by Brian Keene
Russ and I glanced at each other and then shook our heads.
“I can’t,” he apologized. “Sorry, but I won’t be a party to it. Especially not your baby.”
She turned to me and I held up my palm.
“I can’t either. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll need your address,” she said. “To return the car when we get back.”
“It’s on the insurance card, inside the glove compartment.” My voice was monotone.
She thanked us profusely and then opened the Civic’s back door, talking to her baby and assuring him that everything would be okay. His cries gradually ceased. The pain in my stomach turned to stone when he cooed softly.
The three of us started walking back to town. Behind us, I heard our car start up and drive away. Gravel crunched under the tires. Too late, I realized that I’d forgotten to get my CDs out of the glove compartment. Then I remembered that with no electricity, there was no way for me to listen to them back at the apartment anyway. I hung my head. My shoulders slumped. Christy and Russ cursed me out and told me what an idiot I was, and I didn’t argue with them. Russ insisted on knowing why I’d done it.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I honestly don’t. A feeling just sort of came over me. That’s the only way I can explain it. I didn’t really think about it. I just did it.”
“You don’t even know who she was,” he said.
“No,” I agreed, “I didn’t. But she wanted help, and that was the only thing I could do for her. It was the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do?” Christy spat on the road. “You gave her our fucking car.”
“I know. We’re in a crisis situation here, hon. We all need to pitch in and help each other.”
“Oh, bull-fucking-shit, Robbie!” Russ threw his hands up in the air. “You sent that woman and her baby to their fucking death. How is that helping them?”
“We don’t know for sure that they’ll die.”
“Of course we do. You heard what happened to those firemen—and what happened before that. There’s something out there, and it’s not friendly. You knew, but you still let her go.”
I wheeled on him and jabbed my finger into his chest. Fuming, Russ balled his hands into fists. Christy’s eyes went wide.
“Well, I didn’t see you stepping in to stop her,” I shouted. “If you were so fucking concerned, then why didn’t you take the keys from her, or force her and her kid into our car and drive them back to town?”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you. You’re just as much a part of this as I am, Russ. Whatever it was that came over me, it came over you, too. So drop the fucking holier-than-thou shit.”
“I’ve got a better idea, Robbie. How about I just drop you instead?”
“You’re welcome to try.”
“Both of you stop it,” Christy yelled. “What the hell are you doing? Are you really gonna stand out here and beat the shit out of each other? How is that going to help us?”
For a second, I thought Russ was going to hit me. His entire body tensed. His chest felt like a stone slab beneath my fingertip. Then he relaxed and took a step backward.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “What’s happening to us, guys? What the hell is going on here? I’m sorry, Robbie.”
“I’m sorry, too, man.”
“It’s like this darkness is infecting us,” Christy said. “Getting inside our heads and hearts and making us dark, too.”
Russ shook his head but said nothing.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe this is just human nature. Maybe this is how we start acting when our backs are to the wall. I would think that’s more likely—if not exactly reassuring.”
“No,” Russ replied. “We’re better than that. I don’t give a shit how scared we are. We can’t start turning on each other.”
“No,” I agreed. “We can’t. But we almost did. So what does that tell us?”
Neither Christy nor Russ answered. We continued down the highway, heading back into town. I apologized to Russ again and he did the same to me. Then I told Christy that I was sorry about the car. She called me an asshole again, which was her way of saying the apology was accepted.
We never saw our car—or the woman and her baby—again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
People started dying that night.
Night is, of course, a relative fucking term, but we were still thinking in terms of day and night at that point.
When we got back to the apartment building, Russ and I apologized to each other one more time. Then we both apologized to Christy for upsetting her. I felt terrible about reacting that way to them both. I was emotionally exhausted, still scared, and feeling guilty about the woman and her baby.
Russ excused himself and went upstairs to get something to eat, and Christy and I returned to our apartment for some alone time. In this case, “alone time” meant arguing about the car some more, which, after our anger faded, eventually led to a cautious, hushed discussion about the strange surge of emotions that had led to me giving it away. Christy admitted to experiencing the same weird malaise that I had felt. She also confessed that she’d been thinking that if the woman was so intent on killing herself and her baby, then Russ and I should have quit trying to talk her out of it and let her get down to business instead. Just not with our car.
“It was the darkness,” she whispered, glancing at the window as if the blackness could hear us. And who knows? Maybe it could. “I wasn’t upset that she took her baby out there. I was upset about the stupid car. That’s not me, Robbie. You know that.”
“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t. Neither of us acted like ourselves.”
“It was the darkness. Somehow, it affected our reactions. Our emotions. Made us behave in ways we normally wouldn’t.”
“It can’t do that.”
Christy pulled her legs up under her on the sofa. “How do you know?”
“Because…well, I don’t.”
“Darkness doesn’t talk to us with the voices of the dead either. But it did. So why couldn’t it make us do things?”
“I don’t know, hon.”
