Darkfall

by Stephen Laws

  Rohmer stared hard at Cardiff. Duvall waited.

  Lightning flashed at the reception windows, as if a power line had snapped and trailed its cables over the window. Thunder detonated like an underground bomb.

  “The door isn’t locked,” said Cardiff. “And even if it was, my guess is that our Addams Family friend could just take it off its hinges without trying.”

  “Alright . . . alright. . .” Rohmer grabbed Gilbert by the arm with a curiously disappointed look on his face, pushing the smaller man ahead of him. Then, to Duvall: “We’re leaving.”

  “The girl?” said Duvall, perplexed. “Are you saying we leave the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “We’re leaving, damn it!”

  Duvall lowered his aim.

  “There’s a side entrance there,” said Cardiff, pointing to the door opposite. “There’s a corridor leading to a service exit and back staircase.”

  Gilbert needed no prompting. He moved quickly to the door as Cardiff hauled Jimmy to his feet, keeping his own gun discreetly aimed in Duvall’s direction. Jimmy was able to stand unassisted now as Cardiff turned back to the girl.

  “Barbara?”

  She was still looking at the ceiling: “Things like that just don’t exist,” she said to herself. “This is a nightmare and I’ve got to wake up.”

  “Barbara, move it!” snapped Cardiff. “We’re getting out of this nightmare.” With sick fear in his stomach, Cardiff took her arm and guided her towards the side door. At any second, that monstrous thing could come bursting through into the corridor from behind. .

  Gilbert pulled open the side-entrance door, stepped inside . . . and then recoiled. His face was white. Furious with Gilbert’s panic, Rohmer pushed past him and yanked the door wide.

  Someone was in the corridor.

  Rohmer was frozen in the doorframe now, staring into the darkness, and Cardiff could hear a familiar voice whispering in the shadows.

  “I came in here . . . I know I came in here . . . I’m sure this is the place . . . I know I came in here. . .

  “What . . . who is it?” Still trying to keep an eye on Cardiff, Duvall joined Rohmer and looked into the corridor.

  Thunder crashed and the sound of it seemed to fill the whispered voice with dread.

  “God, God . . . I’m sure I came in here! I did! I must have! I can’t get out. I CAN’T GET OUT!”

  “Jesus Christ . . .” said Duvall.

  And now they could all see what was in the corridor.

  Something was trying to pull itself out of the corridor wall. A human figure was somehow trapped in the plasterwork of that wall at the waist, twisting and scrabbling and thrashing to be free. Sensing their presence on the threshold of the door, it twisted its head up towards them with a ferocious snarl.

  Even though the figure was wreathed in shadow, they could see that it was hideously deformed. The eyes were yellow slits blazing in the darkness; the head swollen and contorted. Saliva flew in a spray from hideously enlarged and slack lips. But it was still, despite the deformation, a face that Cardiff recognised.

  “Farley Peters . . .” Cardiff felt his stomach lurch again. “The stupid fool tried to sneak in here and got . . .”

  “CAN’T! GET! OUT!” screeched the thing that Peters had become—and tried to lunge towards them. It remained stuck fast and it screeched again, waving shredded arms as Duvall slammed the door shut and blocked out the hideous spectacle.

  “It’s another Returner, Rohmer,” stuttered Gilbert. “It’s stuck, but we can’t get past it . . .”

  “The main entrance,” said Duvall tightly. I

  Rohmer and Duvall strode away down the corridor with Gilbert close behind.

  Jimmy was recovered now and Cardiff followed, still holding Barbara, who continued to shake her head—wanting to awake.

  And now what? thought Cardiff desperately. Into the cars, that’s what. You have the panda. The keys are in your pocket. They have their own car. We all head off into the bloody storm, and then this whole horror comic gets sorted out when we’re back in the real world. But then that other manic voice was saying to him: But are you sure that the real world exists anymore? Are you sure that there’s anything left out there beyond the Darkfall? Maybe this Storm to end all Storms has killed everyone else out there? And even if it hasn’t, maybe Rohmer can see to it that you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars along with Jimmy Devlin? And maybe . . .

