Come Into The Light

by O'Rourke, Stephen

  COME INTO THE LIGHT

  STEPHEN O’ROURKE

  Mirror Matter Press

  Austin, Texas

  Mirror Matter Press

  Austin, TX

  www.mirrormatterpress.com

  April 2016

  “Come Into The Light” © 2016 Stephen O’Rourke

  This is a work of collected Fiction. All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without the publisher’s written consent, except for the purposes of review.

  Cover Art by Matthew Revert

  Book Design by Travis Tarpley

  CHAPTER 1

  Harold went in search of Nora, Bill, and Jordan. They weren’t in their safe place, which might mean they were probably on the roof. They went up there to take in the sun sometimes before going back into their hiding place even though they were told it was dangerous. Harold has seen how restless they’ve been, he has come across the same restlessness in the past and it usually led to trouble. Maybe the heat inside their small apartment, the smell, the darkness, the sense of claustrophobia and isolation was getting to them. There was nothing new in that. Harold has seen it happen before with others he has tried to help. What he didn’t expect was to have to break through a flimsy barrier and dislodge a door to get onto the roof. When he saw them there huddled together looking both defiant and expectant, staring at him as if they didn’t want him there. He knew they were headed toward the edge of reason.

  Their heat boiled brains couldn’t comprehend a single thing that he said as he tried to get them to go with him. They had to get back to their safe place before it was too late. They were making themselves targets with each passing moment. It would be coming soon. Already he could feel the air changing. They must feel it too but they don’t seem bothered, anxious or fearful. Their act of defiance was nothing short of crazy.

  “We don’t want to go back inside.” Nora explained in an anguished voice.

  “Yea, it’s dark and gloomy. We can’t breathe.” Bill added.

  Harold sighed with nervous impatience, “But you’re protected.”

  “We aren’t afraid. He won’t hurt us. He loves us.” Bill said in awed confusion.

  “You will be changed. You won’t be human anymore. He’s playing with your minds.”

  Harold saw the sun waver strangely as a bright flash of explosive light projected out of it. Morphing and taking shape as it shot toward them across the sky. He felt the stinging, piercing sensation in his head and pushed back against it. It hurt like hell.

  “It’s here! We have to go!”

  They were bent over from the pain in their heads and wouldn’t move, even when he shouted in terror and pulled at them. They fought back saying it was alright. He bit his lip in frustration and tried to think of what else to do. This was what they wanted, but he told them they were crazy. Have they forgotten about the others and what happened to them? Despite everything he said they wouldn’t listen and if he stayed he would be changed along with them. Made into something cold and alien, a vacant minded worshipper who did what he was told, who did what that thing jetting and forming across the sky wanted him to do. Feeling he had no choice, he turned and fled. Abandoning his friends in order to save himself, he jumped over the clutter in the doorway to escape down the stairs. He didn’t feel good about what he was doing but they were stuck stiff in a kind of hypnotic haze. The thing hurtling toward them was already taking residence in their minds and it wasn’t about to let go until it had them in its trap. Soon they would be paralyzed and made helpless and he would be trapped just like them and changed into something awful, inhuman if he didn’t flee. Once that thing disturbed the air and exploded into your consciousness you had to get as far away from it as you could and dig yourself into a dark hole. If his friends waited much longer it would be too late, yet they had made their choice, he could see it in their faces. Still, a little part of him held onto the hope that they would realize that what they were doing was foolish. That they would see reason before it was too late.

  Yet just as Harold was stumbling down eight flights of stairs to make his escape, Nora, Bill, and Jordan were already in the process of raising their heads like attentive followers to the embryo like mass emerging in the light. They soaked up the astounding view unfolding before their eyes in awed amazement even as a deep sense of foreboding bubbled up through their bodies causing a confused adrenalin rush of excitement and terror. They were itching with that intuitive sense to run, to take flight, while still being mesmerized. Yet the warm pressure inside their brains, the incipient itch of needing, of wanting to be overtaken was stealing past their fear.

