Darkened

by Bryan Smith

  He surreptitiously observed a young blonde girl moving down the sidewalk in his direction. She couldn’t be any more than nineteen, but she was stunning. Sleek, toned, and tanned, with a face that looked like it ought to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan. She was wearing a pleated tennis-style skirt that was very short and showed off exquisitely shapely legs, as well as a tight halter top that just as temptingly showed off her other assets.

  The girl was Vandy material, no doubt about it. Probably had some rich or nauseatingly handsome boyfriend. Not that it mattered. Kent was just looking. He was married and happy to be that way. Still, he continued to watch the girl as she paused at the sidewalk directly in front of him. She was staring across the street at Bookman/Bookwoman. Kent gave up the pretense of reading the paper and studied the puzzled expression on her face.

  Then it hit him—she’d seen it, too.

  Whatever it was.

  He opened his mouth to say something to her, but then she was in motion again, crossing the street, weaving easily through the jammed traffic on 21st. She reached the other side of the street within moments and stood on the sidewalk outside the book store. Kent saw her frown deepen as she appeared to study something on the white concrete.

  Kent set the paper aside and stood up. He’d forgotten completely about his cooling mug of coffee. He moved to the sidewalk’s edge, but paused there because the traffic was moving again. His heart raced as he stood there watching the girl. This had nothing to do with his initial attraction to her. Some part of him, for reasons he couldn’t quite identify, believed the girl was in danger.

  But that was crazy. What could happen to her in broad daylight in Hillsboro Village? Aside from being knocked sideways into traffic by falling birds, that is. But surely the shop owner had exaggerated that problem. Kent was sure he would have heard about it before now if something really significant was going on. He felt a little ridiculous to realize he was really and truly worried for this girl’s safety. There was no one who looked even remotely threatening anywhere near her. Regardless, the feeling wouldn’t go away. If anything, it intensified.

  Traffic began to slow again. In a few moments, he would step off the sidewalk and hurry to join her on the other side of the street. But in the next moment something happened that forced him to act sooner.

  The girl disappeared. She didn’t blink out of existence like a ghost in a movie or anything like that. What happened was a thousand times more alarming. She dropped abruptly, like a woman falling through an open manhole. But Kent knew there was nothing like that in front of Bookman/Bookwoman.

  Instinct pushed him off the sidewalk and in front of the oncoming powder blue BMW. The car’s front bumper struck him in the knee and sent him stumbling across the street. He crossed the center lane and fell backward. He heard screams and a screeching of brakes as he landed flat on his back on the other side of the street. He knew he should be concerned only with own safety at this point, but instinct snapped his gaze toward the stretch of sidewalk where the girl had been standing.

  There was nothing there.

  Then, for just a fraction of a second, there was something.

  A jagged black slash in the flesh of the world. And that horrible, deep, deep darkness was the last thing he saw in the instant before the squealing wheel of a Ford Explorer rolled over his head, sending Kent Gowran spiraling down into a different kind of darkness.

  * * *

  Venture News Channel Headquarters

  Atlanta, Georgia

  1:01 p.m.

  Zeke Johnson sat behind the anchor desk and tried not to freak out as the usual whirlwind of between commercials activity took place around him. He stared into the lens of the camera in front of him and tried to convince himself he hadn’t seen what he believed he’d seen in that last surreal moment before the break.

  There was a voice squawking in his earpiece, demanding his attention.

  He ignored it.

  He was still staring at the lens. It was just a lens, nothing more. Just a piece of precision-ground glass through which his smiling, perfectly-coiffed image was captured and sent into the homes of millions of people around the world. It certainly was not a portal into a dark and terrifying other realm. He was tired. Very tired. The long hours and stresses of cable tv news were finally getting to him. So it wasn’t that surprising he’d experienced a momentary…well, hallucination.

  The voice was still squawking in his ear. His producer, Tony Dawkins, was pitching a fit. “Zeke! Dammit! We’re back live in less than thirty. Are you okay?”

  Zeke drew in a breath and summoned his brightest plastic news guy smile. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? We’ve got Maria on stand-by.”

  Zeke maintained his frozen smile and gave his head a barely perceptible shake. “I’m fine. Really.”

  Tony sighed. “Okay, if you’re sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine. Trust me.”

  The break ended. Zeke opened his mouth to begin the next news segment, but the only sound that emerged was a strangled groan of terror. Tony was screaming in his ear again, but Zeke didn’t hear the producer’s frantic cries.

  He was hallucinating again. Only it sure didn’t seem like a hallucination. Something was moving inside the camera lens. A swirling, ghostly apparition. It had to be a hallucination. Otherwise the guys and gals in the control room would have seen it, or at least would have known something out of the ordinary was happening.

  Zeke’s jaw dropped as he watched the center of the lens push outward, distending like a slowly growing air bubble. Something seemed to be reaching for him from the other side of the lens. Which was just crazy. There couldn’t be something alive behind that piece of glass. And glass wasn’t that malleable. It wouldn’t move like that—it would just shatter.

