The Darkening (A Coming of Age Horror Novel) (The Great Rift Book 1)

by Christopher Motz

  Danny knocked and waited. Jacky greeted him wearing the same clothes she had on the day before. Her hair was greasy and knotted and a large purple hickey stood out on her neck from the previous night’s festivities.

  “Eric isn’t here, so you can just go home and fuck yourself,” Jacky shouted as she prepared to slam the door in his face. What a winner. “Hey, wait a second. You smoke pot, kid? I’d do just about anything for a few hits right now.”

  He backed off the porch and noticed that Eric’s bike was missing from its customary place on the sidewalk. Danny ignored Jacky’s last comment, pretending not to hear. She was such a cliche, it would’ve been comical under different circumstances.

  “Come on, for real. I’ll give you the best blow-job you’ve ever had.” Danny looked up at her, turned, and walked away from the house. His stomach lurched at the thought of her touch. What did guys see in her? Were people so desperate they’d put their dicks in a pile of trash for ten minutes of fun? “Whatever,” she shouted. “Your loss, homo.”

  Danny wished life was better for his friend. He looked at his own home life, at the petty arguments he had with his parents, and he felt bad for ever thinking his life was crap. Eric’s life was crap, that was a solid fact. Relief washed over him as the door slammed from behind.

  Brent is definitely knocking next time.

  He didn’t realize until that moment how important his friends were. He was lost without them. He stopped at Becker’s General Store downtown and grabbed a handful of black licorice whips, his favorite comfort food. A night spent on the toilet would be well worth it. It’d grown hot again and by the time he’d gotten to Burger King, he ducked inside to rest in the air-conditioning. Once the sweat dried on his skin he went back outside, immediately regretting his decision as hot, humid air washed over him.

  “Dan the Man,” a voice shouted. “Over here.”

  Charlie Maier stood on his front steps, decked out in a faded Foghat shirt. He wore a pair of dark sunglasses. A silver chain with a small crucifix hung from his neck.

  “Charlie!”

  Danny looked both ways and hurried across the busy street. He enjoyed hanging out with Charlie and often regretted the way he sometimes treated him. Charlie could be argumentative and abrasive; he often argued a point long after losing the battle. He was a good kid, just not always the easiest to get along with.

  “How’s it hanging?” Charlie said.

  “A little to the left, why? Are you writing my fucking memoir?”

  “Did you know that Daddy Longleggers are the most poisonous spiders in the world, but their fangs are too small to bite you? Mikey Smoler told me that and I told him he was full of shit. Maybe he’s right? Do you think that’s true?”

  Danny shrugged. What the hell did he know about spiders other than the fact that he hated them?

  “I thought you were in Virginia?”

  “We got back last night. My mom doesn’t like staying away from home for long. She’s weird like that.”

  “Now I know where you get it,” Danny joked.

  “So you wanna do something? I need to get out for a while. I wanted to go to that party the other night but my mom made me help clean the garage. The garage! Are you kidding me? First day of summer vacation and I was knee-deep in cobwebs. Did you go?”

  “Yep. The place was full of beer and chicks. How could I pass it up?”

  “Oh shit, don’t rub it in or I’m gonna cry. Did Brent and Eric go?”

  “Brent did. I don’t know where the hell Eric was. You know how he gets sometimes, just wanders off on his own. He’s missing in action today too.”

  “So did you get laid?” He elbowed Danny lightly in the arm and chuckled as if they shared a private joke.

  “Unfortunately not. I probably could have but I got wasted and passed out. It looked like a war zone in the morning.” Danny knew he had zero chance of getting laid that night… or any night for that matter. There was no way he’d let his friends know he was still a virgin. Let them think what they want.

  Charlie buried his face in his hands and groaned. “Oh, I’m so pissed I wasn’t there. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “No one in particular. I like to keep my options open. There was one girl I talked to for a while who seemed nice…”

  “Go ahead,” Charlie prodded.

