The Dark Ones

by Anthony Izzo

  She didn’t, instead opening the door and grabbing her bag. She knelt at the side of the car, scanning the sky for the winged creature, and when she saw only clouds, she scurried into the woods.

  As she ran through the woods, the air cut through her. The sharp crackle of leaves underfoot and her ragged breathing were the only sounds she heard. She ducked through bushes, the branches scraping her face. At one point she hit a fallen pine tree and sprawled forward, tearing a hole in the knee of her pants. Knee throbbing, she came to a clearing and found a rotted log, perhaps four feet in diameter. It was big enough to hide in.

  Checking both ways, she darted to the log and ducked inside. It smelled of moss and dust and was too dark for her liking. Something tickled the back of her hand and she flicked it away, glad the darkness at least concealed the bevy of creepy-crawlies lurking in the log.

  She crouched down and her knee sang out in pain. It stung like hell, but she didn’t think there was any real damage. She watched the woods for half an hour. Soon fatigue caught up with her, and she slipped into sleep.

  The beating of wings awoke her. She clutched her bag to her chest, pressed herself against the side of the log. Turning her head slightly, she watched the clearing. And it was there, the winged creature, gray-green against the dark woods. Her heart beat so hard it hurt and she began to think ducking into the log wasn’t the brightest move. It hadn’t seen her, though. Yet.

  I’ll have to fry it, like the other one.

  Now the other one, presumably the one from inside the house, joined it in the clearing. It was naked save for a loincloth, and the moonlight showed pale bluish skin. In its midsection was an open wound and a portion of meaty guts bulged from the wound, slick in the moonlight. Whether it had been a man at one time, she couldn’t tell.

  It trudged up next to the gargoyle-thing and craned its neck. Looking for me, the guest of honor, no doubt.

  Beyond them, over the trees, the first rays of sun appeared and with it a deep pink sky. She must have slept longer than she thought, for they had pursued her until dawn. She guessed they hadn’t seen her run to the woods and had gone looking down closer to the main road.

  Now, hunched in the log, she watched them split and circle the outskirts of the clearing. If they had seen her, she imagined she would have been torn from her hiding spot already.

  She listened. Brush and leaves scraped. Wood snapped. She heard that awful speech, like a foreign language spoken by a throat cancer patient. Then the footsteps sped up and there was a muffled whoosh as the flying creature took to the sky. The second one appeared and from her vantage point she saw its thickly muscled legs.

  It stopped and she feared that at any moment it would peer inside the log, spot her, and come in for her. But instead, it turned away, let out a noise that sounded like “Gat!” and bounded back through the woods.

  It was an hour later when she came out of hiding. The sun was brilliant and her breath plumed in the crisp air. She suspected the dawn drove her attackers off, but as she made her way back to the road, she still checked the sky every so often.

  She neared the edge of the woods. Her stomach rumbled and a faint hunger pang rippled through her belly. Her knee was cold and sticky with blood and the scratches on her face burned. At least she still had transportation.

  Or so she thought. She reached the car and found it had taken a heap of abuse. The windshield was smashed, and the hood lay at a cockeyed angle against a pine tree. Wires had been ripped and mangled and fluids pooled beneath the car. Whether they did this before hunting her—so she couldn’t escape—or after, she didn’t know. The prospect of those things being intelligent enough to cut off her escape vehicle unnerved her. The physical deformities and their very presence was bad enough, but to think they were smart, too?

  And what were they? The same ones that had attacked at the gas station? Were they the “Enemy” that Dad and Reverend Frank talked about every once in a while? They seemed especially keen on finding her.

  The Light had saved her. That was only the second time she had fired a bolt like that. The other had come when a homeless man down by the Royal Theater had gotten aggressive with her. The man, reeking of booze and sweat, a filthy beard around his mouth, had grabbed her arm, looking for spare change. He managed to drag her into the alley between the Royal and the Vacuum Center. She had grown angry, and a bolt of brilliant white light flew from her hand and caught him in the shoulder. It had singed a hole in his raincoat. He had run screaming from the alley, shouting that “fucking bitch” had tried to kill him. Never mind what he had planned for her in the alley.

