Twice as Dark: Two Novels of Horror

by Glen Krisch

  Kevin's vantage point was high up in the rafters, even higher than the choir balcony at the back of the nave, but he still saw of whom Mr. Freakshow was speaking. His mom was standing at the end of the first pew, her arm over Kevin's shoulder. His grandma stood next to him, holding his hand. He could see his own head bobbing, unable to control his tears. He was far from alone. Everyone appeared to have a tissue or kerchief in hand, or with tears on their faces, untouched. And yes, Kevin could plainly see, Amber Winstrom had her face buried in a lace hanky.

  "That's not true. My dad wasn't like that," Kevin was able to blurt out.

  "Oh, I'm afraid it is. Your mom only learned of his indiscretion after your dad was fired for sexual harassment. You see, once she was in good with your dad, Amber tried to weasel her way up to the management ranks in his office. Of course, she was unqualified, and while your daddy enjoyed his tryst with Amber, he knew she was not management material. Pardon the pun, but your daddy was screwed. Either he would push for her promotion, with his intentions as obvious to everyone in the office as if they had actually witnessed your dad's spurious rutting, or he would not mention a word of her ambitions for management and have her spill all the lewd details to anyone who would listen."

  "You lie. He'd never…" Kevin wanted to argue, but deep inside he knew Mr. Freakshow's words were true.

  "At least your daddy had the dignity to not promote someone unworthy."

  Kevin was crying now. Seeing the funeral for a second time, knowing his dad was in that shining box, and knowing that the woman with whom he had been having an affair stood only a few feet away from his own mother, made him feel like he would be sick.

  "Why... why are you doing this? Why don't you just leave me alone?"

  "I can't do that, Kevin, my boy. I can't leave you alone, because I'm a part of you." Mr. Freakshow rattled his shackled wrists. "See these? I'm bound to you and you to me." The monster walked down the center aisle of the church. The funeral goers didn't seem to be aware of his presence. He shoved the pallbearers out of his way, punching one in the back of the head, while elbowing another over several pews. "I want to show you one more thing. I'll need your help, of course, since we have this whole brotherhood thing going on, this bond of ours." Mr. Freakshow rested his palm against the top of the coffin. The priest droned on nearby about dust and earth and the sins of man. Mr. Freakshow backhanded him until the gray balled-up priest tumbled down the aisle, hitting a lectern with a clamorous crash.

  "Leave me alone."

  A knocking came from within the coffin. Mr. Freakshow seemed surprised. "You hear that? Do you know what that is? I think I know what that is. Let's find out. I need for you to come here." Mr. Freakshow waved at Kevin, his wrist shackles jangling, gesturing for him to join him next to the coffin.

  "No!" Kevin screamed as he floated past the choir balcony, descending toward the coffin.

  The knocking became louder. "You hear that, Kevin? That's your daddy banging against the coffin lid. Let's pry this lid open so we can find out which woman he chooses. Is it going to be contestant number one, Amber Winstrom, the ambitious whore-secretary who would go down on anyone to get a leg up? Or is it contestant number two, his dear wife, your mother, the woman who bored him to the point of such a succulent temptation!" Mr. Freakshow yanked on the corner of the lid with both hands, one grotesquely clawed foot propped up on one of the handles for leverage. "Come on, give me a hand!"

  From a far off place, a warm voice tore through the nightmare. It tickled his ear and stirred his heart. He turned away from the sight of Mr. Freakshow violently shaking the coffin, and began to rise from his slumber. The church pulled away, becoming smaller, darker. The bedroom wall fell back into place, and then the window began to shrink, stopping at its original size. The darkness outside lightened, and the oak canopy soon cast shadows across his bedroom floor.

  "I'll see you again, Kevin. Real soon," Mr. Freakshow's voice hissed, fading away to nothing.

  "Kevin, dinner. Come on and get washed up," his grandma's voice cut through the last tenuous strands of sleep.

  Kevin's eyes opened, this time for real. He touched his wet cheeks and the puffy skin around his eyes. He didn't want his mom to know he had been dreaming. He felt like he had slept the night away, but was probably out for only an hour. He cracked open the bedroom door and saw the coast was clear down the hall to the bathroom. He hurried out and reached the bathroom before his mom could see him.