  “No, it’s no big deal. She’s a grade below us, anyway.”

  Charlie smirked. “Oh, come on, just tell me.”

  “Sam Bayonne. We talked for a little, that’s it.”

  “Are you kidding? Dude, she’s hot. You’re a lucky dog.”

  “Lucky? She wanted to talk to me and instead, I got loaded and passed out. She probably thinks I’m an asshole now.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time I pissed some girl off I’d be living in the Playboy Mansion.”

  “Yeah, and still not getting laid.”

  They laughed. Danny needed that.

  They walked off together, chatting about random nonsense and catching up on late school gossip. Danny told him about their adventure to the Rimmel factory and about Jacky’s proposition earlier that day.

  “I’d let her suck my dick,” Charlie said. “There’s no such thing as a bad blow-job.”

  “I’m sure she’s great, she’s had enough practice for the entire girl’s basketball team.” Charlie found this extremely amusing. “It’s the crotch-rot I’d be worried about.” Charlie feigned puking in a garbage can as they passed Turkey Hill, drawing a few nasty looks from customers. He didn’t care. He rarely gave a shit what others thought of him, which got them into trouble more than once. Today, Danny laughed along as his spirits rose.

  At four o’clock they went back to Charlie’s and played video games in his bedroom while paging through the yearbook. Danny paused at Sam’s photo, regretting not taking the effort to hang out with her when he had the chance.

  “Oh look, Danny’s in love,” Charlie said. “Why don’t you take the yearbook home for later?”

  “Shut up dickhead,” Danny said, laughing as he tossed the book at him.

  “Seriously though,” Charlie said. “It’s a chance you might wanna take. How many chances do any of us really get?”

  Danny left at six, walking home as it began drizzling. Charlie was a lot of things, but sometimes he was right on the money. How many chances do we get? Mr. Jones had his chance, and he took it. Sure, his wife had died young, leaving him to spend the rest of his years alone, but did he regret it? When you love someone or something so much, it’s irreplaceable. At least Mr. Jones had that once, and although fleeting, it carried him through the rest of his life. Danny hoped she waited for her husband on the other side, if there was another side. If not, isn’t this all just a waste of time?

  He went to bed thinking about Sam. What if she was the one he’d forever regret not knowing?

  “That’s silly,” he said to his empty room, but he didn’t believe it.

  Not a word.

  ***

  Eric wanted to be alone.

  He didn’t often go anywhere without his friends in tow, but now and then he needed to be by himself. He’d hopped on his bike just as the sun was coming up and rode to a remote picnic grove outside of town. It was mostly forgotten by the locals. The old bandstand had collapsed and a small concession stand remained shuttered and covered in graffiti. The grass had become wild, growing up and around the scattered benches.

  Eric considered it his place. Not even his friends knew about it and he wanted to keep it that way. He needed something just for himself. When life at home got too much to bear, he’d come here to think, to reflect, to have some peace and quiet. More than once, he spent the night there. It was feeling like one of those nights.

  He had no way to reach his mother or his sister. They were both lost in their own addiction, and every attempt he’d made in the past was met with anger and physical confrontation. Joan blamed him for her drinking. She needed someone to blame. Looking in the mirror and taking resp
onsibility was too much for her.

  Jacky was even more vicious, either high on something that made her extremely angry or incapable of rational thought. One angry encounter led to Eric being stripped naked and paraded around in front of her drunken friends while they joked about the size of his penis. For them, this was the highest form of amusement. He’d been so embarrassed he spent the next week in his room. Jacky was sadistic and Eric was more often than not her target.

  After his father had died, the entire family began slowly circling the drain. Eric knew there was no turning back. It was too late for them. He silently prayed that it wasn’t too late for him.

  That night he stayed outside, watching the stars, wishing he was a million miles away. He didn’t ride back into town until the following morning.

