Dark Side Darker

by Lucas T. Harmond

  He couldn’t grasp why it was beginning again. Maybe he’d never really recovered, and the craziness had just been waiting.

  He wished he could remember the dream he’d had while he’d been unconscious in the club’s toilet, as if that might explain everything. For some reason, remembering its events seemed very important. All he could remember was that it had been very violent and that’s it, like his mind was blocking it out.

  He’d woken up about twenty minutes later leaning over the toilet, covered in piss and sick. It seemed he’d knocked the door shut on his fall and since no one had been in there when he fell, no one had noticed.

  He’d been hysterical at the time, but had managed to stay calm enough to wipe the worst of the muck off himself with toilet paper. He’d felt disgusted with himself as he emerged but hoped due to the darkness of the club no one would notice the state he was in. He’d explained to Rufus that he’d passed out, nothing more, and they’d left to crash at his flat. He’d smoked a good deal of shit to calm his razor-edge nerves, risking paranoia then fallen into a deep sleep.

  Now, Josh propped himself up, rubbed his alcohol drowned head, licked his dead tongue around his dry mouth and realised he was awake for the rest of the night now. A whirlwind of chaotic thoughts were spinning round his mind. Most of all though, he had the crushing feeling that something was beginning and that something was coming for him. He smiled nervously.

  “Bullshit,” he whispered and shook his head. Sometimes he hated his vivid imagination.

  Still the fear was in him and felt incredibly justified.

  RANDOM ENCOUNTER

  ONE MONTH LATER

  HEADLIGHTS RIPPED UP WET, uneven tarmac. a slick, flat plane of oil and pissy light. The red smears of its taillights followed closely behind the speeding Golf, before fading and shimmering into the blackness.

  The wind was blasting out around the concrete towers, catching the rain and throwing it out almost vertical. Every now and again the chill picked up and pellets of hail began to bounce off Chris kent’s window screen.

  “Jesus!” He cursed.

  He was having a hard time seeing. It was around twenty to three in the morning and he was mildly drunk. Not pissed, but he’d drank more than he should have. A one off. Normally he stuck to four pints, if that even, when he was driving. Tonight though had been Matt’s birthday and despite his better judgment, he’d had five and a half. Still that wasn’t bad considering he’d stayed till the end.

  However, he was regretting it now. Not because he couldn’t handle it but because he was scared shitless of being pulled over by the police. Also he had enough hash in the glove box, just enough, to be done for dealing. In fact, it was his personal stash, but in the eyes of the law that wouldn’t matter.

  “Shit.” He hissed as he considered the possibilities.

  Old Happy-Hardcore was booming around his custom Golf and although it was stopping him panicking so much, it was also increasing his adrenaline levels and he wondered if he was more likely to be pulled over because of it. After all, it was early in the morning and he knew the bass would be kicking off the tall buildings on either side like cannon shots. Reluctantly he turned it off.

  The window-wipers were fighting a losing battle. Each bead of water reflected light from the numerous acid yellow street lamps before being smeared away and then almost instantly replaced.

  He squinted out into the night. The streets were bare now, everyone having long ago crawled into taxis. Up ahead was the Uni’ buildings and the ‘freak’ pub on the corner, the Fox and Hound. If it weren’t for the weather, the chances were there would still be a swarm of goths and other assorted scum hanging outside of the place, staggering around drunk, shouting and falling about. He’d normally glare at them, slow down, wind down the window and he and Steve— or Matt or Tom or whoever—would hurl a frenzy of abuse at them and if they had any, a few empty beer cans.

  He stopped at the traffic lights on the cross-road and to pass the time stared down the street the Fox sat on. There were a pair of goths crouched back into a doorway looking miserable. “Goes without saying,” he thought, after all that’s all goths do anyway, sit around looking miserable. If they’re that pissed off why don’t they just do the world a favour and kill themselves?

  “Fucking freaks.” He mumbled to himself as the lights changed and resisted the urge to tell them so. He decided it was too wet to open the window, so they would have to do without his insightful and constructive criticism.