  Getting closer, the embryo like mass inside the light slowed down, weaving and coalescing by degrees into shape. From that shape emerged a face, arms, and legs. A sexless, hairless human shape that opened its fiery golden eyes.

  Harold had two more flights to go. He was vaulting down the stairs with a speed that could be easily miscalculated. One bad move and he would be tumbling, smashing his head on the steps… the edges sharp… hard… a possible broken neck. Paralyzed. Helpless. Dead. His heart racing. His legs pounding. So little time… must hurry. It knew of him but was busy now. It wouldn’t be for long. So many goddamn steps. What was he thinking; exposing himself like this? No one else took these kind of risks. Another flight, one more, and then the lobby. Ah, there it was, and there was the door to the outside. He leapt over the last clutter of chairs and raced through the lobby; crashing into the door; spraining his wrist as it jammed against the doorknob. He clumsily wrestled with the knob. Trying to turn it again and again, growing anxious. He had to slow down… relax… concentrate. His throat dry and burning as the knob finally popped.

  He was out in the street, but nowhere near safe. He looked up toward the roof for only a second to see a black blur in the bright light. Filled with eyes. Eyes that were watching. Don’t look.

  There was screaming, awful and tortuous, as he turned away from the roof. He couldn’t help them. He felt helpless, less than human. Why didn’t he do more?

  Cars were parked, abandoned. The meters reading violation in red, he continued to run in a trance. A city boiling with hostility. He knew where he should go, but somehow his rubbery legs were taking him in the direction he didn’t want to go. He felt alone and scared yet he had to report what happened. He had to let Seth know but not now. It was so very hot. So very goddamn hot and bright. It never changed The earth had turned into a hot ominous monster, a seething example of overwrought indulgences. The sun never let up and that thing thrived in the light seeming to derive energy from it. He was sweating, God was he sweating. His eyes were already hurting… stinging… watering as he tried to find his way down the street. Might be nice to get some shade, but though the street appeared empty he knew they were out there somewhere ready to grab hold of him, to force him to bend to that thing’s will, that monster that they saw as a god. To make him one of them. They probably already knew where he was and now Nora, Bill, and Jordan had joined their ranks. He had to keep going. He didn’t know where his sunglasses were and the heat and his head were killing him. He thought he had them in his pants pocket, not that it mattered. They weren’t all that helpful. He wore them mostly to give him a sense of comfort, a sense of control that he knew he didn’t have.

  There was a crash of glass breaking. His eyes darting in all directions. Windows hollowed out of buildings. Shadowy movements within. A rush of bodies. Birds fluttering from ledges. Gray walls stained with graffiti.

  The minute he turned on to Second Street he knew he would be going to s
ee his uncle. His uncle was mad. He probably killed himself. Why go there?

  Before he gave himself any more time to think about it he was stepping over broken glass and rubble and into the old boarded-up tavern with the apartment above it on Second Street. The place was cleaned out but there were still a few torn up and savaged booths, a scrolled on wall-size mirror, and a dented and gouged walnut bar, minus stools and a metal footrest. The place was dusty, dim, and smelled of piss, shit, and liquor, but Harold couldn’t care less. He was heading for the narrow door at the end of the bar, the one next to the coin-operated wall phone that had stopped operating long ago. The door was chipped, worn, and the top hinge had one rusted and one bent screw holding it in place; causing the bottom to scrape along the floor as you pulled on it. There was no light to mark the narrow passage up the tight, moldy steps, so Harold retrieved his trusty butane lighter from his pants pocket. There wasn’t much fuel left. The moorings for the banister had long since rotted and the banister had to be torn away and tossed into the trash pile in the basement. The plank steps, too small for his feet, sunk under his weight ready to give at any moment, so he stepped as lightly as he could and tried maintaining his balance at the same time. It was quite a feat, and it left him a little woozy and tired each time. The floor in the short hallway was also soft and unsafe; leaning crookedly. The yellowed wallpaper hung down like sloping tree limbs. The apartment door at the end and to the right had a new combination lock attached to a corrosive eye hook and hasp. With a couple of sweeps of the dial he was in.

