Darkness Follows

by Mike Dellosso

  Across the field and beyond the trees the battle continued but grew no louder. Sam gripped his head and held it with both hands. Was he going crazy? Had the accident triggered some weird psychosis? This couldn’t be real. It had to be a concoction of his damaged brain. An auditory hallucination.

  Suddenly the sounds ceased and silence ruled. Dead silence. No whispers of a gentle breeze. No skittering of dry leaves across the driveway. No creak of old, naked branches. Not even the hum of the power lines paralleling the road.

  Sam went back inside and shut the door. The dead bolt made a solid thunk as it slid into place. He didn’t want to go back upstairs, didn’t want to sleep in his own bed. Instead he went into the living room, lay on the sofa, and clicked on the TV. The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was watching an old Star Trek rerun.

  Sam’s eyes opened slowly and tried to adjust to the soft morning light that seeped through the windows. He rolled to his side and felt something slide from his lap to the floor with a papery flutter. He’d not slept soundly on the sofa.

  Pushing himself up, he looked out the window. The sun had not yet cleared the horizon, and the sky was a hundred shades of pink. The house felt damp and chilly. The TV was off. Leaning to his left, he saw that the front door was open. Maybe Molly had gone out already and not shut it behind her.

  “Moll?” But there was no answer. “Eva?” The house was quiet.

  Sam stood to see if Molly was in the yard and noticed a note book on the floor, its pages splayed like broken butterfly wings. Bending to pick it up, he recognized it as one of Eva’s notebooks in which she wrote her kid stories, tales of a dog named Max and of horses with wings.

  Turning it over, he found a full page of writing. His writing. Before the accident he’d often helped Eva with her stories but had never written one himself. He’d thought about it many times but had never gotten around to doing it. There was always something more pressing, more important. Since his accident he’d had the time, home from work with nothing to do, but his brain just wasn’t working that way. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t concentrate. His attention span was that of a three-year-old.

  Sitting on the sofa, he read the writing on the page, the writing of his own hand.

  November 19, 1863

  Captain Samuel Whiting

  PennsylvanIa Independent Light Artillery, Battery E

  I am full of dArkness. It has coMpletely overshadowed me. My heart despairs; my soul swims in murky, colorless waters. I am not my own but a mere puppet in his hanD. My intent is evil, and I loathe what the dAy will bring, what I will accomplish. But I must do it. My feet have been positioned, my couRse has been set, and I am compelled to follow. Darkness, he is my commander now.

  I can already smell the blood on my hands, and it turns my stomach. But, strangely, it excites me as well. I know it is the darKness within me, bloodthirsty devil that it is. It desires death, his death (the president), and I am beginning to understand why. He must die. He deserves nothing more than death. So much sufferiNg has come from his words, his policies, his will. He speaks of freedom but has enslaved so many in this cursed war.

  See how the pen trEmbles in my hand. I move it, not myself but the darkneSs guides it, as it guides my mind and will. Shadowy figures encircle me. I can see them all about the room, specters moving as lightly as wiSps of smoke. My hand trembles. I am overcome. I am their slave. His slave.

  I am not my own.

  I am not my own.

  I am notnotnotnotnotnotnotno

  my own

  Sam let the notebook slip from his hands and scrape across the hardwood floor. Gooseflesh puckered his skin. He thought of last night’s battle sounds, of Tommy’s voice and feeling the darkness around him—the darkness. He remembered the grinning jack-o’lanterns, the click of the sliding dead bolt. He had no memory of turning off the TV and opening the door, nor of finding Eva’s notebook and writing this nonsense.

  What was happening to him?

  He stood and went to the front door, barely aware of his feet moving under him. With one elbow on the doorjamb he poked his head outside and scanned the front yard, listening.

  “Moll?” His voice was weak and broke mid-word.

  There was no answer. If Molly was out here, she must be around back.

