“I—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Samuel. You must learn to keep your mouth shut. If you don’t interfere with me, then I’ll leave you in peace, but if you cross me you won’t even live long enough to regret it. Do you understand?”
Samuel nodded, even as he knew that what Mrs. Abernathy was saying was a lie. There would be no peace for him, or for anyone, if she succeeded with her plans. But her voice was so sweet and hypnotic, and his eyelids were starting to feel so very heavy.
“Come closer, Samuel,” whispered Mrs. Abernathy. “Come closer, and let me whisper in your ear …”
Whisper. Ear. Poison.
In that instant, Samuel sensed the danger he was in. With a great effort of will he pinched himself hard on the hand, using his nails so that the pain was sharp and he drew blood. He took a step back from Mrs. Abernathy, his head clearing, and he saw her face cloud with rage. One of her hands reached for him, almost as though it had a will of its own.
“You nasty child!” she said. “Don’t think you can escape me that easily. You’d better be careful, unless_”
“Unless what?” said Samuel, goading her now. “Unless I want something bad to happen to me, is that it? What could be worse than a monster under my bed waiting to eat me?”
Mrs. Abernathy got her anger under control. She smiled almost sweetly.
“Oh, you have no idea,” she said. “Well then, here it is. Something bad is going to happen to you no matter what you do. The question is: how bad will that something be? When the time comes, I can make it so that you simply fall asleep and never wake up again. But if I choose, I can ensure instead that you never sleep again, and that every moment of your wretched existence is spent in searing agony, gasping for breath and begging for the pain to stop!”
“It sounds like gym class,” said Samuel, with considerable feeling. He was happy that his voice didn’t tremble. It made him appear braver than he was.
Mrs. Abernathy looked past Samuel. He risked a glance in the same direction, and saw his mother approaching.
“You’re so funny, Samuel,” said Mrs. Abernathy, beginning to move away. “When my master comes we’ll see if he finds you quite so amusing. In the meantime, you keep your mouth shut. Remember when I said I’d kill your dog? Well, if you speak of this to your mother, then I’ll kill her instead. I’ll smother her in her sleep, and no one will ever know except you and I. I met her in the supermarket yesterday. I know you’ve been talking about my affairs. Remember this, Samuel: careless talk costs lives …”
With that she headed off in the direction of town, trailing strong perfume and a faint whiff of burning.
“What did she want?” asked Mrs. Johnson. She was staring at Mrs. Abernathy’s back with ill-concealed distaste. She couldn’t remember why she disliked Mrs. Abernathy so much, just that she did.
“Nothing, Mum,” said Samuel resignedly. “She was just saying hello.”
That evening, Samuel decided that there was no point in telling any grown-up in Biddlecombe of what he knew. They simply wouldn’t believe him. But perhaps someone his own age might. He could no longer deal with all this alone.
Tomorrow, at the risk of being laughed at, he would call upon his friends for help.
XIV
In Which We Learn That It Is Sometimes Wise to Be Afraid of the Dark
SAMUEL’S DAD CALLED THE house that night to speak to his son. Samuel tried to tell his dad about the Abernathys’ basement, but his dad only said, “Really?” and “How interesting,” and asked Samuel how he was enjoying his half-term break, and if his mum was okay.
Samuel made one final effort.
“Dad,” he said, “this is serious. I’m not making it up.”
“You think these people, the Abernathys, are carrying out experiments in their basement?” said Mr. Johnson.
“Not experiments,” said Samuel. “I think they were messing about with something that they shouldn’t have been messing about with, and it all went wrong. Now they’ve opened a kind of doorway.”
“Into Hell?”
“Yes, except it’s not working right yet. The door is open, but the gates aren’t.”
“Don’t you usually have to open the gates before the door?” said Mr. Johnson.
“Yes,” said Samuel, “but—”
He stopped.
“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” he said. “You don’t believe me.”
