By the Light of His Lantern

by Abe Moss

  She sat down and waited instead.

  Chapter Seven

  Some Answers

  The voice alone gave him pause, lifted the hairs on his arms and neck, told him to resist at any cost. But the pounding on both doors to either side of him in the dark caused his feet to hunger for distance, an irresistible urge to flee. As he was, he couldn’t. Not from either threat.

  “Okay,” he said. His throat was tight, his heart and lungs racing. “I promise.”

  Little fingers danced around his wrists, tugged the ropes across his skin. When both his hands were free, he sat up and began to untie one of his feet while the child’s hands worked on the other. He slid himself off the table, both feet on the glass-sprinkled ground.

  “Karen!” Grant shouted from outside. “What’s happening in there? Unlock the door!”

  “What do we do?” Lewis asked.

  The child—the same girl as from before—spoke quietly in a whisper, so that Lewis had to pay extra attention to hear her through Grant and Karen’s pounding and shouting.

  “I don’t know.”

  Lewis’s heart sank. “You don’t know? What was your plan, then?”

  “This was all the plan I had.”

  Lewis only felt the urge to scatter mindlessly.

  “It took me a long time to come up with what I did,” the girl said. “I was out there longer than you think…”

  Lewis groaned. “Great…”

  The pounding on the front door became violent. A heavy kick caused the door to shudder in its frame, and the ceiling above them rattled and dropped a layer of dust. Then another kick.

  “I need my lantern back…”

  A third kick. Wood splintered.

  “I could get it for you.”

  The door burst inward. The fiery glow of Lewis’s lantern swung wildly through the doorway as Grant rushed inside, spinning and sidestepping his way through the room on high alert. Lewis swiped his hand across the table, picked something long and cold and slender up in his fist, and shrank back avoiding the light.

  “Karen?”

  Grant reached the butchers table, saw the bare tabletop, the loosed ropes on the floor. He held the light up, spun this way and that. Lewis pressed his back to the opposite wall, staying clear of the firelight.

  “Where is he? Karen?”

  “I’m in here!”

  The lantern swung around as Grant turned toward her voice.

  “Where is he? Did he escape?”

  “I don’t know, just let me out!”

  Grant paused.

  “I think he’s gone, Karen.”

  Suddenly he screamed. The lantern fell to the floor. The piece of lighted wood clinked inside. Grant stumbled away from its glow into the dark corner of the room, cursing and holding his hand to his chest.

  “What the fuck!?”

  He darted forward and snatched the lantern back up while Lewis stood frozen, his opportunity missed.

  “What’s going on out there?”

  Grant scanned the room, swept the lantern from side to side. For an instant Lewis thought they made eye contact, but as he looked down at himself he saw he was still hidden in shadow.

  “Something bit me,” Grant said. “Something bit my hand.”

  Lewis turned the sharp utensil, whatever it was, over in his fist. He’d have to be quick…

  Grant moved around the table. He stepped carefully, heel to toe. His black-dot eyes flashed left to right. Lewis watched the cone of light melt over the floor, getting nearer.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Karen hollered. “I’m still in here!”

  The light reached Lewis’s feet, only faintly, and Lewis lifted his eyes to meet Grant’s, who in that instant had yet to register what he saw. He stared through Lewis, beyond him. When his brain worked it out, recognized the naked body folded into the dark wall, his eyes brightened.

  A tiny sound, a child’s breath suspended from nothing, released into the space just behind Grant. A disembodied whisper. Hey, Lewis thought it said.

  She’s here, but she isn’t…

  Those widened eyes gave pause, pinged to the side. Lewis came forward into the light. A gasp. The blade struck, and both gloom and flesh gave way to its metallic sheen. Blood gushed. The knife clattered under the table. Lewis shuffle-stepped away from the pitter-patter at their feet.

  “I’m sorry,” Lewis said. Only he wasn’t sorry. Not really.

  Grant’s probing fingers bathed themselves under the red curtain down his throat. He dropped the lantern a final time. His empty eyes took hold of Lewis’s and held them, gripped them coldly, until he toppled over and was dead.

  Without further ado, Lewis retrieved the lantern and made his way to the front door. Karen pleaded questioningly behind the barricaded door, and distantly on his way out, Lewis wondered how long it would take her to escape.

  Departing without looking back, he noticed his footsteps were alone.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The muddy road which passed in front of the small house was still wet from the earlier rain, though not as slick as before. Lewis walked it a fair distance alone before he was gifted with company again.

  “You killed him,” she said, her voice appearing without warning.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked. “I thought you left me back there.”

  “I’ve been here.”

  He shivered and held himself as he walked.

  “How is it you only seem to be there when you want to be?”

  “Huh?”

  “I haven’t heard you walking with me all this time until now. It’s like you just decide to ‘show yourself’ and there you are.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lewis held his lantern out to the spot where she walked beside him and there was no one.

  “See!”

  “See what?”

  “Exactly!” Lewis stopped. He turned in a circle, formed a fading halo around himself. “Even back there, when you helped me… you bit his hand, I saw him when it happened… but I didn’t see you. You’re not there!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “You can’t?”

