, if possible, there seemed to be even more of them now.

  Past the gulls there was less of the rocky island shore now that the tide was in. The water would still be shallow most of the way, but they would have to swim part of the distance to the beach.

  The beach.

  Samantha blinked and peered into the night. For a moment it seemed as if the whole world had just fallen away into nothingness and only the island and the ocean were left. But then dark, squat shapes resolved themselves—the cottages that lined the coast of Biddeford Pool. The night was at its deepest, perhaps even beginning to wane, and all the lights were off in those dwellings. It was as though she were seeing the world through a dark gauze … or a shroud.

  Brian stepped on a bush and its brittle branches snapped. The sound seemed unimaginably loud.

  He froze. Samantha nearly collided with him. She glanced up at him with only a dull curiosity, but when he turned toward her, eyes filled with dread, she felt a new stirring of fear within her.

  “Wha— “

  He put a finger to his lips and then pointed to the gulls. Samantha frowned and stared at them, hot understanding at first. It took her a moment to notice the silence. No trilling, nor even the slightest ruffle of wings. They were completely still. And they were watching her.

  “I don’t—” she began.

  The gulls took flight with a bombardment of noise, a sound like a thousand flags snapping in high wind, but they did not caw. Samantha gaped at the birds as they flocked toward her.

  Brian clutched her arm, dragged her backward, shouting at her to run. He propelled her back along the way they had come, up the hill and into the thicket of trees. Branches crashed as some tried to follow. Samantha glanced behind her to see that many of them had veered off. Yet she felt them there, above the trees, pacing her. She could taste the bile in her mouth from earlier and now her throat was dry and ragged and her pants were stiff with salt from their ocean crossing, which made it horribly difficult to run.

  Her heart thundered in her own ears. She stumbled and began to fall behind. Brian grabbed her and pulled her forward again, nearly crashing into a tree himself before slipping around it. Limbs like skeletal fingers scratched at their faces and then the gulls were there. One of them tangled its talons in her hair and Samantha batted it away. She swung her arms wildly, snagging her sweatshirt on a tree and snapping a branch as she bulled her way through.

  With an anguished scream she shook her head and slapped at them. A beak tore the flesh of her left hand. Her chest hurt, lungs burning. As she tried to catch a breath, a gull came from ahead of her, flew right at her face and tore a gash in her forehead. Blood flowed into her eyes.

  Samantha screamed.

  “Brian! Get them off me! Jesus Christ, get them off!”

  But Brian was stumbling just ahead of her. He slammed into a tree trunk to scrape a gull off his back even as he tore one from his neck. Samantha wiped blood from her eyes and couldn’t breathe as she watched him, ran to him, helped him to fight off a gull even as another tangled in her own hair. The sounds of them in the branches above her head chilled her to the bone. They were maddening, those flapping, rustling noises.

  “Jesus Christ,” she whimpered again. “Oh my God, please.”

  Samantha had no idea if it was truly God she was praying to, or something else, some strange essence that lingered on this malevolent island rock. But if it was God to whom she whispered, she feared he would turn a deaf ear. She had been faithless. And yet she had nowhere else to turn.

  Off to her right now, crashing through the trees, Brian roared in pain and rage. Despair claimed Samantha and she stumbled. The gulls were going to drive her down. They might only hurt her, but she was not a fool. If they kept at it, well, there were so many of them that the gulls might kill her.

  She lunged forward and dove onto the ground, bent to cover her head with her arms. On her knees on that unforgiving ground she pleaded for mercy to whatever power might listen.

  Nearby she heard Brian muttering but could not make out the words. The thunder of gull wings filled the air still, yet it was receding. Slowly, cautiously, Samantha uncovered her head and lifted her eyes.

  There were perhaps a dozen gulls circling high above and many more roosting in the trees behind her, but she and Brian had stumbled back into the clearing with the stone circle and the gulls would not follow.

  “Oh, God,” she sighed. “Oh, my God, thank you.”

  With a kind of joy she went to Brian, who was curled into a ball on the ground, and helped him up. His face was slashed and one of his eyes was swollen shut, though she could not see if the eye was damaged or just the flesh around it. He shuddered and she did not think it was from the cold. She also did not think he was going to stop.

  “They went away,” she said, hearing how small her voice sounded.

  Brian kept shuddering and stared at her with his one good eye. “How do we get out of here?” he demanded flatly. “Ho
w do we get back?”

  Wiping again at the blood that stung her eyes, Samantha looked around the sparsely wooded clearing. Her gaze settled upon the stone circle again and all the breath rushed from her body.

  Within the circle of stones, above the altar, the air was glowing red and orange.

  But the fire was out, she thought. I saw it. It was nothing but embers.

  Then another thought struck her and she gasped. Daddy.

  Samantha ignored Brian then, staggering toward the stone circle. He reached for her and grabbed her arm but, she shook him off, so exhausted and drained from her injuries that she nearly fell with the effort.

  “Daddy,” she whispered.

  “No, Samantha,” Brian growled behind her. “Stop it. This isn’t right, don’t you get it? Whatever this place is, it wasn’t meant for this, for what we did. It’s … it was a holy place. They burned their warriors here, purified them. Maybe they brought them back, maybe not. But there’s nothing pure about what you want out of this. That’s not what it’s for. What we did … I think it’s blasphemy.”

  But her mind was closed to him. The words barely registered as she moved toward the stone circle. Her stomach ached and she could not swallow, and all the bitterness and disappointment and pain that her relationship with her father had caused her seemed as nothing compared to the idea that she would be able to see him again, to look into his eyes and ask him to love her or explain why he would not.

  A tall, broad figure appeared between two of the stones. The glow of fire inside the circle cast it into sharp silhouette so that it looked as though it were being bom of the flame and the darkness. A spark of her old anger returned along with a flicker of hope.

  At last, she thought.

  The figure emerged from the circle and Samantha faltered. He was huge and had a thick blond beard. The sword that was gripped in his right hand was crusted with old gore and dripped with fresh blood as though he had just stepped from the battlefield. Yellow eyes burned beneath a dented iron helmet with metal horns jutting from it. He wore heavy boots and clothes made of leather and fur and thick cloth.