  When he saw the figure come at him he jumped. It was just the full-length mirror on the wall dimly lit by two gooseneck lamps, but he forgot that it was there directly across from the doorway. There was a thin light flashing ahead of this mirror and suspended in the darkness: a camera was mounted on a small table with a built-in sensor to detect the smallest amount of light and to trigger an alarm. He was surprised it was still working when a low eerie siren sounded causing him to clench with fear until he realized it was the alarm reacting to his lighter so he shut it off. It was creepy seeing his darkened silhouette in the mirror and the flashing red light and nothing else. The boarded-up windows really did an excellent job in keeping out the light and most of the heat, although the tiny apartment was no less suffocating. There was no electricity, no way to get relief except with a battery operated fan which he gave to his uncle. His Uncle Liam was obsessed about his warning system though it made little sense. A warning would give him a few seconds notice before he was dragged out by the ‘sunbies’ as he called them.

  There was a harsh rustling from below the table. The crisp, plastic tablecloth shot up to reveal his uncle staring at him angrily. His milky, owl-shaped eyes were buried beneath heavy lenses and his badly shorn head was peppered with thin bits of lifeless hair. He was one odd specimen and the odor coming off of him was the odor of someone who hasn’t bathed in ages. He was still wearing the same old striped shirt and khaki shorts he has always worn, caked in grime, shit, and dust.

  “You set off my alarm you turd.”

  Harold found the button to shut it off and that released a bit of the tension, “Sorry.”

  He then closed the door and proceeded to feel his way to a chair resting up against a wall to the right of the door. He was too exhausted to stand and grateful to have a chance to rest.

  “Something bad happened, didn’t it?” Liam asked, smiling strangely.

  “I didn’t think-

  “I tried to warn you.”

  “I don’t know how you can sound so pleased?”

  “Because it’s always a mistake to rely on others. Did you think you could come back here and suck off me again?”

  “No,” Harold shook his head feeling weary, confused, “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a wreck.”

  “I have you to thank for it.”

  “Don’t you dare blame me. You’re the one who left.”

  “And I am glad that I did.”

  “So why are you here now?”

  Harold was about to speak and yet he didn’t know what he wanted to say.

  “It’s not because you miss me, is it? I bet you’re surprised that I’m still alive and kicking. I guess you thought I wouldn’t survive without you, well get over yourself, boy-o.”

  Harold was incredulous, open-mouthed with amazement, “Have you been out?”

  Uncle Liam stared at him for the longest time as if he had grown a third eye, “Out! No one ever goes out if they know what’s good for them!”

  “Then, how are you-

  “None of your business.”

  Harold processed all kinds of theories for how Uncle Liam was surviving and none of them sounded good. He was happy to see that his uncle didn’t need him. Maybe that was all he needed to know, and maybe he came back here hoping he would find a corpse.

  “You’re giving me that look. I could always read what was going on in your head. Your mother was the same way.”

  The mention of his mother sent a shock through him. He would never see either of his parents ever again. The old fuckhead had to mention her, didn’t he? He knew how to twist the knife.

  “I have to go. I only came here to see how you were doing.” He said, standing.

  Uncle Liam wasn’t angry anymore and he even began to appear friendly, “Why don’t you stay around. I was about to have my lunch.”

  There was a snap and an animal squeaking in pain from somewhere in the back of the apartment. Harold turned in fright. His eyes traveling down the crumbling, bereft hallway in search of the animal, toward the kitchen, the bedrooms, though all he saw was evidence of a shape here or there and the darkness that rose out of it.

  “Something bothering you, boy-o.”