“Have you been playing those computer games again, those ones where you have to kill demons? Samuel, put your mum on the phone.” Samuel did, and heard one side of a conversation that seemed to revolve around whether or not he, Samuel, knew the difference between reality and fantasy, and if this was some kind of reaction to the difficulties in their marriage, and if Samuel should see a psychiatrist. The conversation moved on to other matters, and Samuel drifted away.
His mum had a troubled expression on her face when she hung up the phone, as though she realized that she was supposed to remember something important, but couldn’t quite recall what it was.
“Samuel, go to bed early tonight,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Read something that doesn’t involve demons, or ghosts, or monsters, hmmm? For me. And, darling, be careful what you say to people.”
Then she started crying.
“Your dad’s buying a house with that woman, Samuel,” said his mum, through her tears. “He wants a divorce. And he wants to come down and collect that stupid bloody car of his!”
Samuel held his mum, and didn’t speak. After a while, she told him that it was time for bed. He went up to his room and spent a long time staring out of the window, but he didn’t cry. Suddenly, monsters and demons didn’t seem so important anymore. His dad wasn’t coming home again. Meanwhile, he was just a small boy, and nobody—not his mum, not his dad— listened to small boys, not ever. Shortly after nine, he changed into his pajamas, and climbed into bed.
Eventually, he fell asleep.
It was Boswell who first sensed the coming of the Darkness. He woke at the end of Samuel’s bed, where he had now decided to sleep permanently after the nasty slimy thing had briefly taken up residence on the floor beneath. Boswell’s nose twitched, and his hair stood on end.
Although he was a very intelligent animal, Boswell, like most dogs, divided the world into things that were Good to eat and things that were Bad to eat, with a small space in the middle for things that might potentially be either, or just Good or Bad generally, but about which he wasn’t entirely certain as of yet.
Thus Boswell’s first impression, upon waking up, was that something was Bad, but he wasn’t sure exactly what, which confused him greatly. He couldn’t hear or smell anything out of the ordinary. Neither could he see anything out of the ordinary, although his eyesight wasn’t very good at the best of times, so that a whole army of Very Bad Things could have been standing a few feet away and, unless they smelled Bad, or sounded Bad, he would have had no idea that they were there.
He jumped from the bed and sniffed around, then trotted to the window and put his front paws on the sill so that he could peer out. All seemed to be perfectly normal. The road was empty. Nothing was moving.
The streetlight at the nearest corner flickered and went out, creating a pool of darkness that stretched halfway to the next light. Boswell put his head to one side, and whined softly. Then the next streetlight went out and, seconds later, the first light came back on again. Even with his weak eyesight, Boswell caught something slipping from one pool of darkness to the next. The third streetlight, the one directly in front of their house, buzzed and then extinguished itself, and this time it stayed out. Boswell stared at the pool of blackness, and a figure in the shadows seemed to stare back at him.
Boswell growled.
Then the pool of blackness began to change. It extended itself, like oil running down a hill, rivulets of it flowing from the base of the streetlight toward the garden gate of number 501. It slid beneath the gate and oozed along the path until it reached the fr
ont door and Boswell could no longer mark its progress.
Boswell dropped down from the window, padded to the half-closed bedroom door and pushed his body through the gap. He stood at the top of the stairs and watched as the Darkness slipped under the door, seemed to pause for a second to find its bearings, and then flowed to the first step and began to climb, the edge of the Darkness forming fingers that pulled the rest of its mass along. Boswell heard a soft pop as the far end of the Darkness slipped beneath the front door, so that now he was staring at a puddle perhaps three feet long making its way inexorably toward him.
Boswell began to bark, but nobody came. Mrs. Johnson’s bedroom door remained firmly closed, and Boswell could hear her snoring softly. The Darkness was now halfway up the stairs and, at the sound of Boswell’s barks, it began to increase its rate of progress. With no other option, Boswell beat a retreat to Samuel’s bedroom door, pushing his way in and then nudging the door closed with his nose. He backed away, still growling. He could see a thin line of illumination between the door and the carpet, and deep in his clever dog mind he sensed that this was not a Good thing.