  Little footsteps scuffed the dirt.

  “Oh,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”

  He’d seen her before, he was sure. After the inn, when he’d ran from her, he’d seen her face then, smiling at him, and she’d looked so familiar. Unbearably familiar…

  “How come you ran away before?”

  He thought he knew why, but would she understand?

  “You were scared of me, weren’t you?”

  Lewis repeatedly extended the lantern out in her voice’s direction when she spoke, thinking he’d see her eventually even though he dreaded it—like checking from under the covers for the monster you suspect is creeping toward the bed. The light continued to reveal nothing.

  “I guess I was.” He still was. Part of him believed she wasn’t real. This place, the darkness, was playing a macabre trick on him again, just like it did in The Historic Inn. She was a figment, conjured up to hurt him in ways the usual things couldn’t—the beasts, the psychopaths, the terrain. She would get in his head and drive him crazy. She already was.

  “It’s because I’m dead, isn’t it?”

  His chest turned to ice. He opened his mouth to argue but he had nothing. Instead he said, “You’re not real.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not really here talking to me. That’s why I can’t see you, it’s because you’re in my head.”

  “But you saw me before.”

  “I don’t know what I saw. This place does things like that. It shows you things to hurt you, to… to…”

  “Then why did you run?

  He didn’t want to answer. “Why are you following me?”

  “I want to help.”

  “Help with what? Do you not see where we are? Or… not see where we are…”

  “I helped y
ou back there, didn’t I?”

  Lewis scoffed. “You should go. You don’t belong here.”

  “Neither do you.”

  Lewis stopped, turned in her direction to tell her to leave for the final time, when he was interrupted by an approaching noise. Creaky, wooden, bumpy, rolling. He held the lantern at eye level. The noise came closer, grew louder, dug into the moist dirt and rocks, gradually slowing in its approach. Lewis’s legs straightened stiff under him, planted like stakes in the soft road. He’d forgotten all about the girl in that instant.

  “Don’t be alarmed!” a new voice shouted.

  Alarmed just as well, he cautiously moved to the side of the road as the noise drew upon them. In his lanternlight, formed in the shadows, two horses—pale, strangely silent—kicked their hooves through the soft mud. They came to a stop. They lifted their heads and watched Lewis carefully, pointed their snouts toward him curiously. Lewis’s eyes wandered, wide and full of eerie intrigue, over the horses and their gray bodies, their silver manes and tails, to the stopped wagon at their rear. He circled, stepped on his own feet, and shined his light upon the chipped, soggy wheels, its weathered boards chipped and splintering along each edge. There was a seat at the front of the wagon, wide enough for perhaps three people shoulder to shoulder, but only one man sat there. He leaned over the side, peered down at Lewis. His smooth, sunken face lit with joyous surprise.

  “My, my!” he said. “Well if it isn’t a naked man in the middle of the road!”

  Lewis concentrated to stop the trembling in his legs. He looked from the driver to the wagon bed. There were shapes inside, dark and lumpy.

  “Where are you headed?” the driver asked.

  Lewis thought. “Nowhere, really. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know where you’re going?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Mmhmm.” The driver squinted at him, took him in, all of his awkward, shivering, naked self. “Most of the naked fellas I come across say the same thing.”

  Lewis looked away, down the road before them which of course they couldn’t see. Then he remembered.

  “I’m looking for a town. It’s called…” And then he didn’t remember. “I don’t know what it’s called, but I was told about it. I guess that’s where I’m going.”

  “So you’re going to the town whose name you can’t remember. Ah. I know just the place.”

  “You do?”

  “What? No. Of course not. You have to be a little more specific.”

  The driver looked over his shoulder into the wagon bed.

  “I might be able to take ya, if you can think of it. I think I have the room.”

  Lewis inched a bit closer, lantern up. From the lumpy shape nearest him in the wagon he saw a bush of wild curly hair sitting on top. He got a little closer. Then the shape moved. Lewis startled. He gasped. The bushy hair turned and a pair of eyes peeked at him through a gap in the wooden wagon planks. Quickly they lost interest and returned to sleep or whatever it was they were doing.

  “Who are these other people?” Lewis asked.

  “Oh, these guys? They’re just travelers, like yourself. Some of them know where they want to go, others have no idea. Sometimes it’s nice just to get off your feet a little bit and let the wagon do the work. Some of these fellas, the ones who don’t know where they’re going especially, think it’s a right fine idea to just stay in my wagon forever. But I won’t allow that. Those people draw the darkness to them, they get too comfortable. You know what I’m saying? If you want a ride, you better have a place in mind. This isn’t a mobile home, I’m afraid…”

  “There are good people there…” Lewis said, thinking aloud more than he meant to speak to the driver. When he realized he’d said it plain for anyone to hear, he straightened. “That’s what I was told. This town, there are good people there.”

  “Good people?” The driver considered it. “I haven’t seen any of them around. Sounds like a tale to me.”

