Dark Side Darker

by Lucas T. Harmond

  “A fucking pleasure mate, a fucking pleasure. know what I’m saying man!”

  “Yeah sure,” said Rufus and shook his hand firmly.

  “Well, you got ya’ Blue, Mind’ how about you show these boys out?”

  Mind’ tiredly got up once again.

  REVELATIONS

  “SO WHAT THE FUCK are we gonna’ do now?”

  Josh seemed to remember Rufus asking a similar question before, but he couldn’t be sure. Either way it was sure a valid one. They were no closer to anything.

  “Give me the pills,” he said as they approached the car.

  Rufus passed over the film canister and Josh popped the lid. There was definitely some kind of dim blue light radiating from the tiny capsules.

  “Man, what the fuck is this stuff?” he said more to himself.

  “I know, dude I ain’t never seen no other shit like it. I mean what the fuck is it?”

  Josh shrugged. He looked Rufus in the eye. “Do you think they knew?”

  Now Rufus shrugged. “Man you know I ain’t even sure. I mean I got the impression they didn’t, but if that’s true then how the fuck do they get it?”

  Josh was silent as they reached the car.

  “I tell you what I do know,” said Rufus as he opened the car door. “We still know precisely dick!”

  Josh was inclined to agree as he got into the passenger door. He looked back at Karen instinctively.

  “So where’s the monkey?” Karen asked.

  “Stoned and happy,” Rufus told her as he buckled his safety belt.

  “So what did you find out?” she asked Josh. “Anything?”

  “No,” said Josh, nothing. “All we did was buy these.” He passed Karen the film canister.

  She took it cautiously, looked in at its contents for a few silent seconds then looked back at Josh. There was a look of awed concern on her pretty features. “What the hell are they?”

  Josh shook his head. “Apparently that’s Blue.”

  Karen looked down at the pills for a little while longer. “It’s beautiful,” she said to herself in a breathy whisper, and then, “this is what Sarah took, this is—this is what made her eyes...” She was close to tears. Could barely speak.

  “Yeah,” said Josh.

  Rufus had slung his arm over the back of his seat and was watching her.

  “So what the hell is it?” she asked him.

  “Honey, I really couldn’t tell you,” he said. “But it’s dangerous, real dangerous!”

  Karen eyed him suspiciously. “How exactly do you mean?”

  Rufus struggled with his image of what had once been Cally in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes and looked away.

  Josh sighed. “When we found Sarah, she wasn’t alone.”

  Karen’s concern was growing. She knew she wasn’t going to like what she heard next. “Who was with her?” She paused, looked inward. “Cally? It was this Cally girl, right?”

  Josh nodded. “Whatever’s happening to Sarah isn’t finished. She’s... changing.”

  “What?”

  Josh couldn’t speak for a second. Next to him Rufus was quietly crying, but trying not to show it. He had turned to look at the street, but his silent tears were clear in the dark reflection. He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and then held it to his mouth with a distant and troubled expression, seeing things he would rather not. Finally his mind was moving through the terrible shock and stoned stupor and now beginning to accept the terrible truth. “Jesus,” he whispered to himself.

  “Changing,” said Josh quietly. “Changing into a monster.”

  Karen laughed, caught the look in his eyes and abruptly stopped. “What? How? you can’t really believe what you’re saying?”

  Rufus had begun to sob, his face in his hands. He looked back, eyes tear-streaked. “Man she looked like something out of the fucking Thing!”

  Karen looked horrified. She passed quick glances between her two friends. What they were saying was madness and yet...

  “You saw her eyes,” Josh told her. “How can you possibly explain that?”

  “But—monsters??”

  “If you’d seen,” Josh said.

  “You don’t never want to see!” Rufus told her.

  Karen was silent, how could...

  “But drugs???” she said exasperated. “Drugs can’t do that! How could they?”