  Then, as if last night’s ethereal battle had landed in his front yard, a rifle shot split the morning air, and the living room window exploded in a spray of glass.

  Two

  MOLLY WAS DOWN THE STEPS IN NO TIME, SLIPPERED FEET scuffing the hardwood like fine-grit sandpaper. Her hair was wildly out of place, pushed to one side and matted like steel wool, and pillow crease lines marked her left cheek. Her eyes were wide and bleary, her jaw slack.

  “Wha–what happened?” The panic in her voice sent spidery legs down Sam’s back.

  She stood at the bottom of the steps in blue flannel pajamas, palms turned up, expecting an answer. But Sam didn’t have one. He had no idea what had happened. He knew the window had exploded—the glass on the living room floor, glimmering like diamonds in the light, testified to that—but the gunshot …

  Was it real? Was it his mind playing war games with him?

  He looked at Molly, “I, uh, I’m …” He glanced at the floor then back at her. His damaged brain wouldn’t shift into gear.

  She took three steps forward, cautiously, as though creeping through a haunted house and expecting a mischievous teenager in a monster mask to jump from the next corner. She looked into the living room, and her hand went to her mouth. “Sam, what happened? The window.”

  “Mommy?”

  It was Eva, standing at the top of the stairs.

  Sam was still frozen, his mind a block of ice, unable to make sense of anything that had transpired in the last fifteen minutes.

  Molly spun around. “Eva, stay there, baby. Don’t come down.”

  “What happened? Did something break?” She was barefoot in her Dora jammies, clutching her worn-out stuffed dog in her arms. Max. There was no fear in her eyes, only questions.

  “Yes, baby,” Molly said. She was in take-charge mode, and Sam knew when she had that look it was best to let her do her thing. “The window broke, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. Just stay there, OK? There’s glass all over the floor.”

  Molly looked at Sam again. “What happened? Why’s the front door open? How did the window break?”

  Too many questions.

  “I …”

  “Sam?” Her voice was more concerned than accusatory.

  For an instant, the briefest moment on a clock, less than one tick of a second hand, Sam almost told her about Tommy’s voice last night, about the sounds of war—Civil War—about the TV and the front door and the notebook with the strange entry he’d written in his sleep, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He was already enough of a burden to her. She didn’t need to know he had lost his footing in this world and slipped into another, that he was now going insane.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep last night, came downstairs to watch some TV, fell asleep on the couch. I woke up and needed some fresh air.”

  She put a hand on his arm. Her touch was soft and comforting, a complement to the tone of her voice, and again he almost told her everything.

  “I–I heard a gunshot and …” He looked at the opening in the window, framed by jagged shards like the hungry jaws of an unearthly beast. “The glass broke. It just shattered.”

  Molly’s hands rested on her hips.

  “Did you hear it?” Sam asked, hoping she would say she had, hoping his mind wasn’t really betraying him.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t hear any shots, just the glass.”

  “Not shots,” he said. “Just one. One shot.” He looked up at Eva. She was sitting on the top step now, still holding Max like he would run away if she let go. It seemed she was so far away that Sam could climb that staircase forever and never reach her. He had the sudden impulse to prove this inclination wrong, to bound u
p the stairs and take her in his arms and squeeze her, to hold her tight and make sure she was real.

  Please, Lord, let her still be real.

  Molly said, “Do you think someone was hunting? Maybe a stray bullet?”

  “I don’t know.” But he did know. Or did he? He couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

  “Did you call the police?”

  Sam met her eyes. The police. Should he have called the police? A voice in his head told him to leave the cops out of this, since they would only complicate matters. Questions would be asked, explanations expected, and he had no answers. But Molly was giving him that look, the one that said she was calling the shots on this and the cops were getting notified regardless of what he said. “No. Not yet. We probably should, though, huh?”

  “I’ll call them.” She spun toward the kitchen.

