“I—I’m afraid I don’t . . .”
“Oh God, Miss Phoebe, don’t! I hate to see you cut yourself up like this!”
“You were faking.”
“You mean just now, the hypnosis routine? No I wasn’t. You had me under all right. It’s just that it won’t stick with me. Everything worked but the commands.”
“That’s—impossible!”
“No it ain’t. Not if I had a deeper command to remember ’em—and disregard ’em.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she said tautly. “She did it!”
He nodded.
“She’s evil, Don, can’t you see? I was only trying to save—”
“I know what you were tryin’ to save,” he interrupted, not unkindly. “You’re in real good shape for a woman your age, Miss Phoebe. This power of yours, it keeps you going. Keeps your glands going. With you, that’s a problem. With us, now, it’ll be a blessing. Pity you never thought of that.”
“Foul,” she said, “how perfectly foul . . .”
“No it ain’t!” he rapped. “Look, maybe we’ll all get a chance to work together after all, and if we do, you’ll get an idea what kind of chick Joyce is. I hope that happens. But mind you, if it don’t, we’ll get along. We’ll do all you can do, in time.”
“I’d never cooperate with evil!”
“You went and got yourself a little mixed up about that, Miss Phoebe. You told me yourself about yin an’ Yang, how some folks set a course straight an’ true an’ never realize the boundary can twist around underneath them. You asked me just tonight was I sure which was which, an’ I said yes. It’s real simple. When you see somebody with power who is usin’ it for what Yang stands for—good, an’ light, an’ all like that, you’ll find he ain’t usin’ it for himself.”
“I wasn’t using it for myself!”
“No, huh?” He chuckled. “Who was it I was goin’ to kiss an’ hold just like it was Joyce?”
She moaned and covered her face. “I just wanted to keep you pure,” she said indistinctly.
“Now that’s a thing you got to get straightened out on. That’s a big thing. Look here.” He rose and went to the long bookcase. Through her fingers, she watched him. “Suppose this here’s all the time that has passed since there was anything like a human being on earth.” He moved his hand from one end of the top shelf to the other. “Maybe way back at the beginning they was no more ’n smart monkeys, but all the same they had whatever it is makes us human beings. These forces you talk about, they were operatin’ then just like now. An’ the cavemen an’ the savages an’ all, hundreds an’ hundreds of years, they kept developing until we got humans like us.
“All right. You talk about ancient mysteries, your Yoga an’ all. An’ this tieup with virgins. Look, I’m going to show you somepin. You an’ all your studyin’ and copyin’ the ancient secrets, you know how ancient they were? I’ll show you.” He put out his big hand and put three fingers side by side on the “modern” end of the shelf.
“Those three fingers covers it—down to about fourteen thousand years before Christ. Well, maybe the thing did work better without sex. But only by throwin’ sex into study instead of where it was meant to go. Now you want to free yourself from sex in your thinkin’, there’s a much better way than that. You do it like Joyce an’ me. We’re a bigger unit together than you ever could be by yourself. An’ we’re not likely to get pushed around by our glands, like you. No offense, Miss Phoebe . . . so there’s your really ancient mystery. Male an’ female together; there’s a power for you. Why you s’pose people in love get to fly so high, get to feel like gods?” He swept his hand the full length of the shelf. “A real ancient one.”
“Wh-where did you learn all this?” she whispered.
“Joyce. Joyce and me, we figured it out. Look, she’s not just any chick. She quit school because she learns too fast. She gets everything right now, this minute, as soon as she sees it. All her life everyone around her seems to be draggin’ their feet. An’ besides, she’s like a kid. I don’t mean childish, I don’t mean simple, I mean like she believes in something even when there’s no evidence around for it, she keeps on believing until the evidence comes along. There must be a word for that.”
“Faith,” said Miss Phoebe faintly.