  He accelerated hard and with wheels spinning, tore forward along up a stretch of mainly abandoned and boarded-up shop fronts. Up ahead of him was the concrete bridge that supported one of the many linking flyovers that looped all around the city centre.

  The wipers were pretty much useless and he had to really strain his eyes to see through all the mess. It seemed to have been raining virtually every day for the past month and the conditions were becoming increasingly extreme. It was becoming like a monsoon and—

  “Fuck!!!” He screamed, his foot pretty much pushing the brake through the floor. They’d come out of nowhere!!! A figure running in front of his headlights, their face illuminated for only a brief second through the blurred glass, then his tires were screaming for traction on the wet road. The car seemed to be grinding forward for minutes, Chris’ mind was spinning, his teeth were gritted and he couldn’t help but close his eyes. He knew he’d never stop the car before it impacted and instinctively he swung the wheel. The wheels screamed as the car lurched round violently in an 180 degree turn. A moving wall of metal ripped forward by what seemed like unstoppable velocity. It wasn’t enough. A few seconds in and he’d heard, felt, the sickening impact, briefly seen something hit the bonnet, went down, closed his eyes again, felt the car spinning, felt it raise then crash down as the front wheels rose up over something. It seemed a long time before all the motion stopped and then he was just rooted there, a slow terror rising up in him.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god...” The words were looped and just kept repeating.

  He span around, checking the road on all sides. His car had come to a halt sideways under the bridge with its headlights blasting onto the wall in front. There was no body anywhere. Uncomfortably, he realised it was most likely directly beneath him.

  Chris vomited violently, most of the scorching hot liquid hitting the dash board, spilling over his fists which were still clamped to the wheel and specks hit the window screen. It didn’t matter.

  He looked at the front of his car which had crumpled up violently. It was hard to imagine a body could do that to solid metal.

  “Oh Jesus, oh fuck, oh god.” A new loop. His voice little more than a viper’s hiss.

  He’d been going too fast, going too fast and he’d been drinking. Jesus how was that going to look?!? The thoughts drenched his head. He was panicking now, wondering if it was maybe better just to drive away. Not leave the poor bastard. God no! Just ring an ambulance at the first phone he saw. There was a call box on the corner behind him, just a minute’s run away. No, the ‘very next’ phone he saw. Still they were under his car how could he... They were under his fucking car!

  “Oh god. I wasn’t drunk. They just ran... Oh god.”

  The engine was still on and the wipers slowly swung like the hands of a clock. Time itself had seemed to have stopped. The city had taken on an eery silence.

  “Jesus how is this going to look?” He whispered, finally managing to take his sick coated hands from the wheel. He knew he could lose his license, or they could get him on manslaughter and he’d go to jail. How long for? He didn’t know. Maybe he should just dump the car and run, no but it was his car. They’d know. Jesus there could be someone dying, dead, under his feet, under his fucking feet!

  “Fuck!” He yelled and punched the horn. He had been struggling not to think about who was beneath him.

  He had to get out.

  Slowly he pushed the door open, looking down. Then stepped out. Despite the storm it se
emed very quiet. He was sheltered under the road. A curtain of water spilled down at the edge on either side of him.

  “Hello?” He managed to say, fighting back the bile that had just pissed hot and sour up into his throat.

  A long slow groan escaped from somewhere under the car and he noticed the blood over the jagged metal of his impacted bonnet and the dark brown streaks that were slowly running parallel with the oil that bled from underneath his car. The shrapnel from his shattered headlight glittered across a wide space, lit by the remaining beam. Some of the tiny shards were now coated in blood. His bumper was cracked, half hanging off and part of it lay a few metres back with a piece of his number plate. But it was the metal, the metal which had folded in like cardboard that shocked him the most.

  The sheer force that...

  There was a scraping sound followed by a light whimper. The scraping continued as whoever it was began to crawl about beneath the car.