  Something in his brain had misfired. There could be no other explanation. He wasn’t perceiving reality as it actually was. And that scared the hell out of him. He knew his career as a television newsman would be finished if he allowed others to know what was happening to him. He was aware of Tony talking in his ear again, but he wasn’t getting the sense of the words. He couldn’t focus. He looked at the teleprompter, seized on the first sentence there and actually managed to speak it. He sounded stiff to his own ears, like an awkward high school drama student taking the stage for the first time. But at least he was talking. There was no dead air. Tony wasn’t cutting him off. Not yet. Zeke gained confidence as each ensuing sentence rolled off his tongue. He kept his gaze trained just below the level of the camera lens.

  He’d be okay if he could just get through this segment. Pleading exhaustion, he’d accept Tony’s offer to have Maria substitute for him after that. The segment shifted to a videotaped report that would last nearly a minute, and Zeke blew out a big sigh of relief.

  Tony said, “That’s it. You’re coming out after this segment.”

  Zeke nodded. “Okay. I’m more tired than I thought, I guess.”

  He risked another glance at the lens and heaved another heavy sigh.

  It was just a lens again. Not a haunted portal. Not a living, pulsing, breathing inexplicable synthesis of technology and living organism. He cleared his throat, took a sip of water, and waited for the video report to end.

  * * *

  Newark, New Jersey

  Near Rutgers University

  Warren Hatcher awoke to a familiar buzzing in his head at 1:15 p.m, a subtle crackling he recognized it as the sub-aural sound of untold thousands of brain cells dying as a result of last night’s overindulgence at Mulligan’s Irish Pub.

  He sighed and turned on to his side, meaning to go back to sleep for another few minutes. Or another hour. Whatever. Like it made a difference at this point. A month into his fall classes at Rutgers and already he was well on his way to failing every one of them. He’d slept through his schedule of classes again today, taking one more shaky step down that slippery slope toward academic doom. Not a smart thing to be doing under any
circumstances, but especially so this time, considering he’d entered the fall session already on academic probation.

  He groaned and willed his eyes to shut.

  He didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted to sleep. Sleep would take it all away. But sleep didn’t seem possible now. The swirling thoughts in his head had ignited the morning-after panic with which he was becoming all too familiar.

  Sighing, he surrendered to the inevitable and sat up. He swung his legs over the side of his bed and rubbed at his bleary eyes. He blinked, saw only a blurred, distorted version of his cramped studio apartment. Then his vision cleared and he saw the note on the nightstand. He recognized Amanda’s handwriting at once, saw the squiggly tail-end of her signature on the nearest side of the paper, which stood in a tented upside-down V next to the phone.

  He grimaced and snatched the note off the nightstand. He smoothed it open and read:

  Last night was fun. You are always fun, sweet Warren. But enough is enough. It’s obvious where you’re going—downhill—and I just can’t walk that road with you. School is important to me, believe it or not. So last night was the end, baby. Please don’t call, write, or come sniffing around. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to, and believe me, if you fail to heed this advice you will get hurt.

  The word ‘hurt’ was underlined three times. Warren thought that was overkill. How dense did she think he was?

  The note continued:

  I wish you luck with whatever life brings you, sweetheart. Though I never want to hear from you again, you’ll always be important to me. I know it sounds strange, but you reached places within me (haha!) few ever have. You’re a special boy. I hope you find a way to turn yourself around, but I have no confidence you can do so. I’d stay if I thought there was any chance you could get better, but I don’t. At all.

  Best to be done with this now and forever.

  I love you.

  I’ll miss you.

  Have a nice life.

  Hugs ‘n’ kisses,

  Amanda

  Warren read the note three times before crumpling it into a ball and tossing it aside. The little wad of paper knocked a picture of his mother and father off the top of his dresser. The picture frame landed with a flat crack of breaking glass.

  Warren closed his eyes. “Shit.”

  This was clearly going to be one of those relentlessly crappy days. The kind that starts bad and stays bad (and maybe gets a hell of a lot worse). Thinking about Amanda’s note filled him with anger. The tone of it was so insulting, condescension couched in a lot of phony affection. ‘Sweet Warren’, she’d called him. And ‘sweetheart’. There should be a law. Any use of the word ‘sweet’ in a breakup note ought to be a capital offense.

  On the other hand, it was hard to refute anything she’d said.

  Warren got to his feet and shuffled over to the mirror. He frowned at the image at the image that looked back at him. The heavy, bruise-colored bags under his bloodshot eyes made him look a decade older than he really was. And his unwashed, bed-rumpled hair and scraggly week-and-a-half old beard made him look like a bum.

  Unable to bear looking at himself any longer, Warren’s gaze went to the fallen picture frame. He picked it up and carried it into the kitchen, where he peeled back the cardboard backing, extracted the picture of his parents, and dropped the now useless frame into the trash basket. He felt something slide away from his fingertips, then looked down and saw whatever it was fluttering to the floor.