  He splashed cold water over his face until the puffiness around his eyes subsided. By the time his mom knocked on the door to call him again to dinner, he looked as close to normal as possible. When he sat down to a dinner of batter-dipped chicken, fried rice and honey-glazed carrots, he had little memory of his dream. Just glimpses, flashes of thought, fragments of emotion. As he ate, he thought about how he didn't want to see a doctor, and how he would do anything to prevent his family from knowing how scared he was to fall asleep.

  Chapter 4

  Nolan Gage stood in the Serenity Wing of his museum of dreams, transfixed by the mural he had commissioned. Behind him was a wall of state-of-the-art impact-resistant glass. Beyond the glass, austere and empty rooms awaited the arrival of the dreams.

  The nearly finished mural was much closer to his original concept than he could have hoped. A silvery rush of water crashed over a boulder-strewn cliff, leaving the wooded vale below shrouded in a cool mist. The pale lemon sun hung low at the start of a new day. Reeds knifed skyward from the hidden reservoir's spongy shoreline at the bottom of the falls. Thick, downy grass carpeted the ground. Two people dwarfed by the enormity and natural beauty of the vale cast their fishing lines into the shimmering water.

  He was one of those minute people lost in the gray morning mist. The other was his daughter, Nicole. His little Nika. He was teaching her how to cast the line with a sharp flick of her wrist, letting gravity take the bait-laden hook through an arc to splash the water. Every time Nika would cast during the day that inspired the mural, she would want to reel in the hook right away. She didn't want to wait for the fish to find her bait. But she had learned. She had learned, and she had been adorable and innocent. And whole. A whole person, not the withered form he now visited on a daily basis.

  His mind seemed to drift through the unmoving air of the museum, crossing through to the otherworldly air of the painting. As he absorbed the depth and detail of the shore, the texture of his painted fisherman's vest, the thatch of the picnic basket they had taken along on that lost morning, a hint of movement played at the far reaches of his peripheral vision. The movement tore his attention from the fond remembrance captured in the painting. He quickly looked up to see a pair of painted birds flying higher than the falls, above the mist, cutting the air with their sharp, weightless wings. He couldn't remember seeing the birds before. They couldn't be new. Sophie wasn't at the museum and there was no way they had painted themselves.

  He had only looked in that direction because he sensed movement. It was an instantaneous reaction, subconscious and altogether instinctive. But the birds were only smudges of different shades of paint. Highly realized and beautifully idealized, but smudges nonetheless. He chalked it up to the mural's breadth of detail. He had simply missed seeing them before.

  "I didn't know you were here, Nolan."

  The sudden voice startled him. When he turned, he felt disoriented.

  "Sophie. Hi. I didn't know you were here, either. I thought I had the place to myself."

  "I was just getting my coat from the office," Sophie Marigold said, zipping her yellow slicker. A loose bun held her silver hair. She wore bright red lipstick and a long denim skirt that swept the floor as she walked. Streaks of red and cream colored paint stained her clothes. Her right cheek carried a fresh daub of yellow paint like misplaced makeup. She was the only person who worked for Nolan Gage who called him by his first name, and the only person who could get away with it.

  They had met in college. Gage had majored in finance while So
phie had studied art. He'd needed to take an art class to graduate, and when the semester was half over and Gage was on the verge of getting a B and ruining his perfect GPA, Sophie took pity on him and helped him get his A. They were soon inseparable.

  "Done for the night?" he asked.

  "I'm so close to finishing, I want to gut it out to the end, but I'm exhausted."

  "And I suppose you would like to get home to Andrew."

  While in college they had nearly fallen in love, but their lives were too different, their worldviews would never travel the same path. Not long after their break up, a fellow art student named Andrew Morton captured Sophie's heart. They married less than a year later. Nolan Gage graduated and made his first million before his thirtieth birthday.

  "Yes… Andrew." An underlying sadness weakened her voice.

  "He's probably busy at home. Painting."

