Four Dark Nights

by Bentley Little

  “There’s really a Nowhere?” Mark asked, pleading in his voice.

  “Oh,” Dash sighed. “Marco, wait ‘til you see it. I meaan really see it. There’s something you need to drink. Here, sit up”

  Mark felt Dash’s hand slip behind his neck, pressing near the throbbing. “It’s easier to see like this.”

  Mark moaned a little—the pain at the back of his scalp intensified. “You hit me too hard.”

  “Sorry.” Dash withdrew the hypodermic needle from the plastic case.

  “What—what are you—what—don’t,” Mark whispered.

  “It’ll take the pain away. And you’ll understand. You’ll see. You will really see,” Dash said, and he held Mark’s arm down, tort his shirt sleeve up to his bicep. Dash squeezed his bicep, and then Mark felt the needle go in, twisting into his flesh. “This isn’t junk. This is ambrosia. Believe me,” Dash whispered. “You’ll have a taste of the Nowhere. What it really can be like.”

  6

  The sensation of floating, but not floating.

  Hands moved in birdlike blurs before his eyes.

  It was already morning. The rain had stopped. The sun was out.

  But the sun was white, not a warm yellowish gold, it was white—all the light was pure white in the sky. There was no sun. Mark sat up against the gravestone. The throbbing in his head was gone. The trees were funny; the woods seemed funny. Something moved along the bark of the trees. Snakes and worms wriggled along them.

  The strange thing was: some things were missing. The trees themselves didn’t move in a light wind; and there was no rain, although there had been seconds before.

  Dash was there, only he was Dash with a difference: he seemed better looking. Color in his face. A rosy glow. His eyes were like a little boy’s—all happy and expectant. Mark’s eyes went in and out of focus, and he heard a strange humming in his head. He looked at his hands, and he saw them as liquid, contained within some invisible boundary that defined “hand.” When he waved his hand, some molecules of flesh dispersed— just a few and seemed to form into an insect of some type in the air—a ladybug, flying off.

  “Ain’t it cool?” Dash asked. “It’s like the world, only different. If you stay still, you disappear. Watch.” Dash closed his eyes and mouth, and clasped his hands together. Within seconds, he seemed to evaporate like steam.

  Then he laughed, and suddenly was there again. “The world we’re used to has to move a lot or make noise for things in The Veil to see it. It’s a strange place, no?”

  Dash kept laughing, but it all seemed to move slowly, and Dash reached into his own chest, and drew back his black T-shirt, tearing it, only it didn’t tear like fabric. It formed droplets of black goo that absorbed against his green jacket. Dash pressed his hand against the skin of his pale, hairless chest and drew back the skin—not as if it were cut or scraped, but again, in that liquid medium, as if Dash himself were a bubble of soap, with the image of flesh and clothing poured into him—malleable and shifting, but within a boundary that kept the liquid in place.

  Dash’s fingers went deeper into his flesh, and drew out what appeared to be a pulsing mass of purple and poppy red. Smiling, Dash brought it closer to Mark’s face. “My heart,” he said. “My heart and your heart.” Dash reached into Mark’s chest, and it tickled. Mark laughed, and felt Dash’s fingers inside his flesh, moving along the organs within his ribcage and up. A featherlike tickle of his heart. All the while, the liquid between their bodies, the floating droplets, merged and mixed, splashing together.

  Dash held both hearts for Mark to see. “We’re brothers,” Dash said.

  “The Veil,” Mark murmured, feeling particularly good, as if he had never known, what it meant in life to feel good.

