Darkness Follows

by Mike Dellosso

  The morning sun was slanting through the study window, bathing him in warmth, tugging at his eyelids. He hadn’t slept well last night, not in his own bed, not on the sofa. Downstairs, Molly was still sweeping glass; Eva was still jabbering away. But Sam’s mind focused on the voice from last night.

  Tommy’s voice.

  Had it actually sounded that real? Real enough to pull him from his bed and lure him downstairs, like a magical flute in the hands of a malevolent piper?

  Slowly he blinked, and his vision blurred. Fatigue, both mental and physical, washed over him, pulling him into the land of sleep and his own disturbing dreams …

  Mom and Dad were downstairs in the kitchen arguing. Always the arguing. Always about Tommy.

  Sammy’s brother, who bested him by two years and about forty pounds, was at it again. Mr. Aholt (nicknames abounded) had called from the school. Tommy had apparently jammed a dissected rat’s head over the nozzle of the water fountain so that water arced out of the rodent’s mouth.

  Tommy was in his room in the attic now, Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” blaring from the stereo, thumping through the floorboards. Sammy opened his bedroom door and crept to the top of the stairs to hear what Mom and Dad were saying.

  “I think he’s nuts, Gloria!” Dad said. “Out of his mind. He needs professional help.”

  Mom’s voice came back sharp and double-edged. “How dare you say that about your own son. Your own blood. He’s no crazier than you are.”

  “Me crazy? I’m not the one protecting a kid who cuts the head off a rat and stuffs it on a water fountain.”

  “He’s looking for attention, probably from his father who never gives it to him.”

  “Don’t you tell me about showing my boys attention. I’m busy working my tail off so I can put food on the table, on their table.”

  Sam had heard enough. The arguing made his stomach knot up and gave him a headache. And Tommy was beginning to scare him. His temper had grown hotter in the past few months. He’d never taken it out on Sam, but their Lab, Gomer, had been on the receiving end more than once.

  Back in his room Sam shut the door, sat on the edge of his bed, and reached for his rifle. Dad had gotten him his first gun, a Remington .22, for Christmas, and he’d proven to be quite the marksman. He could hit a Coke can right in the C from fifty yards away without a scope. Dad said he was a natural. Tommy said, “Big deal.” The rifle brought a bit of comfort, a sense of safety, though he was sure he’d never have to use it against his own family.

  He was sure of it.

  A knock came at his door, and he jumped. He gripped the rifle tighter and felt his pulse pounding all the way to his fingertips.

  “Sammy.” It was Tommy.

  Sam didn’t say anything but forced himself to loosen his fingers from the gun. Tommy was no threat. He was his brother.

  “Sammy …”

  Sam jolted awake and nearly fell off his chair. The feel of the rifle’s wooden stock was still imprinted on the nerves of his hand. Tommy’s voice, like a distant echo, trailed off and faded to nothing.

  After rubbing his face and combing his hands through his hair, Sam walked to the window. The sun was a blazing disk now, hovering above the South Mountains of Adams County. The fall colors, weeks past prime, were muted and browning. More than half the trees were bare, exposing twisted and contorted limbs. In the distance two buzzards carved wide arcs in the sky.

  Movement in the left rear of the property caught Sam’s eye. A groundhog was rummaging through the weeds at the edge of the field. It was a good sixty, seventy yards off, just a gray-brown ball of fur. Sam thought of his gun, not the .22 but the Winchester Model 70 he got when he turned fifteen, the one he had used to drop more deer than his dad and Tommy combined. He was a natural, after all.

  He went to the study closet, opened the door, and stood with arms hanging limply, eyes glazed over. Behind a stack of Molly’s old shoes, next to a curtain rod in the back left corner, the Winchester leaned against the wall. It beckoned him, whispering his name. His palms itched to feel the grain of the wood. His trigger finger twitched.