  ***

  Danny met with Brent at nine the following morning and Eric pulled up soon after. They went and picked up Charlie at his house, making it the first day of vacation they’d all be together. It lifted everyone’s spirits to have the group back together again.

  Brent mentioned a return trip to the Rimmel factory but was quickly shot down because of their previous run-in with old man Moyer. Danny sighed in relief, having much more pressing reasons to keep away.

  By ten they stood behind the abandoned Market Street School, eying the partially open window that granted them access to the dusty rear hall. It was no longer something new or exciting - they’d been here a dozen times - but had become something of a private hangout, giving them a place to smoke cigarettes and curse like sailors without prying eyes.

  “There’s something very liberating about walking into a school and pissing on the floor,” Brent said. “Some serious payback for the last ten years.”

  “I actually agree with him on this one,” Charlie said.

  Danny and Eric nodded their approval.

  The open window was only accessible by climbing the ancient iron fire escape. Some steps were bent and others were completely missing. For fear of the old stairs falling down, they only went up one at a time, the next in line waiting patiently until the man in front of him disappeared inside.

  The school, built at the turn of the century to ease overcrowding, was creepy even in broad daylight. The floor was littered with years of dust and broken plaster. It smelled of old wood. Musty. The embodiment of emptiness. Dust motes hung suspended in the air, trapped in bright yellow shafts of light that peeked through the plywood covering the windows.

  Charlie said, “Let’s go up the attic. Are all of those old books still up there?”

  “They should be,” Danny said.

  “I’m taking one as a souvenir.”

  “Oh wow, that’s so lame,” Brent yelled. “All the cool stuff to take and you want an old book. You’re really the life of the party, you know that?”

  Charlie shrugged and flipped him off, getting a chuckle from Eric.

  They ascended the stairs single file, the dry wood cracking and groaning beneath them. The second-floor classrooms were much brighter without the plywood covers. It was a good place to sit and relax before hitting the stifling attic for Charlie’s souvenir.

  “Guys,” Eric said.

  They continued walking ahead, not hearing him over the dry crunch of their shoes.

  “Guys, stop,” he warned.

  “What’s your problem, you gotta piss already?” Charlie asked.

  Eric raised his arm and pointed ahead. They laughed, turning around, waiting to see if there was a punch line. No one noticed how badly his finger was shaking. What they saw made their laughter catch in their throats.

  At the end of the hall, directly in front of a sunlit window, stood a tall, contorted shadow in the shape of a man. A pair of long arms hung to the floor, its head and neck bent to the side at an impossible angle. It stood there, plain as day, gently rocking back forth.

  “Am I the only one seeing that?” Eric whispered.

  Brent stared directly at it. “What the fuck?”

  Danny stepped back, his shoe loudly scraping against the grit on the floor. “It’s probably just one of our shadows, right?”

  Brent waved his arm in the air but the shadow remained steady. In turn, each of others repeated this gesture to the same effect. The shadow didn’t move an inch. Danny heard Brent’s heavy breathing and turned to see if he was okay. Brent stared ahead in shock, his skin pale, mouth agape.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Eric screamed. “What the hell is that?”

  The air tightened as the shadow on the wall waved back.

  In a tangle of arms and legs, they turned and ran from the direction they’d come, slipping and sliding in the dust and debris. Their footfalls boomed like thunder, echoes bouncing into deserted rooms and coming back to meet them. With all the noise they couldn’t tell if they were being followed, but no one wanted to risk looking over their shoulder.

  Eric was still in the lead. He spun around the corner and into another empty hall, nearly losing his footing on a pile of papers. “The basement! Go down the basement!”

  “Are you crazy, it’s pitch black down there,” Charlie panted.

  “Yeah and there’s also a door down there. Do you want to be the last one to crawl through the fucking window?”

  At the foot of the stairs, they stopped, running into each other and almost crashing to the floor. The only sound was that of their labored breathing. Danny held his index finger to his lips and looked up at the ceiling. The silence was overwhelming.