  Dash nodded. “Yep. The Veil. From a garden that existed thousands and thousands of years ago. A garden destroyed by mankind when it learned the secret names of the gods. But the wise ones who knew its value rescued this flower and its seed. And they’ve planted it and cared for it in secret all these years, Marco. And it shows you the real world. The Nowhere. If I told you this was Eden itself, wouldn’t you believe me? Look, we flow. Look at the sky. This is night, Marco. Not daylight. This is true night. The blackness is an illusion. See? Look—” Dash pointed to the sky. An eel or snake of some kind wriggled in the white air as if it were moving through rippling milk. “This is the realm of the gods. This is what we’re blinded from. This is what the Nowhere people know. And always have. We can’t be here long. We can’t take The Veil too much. It’s addictive, but it can be horrible as well as beautiful. Do you see now? Marco? How beautiful? Marco, I’ve seen magnificent cities on the surface of the sea—I’ve seen creatures that have only been drawn in ancient texts—sea monsters, mermaids, all here, all within The Veil. And the gods, too. They cause what happens, in our world, but we are blinded and cannot see—we see through darkness. The Nowhere is the true light”

  “I feel a little sick,” Mark said, reaching to his stomach. “Sick.”

  “It’s your first time. But you’ll get used to it. You’ll enjoy it more. Right now, you can only tolerate a few minutes. But later you’ll be able to have more of it. I’ll show you amazing things, brother. Amazing. Each one more beautiful than the next,” Dash said, and then he held something in the air. It looked like a white horn of some type. Writhing around it, tiny red insects, mites of some kind, thousands of them. “You’ll come out of this in a minute or two, Marco. When you do, you must say the names as soon as I’ve said the first pan. And if it gets too out of hand, you can stop it. There’s always a way to stop it. Just remember the words. They’re here, on this bone. The names you can’t forget, even if you try. Your flesh hears them once, and your molecules take in the names of the gods and hold them. You have to say the names as soon as you see me die.”

  “Die?” Mark looked at him, uncomprehending. “You’re going to die?”

  “Not really. Not die like you think. You ready?” Dash held the bone in front of his chest.

  He began saying what Marco realized were the first halves of the names of the gods of the Nowhere.

  7

  Alone, with Dash, in the rain. Out of The Veil. In the real world. The ordinary, awful world again. Mark sat up. Sky, black. The earth, sucking mud.

  Taking the smooth thin bone, Dash pressed the sharpened end of it into his chest.

  Mark reached for the bone, pulling it out. “No, Dash, please, no!”

  As he let out a final breath, Dash whispered the beginning of the names of the gods.

  When Dash’s eyes were closed, Mark said the last half of the names. He didn’t know how he could remember them— they were a long string of sounds and clicks and howls. They hurt his ears to say, like a strangely out of tune sound of pipes being played from his throat—or a saw twanging across the vowels of the names.

  He almost wanted to say the words, as well, out of fear.

  The words that could stop this.

  But he hesitated.

  Then Dash opened his eyes again.

  They glowed like the ends of cigarettes in the dark.

  Church of the Veil

  1

  Mark began shivering in the darkness as he watched what had been Dash rise to its feet. It no longer seemed to be Dash, not in the sense that he had felt Dash had been. It had the glowing eyes, and its teeth were sharp at the ends, small nails of teeth, and even in the moonlight, Mark could see the way spurs burst from his joints—elbows and knees—and writhing worms, long nightcrawlers moved along his fingers.

  “Nowhere is here.” Dash grinned, and for a second Mark thought it was a trick. The drug, perhaps, still lingering in his system. Of course. The drug. The Veil. The needle that had gone in his arm.

  “Jesus,” Dash said. “I’m hungry.”

  2

  Dash turned, glancing toward the church. Then back to Mark. “You’re not going to understand this, Mark. If you could see what I see, you would.” The red eyes burned and then
seemed to fade into Dash’s normal eyes.

  Mark heaved a sigh—it must’ve been the drug. It must’ve been. He was still hallucinating. He still felt weak and dizzy, and he had to sit down again. His head was spinning. It was the drug. That’s all it was. None of it had happened.

  “Look, give me a minute,” Dash said. “You need to rest. You’re going through a lot. Shit, I’ve been through a lot.”