  Harold turned back shrouded in dismay as he stared at his uncle, and then with an anxious kind of sickness stirring in him he grabbed for the door, “I don’t know why I came.”

  Liam laughed sarcastically and wet his lips.

  “Be careful closing the door when you leave. It doesn’t set right.”

  As Harold left the bar feeling confused and upset his eyes happened to light on a girl who slipped back into the shadows of a battered laundromat from across the street. She had her eyes on him and she looked curious, guilty as if she has been following him. Harold didn’t think she was one of them. He got a feeling for what they were like and this girl didn’t give off the empty, worshipful vibe he was accustomed to, yet when he crossed the street to find out who she was and what she wanted she had vanished. He didn’t think there were any strays left in the city. How was she able to survive and avoid being changed by that thing? A further sweep of the area continued to leave him puzzled. He has never known anyone who could move so quickly. From what he got of her she was thin with short blond hair and blue, luminous eyes. She was dressed the way a boy would be dressed in an overly large shirt and jeans with sneakers on her feet. There was writing on the shirt: Go Buckeyes. She could have been sixteen or seventeen. A little younger than him. He didn’t have the chance to get a good look at her. He wished he knew why she was following him. Seth would want to know about her he realized. He’s always looking for strays.

  And speaking of Seth, he had to get going. He just remembered there was a meeting taking place this afternoon at 169 Piedmont. The address at Piedmont housed a three story clapboard house painted brown with yellow sashes. The house was once owned by Seth’s friend and had been designed with a reinforced shelter in the basement. Seth got possession of it when his friend was found in the basement with a hole in his head from a .32 caliber bullet.

  CHAPTER 2

  Harold had to remember the secret knock before he was let in by Ross who directed him to the living room. As he followed Ross down the long hallway past the foyer he could hear voices upraised and people arguing. They were in the midst of a discussion with Seth who was standing at the front of the room near the boarded up picture window trying to ease concerns as an active group of forty some individuals s
at stirring up emotions or rose up from an assembly of plastic chairs to argue. The chairs were in rows and lined out all along the extent of the carpeted room. The plush chairs, tables, lamps, and couches had been pushed aside or shoved up against the nearest walls. Sara saw him come in from the corner of the room and waved to him. He waved back and they traded smiles. She was thin and pretty with long dark hair and it was clear she was interested in him but Harold didn’t know what to think of it. They had kissed and she did seem nice but he didn’t know if he wanted to take the next step. Sara could sometimes be intolerable, pushing him to do things he didn’t want to do.

  “We don’t even know who we can trust most of the time. They have that weird light in their eyes but most of the time they look and act like us and I bet they have spies.”

  “We can’t let our fears control us. They were just as human as you or I at one time. Let’s not forget that they are not to blame for what has happened to them. That thing is to blame not them.” Seth argued, keeping his demeanor somber yet forthright.

  “I still think they have spies. They’re recruiting people all the time. Before you know it we will all be like them if something is not done.”

  A rousing cheer swept up from all around Jacob. More than half of the room seemed to be on his side. He had this way of speaking that was common yet incendiary. His thinning combed back hair, chisel hard face, and rock solid workman’s body gave him the appearance of honest labor, of honest talk. And though he wasn’t the type to be agreeable he was born to be a leader. Even the young ones in the crowd seemed drawn to his sense of needing to take action, but Harold didn’t like him. He knew that Jacob would never have placed himself at risk to help anyone against that thing. In his mind there was no room for weak individuals. If they gave in they must be destroyed. He thought Harold was foolish and stupid, as foolish and stupid as Seth who gained sympathy and support because of his blindness. Yet Seth was a born leader as well and unlike Jacob he was flush with a crop of wiry gray-black hair expanding outward from his head augmenting the shaded eyes and the friendly round face that sought to charm you at every turn. He stood a head taller than Jacob and his skin, unlike Jacob’s, was a burnt bronze.