“Peter!” Someone yelled. Peter looked around.
Who’s calling me?”
“I think it’s Wendham,” Rachel said.
He walk past Sophie and Rachel.
“Hey my sun,” Sophie whined as his shadow passed over her again.
“I’m gonna go see what’s up, you gonna sit?”
“Yeah. On Sophie.” Madison said and sat on Sophie’s back.
Sophie screeched.
Rachel grabbed at Peter’s leg as he walked past. He look down at her, she winked, smiled and let go.
“Hey you,” she smiled.
“What’s going on?” Peter said leaning down.
“Just enjoying the sun. You?”
“I’m going to see what that screwball Wendham is up to.”
“Good Luck. He gave me a drink an hour ago and I just stopped seeing things.”
“Oh, super.”
“I thought you’d enjoy that.”
“You know me so well.”
Peter stood back up, he could feel Madison’s eyes on him, so he kept walking.
Peter walked over to the bar where Blake Wendham was mixing drink with all sorts of creative chemicals. Blake was of the English paper magnate Wendham’s. Blake’s partner in crime was Jack Phillips, red as a lobster at the moment, a little bit of sun, a little bit of alcohol and a little bit of god-knows-what.
“Hey,” Peter said to the duo and sat at the bar with them.
“Here try this,” Wendham said in his upper crust British accent and handed Peter a drink. Peter smelled it with due cause, he backed away from it and wrinkled his nose.
“Are you kidding me? You expect me to drink this?” Peter asked and looked over at Maddie, who was still fooling around with Sophie.
“And why not mate? You think I’d poison ya?” Blake asked.
“Maybe not on purpose. Is anything going to happen to me?” Peter asked.
“Nah,” Jack assured him, “Man, I know this stuff.”
Peter swirled the glass and looked at the cocktail.
“I’m going to die aren’t I?” Peter said and took a drink.
It was sweet. But the under-taste of alcohol surfaces. Suddenly Peter’s head starts swimming and Peter feel in a complete state of bliss, just for a second… and suddenly it was gone.
“What the hell was that?” Peter asked as he held his head.
The two of them smile at him and laugh.
“You don’t wanna know,” Jack declare, “How long did it last?”
“Barely a second, it was like… good. Depending on the legality of it, start marketing it boys.”
Maddie snuck up behind Peter and wrapped her arms around him.
“What are you guys up to? Date rape drug?”
“I’m shocked at that statement! We’d never do that,” Wendham said.
“Isn’t your cousin in some trouble at the U of F for that?”
“My cousin’s a wanker for one, for another he’s a Lloyd and he’s probably part Spaniard, got that on his mother’s side you know.”
“What are you talking about? Actually whatever. Alright, I believe you. Sorry to interrupt your party though I’m stealing him back boys,” she purred, “Hey Wendham, I heard you have a girlfriend.”
Wendham’s face went red.
“We’re just friends!”
“Sure.”
Madison pulls Peter back to the spot where she was sitting. She laid down beside Sophie.
“I need lotion on my back.”
“You interrupted me for that?”
“Are you complaining?”
“Hardly, but still…”
“I can call someone else over you know, I don’t have a doubt in the world that Jackie boy wouldn’t do it for me.”
“Fine, fine.” Peter said and reached for her suntan lotion bottle and squirted some on his hands and started applying.
“Where’s Alessandro?” Sophie asked looking around with her suntan lotion bottle in her hand.
The day got a little darker and a sudden breeze makes the wind a bit cooler than usual. The sun seemed to go behind clouds.
“Probably making sure his make-up is on proper,” Peter joked.
“Hey!” Maddie turns and slaps Peter on the shoulder.
“Oh my God Peter, you’re too funny. You should really take your show on the road. But, like really though… on the road, away from here,” Sophie said without looking at Peter.
“Sorry.”
“Just for that you have to help her.”
“But… she doesn’t want my fingers on her.”
“It’s better than dying from cancer… a little anyways.”
Peter looked at Maddie, trying to get her to let him off the hook. Maddie shook her head and laid back down. Peter couldn’t really tell if she was looking at him under her big glasses.
“This is ridiculous, I’m sure if we asked Jack…”
“Sorry cabana boy, you had your opportunity to ask Jack and you didn’t take it,” Sophie said grabbing her long blonde hair and moving it to the side. She reached down and undid her top string on her bikini.
Peter caught Sophie’s eye and gave her a sideways glance. She smirked at him and handed him the bottle. He could feel the coolness of the bottle and squirted it right on her back. She gave out a satisfying scream.
“Cool it down first!” Sophie ordered.
“You can’t cool something down, you can warm it up...”
“Yes you can and the next bit better be,” Sophie demanded.
Madison gave Peter a smack and laid back down.
“You really should be training him better,” Sophie said.
Peter sighed and looked up at the Sun and thought it looked weird. It looked like the Sun was behind clouds, but it wasn’t.
“Is it just me? Did Wendham make me high?”
“Why?” Madison asked. Peter pointed up at the Sun. Madison followed his path up and looked at the sun, “What is going on?”