  Mark turned and threw up onto a gravestone. He wiped his mouth; a sickly sweet taste lingered in his throat. The Veil

  When he turned around, Dash was gone; by the time Mark rose to his feet, he thought he saw some enormous winged bird—almost a pterodactyl, given its wingspan—landing at the door to the old church; but it was a man—no, it was Dash.

  Mark walked toward the church, lurching with each step, stopping every few feet to cough. God, what if I die? What if that drug kills me? He slid in the mud and had to pick himself up. His heart beat rapidly. It was poison. I’m going to die.

  By the time he reached the door to the old church, he heard Danny’s shout,

  3

  The candles along the altar were lit. It was warm and humid within the church, as if the summer storm had turned it into a steamroom.

  “What the fuck?” Danny laughed. “Holy shit, what the hell have you been drinkin’, Dashy? Or maybe it’s me, maybe it’s just me!” He was beer-soaked at this point; the last couple of bottles lay beside him on the stone altar. Michelle glanced up— they had been making out, which is what they seemed to do whenever they had five minutes to themselves.

  “Dash, don’t, just—just—get away,” Mark shouted from the doorway. He stepped into the back of the church. “Just come outside!”

  “Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are callin’,” Dash began to sing, and practically skipped into the church. Danny had his pants off, briefs intact, button-down shirt still on with a few buttons missing; Michelle’s shin was open; she made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat.

  “Sorry to interrupt, lovebirds,” Dash said.

  “Get the hell outta here,” Danny said, but he began laughing—it must have struck him as funny to be caught nearly doing it with his girl on the altar of this rat-hole church. Michelle pushed Danny away and began closing her shirt.

  “Enough,” she said.

  “Just a little fun,” Dash said. Mark stood at the entrance to the church, watching Dash, unsure of what he was really seeing. Dash seemed to move with a grace he’d never had before, like a dancer or gymnast, and he went right up to the altar and pressed his hands down on two of the candles to snuff them out.

  Only one left.

  “Dash!” Mark called out. “Come on, let’s go. This won’t be fun.”

  Dash turned back to him, and in the final candle’s glow, laughed a little—laughed the way he would when they’d first met, back in eighth grade, a let’s-have-fun laugh, and said, “Oh, wait and see.”

  Then he snuffed the last candle out. The room was plunged into darkness.

  “Hey, who turned off the lights?” Danny shouted. Mark saw shadows against shadows. Michelle started cussing and saying she just wanted to get the puppy and get to the party, and why didn’t her cell phone work? Danny began laughing and telling her that it was going to be better in the dark, but Mark heard a strange groaning sound—perhaps a creaking of some door?

  The door behind him slammed shut, as if by a great wind.

  But there had been no wind.

  And then the screaming began.

  The time moved swiftly, for Mark’s first instinct was to run away; but he moved forward in the darkness, hitting one of the long benches. He dug into his pocket for the matches, and drew them out. Only four left.

  He lit one, and for a fizzing few seconds, the light lit the room—there was Michelle, screaming, and something with enormous leathery wings, and crablike appendages studding its body. It was Dash, but it was no longer Dash. It had hold of Danny by the throat and was shaking him hard, side to side.

  The match went out.

  Another match; he struck it, and it flared for a moment.

  Michelle was hallway to him—her eyes were wide and seemed to have lost all intelligence—

  A creature that seemed both insect and dragon—it was only an impression, like the flash of a dream—chewing on Danny’s scalp—

  Mark dropped the match and was again in complete darkness.

  Gurgling sounds followed, and then the tearing sound of meat and a cracking of bones.

  Michelle ran past him. He felt a revulsion toward her, as if in her sudden madness, she were no longer human.

  Dash’s voice from the darkness:

  “Yesssss,” snakelike and hollow. “Marco, the Nowhere is here, you helped bring it, it’s all true,” and then the sounds of a dreadful slobbering and gobbling, as of a wild dog swiftly devouring some prey.

  Mark drew out a third match, and struck it in the matchbook.

  Dash stood so close to him that they were practically touching.