  When he took hold of the rifle, the metal felt alive in his hand, and the weapon seemed to sigh. He hadn’t fired it in twenty-one years. For more than two decades the rifle had sat comatose, neglected, abandoned. Now with it in his grip, he felt the life surging back into it. It awakened in him a desire he hadn’t felt since the last time he fired it. He wanted to shoot something. He needed to shoot something.

  After all, he was a natural.

  The groundhog. What a perfect target to give rebirth to his innate ability.

  Sam remembered the ammunition’s location. Dresser. Top drawer, in the back, under his boxers and briefs. He kept his dresser in the study to save room in their bedroom since these old homes had small rooms and even smaller closets.

  He crossed the floor in three large strides, pulled open the top drawer, and dug his hands through his underwear. His fingers found the magazine. The feel was unmistakable. In one deft motion, as though he’d been doing it every day for the past twenty-one years, he positioned the rifle in his left hand and snapped the magazine into place with his right. Working the bolt action, he chambered a round.

  From the window Sam spotted the groundhog in the same place, foraging among the same weeds. Quietly, so as not to attract Molly’s or Eva’s attention, he slid open the sash and lifted the screen. Cool air tickled his face. It felt good. Sam raised the rifle and placed the butt against his shoulder. It was a natural fit, like an extension of his arm, of his own skeleton, his own flesh. He sighted the groundhog down the barrel and put a bead on it.

  The last time he’d done this he was aiming at …

  You did what you had to do, son.

  His hands began to tremble, sending the tip of the barrel into erratic little circles.

  Sam closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. He focused on a steady inhale and exhale, found the rhythm of his heart. Opening his right eye, he fixed his sights once again on the groundhog. There was no more trembling. His hand was as steady as concrete. His right index finger found the trigger and coiled tightly enough to collapse the fat pad on his fingertip. All it would take now was two pounds of pressure to squeeze off a round and put a hole the size of a golf ball in the little varmint.

  The groundhog moved to the right and Sam followed it, keeping the sight on its midsection. He relaxed his shoulders, arms, hands, found the even rise and fall of his breathing again. During exhalation he took his time, feeling the weight of the gun, the texture of the wooden stock, matching its heartbeat with his own. They were one.

  On the other end of the barrel the critter was motionless, as if it knew its time had come and there wasn’t a thing it could do, as if it accepted its fate and embraced the violence soon to be hailed upon it.

  The groundhog, Sam realized suddenly, was about the size of a human head. A figure flashed across his brain’s imaging center, causing his eyes to lose focus and the end of the barrel to lose its target.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t.

  Eight

  MOLLY TRAVIS DUMPED THE LAST OF THE GLASS SHARDS into the wastebasket. She glanced back at the window, where that mouth of jagged teeth sucked in cool air that said winter was on the way. Normally Sam would have been the one cleaning up and putting plastic over the opening. Since the accident, though, he’d had trouble with decision making and sequencing; that’s what the occupational therapist called it.

  She sat on the couch and let her mind go for a moment. She was so very tired, more tired than she could remember ever being. Memories of that day, that moment, floated back into her mind as they did on a regular basis.

  It had been three o’clock in the afternoon, the sun hot and high in the sky, the air thick with humidity. She’d opened all the windows in the house, but no air moved through the screens as she waited for Beth Fisher to bring Eva home from school. Both moms had agreed the school bus was no place for their daughters
and arranged to carpool. Today was Beth’s day. The phone rang, Molly answered, and that’s when her world was grabbed and shaken violently like a dying rabbit in a dog’s mouth. It was Norman Guise, the elderly man Sam was doing some work for. He said Sam had fallen from the roof and been taken to the hospital. It was bad. That’s all he knew.

  Molly called Beth on the cell, asked her to take Eva home with her, then rushed to Gettysburg Hospital. But Sam wasn’t there. The emergency room receptionist said he’d been flown to the regional trauma center.

  Trauma center? Molly remembered how those words had crowded her mind like a granite boulder the whole hour it took her to get there. How far had he fallen? How had he landed? What injuries had he sustained? So many questions with no answers.