He came and sat down near her. “Don’t take it so hard, Miss Phoebe,” he said feelingly. “It’s just that you got to stand aside for a later model. If anybody’s going to do Yang work in a world like this, they got to get rid of a lot of deadwood. I don’t mean you’re deadwood. I mean a lot of your ideas are. Like that fellow was in jail about the little girl, you say watch ’im! one false move an’ back in the cage he goes. And all that guy wanted all his life was just to have a couple people around him who give a damn, ’scuse me, Miss Phoebe. He never had that, so he took what he could get from whoever was weaker’n him, and that was only girls. You should see him now, he’s goin’ to be our best man.”
“You’re a child. You can’t undertake work like this. You don’t know the powers you’re playing with.”
“Right. We’re goin’ to make mistakes. An’ that’s where you come in. Are you on?”
“I—don’t quite—”
“We want your help,” he said, and bluntly added, “but if you can’t help, don’t hinder.”
“You’d want to work with me after I . . . Joyce, Joyce will hate me!”
“Joyce ain’t afraid of you.” Her face crumpled. He patted her clumsily on the shoulder. “Come on, what do you say?”
She sniffled, then turned red-rimmed, protruding eyes up to him. “If you want me. I’d have to . . . I’d like to talk to Joyce.”
“Okay. JOYCE!”
Miss Phoebe started. “She—she’s not—oh!” she cried as the doorknob turned. She said, “It’s locked.”
He grinned. “No it ain’t.”
Joyce came in. She went straight to Don, her eyes on his face, searching, and did not look around her until her hand was in his. Then she looked down at Miss Phoebe.
“This here, this is Joyce,” Don said.
Joyce and Miss Phoebe held each other’s eyes for a long moment, tense at first, gradually softening. At last Miss Phoebe made a tremulous smile.
“I’d better make some tea,” she said, gathering her feet under her.
“I’ll help,” said Joyce. She turned her face to the tea tray, which lifted into the air and floated to the kitchenette. She smiled at Miss Phoebe. “You tell me what to do.”
Elizabeth Engstrom
When Darkness Loves Us
Elizabeth Engstrom entered the horror field with little fanfare in the 1980s with the publication of her book of two novellas, When Darkness Loves Us (1985), containing an introduction by Theodore Sturgeon, who was one of her teachers and literary mentors. Since then, she has written two horror novels, Black Ambrosia (1988) and Lizzie Borden (1990), in the process gaining a reputation among connoisseurs and an award nomination from the newly founded Horror Writers of America. Her reputation is still growing. Elizabeth Engstrom seems destined to become a central figure in the field. “When Darkness Loves Us” is a deeply disturbing tale that moves subtly, then with more force into the fantastic and grotesque to expose monstrous psychological abnormality. Its rural setting is reminiscent of many of Shirley Jackson’s works, and its concerns link it closely to the horror fiction by women from the late nineteenth century to the present. It is interesting to compare it, for instance, to Violet Hunt’s “The Prayer.” There is no more direct or powerful examination of the darkness in relationships in the entire body of contemporary horror literature than this novella.
Part One
1
Sally Ann Hixson, full with the blush of spring and gleeful playfulness as only sixteen-year-olds know it, hid around the side of the huge tree at the edge of the woods as the great tractor drove past her. She saw her husband, torso bare, riding the roaring monster, his smooth muscles gliding under sweat-slick skin tanned a de
ep brown. She didn’t want him to see her . . . not yet.
She plopped down into the long grass, feeling the rough bark of the big tree against her back as she gazed into the woods. This had been her favorite place to play when she was little. She could just barely see her parents’ house on the hill about a mile off. Her mother had noticed her restlessness as soon as the major canning was done and sent her away to run, to play, to spy on her new husband as he worked with her father in the fields.
This summer, they would build their house on the other hill, and they could raise their family to be good country folk, just like their fathers and their fathers before them. She stretched her legs into a sunbeam, feeling them warm under her new jeans. She had a wild impulse to cast off her clothes and run naked through the grass. She thought of Michael then, and their delicious lovemaking the night before. She was not able to give of herself very freely while in her parents’ house, but some nights Michael took her by the hand and led her out to the hill where their house would soon he built, high up on the knoll, and with the moon watching and the cicadas playing the romantic background music, they would make love, uninhibited, wonderful love. They explored each other’s bodies and released sensations unfamiliar to either of them, with joy and togetherness in discovering the full potentials of their sexuality.