“You see it too?”
“What are you two blathering about?” Sophie asked and slowly turned.
“The sun looks like it’s being wrapped up, like a spider wrapping its prey. A bluish halo seems to slowly engulf the sun,” Madison said squinting.
“You guys look,” Peter said to a couple people around.
They shield their eyes and look up.
“What the hell is wrong with it?” Sophie asked.
Chapter 6
Madison rested her arms on Peter as she read his e-mail over his shoulder. Peter’s brother James was a defense analyst for the government in New York and was in charge of making sure the millions of different ways to destroy the city didn’t happen. Peter’s family had a long tradition in the military.
“That’s incredible,” Madison said in a hushed tone.
“He told me he had something incredible to tell me. But I missed him in New York.”
“Way to go,” she scolded and finished scanning Peter’s brother’s rather detailed e-Mail.
The e-Mail contained a lot of jargon that Peter didn’t understand. But from what they did understand, and it was just a theory; was that a space cloud had passed the sun and got sucked into its orbit. It was incredibly long, well over ten million miles long, but so thin that it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. But once it got close enough to the sun it was sucked into its gravitational pull and started orbiting the sun and when enough matter accumulated, it eventually became visible. The sun’s pull accelerated the cloud and pulled on it until almost overnight it appeared. And now within a week the sun would be completely wrapped up, no one knew to what extent though. Some say total darkness, others say a black disc in the sky. Regardless the sun was going to be blotted out of the sky and darkness would reign. The moon wouldn’t even shine anymore.
Maddie walked over to their room’s window and looked out. Peter followed, Maddie had put on a shirt, but Peter’s hands found their way underneath to her cool skin.
They looked out the s
mall window together, up at the fading Sun.
“Don’t go all silent and sad,” Peter said.
“When you left West Point, were you scared?” she asked.
Peter nodded his head. Wild rumors had followed Peter’s expulsion from West Point.
Maddie turned to Peter and kissed him long and hard. She pushed herself against him.
“Should we go back to the party?” she asked.
“Do we have to? I mean if the end of the world is coming, shouldn’t we enjoy our last precious seconds with the ones we love?” he suggested.
She smiled but then went dark again.
“The darkness is actually coming, by this time next week the world will only be able to see, by the burnt-out wreckage of its former self. Mankind will have given into its most primal urges, maybe not at first, but slowly like the creeping dusk. Some will see the darkness as a sign by God and start holy wars. We’ll engulf ourselves.” She turned to Peter, her eyes a gulf of conflicted emotions, “But who knows, it could be fun for awhile.”
“Maddie, I’m sure all the scientists in the world are working on this.”
“Just think about God.”
“What does God have to do with science?” He asked.
She looked at Peter like he was out of his mind.
“Everything! God is science!”
“Oh, I thought it was one or the other.”
“Not with me, they’re not exclusive in my world, they’re together. Some don’t believe in God because of science, but some believe in God because of science. Numbers, designs, divine will, heck even free will. The light that led the Wise men to Nazareth was probably a supernova. God made a star explode to usher in his son’s birth into flesh. What do you think he’ll do to us? Satan was the most beautiful angel, and eventually the proudest. He soon thought he was more than God, and he waged a fruitless war. And he fell from grace and all the way to earth, his wings burned and his skin burned, and soon he was no longer beautiful, just a stained victim of his own desires. And now us? Well, we’re just ants scurrying around trying to usurp authority. But we’re this way because we let the devil taint us, and now we want God to save us? Were we not the ones who wanted freedom?”
He held her close to him, “I don’t know what to tell you Maddie. I’m not really too much into theology. I just know we will do what we have to do to survive. I’m sure it’ll be all over the news soon.”
“Maybe, but if it is the end of the world as we know it, they’ll try to keep it quiet until the last of the light is long gone and even then we’ll be told it’s only a temporary thing.”
Chapter 7
The party was pretty cool though. He had to admit that much, despite his utter dislike for Sophie. He never really attended a lot of parties at West Point. Maybe the occasional school dance, but that was about it.
Although it was impossible to forget what they’d learn, they both agreed that spreading the news right then and there would be pointless. Some looked at the sun in their alcohol or drug induced stupor and thought it was awesome. Peter nor Maddie bothered correcting them.
Peter sat on the sundeck and drank and hooted and hollered with the rest. But slowly the sun was swallowed by advancing clouds from the north. He had really wanted to see the sun disappear into the ocean, it was always a hidden wish to be on a boat and see that.
At first the rain just tickled them, but soon it was a full on assault and sent everyone for shelter. The gang hit the hot tub room. The normal lights were down and the black lights were on.
“It’s like this discothèque I went to with my cousin outside of Athens…” Alessandro continued, getting louder by the second.
Peter couldn’t listen to another one of his pretentious stories about him and his hot chick cousin, which was actually starting to sound very Appalachian to him.
