Storberry

by Dan Padavona

  No longer hearing the thunder, Mary ignored the storm. She stared at the ceiling, beyond the crawlspace floorboards. What lurked beyond looked back at her, with hurricane lantern eyes and a Cheshire Cat grin. Her body began to tremble. It was all she could do to speak.

  “We're all going to die in there.”

  Disgust spreading across his face, Rory glanced at her and quickly disregarded her, turning his attention back to Evan’s struggle with the trapdoor. Rory appeared tired of the waiting, the excuses, and the petulant worrying.

  Evan grunted and pushed against the bar. The door shrieked, rising another half inch, as dust cascaded down on his face and left a gritty taste on his lips.

  “I've almost got it.”

  “Let me do it,” Rory said, pushing past Greg and Evan.

  Evan stumbled backward into a wall of tools. Hot pain spread across his back as a pair of garden shears opened his flesh. Greg rushed to him, his stomach churning as the line of blood welling across the back of Evan's shirt. The laceration was deep. Greg removed his own shirt, then ripped off the undershirt and wound it upon itself until it was tight. He gritted his teeth and pulled Evan's shirt upward, revealing the blood which poured from the elongated wound, the skin flapping grotesquely against his hand. He pressed the wrapped shirt to Evan's back, and then Mary came to their side, applying constant pressure to the wound.

  “Jesus Christ, Rory. What have you done?”

  As Greg looked warily at the overhead boards, something heavy shifted its weight above the ceiling, and more dust and dirt rained through the boards.

  “I hear you up there, you fucker!”

  Rory's eyes were wild and distant. Hate burned through them, black as coal. As he strained against the bar, the boards screamed in agony and the door wedged upward another quarter inch.

  Rory threw his full weight against the bar, his skin crimson. Veins protruded from his neck like snakes coiling around prey.

  Wood squealed against wood, followed by a loud popping noise. The nails gave way, the aged binding finally relenting. The door flew open to an alien dimension of absolute black.

  Greg paused in his attending to Evan's wound and looked up through the ceiling.

  The darkness that rolled out of the crawlspace first grabbed hold of the edges to the trapdoor with searching fingers, and then plunged outward like a black tidal wave that would drown them where they stood.

  A stagnant odor drifted downward, followed by a more foul scent. Something skittered across the floor above their heads, perhaps rats blinded by generations of darkness.

  As Mary's hands trembled—one hand applying pressure to Evan's wound, the other gripping the cross to her chest—her eyes fixed on the opening to the crawlspace.

  “Hold on just a second, Rory,” Greg said. “Let me finish this, and we'll go in together.”

  “I've waited long enough. I'm going to kill this thing.”

  Rory pulled himself up the rungs. His head disappeared into the crawlspace.

  “Dammit, Rory. Give me a second to—”

  A louder skittering came from overhead, as though something huge moved across the ceiling of the crawlspace. Then a wicked laugh, and Rory's body shot into the crawlspace.

  “No!” Mary screamed at the black hole.

  Rory screamed. A horrible crunching noise followed, like egg shells breaking. As crimson fluid poured through the cracks, Greg doubled-over from nausea. Thunder pealed overhead, the windows rattling against the building storm.

  There was a thud from above and then a sliding noise which trailed away. The thing dragged Rory into the depths of the crawlspace. A moment later they heard Rory's body hit the floor in the far corner.

  Then the boards groaned as something heavy approached the trapdoor. The monster was coming.

  Lips quivering, Mary backed herself against the outer door.

  “It's okay,” Greg said. “It can't come down. It can't come into the light.”

  But there was a hint of doubt in his voice. If the storm left the inner room dark enough that the vampire could descend the rungs, there would be no escape. It would hover over them, a monster out of their darkest nightmares.

  The sounds stopped at the trapdoor. It was then that they were sure the monster would drop through the opening. They would look into its hideous face, and their symbols and weapons would be useless against it.