  Did Dad know about her abilities? And did Reverend Frank? She would sometimes catch them watching her and then averting their gazes. Waiting for her to light something up?

  She wished he were here, Dad. Or Robbie. Anybody.

  She resigned herself to being alone for now and walked back to Cherry Hill Road. After she had been waiting forty-five minutes, a white semi rolled up and stopped. The driver leaned over and opened the door. He didn’t look much older than her, but he sported a thin goatee and smiled. Cocking the ball cap on his head he said, “Need a lift?”

  “You going to Buffalo?”

  “Tonawanda, right nearby.”

  She climbed up into the cab. A Hustler magazine with a topless brunette on the cover rested on the dashboard. She had bright red lips and was pinching her nipples. The driver grabbed the magazine and flung it behind him, into the bunkhouse. “Sorry. Get a little lonely on the road.”

  “I understand.”

  “Randall Powers.”

  “Sara. I thought you guys weren’t supposed to pick up hitchhikers?”

  “I’m Randall Powers the second. Randall Powers the first owns the company. What Daddy don’t know won’t hurt him.”

  “Roll on, then.”

  They had driven a few miles and were rolling up the ramp to the 90 when it hit her. Joanne, dead in the garage. She hadn’t thought of the woman while fleeing from the attackers, but now it pounded into her. Her throat tightened up and it let loose with a single tear and then more. She couldn’t stop it. She put her hands over her face and the sound of her own whimpering disgusted her.

  Randall said, “You okay?”

  She wiped tears from her face with the sleeve of her jacket and crossed her arms. “I’ll be okay.”

  Sara looked straight ahead at the long expanse of blacktop and had never felt more alone than she did now.

  CHAPTER 8

  Harry Hargrove didn’t mind his job. Mostly it involved sitting in the guard shack at the former Gate 4 of the mill. He had a kerosene heater, a little TV and DVD player, a drawer full of snacks, and a stack of John D. MacDonald novels. The pay sucked, but for part-time it wasn’t bad, and it got him away from six screaming kids and a wife intent on smashing his balls into jelly half the time. No pleasing that woman. Car not running right, Harry. Did you call the dentist, Harry? Jules Spender got a three-karat ring from her husband for Christmas.

  No, he didn’t mind at all. The Yanks were taking it to the competition on the tube, and he had a belly full of Slim Jims and Dr Pepper. Every hour or so, he got up, drove around in the patrol car, and made sure no kids had found their way into the mill buildings.

  When they hired him, Flanders—his boss—said guys didn’t last more than a few months. Sitting in the shadow of abandoned blast furnaces, their pipes spiraling up in the darkness, and the big rolling mill buildings, gave some the creeps. The mill had shut down in 1982, taking five thousand jobs with it. The furnaces were cold and not going to be hot again. Big steel was a thing of the past, at least in Buffalo. There was talk of tearing the whole thing down and putting up wind turbines, but he’d believe it when he saw it.

  Now, peeling the wrapper off another Slim Jim, he looked out onto the property. The blast furnace stoves, some hundred and fifty feet high, almost seemed to block out the moonlight. He took a bite of the Slim Jim, relishing the greasy taste.

  H
e heard sirens in the distance and the blat of fire engine horns. He set down his snack, and after taking a swig of pop, stepped outside the shack. He immediately wished he had thrown his jacket on. The cool air caused goose bumps to pop up on his bare arms. He looked across Route 5 and saw smoke spiraling against the sky and smelled the acrid tang of it on the air. The high whoop of a police siren joined the fire trucks. Must be a pretty good blaze.

  He stepped back into the guard shack, rubbed his arms for warmth, and was ready to pick up his Slim Jim when he saw someone through the picture window. They were about a hundred feet away, loping across the ground. Damn it, they must have hopped the fence. He grabbed his jacket and keys and got into the truck. He started it up and was ready to put the car in gear when he saw more of them. Black shapes, some dressed in rags, others appearing to have bluish tinted skin, still others with hooks and spikes piercing their faces. All shapes and sizes, claws and horns and fangs and what was he seeing?