  Shocked by the closeness, Mark dropped the match, and it went out.

  In that second, he had seen the white and pink worms encircling Dash’s throat and hands, growing in pulsating movements from his flesh, and soft fuzzy tendrils gently fluttering from his bare waist and ribcage.

  His mouth painted a dark red.

  In his arms, he cradled what was left of Danny’s body. Tom and ragged and more meat than human.

  “Any shape I desire,” Dash said, and tossed Danny’s remains to Mark when the darkness again engulfed him.

  Mark felt the nausea sweep through him; he dropped the body, and turned to run, but fell to his knees instead.

  “Pray to your little god,” Dash said. “Pray like a good altar boy. But you’re in the wrong place, Marco. This is the altar of the Nowhere. The Church of The Veil. Now, where do you think Michelle’s run off to? Not outside. 1 made sure the door was shut tight and locked. She must be here. Hiding. Oh, yes! This makes it more of a game, doesn’t it? But 1 can see with more than eyes now. You know that, Marco. You’ve been through The Veil. You know that it’s a world of liquid white now.”

  Mark wanted to cry out or scream, but his voice had abandoned him—or else he had screamed so much in the past few moments without realizing it that he had no voice left. He felt cold and hot at the same time. The words. Remember the words.

  You can stop him with them. They’re the words of ending. The god will return to The Veil. The words.

  “I can hear her breathing,” Dash said. “She is gonna love what 1 do to her. I hope you’re there to see it, Marco. 1 hope you’ll partake.”

  Mark thought he heard Michelle cry out from behind him.

  “Run! Get out! Michelle! Just get out!”

  The sound of her sobs echoed. “It’s locked!” she cried, banging on the door, “Somebody! Somebody help me! Help!”

  “Michelle! Shut up! Just shut up!” Mark yells. “Stay still and shut up!”

  It needs movement and noise. Maybe it will leave now that it had Danny. Dear Jesus help us. Help her.

  The words. Remember them.

  PART TWO: THE ENDING

  1

  And so, in the room in the church, it feels his ankles. He has pressed himself against the wall, halfway between scared shitless and ready to do something—anything—to keep it from going after Michelle.

  Slick and sticky and wormy, it seems to lick his calves with its feelers. Michelle by the door, moaning out little noises—and the thing that Dash has become is slithering and feeling its way over to her. In Dash’s mind, he must be seeing the whiteness of the darkness. He must be seeing the liquid move and slosh, and the unseen things that move in the air and along the walls. He must see Michelle, too, not as a terrified young woman of eighteen, but as some collection of molecules to be devoured, to be fed upon, to increase its happiness and its mission as it moves through the world.

  The last of the tendrils that Dash-thing drags with him, slide away from
Mark’s foot.

  Leaving him. Letting him go.

  Moving toward her.

  She is groaning as if she can’t contain her fear.

  And then she lets out a bloodcurdling scream—and another and another in quick succession.

  He hears the throaty laugh. “Come on, it’s only me, Mi-chelle, come on,” Dash says, and for a fleeting instant Mark thinks that it might be a game. It might just be all fake. The drug! Yeah! It’s the drug! What he saw, the heap in the comer, wasn’t Danny at all. It was some kind of illusion. Some trick of light and dark. A bad acid flashback. This is some kind of trip. This isn’t the real world. Michelle’s sobbing, with screamlets in her voice, jagged shards of sound. Get to Danny. In his jacket. A lighter. It’s afraid of light. The Nowhere can’t exist where there’s any light. Any genuine light. If darkness is light to it, than surely light is its own kind of darkness.

  “You always wanted me, Michelle, you always did,” the thing that Dash has become says. “Rachel used to tell me how you thought I was quirky and cool, and when she did, when she whispered those things to me, it got me so revved up, baby, and I knew that someday, you and I would have this moment.” As he spoke, Mark heard the whirring sound again—a soft, rapid fluttering. He’d once had a junebug fly into his ear, and it was a sound very much like that.