  There was a moment of silence within, and even the storm seemed to abate in anticipation of the vampire's appearance.

  The trapdoor slammed shut. The thing laughed and crawled back into the depths.

  Three

  Finding the Barrows' home still unlocked, Greg located a first-aid kit in the upstairs bathroom. He bandaged and taped Evan’s wound, and while it still stung like hell, the bleeding had stopped, and he had regained some mobility.

  They were soaked from the storm. The rain had been a deluge during the brief run from the garage to the house, and Evan had slowed them considerably.

  As Greg replayed Rory's death in his mind, he thought that maybe it was better this way. Perhaps Rory and Evelyn were together again, someplace safe, where nightmares did not walk the land.

  It was 6:20 p.m. Sixty minutes until sunset.

  As though pieces of cotton had been shredded and left to float lifelessly through the heavens, the storm moved east and left behind a tattered sky of cloud and blue. The sun emerged through the morass of broken pieces, and already its resultant color had turned golden as it was pulled against its will toward the western horizon. As the uphill creek jumped its banks and rushed downhill, rivers of blood cascaded through the backyards, the water’s color altered by the amber sunset.

  While Mary stayed with Evan in the kitchen, Greg revisited the garage, feeling the presence above him. He sensed how the monster loathed him, how it craved him. The vampire would soon be released from its daytime prison, and they would all be finished. The second-hand on his wristwatch moved in double time.

  As he searched the side room, he found nothing but the garden tools and implements they had discovered earlier. The single-car garage was unoccupied. Wrought with mildew, an old desk was thrown into the back corner, and several lawn chairs which the Barrows' family would not be enjoying this summer were piled along the far wall.

  He had all but given up hope when he located what he sought in the very back of the garage. He smelled the gasoline can before he saw its spouted neck wedged between a wall and a self-propelled lawnmower. The gas was surely stale from the long winter, but that mattered not for his purposes.

  As Greg returned to the house with the gas can in hand, Mary rechecked Evan's bandages in the kitchen. He plopped the can down on the counter.

  “Found it. We'll burn it alive.”

  Evan nodded.

  “We had better start immediately. As soon as the sun sets...”

  “I know. We're running out of time,” Greg said.

  “There's also all of the moisture to deal with outside. It's not going to be easy to keep the fire going.”

  “Agreed. Which is why we are going to start the fire from inside the garage.”

  “That's risky. You sure as hell better be certain you don't trap yourself inside.”

  “I'll douse the inner walls of the garage, then lay a trail out through the side room toward the door. I'll light it from there, then step outside.”

  “That should work. Then we can all get the hell out of here?”

  “You bet.”

  Greg turned to Mary.

  “How does he look?”

  “You did a good job with the bandages,” she said. “If he doesn't try to do too much,” and she gave Evan a knowing look, “he should be fine until he gets proper stitches.”

  It was already 6:40 p.m.

  As the sun drifted behind the clouds again, a cool shadow fell over the Barrows' home. The sun reemerged at a lower angle in variegated ruby, like jewels of the devil. The sun seemed to accelerate its downward drift, as though it had made a secret
arrangement with the night to conspire against them.

  At 6:45 p.m, they entered the garage.

  They sensed that the thing knew they were below the floorboards, though they doubted it knew what they intended. Casting elongated doppelgangers eastward across the garage, the trees sent long shadows across the yard. It occurred to Evan as they crept within the dappled light that it might already be dark enough for the vampire to survive outside the crawlspace, if it kept to the shadowed corners below.

  A colder thought occurred to him. What if the monster is here with us in the garage right now, waiting unseen in the corners where the light is thwarted by the walls? The glass windows of the garage door faced due north, where ambient light danced and died at the threshold. Was the shadow sufficient for the thing’s survival?

  The air was difficult to breathe, awash with stale fuel. Where the wind failed to reach, the odor stagnated within the structure's walls. Red puddles sank into the floor under the trapdoor, causing Mary to gag.