  They moved toward the Ten Inch Rolling Mill, perhaps a hundred, maybe more. He looked down the length of the chain-link fence and saw them scaling the barrier in droves. Suddenly being visible didn’t seem like such a great idea. He slid down in the seat, staying high enough to peer over the dashboard. The one he saw first, the tallest of the lot, stopped at the gaping door of the Ten Inch Mill. He raised his arms and the others filed past him, into the mill. It took maybe five minutes for them all to enter the building. When they had passed him, the apparent leader seemed to look right in the direction of Harry’s truck. Harry ducked lower, face pressed against the vinyl seat.

  I don’t know who it is, but I hope it didn’t see me.

  He gave it a minute, then sat up. The guy was gone.

  He didn’t know what he just saw, or who they were. Maybe some sort of Satanic cult. Whoever they were, they looked dangerous. This was more than he could handle, and he planned on calling the real cops.

  Harry opened the truck door and stepped out. His heart thudded in his chest. He reached up to adjust his cap and knocked it off his head. It fell to the ground and rimmed around like a coin dropped on a table. He picked up the hat, telling himself to calm down.

  He smelled something bad. Something old and vaguely mildewy. From the roof of the guard shack came a scraping noise and Harry jerked his head up and saw the winged creature perched on the roof. He felt a whimper rise in the back of his throat and he started forward, but the creature pounced, its claws digging into his shoulders, the full weight of it pressing him down, and he felt his ankle break with a stunning pop and he shrieked. It dug into his shoulders and his nerves lit up with pain, sending hot tendrils down his arms. He heard the thwip of wings overhead and slowly his feet left the ground.

  It felt like being on some crazy amusement-park ride. As they reached the open door of the mill, the claws left his shoulder with a wet sound, and he hit the ground and rolled into the mill. His ankle sang out again and for a moment things started spinning and he felt a wave of nausea. He came to rest against a steel column, and now he was aware of shapes surrounding him in the darkness. He looked up and one of them approached, this one with stringy long hair and wearing a ragged trench coat.

  Around him, the circle closed. Through cracked lips, the stringy-haired one said, “Flay him.”

  He felt himself hoisted to his feet. Something tore open his shirt, gashing his chest in the process. His pants were shredded by claws. His shoes were pulled off, and something gave his broken ankle a vicious twist and he nearly blacked out from the pain. Something took him in a bear hug around the chest. Another pulled his arm and he felt a snap in his shoulder and more pain and the shoulder separated. Rough hands turned his head toward the outstretched arm. A blade, flat and dull in the darkness, started in the crook of his elbow and split the skin down to the wrist. As the skin was peeled back and the raw red muscle exposed to the air, he passed out.

  Engel remembered seeing the mill from his last encounter here. Large buildings, capable of holding a small army. Perfect for them. Even better that it was empty. The man had been a nuisance, nothing more. His screams had been exquisite. Engel ordered the skinned corpse impaled on a spear. They would place it outside the gate, near the road, as a warning: The Dark Ones are coming.

  After dropping Schuler off, Mike ditched the stolen car in a field near the old Cargill grain elevators. He walked home, holding his coat shut the whole time, hoping to ward off the ever-stiffening October wind. He moved through the old First Ward, occasionally peeking at the houses, wanting to shake his head. They were all pre–World War II, built long and tall and narrow, with eight or so feet between the homes. They were so close it seemed like you could reach over and snatch a morsel of corned beef from your neighbors’ dinner table.

  Now most of them had been turned into crack dens. One couple, Sandy and Deke Labin, had been raided by the DEA. Deke had set up a meth lab in his basement. Parrish, who lived across the street, ran a gang called the Seneca Crew. It was sad, and he wondered what the hell he was still doing here. He knew the answer to that: Mom. She was just like the old Polish living down on Memorial Drive, too proud to leave despite the rash of home invasions. Some of them had been tied up, pistol-whipped, and robbed, but still they stayed.