  Lightning whip-cracked across the reception windows again—and in the brief instant that the windows were illuminated by the flash, they all saw the monstrous shape beyond. They froze on the spot at the sight of that hideous snapshot; at the sight of the grotesque, massive shape in the act of bearing down upon those windows; charging headlong in an insane frenzy towards them. Darkness blotted out the shape again.

  And in the next instant, the glass reception doors exploded inwards.

  The storm erupted with all its force into the reception area in a whirling, roaring maelstrom of disintegrating glass shards and a wild, bellowing fury of nightmarish, mutated flesh and flailing claws. Cardiff saw Rohmer, Duvall and Gilbert recoil towards him as the hideous black-glistening thing thrashed amidst the collapsing detritus of its entry. Glass exploded and shattered all around it as the storm wind and rain blasted down the corridor at them. At once, he could see that it was the same monstrous nightmare that had attacked them in the basement. While they had been delayed by Duvall’s attack on Devlin, the thing had withdrawn from the basement window and lurched through the storm to the front of the building.’

  In a nightmare-blur of frenzied activity, Cardiff saw Duvall lunging back through the storm in their direction, a shower of sparkling” glass on his shoulders; saw Rohmer seize Gilbert by the collar of his jacket and whirl him away bodily from the monstrous, thrashing shape and drag him backwards, hair and coat whipping madly in-the hellwind. And in the instant of time available to him, he thought of the only place of possible escape from this nightmare. Not the basement from which they’d come, with its shattered windows giving further access to this horror . . . not the service/access corridor with its hideous wall-bound parody of Farley Peters . . . but the door next to the basement door marked: ‘Stairs’.

  Again, in a frenzied blur of storm-driven wind, ice-cold rain, glass and splintered wood, Cardiff was suddenly at that door now, tearing it open with one gloved hand while he pushed Jimmy and the girl through into the darkness. Duvall collided with him in the rush, nearly flinging him to the corridor floor, but Cardiff clung to the door knob and swung himself back again as Rohmer and Gilbert hurtled past him.

  And Cardiff looked back to see the thing standing there amidst the destruction. No longer flailing with hideously encrusted, burnt and sinewed arms; no longer bellowing in fury with the steel trap jaws of some gigantic insect or machine. But standing in the blast of the storm and looking at him even though its ravaged eye sockets contained no eyes. The thing was hunched, but even so, Cardiff could see that it was at least nine feet tall and somehow impossibly larger than the burnt corpse he had first seen behind the wheel of that car. He thought of Pearce, swept away and eviscerated; lying down there in the basement like some horrifying animal-skin rug. And then the thing stepped out of the ruins of broken glass, plaster and wood . . . and in his direction.

  In the next instant, Cardiff was in the stairwell and had slammed the door shut behind him.

  The sounds of the storm were muffled in the blue-blackness. But the sounds of gasping breath rasped and echoed as Cardiff turned to see that Jimmy and Barbara were still standing in the stairwell. Rohmer, Duvall and Gilbert had started up the stairs, and the sounds of their clattering flight echoed back.

  “What are you waiting for?” hissed Cardiff, tearing the tie loose from his collar, realising that he still had the automatic in his other hand but had been unable to use it again. “Go on! Get up those stairs!”

  “What is it?” asked Bar
bara breathlessly. In the darkness, Cardiff could not see her lips moving, and almost shouted back at her: It’s your brother! That’s what the hell it is! But instead he grabbed her arm and shoved her ahead. Turning back to look at the door, he could see no manual locking mechanism—only a circular brass inset that seemed to need a special key. Cursing, Cardiff fumbled at the mechanism but could find no locking-catch.

  Something smashed hard against the door from the other side. The entire frame shuddered, and Cardiff stumbled back. The door was solid but unlocked. Would that thing out there still know how to simply turn a handle? The door cracked and shuddered again; the sound of the impact terrifying, loud and threatening in the stairwell. Cardiff turned, heart pounding and grabbed the handrail, hauling himself up the stairs.