  Chris walked around the vehicle and saw a foot twitching, before it was dragged lifelessly out of sight. A sharp grating sound, bare toe nails over the raw road. A bare foot?

  “Look, try to lie still.” He stammered and crouched down to look under his Golf.

  It was dark. The shape was uncertain and crawling about,their wet shiny body appeared to be naked. Could that have been caused by the impact? No, that’s just plain fucking stupid! Which meant they’d been naked before he’d even hit them. The terror grew. Chris shivered. Something was very wrong here.

  “Are you alright? Please god, I... Can you speak?” He was shaking violently.

  The body began to turn quicker, scuttling awkwardly like an insect, their form clearly smashed up. Small gasping sounds and whimpering.

  Tears were rolling down Chris’s face. Were they in shock or were they insane? He —it?—was naked for fuck’s sake and his body seemed too black.

  “Please, I’m sorry, talk to me. Stay still, I’ll phone an ambulance. Can you hear me? Will you be alright while I go? Please for fuck’s sake!!”

  It was still turning ’round its body, thrashing against the metal above, uncaring. It began to scream, a hideous sound that tore between the road and the car. A hand scuttled out into the light, claws scraped at the tarmac, came out like a crawling spider. Chris looked into the screaming face largely obscured, saw shadow drenched teeth, sharp and long, saw human eyes but with pupils needle-pointed into insanity.

  He fell back in shock, the road jarring his spine. The long fingered hand slashed out, raking up his shin. Sharp pain, as claws slashed through the cloth with incredible force and tore lines through his skin directly to the bone.

  He screamed barely aware that urine was pouring over his thigh. He was kicking backwards, pushing himself along the road screaming.

  “Get the fuck away from me! I’m sorry!”

  The thing was crawling out after him, spastic motion,uncontrolled but fast. Its tight hand was still locked over his burning ankle and as Chris scrambled backwards he pulled the thing—thrashing and screaming—further out into the light. His own desperate energy helping the beast free itself.

  Its body was mangled but it was hard to say how much of that had been caused by the accident. It was bloated and out of shape, but with tight muscle tone. Its flesh, oil black, wet and speckled with flecks of white in strange markings. The face that screamed at him was human -like, only twisted; its mouth was too large, had a lot of teeth smashed out, and had a large gash from which too-red blood flowed freely. Its nose was broken and the face was mottled with bright red blood and ripped flesh. Even before his car had smashed into the creature, Chris knew that face had never been fully human.

  Chris fell onto his back, momentarily frozen in fear, unable to do anything but stare at the abomination which had attached itself to him. For a second both man and creature stared at each other and then the creature’s mouth opened impossibly wide into some kind of malicious sneer;with renewed vigour it began to crawl towards him, using his leg for grip and dragging its broken legs uncaringly behind.

  His trainer kicked hard into the mouth as he scrambled backwards. A tooth ripped lose and the creature screamed, twisting away, eyes shut tight.

  It was crawling up over him, dragging the last of itself out into the open. Putrid, shimmering flesh escaping out from under his car, like some kind of perverse birth, tearing out from a metal womb into a fresh world.

  “GET OFF ME!!” Chris screamed so loud his voice cracked. He kicked franticly and managed to knock the thing sideways and off his legs. He scrambled to his feet. A strong hand locked over his ankle and he span about, kicking out at the thing’s broken face. The hand let go and the thing let out a high pitched wail that turned into a hiss as it fell away.

  Chris began running—more like trying to run. Blood was seeping out of the wounds and into his shoe.Each footstep felt like a hammer blow of pain and he kept stumbling, landing on his hands but still moving forwards. Always moving. He was crying and the ankle felt like it would give at any time. Somehow he kept moving, pure terror and adrenaline driving him on. He couldn’t look back.

  If he had, he would have seen the creature a long way back, pulling its broken body after Chris with animal determination.