  "Even if I wasn't so tired, I should go. He misses me."

  "That's understandable," Gage said softly. They were quiet then, standing at the base of the mural, seeming only a step away from entering the grassy vale. "This piece is better than I deserve."

  "You are too hard on yourself. You've given me something no one else could have. Andrew and I haven't been this happy in so long."

  "Good. That's good. Then I guess it worked out for everyone. You have your happiness, and I have the perfect image of a perfect day to look on whenever I want."

  "Can you walk me to the door? I'm afraid I don't have a key to lock up behind me. I should have realized when the last of the workers were leaving, but I was a bit distracted by the painting."

  "Of course." Gage watched Sophie as they left the Serenity Wing and entered the expansive foyer. He had often wondered what it would have been like if they would have tried harder to keep their relationship together. He imagined they could have been happy, but then he would never have had Nika. For the briefest moment, he felt like his life would have been better off. He felt a twinge of guilt when he remembered why he had come to the museum so late in the first place.

  They reached the wooden double doors. Sophie flipped the deadbolt and pulled open the heavy door. "I hope Maury can help you."

  "It's what I live for."

  Sophie surprised Gage by touching his face with the back of her thin, gentle fingers. She caressed his cheek. She smelled of turpentine and flowery perfume.

  He saw tears forming in her eyes. "You've always been a sweet man."

  "I'm glad you're in my life again." Gage felt both discomfort and warmth from her touch. Gage took hold of her hand as it lingered at his cheek. He squeezed it before letting go.

  "Are you leaving soon?" Sophie asked.

  "I came to see my daughter."

  She nodded with understanding and gave him a weak smile as she left the museum.

  "Drive safely," Gage said. He stepped outside to make sure she made it out safely.

  As Sophie walked to her car, Gage noticed the normal sprightly bounce to her step had disappeared and she clutched her purse tightly. She looked so vulnerable. Tired. Maybe it was just age. He didn't get around as well as he once had, either.

  After her car's headlights disappeared, and the loud clatter of its muffler faded, he looked at the outside walls of the weathered limestone building. The sunken twelve-panel windows of the old Carnegie Library looked like entrances to abandoned caves. Navy-blue drapes held in the meager interior light. Still thinking of Sophie Marigold, he entered the building, hoping he was making the right decision in opening this museum.

  Novelties and concessions would soon fill the island at the middle of the open foyer. T-shirts, cheap plush animals, rainbows of cotton candy. Posters and autographs. A pair of curving stairwells framed the far end of the foyer like a giant's embracing arms. The second floor housed the adult-natured dreams. One branching hallway led to the Nightmare Wing, the other to the Erotica Wing. Originally, Gage didn't want any part of displaying such fodder, but Maury Bennett argued vehemently that their display would more accurately represent the human psyche. Gage eventually conceded after Maury assured him ID checks would be required of anyone wanting to enter the second floor.

  The first floor was family-oriented. The Serenity Wing would soon house lush dreamscapes inhabited by liquid flowing pastiches of human-animal hybrids, flocks of laughing, flying children, and any number of indescribable dream-folk. The dream-folk changed both their own shape and the symbolism embedded within their environs with equal ease. Bunches of floating balloons tied to razor sharp ribbon, became bunched ripe grapes, became pillowcases stuffed with goose down and one hundred dollar bills. A dream child, transmuted from the mind of an alcohol abusing truck driver, became an eye-patch wearing pirate, became a green and crimson clothed elf using his saliva to join pieces of a balsa wood airplane became…

  The possibilities were limitless.

  Gage marveled at the complexity of the dreams, the ironic simplicity of their lives. A year ago, if someone would have told him he would soon walk through a building full of embodied dream people, he would have insisted upon their consignment to a padded cell. The fact that he now owned and financed such a business? Perhaps he too should be committed.