  Above him, Jimmy had stopped on the first landing and was looking back. Cardiff waved him on, too breathless to speak. From below, there was the sound of a third impact. And up ahead again, from the first-floor landing, Cardiff could hear a muffled and urgent exchange of dialogue. The voices belonged to Rohmer and Jimmy Devlin, but he couldn’t hear what they were arguing about as he hauled himself around the staircase rail, paused for gasping breath and looked back down into the stairwell.

  A black and vicious claw burst through the woodwork of the door with an explosive crash that echoed up and down the staircase like thunder. The voices above stopped arguing, as Cardiff slid down the rail, exhausted and gasping for breath. He sat on the top step, raised the automatic with both hands and aimed it at the arm that was writhing in the aperture below.

  “It’s coming . . .” he said, without looking up.

  He squeezed the trigger and the echo of the shot blasted all around the stairwell.

  Duvall was suddenly standing on the step above him, pushing him out of the way and stepping down past him. Bracing one hand on the stair-rail, he began to squeeze shot after shot down into the stairwell. Amidst the crashing echoes and detonating white flashes Cardiff heard Jimmy shouting: “It does no good, Duvall. Can’t you see that? Cardiff shot it in the face, and it didn’t stop.”

  Rohmer remained silent, watching as Duvall descended the stairs still firing. Cardiff heard Jimmy curse; a wordless expression of anger and fear . . . then footsteps on the stairs again as Jimmy hurried off. Was he running for it at last? Still sucking in lungfuls of air and wincing at the detonating roar of Duvall’s automatic pistol, Cardiff began to haul himself to his feet again by one arm, his gun hand hanging limp. There was a presence at his side now and he saw in surprise that it was Barbara. Cheeks smeared by tears and mascara, she was helping him to stand and all he could think was How can she still have mascara after where she’s been? And then, from down below, an enraged roaring swelled up to fill the staircase. The staircase walls seemed to vibrate with the sound of it.

  And over the sounds of Duvall’s pistol shots, a deafening punctuation to the sounds of the beast and the storm, Cardiff could hear Duvall spitting out words between each shot as he descended. Crazily; he was enraged.

  “Can’t burn you! Can’t shoot you! Can’t . . . !”

  The doors on the landing behind Cardiff juddered open with a loud clatter. Gilbert had been standing next to them and almost fell down the stairs in his efforts to get away from those doors as something shouldered them open. Panic subsided when he saw that it was Jimmy. He was wrestling with something on the other side of that landing door, pushing open the door with one foot and shouting: “Come on, then! Give me a hand!” Now they could see that Jimmy was tugging a large metal filing cabinet with him, dragged from one of the side offices on the first floor. They stood watching him as he tried to manoeuvre the five foot cabinet through on to the landing with them. Its drawers kept sliding open and shut as he heaved at it; the juddering clatter joining with the other sounds of cacophony in the stairwell. “Well, don’t just stand there and bloody watch me. Help me!” And then Rohmer grabbed at the door at last as Jimmy began to heave it through.

  Below, the stairwell door split down its length under the frenzied and monstrous assault. The top hinge flew apart and the door began to judder inwards. Duvall cursed aloud, fired one last shot directly into the door and whatever lay beyond it, heard the resounding roar of anger and rage . . . and then retreated hastily back up the stairs towards them. Rohmer had hold of the filing cabinet with Jimmy now, and Cardiff and Barbara moved quickly aside as Duvall reached the landing again, looking vacantly at the wrestling match with the cabinet.

  “Move!” shouted Jimmy, and he and Rohmer pushed the filing cabinet to the top of the landing . . . just as the nightmarishly black and writhing shape of the thing below burst through the sundered door. Rain and wind gusted in around it. Cardiff saw its hideously burnt and decomposed head turn to look up the stairwell at them, just as Jimmy and Rohmer heaved the filing cabinet over.

  Crashing and echoing, the filing cabinet toppled end-over-end down the stairs as the thing heaved itself through the door aperture.

  The cabinet slammed full against the shape, pinning it down and jamming sideways at the bottom of the stairwell. Cardiff saw its wildly thrashing and monstrous arms, beating and tearing at the dented grey metal of the cabinet.

  “Swallow that!” shouted Jimmy.