  “Mostly good, I guess. I don’t know. I was told there was a town where… where… regular people might be. People like me.”

  “Like you, huh? What makes you so regular?”

  Lewis felt increasingly embarrassed. It wasn’t enough to be naked and cold and lost, he had to be belittled as well?

  “I just mean…”

  “Oh, I know what you mean! I’m just giving you a hard time. You have one of those faces, you know? Like you’d be easy to give a hard time.”

  “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “I don’t know. I guess.” The driver chuckled, a deepthroated sound rising from his belly. “You say them a lot.”

  “Okay.”

  “Listen!” The driver looked over his shoulder again. “I don’t know if I’ll have room for you back there. It’s pretty full. And you might not want to ride with them fellas anyway, as they’ve been rocking back there a while some of them, and are probably getting mighty ripe if you know what I’m saying. But you’re welcome to ride up here with me, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, I don’t—”

  “It’ll beat walking wherever it is you’re going. And maybe while’s I’m taking these fellas to their destinations you might remember the name of yours. How does that sound?”

  Lewis needed a second to think it over. He knew he’d accept the offer before it was officially made. But there was something else about this man and his wagon. It was just… after the handful of people he’d met so far, he was quickly learning to be skeptical about anyone who might offer him anything. These murderers and crazies were tools of the darkness themselves, whether they knew it or not. This man and his wagon had quite literally shown up out of nowhere. Where would he really take him?

  “I can see it in your eyes,” the driver said. His own eyes were giant, beaming with childish menace. “You’ve already agreed to climb aboard.”

  Lewis looked around himself and, to the grass beside the road he whispered, “You still there? You coming with me?”

  “What’s that?” the driver asked. “You talking to somebody?”

  Lewis waited but there wasn’t a response. He looked up at the driver sheepishly.

  “Just myself.”

  Lewis reached up. The driver took one of his hands and, with another hand on his shoulder, helped him up onto the seat next to himself. As he helped him, his chin over Lewis’s shoulder, he said, “Just talking to yourself like us regular folk, I guess. I don’t know.”

  He let out a shrill stream of laughter, hyaw’d his horses back to life, and before Lewis could second-guess his decision they were trotting deeper and deeper into the heartland of the darkness, with only his meager jarred flame to show them the way.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  They stopped the wagon once so the driver—Harvey was his name, Lewis learned—could check the passengers in the back. There were eight in all, but two of them were discovered dead, murdered by one of the remaining six.

  “Ah well,” Harvey said. “No way to tell who done it, they’re such a quiet bunch.”

  They continued on.

  “Don’t you worry one of them might kill you?” Lewis asked.

  “Why on earth would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. To steal your wagon, maybe.”

  “Oh, no. This wagon is more work than it’s worth, to tell you the truth. They know that. Plus they appreciate what I do.”

  “What about the darkness?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well… aren’t you meant to be suffering in some way? You seem…”

  “No, no. I’m doing fine! The darkness is fine!”

  “But—”

  “Fine I’m telling you! Just fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “I’m not worried, it’s just… I’m wondering how you keep the darkness away. Shouldn’t there be—”

  “Trust me, Lewis. I pay my dues.”

  The tone in Harvey’s voice told Lewis it would only irritate him to question further. But ther
e was more to it, he knew. Much more.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  He saw Harvey’s eyes move in his direction, watched him from their corners.

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I met someone… actually, you picked me up just after having met them… who believed hurting others would keep the darkness away.”

  “Ridiculous.” Harvey scoffed. “Those people… they’re what’s wrong with this world.”

  Lewis nodded, though he thought there was plenty more wrong with it than that.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It eventually became quiet between them and Lewis thought that was okay. He periodically checked the wagon to see what the other passengers were up to but it was always the same. They slept, or something close to it. Sometimes one of them coughed or sneezed or sighed. Lewis, though he felt no need to sleep despite relentless exhaustion, closed his eyes for a while as they rode.

  It was hard to tell for how long.

  He opened them when he heard the crackle of fire. Except… not quite. Crackle was a slight understatement. More of a roar, really. And his eyes were immediately drawn to it, being the only visible thing in the midst of all the nothing. A giant block of fire. It was a house. White clapboard. Fire gushed from each of its windows, licked at the awnings, at the roof above, huge black genies rising from the smoldering shingles. Sheets of its smoke must have drifted overhead, as Lewis tried stifling the spasms of his protesting lungs.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “What’s what?”

  “That house over there. It’s burn—” He lost his words to a coughing fit. His eyes stung, tears welled.

  “Oh, huh…” Harvey watched Lewis with interest. “You can see it too, then.”

  Lewis wiped his eyes dry and cupped his hands over his mouth hoping that would help him breathe less of the toxic clouds.

  “Well yeah. Shouldn’t I?”

  The road they followed curved around the house so that Lewis was able to see it from both the side and the front. It cast a bright skirt of warm light on the ground around it, bare dirt, and once or twice the sound of collapsing wood could be heard, the house falling apart internally, caving in. But otherwise, it burned and burned yet remained unchanged.