  Evan looked up, seeing not the crawlspace floorboards but Rory somewhere beyond, piled in a corner, bled out, eyes lifeless. Soon those eyes would fill with malevolence. Rory would rise again with the night.

  Not Rory. I won't allow it to happen to him.

  The side room opened into the garage. As ambient light filtered in from the windows to their left, the gray turned murky and faded to shadow within a few yards of the door. The remainder of the garage, including the path directly forward, could not have been blacker. Dust motes sparkled down through the four small windows across the garage door, and then all illumination perished within the gloom.

  The vampire could be anywhere within. Waiting.

  They had discovered a pack of matches within the Barrows' kitchen drawers. Only four remained, but Evan had no choice but to strike one. Lighting their way forward, the fire threw an orange glow into the abyss. The light withered five yards away.

  As the stagnant air pressed down on him, the enclosed confines exaggerated the sounds of his breathing until it was all he heard. His eyes were slow to adjust to the murk, every outline at the edge of his vision screaming danger.

  Evan flung the low-burning match to the ground when the heat licked at his thumb. Only three matches remained. He couldn't risk lighting another.

  For one terrifying moment they saw nothing ahead of them. Then Greg's eyes readjusted, and he began to see familiar shapes—the lawnmower near the back of the garage where he had found the gas can, the dust-covered lawn chairs, a spare set of tires he had noticed in the far corner.

  “Stand back,” said Greg.

  He popped the cap off the gas can spout and pulled the plug on the air flow. As the volatile liquid sloshed around inside the plastic container, he swung the can forward and splashed the back wall with the pungent fuel. Evan and Mary shuffled backward across the dirt floor, making room for Greg to douse the east wall.

  He reversed course and splashed fuel across the west wall, then walked along the barrier back toward the side room, coating as much of the wall as he could with what little fuel remained. While the dappled light in the side room was blinding in comparison to the darkened garage, he sensed that it was fading quickly.

  A heavy weight shifted overhead. The boards groaned.

  The vampire knows what we are up to.

  Something heavy moved toward the trapdoor. Greg's mouth went dry. At any moment the monster would rip the door asunder.

  Through the tall trees pressed thin strands of sunlight, lighthouse beacons which offered them salvation. Mary stood in the closed doorway, the dying rays of the sun brushing the tops of her shoulders.

  “Stand within the light. It cannot reach you here,” she said.

  But the light was nearly snuffed. Though sunset was still twenty minutes away, the tree and ridge line to the west blocked the rays long before the sun was dragged below the horizon. As Greg backed into the side room splattering a trail of gasoline, he was aware of the thing's presence above, hovering over them, ready to strike.

  “Hurry,” Evan said.

  As Mary opened the door, allowing the overpowering stench of fuel to disperse in the evening air, Evan breathed for the first time in what seemed to have been an eternity. Greg tossed the nearly empty container into the depths of the garage and bent down at the gas trail's end. With Evan kneeling beside him to provide a shield from the wind, Greg struck the match.

  He threw the first match into the fuel trail, and a blue flame danced forward and fizzled. The wind sheared the flame apart before it fully caught the fuel. Now only two matches remained.

  Greg struck the second match and walked it inside the room a few feet to reduce the wind effects. It was silent in the crawlspace, but he could feel the thing's evil poised overhead. As the match caught the trail with greater vigor, flames spread toward the garage, but also toward the door under his legs. When the fire caught his pant leg, he leaped backward into the grass to pat it out before the flame reached his skin.

  A whoosh emanated from inside the garage, rendering the far wall in sharp detail within the flickering glow. As they retreated into the backyard, a virulent mix of torrid fumes rushed through the doorway.

  “Go,” Greg said, and they turned for the driveway.