  “A way out?” snapped Duvall atCardiff. “You know the building, there must be a way out . . .”

  “Back staircase,” said Cardiff, breath returned at last. “Through the offices on the first floor.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” said Jimmy as thunder roared again, and the thing below gave an answering bellow of fury.

  Cardiff led the way into the corridor on the first floor. The main office door to their right was emblazoned with the logo: Stasis Computers, and it was open. This, no doubt, was where Jimmy had found the filing cabinet. Cardiff pushed through into the offices. It was open plan, divided by hessian screens at chest-height. A main thoroughfare had been created through the centre of that office with the screens. On the left was what he imagined must be a typing pool, on the right more desks containing tidy ranks of computers for administrative personnel and computer operators. There were plate-glass windows on three sides of the office . . . and what Cardiff saw through those windows brought him to a halt. The others pushed on past him in the doorway, but they too stopped when they saw what was revealed on the other side of the windows.

  The office block was in the middle of a hellish whirlwind.

  From left to right, a spinning maelstrom of snow and rain was sweeping around the block like a tornado. The effect was dizzying. The voice of the storm was louder up there; a wailing lament of storm-wind against the buffeted glass. Overhead, the strip lights gave out a ghastly flickering blue and the shadows of the storm on that huge expanse of glass created a psychedelic swirl of speckled light in the office which added to the vertigo.

  “Darkfall,” said Rohmer in a tone of voice approaching real awe, and Cardiff looked at him hard again. He had changed somehow since this nightmare had really descended and impossible things had started to happen. In spite of the immediacy of their terror and danger, he was somehow more self-absorbed.

  “What do you all take me for?” shouted Jimmy. “A furniture remover?”

  Cardiff turned to see that Jimmy was manhandling another cabinet from behind one of the hessian screens and towards the door. Duvall joined him and began to shove hard, until the cabinet had juddered close up to the office door. “Don’t get any skin contact with this, Duvall,” said Jimmy through gritted teeth. “You don’t want to end up filed in there forever, do you?” Duvall gave him a flinty stare.

  Jimmy was changed in Cardiff’s eyes, too. But he didn’t have time to speculate now as he strode across the office with the others following, down the ‘corridor’ between the screens and towards the double-doors directly ahead which would give access to the secondary staircase.

  “How do we get down if the bottom door is locked?” asked Gilbert as they moved.

  “We’ll have to jump from th
e first floor,” said Cardiff. ‘

  “Jump?”

  “There’s a raised embankment behind the office block. The contractors have been clearing earth back there for landscaping. It won’t be far from the first-floor windows to the mound. It’s only ten feet or so down, if we pick the right window.”

  From somewhere below came a great rending and echoing squeal of torn metal. It sounded as if the thing downstairs had finally torn the cabinet out of its way.

  And then another Darkfall bolt hit the building.

  The thunderclap was deafening. Their hands flew to their ears in unison and they staggered under the immensity of the reverberating impact. The floor beneath them vibrated, and they reeled. Ahead of them, a great crack appeared from ceiling to floor in the wall where the double doors were set. Somewhere, party glasses slid from a table and shattered on the floor and one of the computer consoles fell from the end of its desk with splintering impact. The glittering green Christmas decorations which had been Sellotaped to the ceiling and walls swayed crazily as if the whole office block was tilting. Plaster dust puffed downwards from the ceiling.

  Something was happening at the windows.

  At first, it seemed as if the windows had all cracked under the impact of the strike. There was a jagged network of white fractures in the glass of all of them. But those cracks were somehow alive and moving with a pulsing and fractured blue-white light as they looked. Those jagged fractures spread like hissing, living root fibres on the juddering panes, filling the office with light.

  “Lightning!” exclaimed Gilbert.

  And they watched the living cloud of electricity which surrounded them flickering and dancing with fingers of thin white crepuscular power; they watched the spidery web of frosted white fire greedily dancing and exploring the windows.

  The second impact came, like the slamming of a huge underground steel door . . . and just like the sound that Cardiff remembered from the basement. Their hands flew to their ears again, pain stabbing into eardrums.