Candles flickered against the walls, and the apartment filled with the competing scents of lavender, vanilla sugar, lilac, and cinnamon. Outside someone was shouting, but neither one of us got up to check and see what was going on. There’d been shouts and screams throughout the day, and this one was no different.
“It was the darkness,” she repeated. “First it showed us our loved ones. Then it got inside our heads.”
“But how? And why?”
“Because we’re dead, Robbie. All of us. This whole goddamn town. Maybe the entire world. We’re dead, and this is the afterlife. All that’s left is darkness.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true,” she insisted. “Just darkness and ghosts.”
“We’re not dead, Christy. We’d remember it if we died.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “If you were in a sudden car crash, or somebody shot you from behind, would you remember that?”
“No, but somebody couldn’t have sneaked up behind the entire town and shot each of us in the head.”
“Yeah, but there are plenty of other ways we could have all died suddenly. And that would explain what’s happened to us. Sherri at work says ghosts don’t realize that they’re dead. That’s why they hang around, just haunting places—because they’re trapped in the darkness between worlds. There’s no light for them to follow. They can’t leave because of the darkness. Sound familiar?”
I took a long swig of warm beer. “But I still don’t see how. I mean, we couldn’t have all died at once.”
“Why not? Maybe a bomb really did go off and killed us all while we were sleeping. Or maybe an asteroid hit the Earth or something.”
“Or maybe you just need some sleep.”
She leaned over and punched my arm. “Don’t be a smart-ass, Robbie. I was just trying to talk to you.”
“Well,
let’s talk about something different for a while.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry, Christy, but you’re talking crazy.”
“Me? What about earlier? You heard it for yourself. You saw your grandfather, Robbie.”
“Yeah, but that was out there on the edge of town. There it seemed…I don’t know. More real. I can believe there’s something in the darkness because I’ve seen it and heard it for myself. But this stuff about ghosts and the afterlife—it’s just crazy.”
She blanched. “Excuse me for being scared and trying to make sense of our situation.”
She banged her beer down on the coffee table and stood quickly, grabbing a flashlight and stomping toward the bedroom. I called after her, but she slammed the door. A moment later, I heard the mattress springs groan as she flung herself into bed. I got up and went to the door.
“I’m sorry,” I yelled. “Look, we’re both tired and scared. It’s been a long, weird day. Our nerves are just a little frazzled. But I’m sorry.”
There was silence. Then I heard feet padding across the carpet. The bedroom door opened, and Christy peered out at me. She’d been crying.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, more quietly this time. “I didn’t mean it. Okay?”
“It wasn’t you. It’s the darkness. It’s making you mean. Making me mean, too.”
“You weren’t mean. Like you said, you were just trying to talk to me. I should have been more supportive and—”
“But I was mean,” Christy said. “You just didn’t know it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When you got sarcastic with me, I had a sudden urge to smash my beer bottle on the table and cut your throat with it. I saw it really clear in my mind. I could even hear the glass slicing through your skin and feel your blood on my hand. Your blood was hot, and it sort of turned me on.”
“Jesus, Christy…”
“I know! Why would I think about doing something so horrible? What’s wrong with me? I wanted to kill you!”
She rushed to me, sobbing, and buried her head in my chest. I held her, stunned and speechless by the revelation.
“We’re not ourselves,” she whimpered. “What’s happening to us, Robbie?”
“We’re stressed, we’re tired, and we’re freaked the fuck out. That’s all. It’s really late and we need some sleep.”
“But it’s not late. It’s barely three in the afternoon.”
“That can’t be right. No way. It’s later than that. Feels like eleven or midnight.”
“I checked that old watch in my jewelry drawer—the one my grandmother gave me. I wound it not too long ago because I still wear it sometimes. It was a quarter till three.”
Doubting that was accurate, I got up and checked my own wristwatch. I’d taken it off when we got home and laid it on the entertainment center. I was surprised to see that it had stopped working. Apparently, the battery was dead.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My watch is busted.”
“I’m telling you, Robbie. It’s close to three.”
“It feels later than that.”
“Yes,” Christy agreed, “it does. Because of what’s outside. Because of the darkness. And because of what we’re becoming.”
“We’re not ghosts, honey. Please don’t start that shit again.”
“Aren’t we?”
“No.”
“Are we alive, Robbie? Are we still human? Because we sure as hell don’t seem to be acting like it anymore. And if we’re not human, then what are we?”
I didn’t answer.
“Maybe you’re right,” she continued. “Maybe it is later than we think. Late for us all.”
Her voice took on a cracked, hysterical tone. I gently led her into the pitch-black bedroom and lay her down on the bed. Then I turned on the flashlight.
“You need to sleep. We’ll talk about it more when you wake up. Okay?”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“Please? For me?”
“Let me burn one first. I need it.”
“Honey—”
“It will help me relax. Just a few bong hits.”
“Better not,” I said. “God knows when we’ll be able to get another bag of weed, and we’re almost down to stems and seeds.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly. Now, go to sleep. Okay?”
She nodded weakly. Her head sank into the pillow. I brushed her hair from her eyes and kissed her forehead.