The idea made her tingle, then blush, and she crossed her legs, thinking of the times her thoughts strayed to such matters when she was with her mother. It was worse then, because she was sure lovemaking was not like that for her parents, and sometimes she had to excuse herself and go into the bathroom until she could stop grinning.
She picked up a long strand of grass and put it between her teeth as she peeked around the tree and watched her man, handsome and tousled, drive the machine over the next hill. She glanced around one more time to make sure her pest of a little sister wasn’t lurking somewhere in the shadows. She jumped up and followed the edge of the woods until she could see the flatbed truck where her father waited. Michael would stop there and have a glass of iced water that she had put in a thermos jug for him that morning. She saw him turn to look behind him, so she dodged back into the woods . . . and saw the stone steps that led down into the ground.
It was so familiar. She used to play here when she was small, but she hadn’t come here in years. There were two brand-new doors with shiny hinges mounted to the concrete, and she knew that it was going to be sealed against children and mishaps forever. What used to be the attraction here so long ago? She remembered the darkness and a tunnel, and she stepped down to the first step, then the second one, looking into a black hole that had no end.
It was cool, but not cold, and she took the sweatshirt that was tied around her waist and slipped it over her shoulders. She continued down into the eerie darkness and tried to remember the story about this place. A hiding place for runaway slaves, maybe. She continued her descent. The steps were sturdy, stone set in concrete. She felt her way along with her hand, the rough rock cool to the touch. The steps were narrow, set at an easy angle, and as she glanced back to reassure herself of the warm spring day above, she noticed that the entrance to the stairs would be out of sight before she reached the bottom. Yet down she went.
At the bottom there was a hole in the side of the wall, and memories, just out of reach, began to form themselves in her mind. She wondered if any of the old playthings were still in the tunnel. She crouched down to enter. Once inside, she straightened up—the tunnel was quite large. The small amount of light afforded by the entry provided very little visibility, but she made her way slowly along the tunnel, until the toe of her tennis shoe struck something that went ringing into the darkness. It was a baby spoon. The light glinted off the surface, just enough for her to find it. She picked it up, suddenly remembering the nursery rhymes and the frightening pleasure of having tea parties in such a forbidden place.
She rubbed the spoon between her fingers: tiny, smooth, and round, with a handle that doubled back upon itself, big enough for her finger. Then she remembered Jackie, killed in Vietnam. They were inseparable, always knew they’d eventually marry, and she had cried when he went off to the army. But now Jackie was gone and Michael was up there, and she had better go surprise him before she missed her chance. With one more thought of Jackie and a prayer for his soul, she moved back through the tunnel to the hole in the wall and the stairs, back to the sun and the springtime.
She heard Michael’s voice above the roar of the idling tractor just as she came through the hole in the wall, caught the last words of his sentence. Angry that he had found her before she could surprise him, she had started running up the stairs when the doors above slammed shut, cutting off all light, and the sound of a padlock’s shank driving home pierced her heart. She stood stock-still. The walls instantly closed in around her, and the air disappeared. She managed one scream, drowned by the earth-vibrating essence of the great engine above. She gasped, stumbled up one more step, then fell to her knees, fighting for breath, trying desperately to repress the horror of being locked in the darkness, while Michael’s last words reverberated in her mind: “. . . before one of my kids falls down there.”
Chest heaving, she tried to crawl up the stairs, fingers clawing—capable only of breathless moans rather than the strong screams she was trying desperately to utter in a vain attempt to bring father and husband to her rescue. She convulsed in fear, fingers stiffening, back arching. A muscular spasm turned her onto her back, the stone steps dug into her spine, and the darkness moved in and took over her mind.
2
The awakening was slow, starting with the pain in her lower back, then in her fingers, followed by the throbbing in her head. Slowly she opened her eyes. Darkness. She felt her eyes with her fingers to see if they were open or if she was dreaming. She felt the cold stone steps beneath her. Then she remembered. She looked around, but could see absolutely nothing. On her hands and knees, she mounted the steps until her head touched the heavy wooden doors, and she remembered the shiny new hinges and the solid, heavy wood that wouldn’t rot as the seasons changed.