  He realized what he was seeing an instant before it landed face-up on the floor. He heaved his heaviest sigh of the morning, leaned back against the kitchen counter, and slid slowly down until his butt met cold linoleum. He put a hand over his face and tried to stifle the sniffle that wanted to come. He couldn’t do it, of course, and soon his eyes were welling with moisture. But he forced himself to look at the old photo he’d hidden behind the picture of his parents three years prior.

  When it came right down to it, everything that had gone wrong for him these last three years all stemmed from an all-consuming need to forget the girl in the picture. The image showed her smiling on a couch, cradling the guitar he’d given her for Valentine’s Day.

  He cupped the picture in two trembling hands.

  The tears began in earnest then, and the last thing he saw before they blinded him was a single drop of moisture landing on the image of Emily Sinclair, Warren’s great lost love.

  * * *

  Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

  1:15 p.m.

  There was something wrong with the flower.

  Jasmine Holtz poured more sweet tea from the yellow pitcher into her mug. She set the mug on the table and leaned back in her chair to study the little patch of flowers next to her patio. There were snapdragons and daisies, and growing here and there in the brown patches of dirt between were green shoots of various sizes. She’d neglected to do the weeding this week and it was starting to show. She meant to do it after having a bit more tea, but the tea and the task were forgotten as she narrowed her eyes and studied the defective flower a bit more closely.

  The daisy’s center, normally a cheerful bright yellow, had darkened considerably, become almost black. But that wasn’t the most disturbing aspect of what she was seeing. The dark button in the middle throbbed subtly, the way the flesh around on infected open wound might if left untreated too long.

  She picked up her mug and took a sip of tea. She frowned. She could swear she’d just seen a tiny blip of purple light at the center of the button. She set the mug down and got to her feet with a sigh. She saw the purple blip again as she walked to the edge of the patio. She shuddered. It looked like some sort of demon eye winking at her. But she banished the thought and lifted the hem of her yellow sundress to kneel in the dirt of her little garden. She knew there had to be a rational explanation for this odd phenomenon. The purple blip was just a trick of the bright midday light. And the blackening of the flower’s center was likely the result of a plant disease she knew nothing about. She’d have to do some research online. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to rip up the whole garden and start over.

  From this vantage point, however, it was clear the intermittent purple blip could not be attributed to anything as mundane as a trick of the light. There was an intimation of motion every time she glimpsed the little speck of purple, just the faintest ripple in that black center, like the displacement of water that occurs when an air bubble emerges from the lungs of a person swimming underwater.

  Odd. Very, very odd.

  For the first time, Jasmine began to feel truly unsettled by what she was seeing. Against her better judgment (not that she truly possessed such a thing as good judgment; she was notoriously impetuous), she knelt closer to the strange flower. The purple blip flashed faster. When her face was less than a foot away from the daisy, the flashing blip changed colors, shifting from a calm purple to an angry red. Which was a funnily apt way of thinking about it, Jasmine decided, because she sensed the color change really was wired to some sort of emotional center.

  She also sensed the flower was a threat to her life. She wasted no time wallowing in denial. Her rational mind would be the death of her, so she shut it down. She gripped the flower by the stem and ripped it out of the ground. A sound like a scream emerged from the daisy’s dark center and she flung the uprooted flower aside. It landed on the pebbled concrete next to the table.

  Jasmine got to her feet and ran through the open patio door into the house. She dashed into the kitchen, opened a drawer and rifled through a mound of odds and ends until she found what she was looking for. Then, heart slamming in her chest, Jasmine returned to the patio and again knelt over the diseased flower, the pebbled concrete pushing painfully into her bare knees. She opened the box of matches with shaking hands and promptly dropped it, spilling matches everywhere. She snatched the empty box up, found one of the matches, and struck it against the flint pad on the side of the box.

  The match flared to life
and Jasmine allowed herself a moment to steady her nerves before applying the little flame to the daisy. The flower ignited and the screaming she’d heard before burst forth once again, this time so loudly it caused her to tumble backward and clap her hands over her ears. Anxious to put some space between herself and the inexplicable thing on her patio, she scooted backward through the open patio door into her living room. She gripped the edge of the door and threw it shut, mercifully muffling the screams of…whatever it was.

  On her hands and knees now—and panting like a dog playing in the sun—she moved to the door and peered through one of the glass panes at the twisted, blackened, horrible thing that had once been a seemingly ordinary flower.

  She stared at it for a long time, waiting for any hint of further plant shenanigans. But nothing happened. In a while she got up and went straight to the liquor cabinet. She then returned to the kitchen and prepared the first of several very stiff drinks.

  * * *

  Washington, D.C.

  1:29 p.m.

  The president of the United States took a small sip of single-malt scotch then put the glass down and again read through the careful speech prepared for him by a team of the best writers money could buy.

  He sighed.

  He’d read this latest draft some two dozen times already. Though the information it was meant to convey was couched in very cautious, non-hyperbolic language, there was no getting around the fantastical core facts he was set to reveal to the nation on live television in just a few hours.