Slowly the light disappeared, diminishing from left to right until nothing of it remained. For a couple of seconds, all was still. There was only the sound of Samuel’s breathing, and the distant buzz of Mrs. Johnson’s snores, to disturb the silence.
Boswell jumped onto the bed and barked in Samuel’s ear.
“Mwff,” said Samuel. “Argle.”
Boswell tried licking him, while at the same time keeping an eye on the door. Samuel just pushed him away, not even waking up properly to do so.
“‘S early,” he mumbled. “No school.”
Just then, with a speed that caused Boswell to jump backward in fright, the Darkness poured under the door, moving swiftly toward where Samuel lay. It found the leg of the bed and climbed it like a snake, winding its way round the wood before sliding across the blankets. Boswell could smell it now. It reeked of old clothes, and stagnant water, and dead things. It did not shine like oil, even though it moved with the same relentless viscosity. It was absence made solid, nothingness given form and purpose.
And as it moved to smother Samuel, Boswell knew what he had to do.
Standing near the edge of the bed, he gripped one end of the Darkness with his teeth, and pulled. He felt it stretch like rubber in his mouth. His tongue grew cold, and his teeth began to hurt, but he did not release his grip. Instead he dug his paws into the blanket and began working his way back to the end of the bed. The Darkness extended toward Samuel, by now almost within reach of his neck. Boswell’s paws tore at the blanket as he tried to maintain his position, his teeth tugging with all his might, even as he felt his back legs begin to slide and he fell off the edge of the bed, his bite still hard upon the Darkness.
The impact of Boswell hitting the floor, combined with the sensation of the blanket slipping away from him, finally woke Samuel up.
“What’s happening?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
From the floor came the sound of a struggle, and he heard Boswell whimper.
“Boswell?”
Samuel sat up and looked over the edge of the bed. He saw what appeared to be a blanket of blackness, and beneath it the shape of a small, struggling dog. The Darkness, or whatever, was controlling it, had recognized at last the threat posed by the little dachshund, and was doing its level best to extinguish it.
“Boswell!” shouted Samuel.
He reached down and began to pull at the shadow, but even as he did so it froze his fingers and, as he watched in horror, it began to flow up his arms.
“Ugh!” said Samuel.
Meanwhile, Boswell, now freed from the suffocating force, was catching his breath. Seeing his master in trouble, he recommenced his attack, digging his aching teeth in once again. Simultaneously Samuel began to move backward, until, at last, the Darkness was stretched between them.
“Don’t let go, Boswell,” said Samuel. He pulled the Darkness, and Boswell, in the direction of the small bathroom that lay to the right of his bed. It contained only a toilet and a small basin, but it was enough for what Samuel had in mind.
“Stay, Boswell!” he said as he reached the toilet and Boswell was almost at the door. Holding on to the Darkness with one hand, so that it remained at full stretch, Samuel lifted the toilet seat and, taking a deep breath, told Boswell to open his mouth.
The Darkness sprang from Boswell’s mouth, the force sending its bulk flying in Samuel’s direction. As quickly as he could, Samuel released his own grip. The Darkness struck the cistern, then fell into the bowl. Immediately tendrils of it extended upward as it tried to pull itself out, but Samuel was too quick for it. He hit the flush and watched with satisfaction as the Darkness swirled around the bowl for a time and then was swept into the sewers.
Breathing heavily, Samuel leaned back against the sink.
“I’m never using that toilet again,” he said to Boswell, but Boswell was no longer at the door. Instead, he had returned to the window, where Samuel now joined him. Together they watched as the streetlight across from the house came on once more, and the next one extinguished itself, and so on until at last the corner was plunged into darkness for a moment, and something fled away into Stoker Lane.