  With Hark most likely after him, Mike had good reason to leave, but there was his mother. She wouldn’t make it to the end of the driveway in her current condition. Her breathing was more labored and she had developed a nasty wet rattle in her chest over the past month. Moving her would mean the end. He would have to find a way to avoid Hark, lay low until the whole thing blew over. And there was the life, as Schuler called it. He was growing tired of looking over his shoulder, wondering if someone was waiting to pop him in the back. Wondering if the plain brown and gray cars passing the house were plainclothes or not. Even Schuler had grown old. Mike found himself forcing himself to laugh at the same jokes, feign interest in the same war stories, how they knocked over this place or that.

  By now Hark had to have heard about the fire. It would have made the eleven o’clock news. He hoped Schuler got out of town, even if the dirty prick did insult Mike’s mother. He had to admit, the kid did one hell of an Irish brogue, and if Mike’s mom hadn’t been the target of the joke, he would have been bent over the steering wheel laughing.

  He turned the corner onto Smith, past Ricotta’s, its windows covered by plywood. The little corner store had moved to Orchard Park. Good for them, Mike thought.

  He came up on the house. The first thing he noticed was the dim front window. It struck him as unusual. Mom always left a light on until Mike got home. Maybe she had retired early. Then he started to worry, maybe she’d fallen, or maybe Jasmine, her nurse, hadn’t shown and Mom had slipped into unconsciousness.

  He quickened his pace until he reached the front step, which rattled, the one-by-six having loosened over the years. That porch probably hadn’t been fixed since 1985, when his father had still been capable of walking ten feet without sucking from an oxygen mask.

  Reaching the porch, he noticed the door cracked open. That was another thing. Mom insisted he lock the door, and in this neighborhood, it was the wise thing to do. He never left it unlocked.

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out the .45. He pointed it at the door. It might be nothing. Or maybe he did get careless and leave it open. Or it might be a junkie on the prowl looking to swipe something.

  He opened the door and looked inside. The furniture blended with the complete darkness. Mike wanted to call out, ask where Mom was, but he thought it better to remain silent.

  Winding his way through the living room, he refrained from turning on any lights. He listened, hoping to hear the murmur of voices from the television, maybe a Golden Girls rerun, one of Mom’s all-time favorite shows.

  The dining room revealed a tipped-over oak chair. The picture of him taken sophomore year, the one with the mullet and the skinny tie, hung askew on the wall. Trouble had found the O’Donnell house. The question was what ki
nd, Hark or random street crime.

  He still hadn’t heard any noise from the back bedroom. The house was still except for the furnace motor whirring in the basement.

  In the kitchen, he smelled the remnants of lemon dish soap. A pile of clean dishes was stacked in the dish drain, which meant Jasmine had been here to clean up, but she wouldn’t have left the lights off.

  Only the hallway and the two back bedrooms were left. In the hallway, he saw the bathroom door was open. The closet door was closed. Outside, he thought he heard a car pull up and a door slam, but he dismissed it. He poked his head into the bathroom. The shower curtain was drawn, but he saw no shape behind it, and unless someone had found a way to cram themselves into a medicine cabinet, no one else could have hidden in the bathroom.

  He left the bathroom, stared at the scarred bedroom door, gouged by their late bulldog, Max. From behind the door he smelled it, like meat gone bad. And under it, the smell of shit.

  Dear God, I’m going to go in there and she’s going to be dead, like a wax dummy, lying in her own filth. You weren’t even here, you rotten fuck. Your mother was dying and you were out burning buildings.

  He nudged the door open with his foot. Between the twin beds, he saw the body.

  It wasn’t his mother, but Jasmine. The comforter and sheet lay crumpled on her back, and a blotch of blood soaked the sheet. The rear of her pants were soiled brown, and one white Reebok lay next to her foot. He felt his dinner start to kick back up his throat. He clamped his hand over his mouth. She’d been a nice lady, quick to smile, and Mom was always glad to see her.

  It wasn’t Mom, but would he find her somewhere else? Maybe someone tossed her down the basement stairs and she broke her neck and he would find her in a heap, staring at him with glassy dead eyes.

  Behind him, the closet door opened with a groan. He whirled around and saw a bullnecked guy with a crew cut standing half out of the closet. He had a mole the size of a dime on his cheek. He grinned at Mike.