  Sam looked at Eva again. He tried to force a smile, but it wasn’t anything near genuine. Every time he looked at her he thought of her notebook, the one with her stories about Max and the flying horses, the one with his writings about the man—Samuel Whiting—full of darkness.

  I am full of darkness. I am not my own.

  He felt that somehow his writing had violated the innocence of his daughter, that it had trespassed upon and poisoned the sacred ground where childlike expression took root and flourished.

  “Are you OK, Daddy?” The sweetness of Eva’s voice almost brought tears to his eyes. The sincerity. The tenderness. It was the voice of an angel—his angel—anchoring him in reality.

  “Yes, darling, I’m fine. Are you OK?”

  She shrugged and held Max closer to her chest, as if the stuffed dog gave her the comfort her daddy couldn’t. “Just a little scared. Did someone shooted our window out?”

  Sam ascended the steps and sat next to Eva. He put his arm around her, looked deep into her eyes, and yes, there he found the fear. He pulled her close to his side, and she rested her head on his chest. The smell of her hair was right, the way it should be, the way it had always been. At least one thing hadn’t changed. “I don’t know, little buddy. I think so. Maybe some hunters were shooting at groundhogs, and one of them missed.”

  “Why do they shoot at groundhogs?”

  “Farmers hire hunters to shoot groundhogs. They dig holes in the fields.”

  “The hunters dig holes?”

  Sam laughed. “No, silly. The groundhogs dig holes.”

  Eva paused, and Sam knew she was thinking that over. “Is Mommy calling the policeman?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is he going to take you to jail?”

  “No way,” Sam said, ruffling her hair. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” If not, why did he feel so guilty? Again the voice was there telling him not to involve the authorities. “They’ll come and look around and ask lots of questions. They’ll figure out what happened.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yeah, buddy?”

  “Are you OK?”

  Ever since the accident Eva had been overprotective of Sam, asking him this question several times a day. Her faith was strong, but she was still a kid, and Sam knew she worried about her daddy.

  Sam pulled her closer. “I’m fine, sweetie. Just fine.”

  He hated lying to her.

  Three

  NED COLEMAN HAD WANTED TO BE A PENNSYLVANIA STATE trooper for two reasons: the uniform and the women. Like rock stars, staties had groupies, women who loved the uniform as much as Ned did and gave any man in it plenty of action as long as he was willing. And Ned was always willing. What he didn’t like was the graveyard shift, and what he liked even less was Adams County.

  He was a senior at Archbishop Ryan High, in Philly, the first time he met a statie. Unfortunately it was on the wrong end of a ticket, for doing ninety in his parents’ Beamer on US 95. But he saw the power and intimidation that uniform commanded and fell in love with it. After graduation he tried college for two years because that was what his parents wanted (what his father wanted), but neither his heart nor his mind were in it, and he eventually flunked most of his classes. He quit college, disappointing his parents (his father), and applied to the state police academy. Two months later he received a we’re-very-sorry-but-we’re-denying-you-admittance letter. Ned Coleman wasn’t used to being told no, and neither was his father, a powerful criminal defense attorney at the legal firm of O’Hara & Coleman. In spite of his disappointment, Garrison Coleman pulled some strings and cashed in some favors for his only son, and within a week Ned had received his acceptance letter.

  The second blow came when, upon graduation from the academy, he was stationed in the Gettysburg barracks despite his requests to be placed in or around Philadelphia. Ned didn’t want to cruise the back roads of Adams County at forty miles an hour, and he certainly didn’t want to patrol an area that was one step above Appalachia when it came to nightlife and women. What Ned wanted, and what even his powerful lawyer of a father couldn’t deliver, was the fast life in Philly—fast cars on the open highway and fast women on the Philly night scene.

  So here he was, one year into his stint in hillbilly land, working the graveyard and maxing out his Crown Vic (most turnpike staties around Philly were getting Mustangs or Chargers) at fifty on the winding mountain roads of northern Adams County. Even the groupies were slow and sparse around here. Life in the fast lane it was not. Someday he’d get a transfer; he just hoped it wasn’t to Potter County. The staties there spent their time cleaning up road-kill and busting rednecks for oversized tires on their pickups.