  KAREN

  JOSH WOKE SUDDENLY, panicked and scared. It had become the standard. He’d wake suddenly from some nightmare he couldn’t even remember. His sleep had become troubled and erratic and it was taking a toll on him. He had become afraid to sleep, but was unable to remember what he saw in his dreams. Only that he felt something was waiting for him. And all the time now. Always.

  “Goddammit.” A car crash or something? He groaned and roughly massaged the side of his head with his palms.

  He felt like shit, his eyes hurt and he still felt heavily drunk. His drinking had reached dangerous levels again. He couldn’t help it, since it was the only thing that was even vaguely holding back the constant dread he felt. No one had noticed yet, it wasn’t as if his drinking had ever really dropped to a standard amount but until recently he certainly had control of it. He could quite easily go without a drink when he went out if he really felt like it. Still, over the past month he’d felt an increasing need to lose himself in alcohol. The steady increase in the voices he was hearing wasn’t helping either.

  He briefly wondered where he was, before realising he had obviously crashed at Karen’s dad’s home last night. Actually, when he thought back, there were vague memories of him walking with her back from the Arena. A pretty crappy night from what he remembered, which wasn’t much beyond shakily clinging to a toilet and desperately trying to rid his already empty stomach of vodka, whiskey and whatever other filth he’d downed.

  “This has to stop.” He whispered and slumped down on the sofa with his hand resting on the floor and his head hanging off the side. Blood began to swim to his head and he felt like he might faint.

  His eyes widened and he reached for a newspaper that was lying under a glass coffee table. He focused first on the girl’s face then the headline above the small article.

  “LOCAL GIRL STILL MISSING”

  Josh knew her face vividly, without any idea why. He scanned down the column and found the name, Sarah Comby. A name which he had never heard before in his life and frowned. Had he just seen her around, in the clubs? Well it seemed different to that, he felt, almost, like he knew her. She’d been missing since last Thursday. He checked the date of the paper, two days old. So how long had she been missing now? Nine days. He closed his eyes and, as he so often did, wondered what the hell the design of life was all about. For about ten minutes he just stared at her face trying to recall how he knew her and hoped, despite realising how hopeless it actually was, that she was alright. Most of all he thought of Sarah, the Sarah he did know, as if the two girls were connected. Not by the name but by something else. Eventually he threw the paper down in frustration and clumsily got to his feet. The head rush and swim weren’t unexpected.

  He staggered through to the kitchen, eve
rything was growing dim, he began to feel detached from his body, managed to grab the side of the sink unit and braced himself. He breathed deeply for a few minutes until he felt his senses returning and then fastened his mouth over the tap and began drinking.

  He couldn’t really remember the last time he’d drunk water in a significant amount. He put the experience down to dehydration then slumped down on the cold tiled floor, breathing slowly and deeply to try and kill off the grogginess he still felt. He tried to remember the last time he’d nearly passed out like this but couldn’t. Though it had happened quite a few times—not that he’d ever tell anyone. No, this drinking really had to stop!

  The day outside looked pretty dead, with a brilliant white but lifeless sky. He hated waking early around someone else’s house since all he could do was wait for them to eventually wake up since he felt it was rude just to leave without thanking them and was uncomfortable using the place as his own.

  Cautiously he moved back to living room and switched on the Tv quietly.

  It was a few tedious hours of kids morning programs before Karen emerged from upstairs looking reasonably worn out by the previous night.

  “Morning.” she said in a sort of yawn.

  “Shhhh. Can’t you see I’m watching N-sync?!”

  “Sorry.” She grumbled with no trace of her usual humour. It was still pretty early, he supposed.

  Josh turned to look at her.

  She looked grumpy this morning. Her dyed red hair was a scattered bird’s nest over her young, pale face. Karen was only one year younger than him, but that wasn’t obvious from her appearance.

  He smiled. “You look worse than I feel.”

  “Yeah thanks.” Again completely devoid of humour.

  “Are you alright?”

  She walked past him, scooping the remote control off the arm of the chair. The baggy old basketball shirt she wore looked like a tent over her slight form.