  He walked to the elevator set in the back wall of the foyer. He hit the down button and waited for the doors to open. His mind drifted to the day Sophie Marigold reentered his life. Periodically, Maury would update Gage on the dreams he had encountered and the possibilities of including them in the museum. Many of the museum's dreams had come from his work with patients at his private practice. Others had turned up after Maury posted want ads on bulletin boards in the courtyards and hallways at the University of Chicago. The ads solicited lab technicians interested in groundbreaking dream therapy. No experience necessary. While at the university attending an art seminar, Sophie came across one of these ads. A long-time sufferer of recurring dreams, Sophie was immediately interested in hearing what Maury Bennett had to say.

  A week after her initial phone call to Maury, she was at the former Carnegie library, gutted of its bookshelves and magazine racks and antiquated card catalogs, walking side by side with her former love, Nolan Gage. They hadn't spoken since their ten year reunion in 1973. Nolan had been amazed by how little she had changed.

  The elevator doors inched open, and Gage entered, descending into the bowels of the building.

  After exchanging awkward pleasantries, he had shown her his doorway to the sleeping mind. He had explained how the dreams would be divided into separate "wings" of the museum. It wasn't long after Gage had started their impromptu tour of Lucidity that Sophie had stopped walking and had given him a quizzical look.

  "I didn't know people were so interested in dreams. Or at least enough to have an entire museum dedicated to them. Aren't you going to do anything about Freud or Jung?"

  "Lucidity is a museum dedicated to dreams, but not how you're thinking. It has very little to do with psychology and the interpretation of dreams. Lucidity is a modern museum with a goal of attracting a young, forward-thinking demo."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Actually, I guess you can consider Lucidity to be more of a zoo than a museum."

  Sophie had thought about it for a moment, but was still just as confused.

  "All those displays with the four-inch thick glass, the empty chambers roped off from the public--those displays are going to house dreams."

  Sophie had no idea what he was talking about.

  "I know, it sounds crazy, and I don't really know how it works. I'm just in charge of bankrolling all of this. Maury Bennett is the guy who brings us the dreams."

  "Slow down a second. He brings you the dreams?"

  "Like I said, it's more like a zoo. It's not the entire dream we house, just people or creatures from within the dream, for the most part."

  "Really?"

  "I've seen it myself. It's amazing, kind of dumbfounding, really."

  An hour later, they had parted company, their decades apart forgotten, and a ne
w bond formed. She had agreed to paint his mural, and in exchange, Maury Bennett would help her with her recurring dreams.

  The elevator doors opened to the museum's basement. For decades, the library had been the county's local history archive. The cavernous Carnegie Library basement had been a depository for the largest historical collection for Chicago's history. From shortly before World War I until the early 1960's, collegians and professors alike ventured to the basement, a place that seemed downright cold even on the hottest summer days, to thumb through volume after volume of forgotten news and discarded artifacts.

  With the opening of the museum only two weeks away, most of the dreams occupied enclosures in the basement, in the former archives, tucked away in secure environments, unbeknownst to the people walking above them. As the workers finished with their remaining work, Maury would move the dreams to their appropriate locations in the wings of the museum's upper levels. By the day of Lucidity's grand opening, the basement would be empty with the exception of one room. The room held a single, well-worn recliner, an occupied hospital bed, and the brightly colored accoutrements of a child's bedroom.

  He would visit his daughter regardless of the success or failure of the museum, until hopefully she would awaken. The doctors had told him there was little point in holding on to hope; there was little chance of her regaining consciousness. As this almost certain situation became clearer, he noticed himself putting more faith into Maury Bennett and his mysterious abilities. If Nika should never awaken, Gage awaited the day when Maury Bennett would transmute a dream-Nika from her comatose mind. As long as her mind continued to function on that most basic and primal level, Gage had something to hold onto.

  He could find Nika's room in the dimly lit hallway with his eyes closed. He turned left, walked a short distance, and then made another left. At the end of the hallway was a small antechamber with a number of brown-painted metal doors recessed in the rough stone walls. Behind three of the doors were small rooms with glassed-in enclosures. All kinds of nasty creatures lurked within. In the fourth room, his daughter slept her endless sleep. Safely away from the world above, left in a perpetual dream state. His hand was on the knob to her room when he heard what sounded like thunder emanating from the ground itself. The air seemed to become heavier and much cooler. The hair stood up on his arms, and he had to suppress a shiver.