  And on top of all that, his partner had gotten sick this morning and upchucked all over the dash and seat of the cruiser. Back to the barracks they went. Jeff took the rest of the day off, and Ned got a new cruiser to finish the two hours left in his shift.

  Now the shift was just about over, and Ned Coleman was ready to wrap things up and head home for a morning beer and some sleep.

  He was pushing his cruiser around a tight curve and accelerating into a straightaway when the PCO, Police Communications Officer, spoke over the radio. It was Tiffany, a young brunette with a smoky voice who had caught Ned’s eye.

  “Gettys Nine, copy a call, shots striking a house.”

  Ned picked up the receiver and pushed the button to talk. “Gettys Nine, bye.”

  “Got a report of shots striking the residence at 456 Pumping Station Road.”

  Great. Some hicks were probably up all night drinking and decided to get the guns out. “Any vehicle description or number of subjects involved?”

  “The caller says she doesn’t see any vehicles or subjects in the area. Do you want the corporal to respond from the barracks?” Tiff’s voice made Ned momentarily forget his current plight.

  “Negative. We’ll see what we have. En route.” He pulled into a gravel driveway to turn around.

  “Per the corporal. Do you have an ETA?”

  Ned backed up the cruiser, shifted into drive, and stepped on the gas. The wheels spun and loose stones clinked off the underside of the car. “Fifteen minutes. Ten if I’m lucky.”

  “OK.”

  As he handled the curves and straights, Ned hoped he wouldn’t get sick. Man, he hated barfing.

  Four

  THE POLICE WILL BE HERE SHORTLY,” MOLLY SAID FROM THE foyer.

  Sam kissed Eva on the top of her head and descended the stairs. Memories of last night and of following Tommy’s voice down these same steps washed through his head like dark ocean waters. It was that voice from the past that had started this whole thing, the voice that haunted him.

  Molly walked carefully into the living room, looking around. “What a mess. What a total mess.”

  It was then Sam noticed the notebook on the floor by the couch, pages splayed and bent like those same broken butterfly wings.

  I am not my own.

  He wanted to run and pick it up before Molly found it, but he was still barefoot. Molly circled the room, steering clear of the damage. Morning light bent at an odd angle through the broken wi
ndow and dusted the room in a pink hue. Molly stopped. Sam followed her gaze to the notebook. She tiptoed between the couch and coffee table and picked it up, letting a handful of glass shards slide off. As she turned it over, her eyes traced the writing on the page.

  “What’s this, babe?” she said, reading the words—those words borrowed from another—that Sam had written.

  He swallowed hard. “It’s nothing.” Such a lame response was all he could produce. He wasn’t about to tell her the words were foreign even to him, though they appeared to be written by his own hand. He had absolutely no recollection of penning them.

  Molly looked at him, her expression a cross between bewilderment and betrayal.

  “Are you writing again?” she said.

  Many years ago, it seemed like a lifetime, maybe more than a lifetime, when they had first started dating, Sam had aspired to be a writer. He wrote a few novels, was unable to get the attention of any agents or publishers, and eventually dumped his dream for carpentry, crafting with wood rather than words. No use pursuing an obvious dead end. Molly, though, loved his stories. She encouraged him to keep writing, keep submitting his novels, and never quit. She believed in him … or at least said she did.

  Sam shrugged. “I was sorta thinking about it,” he lied. “When I couldn’t sleep last night, I jotted some things down. Just some ideas I have for a story.” He held out his hand for the notebook.

  Molly was about to say something when a knock came at the front door. Eva started down the stairs, but Molly handed the notebook to Sam and headed her off. “Oh, no, young lady. You stay on the steps. There’s still glass you could step on.”