Before it disappeared, Samuel and Boswell caught a glimpse of it.
It looked like a woman.
In fact, it looked very much like Mrs. Abernathy.
XV
In Which Samuel Johnson Begins to Fight Back
SAMUEL DIDN’T SAY MUCH at breakfast the next morning. His mother noticed how subdued her son was.
“Is everything all right, dear?” she asked.
Samuel just nodded, and ate his cornflakes. He wanted to tell his mother what had happened the night before with the pool of Darkness, but he couldn’t. She wouldn’t believe him, and he had no proof. He had no idea where the Darkness had ended up, and was at first a little worried that it might be stuck in one of the household pipes, waiting for a chance to emerge. Once he had thought about it for a while, though, he realized that it was probably lost in a smelly old sewer, which was just fine by Samuel. Still, he had taken the precaution of gluing the toilet seat closed using superstrong adhesive. He was the only one who ever used the little bathroom anyway, and as long as he was careful nobody would discover for a while what he had done.
But Samuel was also very frightened, for his mother and for himself. He remembered Mrs. Abernathy’s threat to kill his mother if he continued to try to convince her of what he knew. The demon under the bed had been bad enough, but at least that could be reasoned with. The Darkness had been something else entirely. He had been lucky last night; Boswell’s bravery had saved him, but Boswell might not be able to save him, or his mum, from whatever came next.
Because Samuel was sure of one thing: Mrs. Abernathy wasn’t going to give up. The Darkness had simply been her latest attempt to silence Samuel. Others would follow, and eventually she would succeed.
Samuel didn’t want to die. He quite liked being alive. But as he tried to come to terms with how scared he was, he began to feel angry. Mrs. Abernathy was evil. She wanted to do something awful, so awful that the world would never be the same after it, if there was even any world left once the gates were opened. She had to be stopped, and Samuel was determined to fight her until his last breath.
It was at that moment that fortune began to turn in Samuel’s favor.
There was a small portable television in the corner of the kitchen. Samuel’s mother sometimes liked to watch it while she was having breakfast. The volume was turned down low, and the news was on. Samuel glanced up and saw a man in a white coat talking. Behind him was what looked like an enormous series of pipelines. Samuel knew what it was: the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. He had watched a documentary about it earlier in the year and, although he hadn’t understood everything that had been discussed, he thought it all sounded like fascinating stuff. He reached for the remote contr
ol and turned up the volume.
The scientist, whose name was Professor Stefan, looked a bit embarrassed. It became clear that he was trying to explain why the collider had been shut down. Samuel knew the collider hadn’t worked properly the first time it was turned on, and the scientists had been forced to tinker with it for a while before it began running to their satisfaction. Now, after all the money that had been spent on it, it still didn’t appear to be working the way that it should.
“Well,” said Professor Stefan, when the reporter pointed this fact out to him, “that’s not entirely true. It was working perfectly, but then there was an, um, unanticipated release of unknown energy.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” asked the reporter.
“Well, to put it in layman’s terms, a bit flew off, and now we’re trying to find out what it was.”
“A bit?” said the reporter.
“A particle of energy,” said Professor Stefan, “but one that has not been encountered before, and appears to show unusual characteristics.”
“What kind of characteristics?” said the reporter.
“Well, the collider is a vacuum, and therefore it’s sealed. It simply should not be possible for anything to find its way out of there.”
“But now you think that something has?”
“We believe so. It may just be a leak, so we’re checking every inch of the collider for possible breaches. As you can imagine, that’s a time-consuming procedure. In the meantime, we’re going back over our systems in an effort to determine precisely what we’re dealing with.”
The reporter thought over what he had just been told.
“Is there any possibility that this ‘energy’ might be dangerous?”
“Oh, none whatsoever,” said Professor Stefan.
Samuel thought that he seemed very sure of this for someone who didn’t know what exactly the energy was.
“And when precisely did you become aware of this energy leak?” asked the reporter.
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