  When she arrived, she was told Sam had fallen a good twenty feet and his head had absorbed the impact. There were no broken bones, no spinal injuries, but multiple contusions had been found on his brain. “Coup-countrecoup”—that’s what the doctor called it. It was when the brain got shaken like yogurt and developed bruises on all sides.

  The initial prognosis wasn’t good. Sam was in a coma, and nobody knew what dysfunctions he’d have when he came out of it … if he came out.

  For Molly, it was like being submerged in murky water. That disoriented, suffocating feeling. She prayed, oh, how she prayed. She took Eva to visit her daddy every day. She and Eva cuddled together, cried together, prayed some more together, and for four weeks slept in the same bed together. That’s how long it took Sam to climb out of his coma.

  But he wasn’t the same man when he returned home. Though glimpses of the old Sam surfaced from time to time, for the first month or so it was like living with a stranger. There were times when Molly watched him sit and stare out a window, wondering if she could live the rest of her life with this man she no longer knew. Slowly, though, almost imperceptibly, the old Sam reemerged. There were still deficits with organizational skills, decision making, and that blasted sequencing, but the therapist said those should return in time. Molly just had to hold on a little longer, carry the weight a little farther.

  Yes. So very tired.

  She rubbed her eyes, smoothed back her hair, and headed to the closet for the vacuum. That’s when she heard the gunshot.

  Her first thought was that it had originated from outside the house—like the gunshot Sam had heard earlier—and she instinctively ducked and covered her head. Someone was shooting at her. But as the concussion reverberated in her ears, she realized it had not come from beyond the four walls of her home but from within. Upstairs.

  Heart in her throat, mind racing with all sorts of grisly images, Molly dashed up the stairs two at a time.

  On the second floor Eva stood in the hallway. “Mommy?”

  The sight of her daughter, unscathed, sent a wave of relief over Molly but dread as well. Sam. The door to his study was closed. Would he …?

  “It’s OK, baby,” she said to Eva, trying in vain to control the shaking of her voice.

  She listened and heard nothing from beyond the shut door. The only sounds were Eva’s hitched breathing and her own pulse tapping in her ears.

  “Eva, go back in your bedroom.”

  “But is Daddy …?”

  Molly swiveled and faced her daughter. In Eva’s eyes she saw confusion and fear. Eva was seven but no dummy. She knew what Molly was thinking. “Honey, go in your bedroom, OK? Let me check on Daddy.”

  Eva stepped back into her room, her eyes never leaving her mother.

  Molly turned, placed her hand on the doorknob, and pulled in a deep breath. Her heart thumped like a war drum, beating out a rhythm of doom. The knob was cold and seemed to warn her against turning it. She placed her other palm on the door, hoping to feel Sam’s heartbeat through the board, but found nothing but lifeless wood. She turned the handle, heard the latch click, and pushed.

  The door creaked open on dry hinges, and there, by the window, his back to her, stood her husband. The window was up and Sam was leaned forward, his hands on the sill. Daylight silhouetted his hunched frame and gave him an almost ghostly appearance.

  “Sam? You all right?” Her voice sounded weak and thread-thin to her ears.

  He didn’t turn. “Yeah.”

  Next to him, his rifle was propped against the wall. The one he’d kept in the closet and never once fired in their thirteen years of marriage.

  Molly approached Sam and rested a hand on his back. She looked back to make sure Eva hadn’t wandered out of her room. “What’s going on?”

  Sam shrugged. “Groundhog.”

  Well, that made sense. He’d seen a groundhog and taken a shot at it. Molly looked out the window and scanned the backyard, but saw no dead fur ball. “Did you get it?”

  “Nope.”

  She could hear the disappointment in his voice, the discouragement, the self-reproach. According to the stories she’d heard, he had once been quite the shot. Had a knack for marksmanship. But it was something Molly rarely spoke of … and Sam never mentioned.

  “It wasn’t more than seventy yards away,” he said. “Shoulda poked it.”

  He looked at his hand, and Molly noticed the trembling.