  The flames roared higher behind them, the air a mix of gasoline and wood burning. Something crashed in the side room, and Greg was sure the vampire had descended from the crawlspace, but it was just the crash as the flower table collapsing. Just a little longer and the flames would engulf the upstairs.

  Fifteen minutes until sunset.

  A great weight shifted overhead and began to move, erratically darting across the crawlspace floorboards—to the back window, where the final glowing embers of sunlight washed across the walls; to the front window, where a haze of slate gray waited dangerously beyond the boards; to the opening in the floor, where smoke billowed upward, flames licking at the floorboards like the tongues of wyverns.

  The flames raged higher. Time had run out for the lord of all vampires.

  As a horrifying roar from somewhere within the crawlspace curdled their blood, they raced toward the truck. Black smoke billowed out of the garage, like a dragon breathing. They heard the rasp of nails being torn from wood, the planks exploding from the north-facing window.

  “It can't...Evan, it can’t come into the light!” Mary screamed, but the shake in her voice bellied her conviction.

  The sun was behind the ridge line now. Cast in a nondescript gray, the ambient light at the front of the garage seemed to hide as much as it revealed.

  As the heat shattered the windows of the garage door, they climbed into the truck, and Greg started the engine. The way forward grew dim, dusk already beginning in the eastern sky. Greg shifted the truck into drive when Greg saw something large drop from the north window of the crawlspace. His mind may have played tricks on him, but he thought smoke rose off of the shadowed form, as though another source of heat had captured the shape in its descent.

  It's burning from the light.

  As quickly as the huge shadow fell to the earth, it bounded east through the neighboring yard. A window shattered out of view.

  “The vampire!”

  Evan's eyes were wild with panic.

  “Impossible. The goddamn sun hasn't set!” yelled Greg.

  The truck lurched to a stop.

  “It's in the houses.”

  From the crawlspace came another scream—a human scream, trilling with pain and fear. Greg felt his stomach lurch. Rory Dickson was burning to death.

  Behind the truck, the soil pulled the sun into its depths. The flames burst in a final crescendo, as though sending a distress signal. Darkness rushed toward Storberry.

  Four

  As the fiery sun accelerated toward the western horizon, Renee paced the front windows to the farmhouse like a caged animal. Unwilling to accept that the other group members would not return, she had wanted to give them just a little more time before she departed with Tom and Jen.<
br />
  Her procrastination had cost them dearly. Time had slipped away, as though the fates had robbed the minutes from her while she wrestled with indecision. In a matter of moments the shadows would spread westward. Already they pooled in the sheltered meadow east, like apparitions waiting to take flight.

  As though she could will the others to return sooner, she opened the wooden door and stood at the screen. The song of peepers and crickets had already begun. The post-storm air smelled fresh, carrying the scent of ozone and a cleansing humidity. While the teenagers watched her with consternation from the living room, she sighed and turned to them, unable to disguise her building sorrow.

  “They're not coming back.”

  There. She had said it.

  The statement didn't mollify her. If anything it made her feel worse. Though she hadn't known Evan for more than a few days, she had grown fond of him. He was a kindred spirit, someone she believed she could grow old with. As she thought back to their time together at Mary's café, she recalled how alive he had made her feel.

  As familiar as the streets she once traveled to the library each morning, the other members of their ragtag group had become a part of her. They couldn't be gone. She didn't want to believe. But it seemed to her that the entire town had gone to the grave, and that they would soon follow if they didn't act now.

  “What are we going to do?” Jen asked, watching the light push westward across the fields.

  “If we don't leave now we'll be trapped in here ‘til morning. And it's almost dark.”

  Suddenly the old farmhouse seemed much larger to Renee. Its cold hardwood floors, its dark passages, the unexplored attic, the basement and root cellar. She looked outside toward the wind-torn barn and tool house. She had felt safe here at the northernmost outskirts of town…or perhaps she had merely thought herself secure, misled by the perceived safety in their numbers. But now they were only three.