Maddie and Sophie had gone down to the kitchen earlier and now he saw them come back. They had a tray full of refreshments which was good because he was starving. They all just sat and ate. It seemed like no one said anything for an eternity, all the rowdy ones were passing out or preparing their energies for a second wind.
Lee was passed a joint by Jack. Lee took a puff and passed it to Olivia who sat beside him in the water. Olivia shook her head and Lee attempted to pass it to Peter.
“No thanks,” he told Lee.
“Dude, it’s a party,” he argued.
“I’m good,” he said and smiled.
Maddie took it from Lee.
“Don’t worry about him, he’s a party pooper,” she said.
She slowly exhaled and took in another puff and again exhaled. Her eyes were soon red. Most of them were. The alcohol and drugs flowed freely, a little too freely for his taste. He never really hung around such people and the air was getting stale, Peter needed to clear his head and get some fresh air. He got out of the hot tub and wrapped a towel around his waist.
“Taking a breather?” Olivia asked him. Lee’s half conscious head was on her shoulder.
“That I am,” he nodded.
“Good, me too,” she said as she moved Lee gently over, so he was leaning against Jack. “Don’t let him drown,” she told Jack. He nodded, barely awake himself.
She reached out her hand to Peter and he took it, helping her out.
***
Olivia stood beside Peter and they breathed in the fresh Atlantic night air. Their arms resting on the cool railings of the yacht as they stared out at the black waters.
“Kind of weird just looking out into the inky blackness you know,” Olivia said.
“Yeah, can’t imagine just being out there like the old time fishermen and those people on the Titanic. Just floating, hoping someone would rescue them.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked him.
He shrugged.
“I’m not a real big partier.”
“Me neither. Strict parents, the usual spiel.”
He nodded in understanding. They turned to each other and smiled. Her skin was dark, like an olive color and certainly accented earlier in her bikini. She still had her bikini on, but now she wore a white shirt over, barely covering her bikini clad body. Her slim and slender legs jetted out.
“I heard you were some kind of army brat or something,” she asked, maybe to get their eyes off each other. He turned back to the ocean.
“Or something is right. I kind of screwed things up for me at West Point.”
“Is that the kind of person you are? You screw things up?”
He shook his head as much in self defense as an answer.
“I try not to analyze myself.”
“Afraid of what you’ll see?”
Peter shrugged, he’d asked himself that same question far too many times.
“Can I guess?” she asked as a breeze blew hair strands into her face.
“I don’t know why you’d want to. I’m not anything special.”
“I think you are.”
Peter turned back to her, reached up and with a finger tucked her hair behind her ear. She smiled shyly and backed up a little.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything…”
“You’re apologizing to me?”
“I just didn’t want to make things awkward between us, I’m sorry if I… you know.”
“So does that mean I can guess?”
“If it makes you happy, sure.”
“Well let’s see,” she said, drawing in a breath, “Instead of rebelling against the army life you embraced it. Your family made arrangements for you to get into West Point and you loved it,” she looked up at him. “Right?”
“Public facts, but sure.”
“And that was you, the real you. But now you can’t be you because you’re here… being someone else.”
“Your insights are truly Freudian. Are you planning to be a psyche major at Yale?”
“But something happened at West Point. Something so terrible it resulted in seven expulsions, nearly jail sentences… and two deaths.”
“That...”
“Is that public fact?” she asked.
He shrugged and looked away from her, trying to hide his sudden rush of anger.
“I suppose if you know where to look,” he said quietly.
“Don’t worry,” she said and moved a little closer. She put her warm hand on his cool hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “Don’t be mad, I just picked it up somewhere. You know how these things are.”
“No one knows. I have a chance to be someone else here,” he said, trying not to growl out his words.
“For how long?” She looked up at him.
“What… what do you want?” He asked as if we were about to fight, “I’m not a murderer!”
“Nothing! It’s our little secret I promise. I wanted our talk to show you that you could talk to me and trust me, not to build distance.”
He realized her hand was still on his. He pulled it away and turned around.
“Well, I guess it is getting cold out here,” she said.
“I… it’s just I never told Maddie about it, or anything about West Point. I know people think what they think. And I want to tell her… She knows I was expelled. But when’s the right time to tell her about something like that?”
Olivia grabbed Peter’s arm and turned him around, she leaned in and kissed him on the lips. He could have stopped her, He don’t know why he didn’t. She caught him off guard.
“Now we both have our secrets,” she smiled. “And my lips are sealed.”
Chapter 8
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the sun shined as dully as if it were the middle of February.
The kids that managed to crawl out of bed at ten thirty in the morning were treated to a pancake breakfast.
Sophie put great efforts towards some things and impressing party guests was one of them. Maddie and Olivia helped her with whipping up the batter. Peter was consigned to help Alessandro with the grilling of breakfast sausages and pancakes. But Alessandro was kind of useless and burnt most of the pancakes he made and when he flipped them batter went everywhere. Peter’s however were golden and not raw on the inside.
“Patience my man, patience and care and love and watching the heat,” Peter explained to Alessandro letting him in on his secret.
The Complete Creeping Darkness Page 3