  Brent inched closer to his friends, shoulder to shoulder. “Maybe we’re just a bunch of scaredy-cats. It must’ve been a trick of the light or something.”

  “Yeah. Or maybe it wasn’t,” Danny said.

  Plaster crunched on the floor above as they held their breath, waiting for the sound to be repeated. Something sounding like a tortured cat screamed from the upper floor as doors slammed throughout the building. The air pressure changed as if the oxygen was quickly being sucked from the room. Glass shattered behind them as a bookshelf toppled nearby. A stale breeze blew down the hall, carrying dust and yellowed scraps of paper. The scream was repeated, much closer this time.

  They ran.

  Danny barely knew where he was going. The layout of the building suddenly seemed different, the halls much longer, doors leading off into darkened rooms he’d never seen before. His feet only skimmed the steps as he descended into the basement, his friends’ shouts of fear following him into the darkness. He stumbled across the concrete floor and ran into the wall, bumping his head and crying out in terror. He slid his hands along the wall until he found the rusted door handle that would get them outside.

  He worked at the handle as the others ran down behind him, huffing and puffing from the exertion of their flight. One of them uttered a brief squawk before tumbling the rest of the way down the stairs. Their dull grunts were soon followed by pained screams.

  “Oh, shit, who fell?” Danny asked.

  “I think it’s Charlie,” Eric said. “I know he was behind me.”

  Charlie’s voice rose in pitch and he screamed again. “It’s me, you fucks! My leg! My fucking leg is busted!”

  Brent moved toward the sound of Charlie’s voice. “Calm down, we’re getting out of here.”

  “IT’S BROKEN! IT FUCKING HURTS!”

  “Well screaming isn’t going to fix it, dumbass.”

  “Danny, please open the door,” Eric said

  “I’m trying. The handle is stuck.”

  Eric and Brent found Charlie sprawled on the cellar floor and tried to get him to his feet. “PUT ME DOWN, GODDAMMIT!”

  “Stop being such a baby,” Brent said. “You have two legs.”

  “But no balls,” Eric added.

  Charlie laughed through his tears. Once he was upright, his leg didn’t hurt nearly as much, but he knew it was broken. His cries turned to sobs as they moved closer to Danny.

  The pressure on the handle released, and the door opened a crack, allowing the sun to penetrate the black
ness. Danny turned to check on his friends when something breathed in his ear.

  The voice that followed was thick with phlegm, wet and slobbery.

  “Why don’t you just leave him with me?”

  Without waiting to see if his friends heard the voice, Danny pushed the door open as hard as he could, running into the welcoming sunlight. He didn’t stop until he was nearly one hundred yards away. The others followed more slowly as Charlie hopped on one leg between them. He was covered in dust. A dozen scrapes, several bleeding, covered his entire body from his tumble down the stairs. His ankle bent at an ugly angle and had begun to swell.

  Eric panted harshly, looking at the building as if it would reach out and pull him back. “What the hell just happened in there?”

  No one answered. The only sounds were those of heavy breathing and Charlie’s quiet sobs. Danny felt violated by the closeness of the thing that’d whispered in his ear, its voice carried on a hot, stinking wind, rotten and corrupted. If he was crazy, so were his friends. Even if they didn’t hear the voice, they surely couldn’t pretend that nothing happened in there.

  “We need to get Charlie back to my place,” Danny said. “I’m the closest one. We can call his mom, tell her he fell off his bike or something. That ankle looks seriously messed up.”

  Charlie looked up at him with squinting eyes and answered through clenched teeth. “Well, thanks a lot, Dr. Harper. Is that your professional opinion?”

  “I say we cut it off,” Brent added. “Why waste time going to the hospital?”

  They laughed without humor.

  Charlie turned to Brent, trembling from the pain. “I say we cut off your tongue so for once in your life you keep your fucking mouth SHUT!”

  “Not likely, buddy. I’d be the loudest mime in all the world.”