It must be night, she thought, or surely I could see a crack of daylight somewhere. She felt alone, isolated, abandoned. Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes as she focused all her panic and shot it to her husband, hoping that somewhere there was a God who would transmit the message to him, so he could sense her surroundings and come rescue her and take her home to their warm, soft bed.
She pushed on the door with her shoulders, and it didn’t give at all. She lost hope of wiggling the hinges loose. Cold and afraid, she huddled on the first steps, knowing that soon Michael and her dad would be coming for her. It was the only possible place she could be. After she had been missing for a night, they would come looking for her here. And here she would be, brave (not really) and okay (barely) and so very glad to see them. She fought the claustrophobic feeling and tried to relax. She was desperately tired and uncomfortable. She put her head on her arms and slept.
When she awoke, it was still pitch-dark and she had to go to the bathroom. She couldn’t be embarrassed by the foul smells of her own excretions when her husband came to rescue her, so she had to find some place to go. Slowly, with aching muscles, she moved crablike down the stairs, visualizing in her mind’s eye the hole in the wall and the tunnel thereafter. She crouched, feeling the circumference of the hole so she wouldn’t hit her head, and slipped through to the big tunnel.
She remembered that it ran wide and true to where she had picked up the spoon, and she took brave steps in the darkness. She remembered Jackie, talking to her when they were out walking in the countryside on dark moonless nights. “You’ll never stumble if you walk boldly and pick your feet up high.” It worked then, and it worked now. She walked through the darkness and the fear, until she sensed by the echoes around her that the tunnel took a turn to the right. In the corner she relieved herself.
Nothing could be worse than waiting at the top of the steps, so she decided to explore the tun
nel just a little farther and exercise the kinks out of her legs. The tunnel wound around until she was certain she must be directly under the stairs; then it straightened again. Her breathing echoed off the walls in eerie rasps. She walked still farther, and the air turned cooler. It smelled different. Water. Suddenly overcome with thirst, she walked boldly and entered a large cavern. The change in acoustics was immediate. She felt small and lost after the intimacy of the tunnel. Pebbles crunched underfoot.
She picked up a handful of loose stones and began tossing them around her to get a bearing on the dimensions of the cavern. It was huge. A path seemed to continue right through it, water on both sides. Slowly she stepped off the right side of the path, taking baby steps down into the darkness until her tennis shoe splashed in water. She lifted a cupped handful to her nose, then tasted it. Delicious. Eagerly, with both feet in the water, she drank her fill.
Wouldn’t Dad be surprised, she thought, to know of this underwater lake on his property. The water tasted like the cave smelled—mossy—but it seemed pure, and it did the trick. She splashed some on her face, stood up, and dried her hands on her sweatshirt.
Feeling far more comfortable, she picked up another handful of pebbles and started throwing them. On this side of the path was a small pond, but the lake on the other side seemed endless. She threw a rock as far as she could, and still it plopped into the water. She threw another to the side, and it splashed. She threw another and there was no sound. Her heart froze. Maybe it had landed on a moss island. She threw one more in roughly the same direction and heard it land with a plop, and she visualized the concentric circles of black ripples edging out toward her.
She walked along the path, humming away the discomfort, spraying pebbles in wide sweeping arcs. The sound was friendly. Pebbles gone, she continued walking until she could feel the cavern narrowing back into a tunnel, and it was then that she heard the splash behind her. A small splash, as if one of the pebbles had been held up from its fate, suspended, until it finally fell. She stopped, midstep, and listened. The darkness pressed in upon her, and she could hear her blood rush through her veins. Silence. She had resumed her walk, stepping quietly, when another splash came, closer behind her, and her mind again was seized with unparalleled terror. She froze. A third noise, a sucking sound coming from the water just inches away from her feet, made her start. Moans of panic churning up unbidden, she ran blindly, until she stumbled and collided at a turn with the wall of the tunnel. She wildly felt her way around the turn and continued running the length of it until the cave with its lake and resident monster were far behind her.
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