  Josh shook his head. “I’ve no idea but that,” he pointed at the tub she held, “that did it.” Karen looked down at the small blue pills. “These?” she said softly. Karen stared into the canister. It was nearly night now. The sky was dark blue, the street lamps were coming on but there was little light in the car. yet there was a quite visible unnatural, electric blue glow lighting up the walls of the film tube. She found herself being drawn into the pills. She began to notice tiny lights dancing within. At first she wasn’t sure she was really seeing them, but there seemed to be something swirling at each of their centres, nondescript, lucid and alive.

  “Jesus, it’s full of stars,” she whispered.

  “What?” Josh asked.

  “Oh nothing. So what exactly are you going to do now?”

  Josh looked at Rufus and saw he was wiping tears from his eyes again. “You alright?”

  Rufus nodded quietly and turned his face away so Josh couldn’t see. He rarely cried, made strong by a tough childhood. Josh reflected that most people’s opposite self was usually relative to their true one. He found himself moved by Rufus’ tears and thought, yeah that’s why I love him.

  He looked back at Karen. “I really don’t know, I mean those kids didn’t tell us anything really. I don’t know what to do.” He thought of Sarah and then of Cally. “But I’ve got to do something.”

  “Well, who are they then? The dealers I mean.”

  “That’s the point, they don’t seem anything special. Just some Asian kids who deal drugs.”

  Karen was thoughtful for a while, still looking at the pills. “Maybe we should just wait here awhile, see what happens?” She paused. “Or maybe we should just tell the police.”

  “Fuck that!” said Rufus quickly. “Josh is right, this shit is way too weird to involve the Man. I mean how we gonna’ explain our involvement?”

  “Well, we could...”

  “Nah’, nah’ Karen, he’s right, fuck the police!”

  “So should we just wait then?”

  Josh shook his head. “Nope, I don’t see that really gets us anywhere. I’ve got to do something quickly. I don’t know how much time Sarah’s got.” Sarah, he thought to himself and then he knew what he had to do.

  He looked to Karen. In the darkness his eyes gleamed intensely with his inner lights.

  “Pass me the drugs, Karen.”

  Karen didn’t like the tone in his voice. “Why?”

  “I know what I’ve got to do!” he told her.

  “That’s crazy Josh! you can’t possibly be thinking of taking this stuff. Not after what you’ve told me. I mean if it does what you say?”

  “Karen honey, I don’t have a choice.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Karen, give me the pills!” Josh said sternly.

  Karen shook her head, pulling the container closer to her. “I won’t let you!”

  “Jesus, Josh, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Rufus asked.

  Josh ignored him. “Karen give me the pills!”

  “Josh this is crazy!” Rufus told him.

  “I know what I’m doing. Karen, the pills!”

  “No, Josh, no. I won’t let you. I don’t want you to.”

  Josh spoke with sudden ferocity. “Give me the fucking pills!!!”

  Karen handed them over without thinking, felt compelled to do so. She felt suddenly shaken, scared by Josh’s intensity. Had that voice been his?

  Josh sat looking at the pills.

  “Josh man, this is probably the most stupid idea you have ever had. Don’t do it.�
�

  Josh took out one of the small capsules. He felt a slight prickle of energy caress his fingertips. The pill was ice cold and squashed with pressure. He couldn’t tell what it was made of.

  “Josh,” Rufus said.

  Josh sat holding the pill, staring at it, building up the will. He was scared shitless. He’d seen what it could do.

  He raised his hand to his mouth.

  “Josh, don’t do this,” Rufus said softly, although he was making no attempt to stop him. In his heart he knew he couldn’t.

  Josh opened his mouth and before he had the chance to let his panic at the unknown seize him, swallowed the pill and gulped it down.

  That’s it, he thought, no going back. Whatever happens now there’s no going back.

  He sat silently. Both Karen and Rufus were staring at him expectantly. He returned their troubled glances.

  Nothing happened.

  “WE LIVE INSIDE A NIGHTMARE...”

  THE WORLD FELT ICE-COLD and distant. The hospital ward around her seemed dim. The sky outside the dirt-caked window was slowly dying into night. When she breathed, hot vapour appeared at her pale lips and escaped into the freezing room. Ice seemed to be gathering inside her body, crystalising inside the network of her veins. The cold veil of death clung to everything.