“It would be easier if it had just been the darkness by itself,” she said. “If there hadn’t been anything out there in it.”
I wasn’t sure about that, but I kept it to myself. Thinking about it, I actually preferred the ghosts—not that I believed they were ghosts—and the sounds to nothing at all. The darkness was creepy enough, but to have it be silent, too? That seemed scarier somehow. It would have made it even more mysterious. More unknown. And fear of the unknown is almost as strong as a fear of the dark. Combining the two might have been too much for anyone to handle.
“Go to sleep,” I urged again. “You need to rest.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not sleepy yet,” I said. “I’ll sit up for a while, just in case the chief sends someone around with news.”
She grabbed my wrist. “Don’t leave me here in the dark, Robbie.”
“I won’t. I’ll bring you a candle.”
I did and set it on the nightstand next to her. She relaxed after that, and I sat with her until she fell asleep. It didn’t take long. The worried lines on her face gradually softened and smoothed. Her lips fell slightly open. Soon she was snoring softly. Her warm breath lightly grazed my face. Her eyeballs moved beneath their lids.
“Good night, Christy,” I whispered. “I love you. And I promise that I’ll take care of everything.”
She murmured, but remained asleep. I moved slowly so as not to wake her and returned to the living room. Then I waited. I don’t know for what exactly. I just waited. There wasn’t anything else to do. Nobody to talk to and no television to watch. No radio. I didn’t even have enough light to read, and didn’t have any books even if I’d wanted to. Even though I was still physically exhausted, my mind was now awake and alert. To make matters worse, my internal clock was all fucked up. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it seemed later in the day than it really was.
Later for us all, just like Christy had said.
My mind wandered to the line of salt and the weird graffiti spray-painted in the middle of the road. Again, I tried to figure out what the picture had represented. It had sort of resembled a door. The ghost—the thing that looked like my grandfather, but wasn’t—had told me to get rid of it. It had said that once the symbols were gone, we could be together again. What had it meant by that? Nothing had happened to the firemen until they passed over the salt and symbols. What was it about them that kept us safe?
Footsteps thudded overhead. The disturbance caused the light suspended from the living room ceiling to swing slowly back and forth. Russ was awake too apparently. I checked on Christy one more time, making sure she was sleeping soundly. I was a little nervous about leaving her alone after everything that had happened to us, but I wanted to talk to Russ and see if he’d gained any new perspective or come to any conclusions. In truth, I’d always been in awe of Russ’s intellect. I mean, he was one of us. But he knew a lot of shit—shit you only learned in college or elsewhere. Not the sort of things you learned living in a small town in Virginia.
I crept out of the apartment and went upstairs. The stairwell was dark, and I hadn’t brought the flashlight; I’d left it behind for Christy in case she woke up. (The batteries in her flashlight were fading already, and the beam had grown dim on our way home.) I walked slowly, navigating blindly. I kept a firm grip on the rail with one hand and let my fingertips brush along the wall with the other, until I came to Russ’s door. He answered on the secon
d knock. He looked even more disheveled than he had earlier in the day. Smelled riper, too. He barely acknowledged me—merely nodded a greeting and stepped aside to let me in. I wondered if, despite his apologies earlier, he was still pissed off about the woman and the baby.
I walked through the door and caught a whiff of tea brewing. I’m a coffee person and not much of a tea drinker, but the scent revitalized my senses. I inhaled through my nose, breathing deep. Then I coughed. Beneath the aroma was a sharp hint of kerosene. It made my eyes water a little.
“Want a cup?” Russ asked. “I got Irish Breakfast or Darjeeling.”
“Darjeeling? What the hell is that?”
“Man, you’ve never heard of Darjeeling?”
“No.”
“It’s the champagne of teas! You’ve really never had it?”
I shook my head. “No. Can’t say that I have. If I did, then I didn’t know it.”
“Well, we’ll fix that soon enough. I’ll make you a cup right now.”
I followed him into the kitchen. “How the hell are you heating it?”
“Got out my old kerosene heater and there was still fuel inside of it. I’m putting the kettle on top of it until the water boils. Heated up some noodles earlier the same way.”
Sure enough, the kerosene heater sat in the middle of the kitchen floor, casting a soft, orange glow on the walls and cabinets. The room was noticeably warmer than the rest of the apartment. Russ grabbed a cracked coffee mug and plopped a tea bag in it, then poured some hot water into the cup. Not bothering to let it steep, I sipped the hot tea and sighed. Immediately, I felt the caffeine kick in, though not as much as I’d have gotten from a cup of coffee.
“Thanks, man. I needed that.”
“Don’t mention it. Here, add some of this to it.”
He pulled a pint of bourbon from a drawer and poured some in my mug.
“Now we’re talking,” I said, grinning.
“Special occasion. And listen, Robbie—I’m sorry about earlier. I don’t know what came over me. I was pissed, but still…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We were both out of line.”
We fell silent for a few minutes, each lost in our own thoughts.