  “It’s OK,” she said, but she knew her words fell on deaf ears. They meant nothing to Sam. She didn’t even want to broach the subject of why he’d taken the shot. What had urged him to dig his rifle from the closet, load it, and do something he hadn’t done in at least thirteen years?

  Sam hit the sill with both palms, hard enough to rattle the wall. “It’s not OK.”

  Molly thought he looked older than his thirty-six years. The lines of his face were deeper, his stubble grayer. The distant look in his eyes was one she hadn’t noticed before. “You scared Eva and me, you know.”

  Sam looked at her with those blank eyes. He forced a little smile. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that. Just thought …”

  She waited for him to finish, but his words trailed off like a column of smoke into a starless sky. “Well, no harm done. Not even to the groundhog.” Her attempt at humor was ill received. “Where’s the plastic for the window? There’s cold air pouring in.”

  Sam paused. She could see he was processing the question, mentally searching the house, the cellar, his supplies.

  “On the shelves next to my workbench in the basement.” He started to get up. “I can do it, Moll.”

  Molly put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you put that gun away so Eva doesn’t get it? I’ll get the plastic, and you can show me how to do it. I’d like to learn some home-improvement stuff.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She lifted her hand from his shoulder and noticed the notebook from downstairs, open on his desk. “I see you’ve been writing again.”

  Nine

  SAM SLUMPED INTO HIS DESK CHAIR AND STARED AT THE notebook. There was more writing on its lined pages. Tentacles of fear wormed into his chest and strangled his heart. He hoped his reaction wasn’t evident to Molly. “Uh, yeah, I guess I have been.”

  “Good for you,” she said, smiling. “I think it’s what you need.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll get the plastic and meet you in the living room.”

  “Yeah.” It was all he could say.

  His mind wasn’t on plastic or the living room or the broken window or the cold air pouring into the house. Goodness, no. Those were the last things on his mind. He was thinking about the unusual words, scrawled in his own handwriting, dated July 1, 1863. The first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. He was thinking about how they had gotten there. Thinking about how he hoped—man, he hoped—he wasn’t going insane. After all he’d been through and put Molly and Eva through, that was the last thing he needed.

  Behind him Molly closed the door on her way out. The click of the latch sounded like a gunshot, causing him to jump, and in his mind he saw the snap of a head and spray of blood.

  On the desk the notebook waited. It beckoned him to take hold of it and read, as if it
held some cryptic message for his eyes only, as if Samuel Whiting—whoever he was—had solved the mysteries of quantum physics and now reached a gnarled hand through the gulf of time and space, touching him, tapping him on the shoulder, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck.

  He picked it up and leaned back in his chair. The words spoke to him from the past.

  July 1, 1863

  Captain Samuel Whiting

  As we came into a field full of wheat and straw, some parts of it were already on fire. We drew into battery, our three-inch ordnances belChing forth a deadly fire at 600 yards. To my left, I saw the 11th Corps streaming toward the town. The rebEls were in close pursuit. I ordered wheels right-right to cover their retreat. At the same time I saw puffs of white smoke coMing at a half mile. Within seconds we were under terrific fire of shot and shell. I ordered the battery to split two left and two right and return fire. Soon another battEry wheeled and silenced the enemy. We took aim at the mass of gray hot on our boys’ heels, but they already had forward momenTum and could not be stopped.

  By this time the sun was well on its way down. Received orders to withdraw to a hill to the left rear of town. We were forced to leave behind four dead and one fiEld piece (spiked, of course).

  Eight horses dead, sixteen wounded. The move took several hours. The terrain was very rough. Once upon the hill, we woRked with infantry to make formidable breastworks and two well-placedgun redoubts. Here, the enemy would pay dearly getting at us.

  When I am alone, I question the need for war, especially this war. These men we fight, the enemy, are our brothers, our countrYmen. I would never tell my boys this. God knows they need a leader right now. But still, I question it.

  He read it again. And a third time. The letters—had he noticed them in the first entry? He flipped back a page and scanned the first of the writings. They were there too. There was more to these cryptic messages than he thought. But what did it mean?