  Clouds raced past at impossible speeds and sometimes there would be dim figures, wraiths, standing above her. Phantoms dressed as nurses with dead-head grins. They flashed into existence, shadows holding clipboards, and then vanished just as quickly.

  The world had become timeless and alien. Tiredly, Sarah closed her eyes. A chaotic wall of sound filled the void. The bored thoughts of a thousand patients locked inside their sterile cells, some dying, some in incredible pain. It all washed over her, became her. Conversations, visions, she saw the bored occupants of the Big Brother household sitting around staring at walls decorated with childlike paintings, saw it from the eyes of a child somewhere within the building.

  “I need a cigarette, I need a cigarette, I need a cigarette—I’m gonna’ go fucking mad if I don’t get a fuckin’ cigarette! Why won’t those bitches let me smoke? I need a cigarette, I need a...” And on it went. Someone had been thinking this repeating thought-chain for hours now. Days maybe.

  She opened her eyes again, the only way she could even remotely take control of the assault on her mind.

  The strip-light above her looked dirty and flickered like stop motion animation. She stared at it for an infinity, watching the gaps between when the light flared on and off becoming increasingly long. Stretching from seconds at first, then minutes and then hours and then complete darkness. The room disappeared and she dissolved back into a place she had been at before.

  For a long time she was nowhere, suspended in the void. Sarah was aware she should have felt terrified but somehow all she felt was numb. Then as the darkness grew more complete she felt herself becoming desperate, absorbed by despair and alone.

  Only she was very aware that she wasn’t.

  Constantly she could feel unseen things sniffing about her, excited by her presence. Slowly coming closer.

  She found herself wanting to cling to her mother, regretted all the suffering she had caused her, every unresolved argument over nothing, and for a second, somewhere, she could feel her mother’s current panic. For a moment she had stood above her.

  Then again darkness, felt herself being structured, like waking up without ever going to sleep. Blinding light, hot wetness.

  The street around her was warped. The sky was deep crimson and smeared with drapes of black smoke. A dark mist hung heavily, drifted up from crooked chimneys silhouetted against the bloody sky.

  It all seemed vaguely familiar but altered. Two of the city’s spires rose like black daggers in the distance but the third one didn’t exist here. What would have been a kentucky Fried Chicken was little but a burnt-out hulk. Sarah found herself standing in the ghost of the city she knew, its shadow. Places she knew were twisted and broken, windows boarded up or with the faint glow of candles within. Hungry eyes watched her from a thousand blackened shelters.

  Everything kept shifting, threatened to dissolve and in that respect it felt quite familiar.

  Broken cars shuffled along shattered tarmac and smoky figures hung in shadows. They seemed unreal but as they approached, Sarah moved away, not wishing to find out. Most seemed oblivious but some fixed her with needle-sharp eyes, piercing her insides.

  She tried to move but her feet barely carried her and no matter how much energy she used she barely travelled a foot. Sarah felt as if she was wading through a river at rising tide, constantly being drawn back to the shrieks behind her.

  She stepped off the pavement and a forest of hands erupted out between the cast iron bars of a metal grill placed in the road. Fingers had been lopped off crookedly and the hands were horribly disfigured. Deep mournful screams of sorrow echoed out of the dark hole beneath her, as whatever was held inside clawed at the dying light of the outside world.

  She screamed and stumbled backwards, falling over the curb, and as she fell she opened her eyes and again found the dull strip light flickering above her.

  In that second Sarah knew Josh was thinking of her and again something else was beginning to crawl through her insides.

  She hit the curb, jarring her spine.

  ‘Sarah?!??’

  It was distant at first but even so she knew who had spoke and she looked around to find his face.

  ‘Josh?’

  There was nothing but the same wraiths.

  ‘Sarah, where are you?’

  ‘I... the hospital.’

  ‘I don’t see you, where are you?’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Where!? This is crazy, where the hell are we?’

  He felt her smile. ‘Maybe we are,’ she replied.

  There was no voice for a few seconds, just the same ghostly echoes. She felt Josh’s presence fading, felt he might disappear completely if she didn’t call out right away and did so in desperation.

  ‘Josh!?’

  ‘...? Why can’t I... I’m still here. Sarah? Where are we, why can’t I see you?’

  ‘I, I don’t know. Josh, I’m so scared! The place is so fucking wrong! I don’t want to be alone here anymore!’

  She felt something vast pass within inches of her being and chakras exploded in revulsion, an ice-shiver spasmed through her body and she was screaming. ‘Stay the hell away from me! Get away from me, stay the fuck out!’ She felt as if her psyche had been raped.

  She felt Josh’s panic rise, his absolute dread.

  ‘Sarah, what’s happening? I can’t reach you!’

  Somewhere she was still screaming.

  ‘Oh gooood, keep away! Stay the hell away! Joooosh!’

  No matter how hard he tried he had no way of reaching her and Sarah quickly spiralled away deeper into the void.

  LIVING IN ECHOES

  HER ICE COLD HAND slipped out of his and the naked girl fell away into the murk. Ian watched her drown within it, her beautiful mouth parted in a silent plea for help and those eyes, those eyes... Wisps of smoke snaked into her mouth, clouds formed over her face and she was gone. And he was again standing over that impossible hole stretching open inside a lifeless corpse in some house somewhere in another world. His hand was reaching down into the void trying to catch the dissolving girl’s hand, knowing he could almost grasp her fingers. If only he could reach that little...

  Something moved.

  Something, black and wet slithering just below his reach in the inky blackness.

  “Jesus.” He wrenched back his hand screaming as his mobile phone began to ring.

  “Jesus fucking Christ! Shut the, urghhh... where is the bastard?”

  The first few seconds of Ian McCalister’s awakening were utter confusion. The newspaper he’d fallen asleep under slipped off him in a landslide of papers. He shifted upright in the dark and kicked over a half empty beer can, spilling it over the
carpet. All the time the sharp electronic beeping of his mobile was assaulting his ears. Screeching in the dark.

  He sat on his sofa in the dark holding his head. “Ah god... okay, okay hold on you bastard!”

  He raised himself to his feet and staggered towards the light switch. Another can skittered away from his blind foot steps and he tumbled into the wall. “Bollocks!”

  He groped for the switch, swatted it and screwed his eyes shut against the light. “Ahhssshit. Hold on.”

  His eyes began to readjust.

  The room was a mess. On his coffee table, beer cans and empty shot glasses were gathered around a half-eaten portion of chips. Amongst the chaos—scattered and arranged in no discernible pattern—were newspaper clippings and files stained with coffee rings. Paper was spread everywhere. Clippings were taped to his walls, pages had been paper clipped to relevant folders, photos and highlighted photocopies were stacked in piles around the room. The amount of gathered paperwork was exceeded only by the number beer cans. All around Ian’s living room there were the signs of heavy alcohol abuse. Empty whiskey bottles sat on his tables, a pizza box lay on the shelf beneath his television and in one corner there was a large black bin bag filled to it’s top with empty cans.

  Right now all he was concerned with was finding his mobile, mainly just so he could shut it up. As he made his way to the cluttered table he noticed the clock on his video read 2:35 and wondered who was phoning him so late at night.

  He found it relatively easily and put it to his ear.

  “Yeah?” He answered with all the warmth he felt at that moment, which was precisely none.

  There was a hearty laugh on the other end of the phone. “Jesus Ian, you sound pleased as punch!”

  He was mildly taken aback, rubbed his spare hand over his blood shot eyes. “Who... Callum?”

  Another laugh. “Yeah, it’s Callum, how you been old man?”

  Ian paused and looked around at the state of the room. He’d pretty much been living-in for the past month. “Yeah, grand Callum, grand. Listen no offence, but it’s pretty late...”

  “I think this will wake you up, might have something for you.”

  “Oh?” Ian sobered up slightly and his brain throbbed dully in his head. He sat down and grabbed the nearest whiskey bottle. He was about to pour himself a shot when he noticed the cigarette butt floating in what was left. He sighed.