Twice as Dark: Two Novels of Horror

by Glen Krisch

  In the darkness, he fumbled his hand around the edges of the chute. He came across a latch, and opened it. The door fell open on its hinge toward him. The open mouth of the chute sat at armpit level, making Kevin wonder if it was a fool's dream to even try climbing in there with his bad arm. But he had to. He had to try.

  He reached inside the chute and felt a wooden frame jutting out. He dug in with his fingers, stabbing them at the framing as if intent on driving them into the wood. Tiptoeing on the top of the dryer's control panel, he did a little hop. He pushed up with his good arm, throwing his broken limb in front of him. The arm was still good from the elbow in, and he was able to use the joint against the framing like a lever. He was waist-high in the dark tunnel. It was just a matter of pulling his legs up behind him, grabbing hold of the door, and holding it in place.

  The basement door came crashing in, a cumbersome and deadly bulwark skidding down the stairs. His dad's paranoia of some punk kids breaking into their house had bought Kevin enough time to hide. Maybe enough to get away somehow. He held the laundry chute door closed, listening.

  The Freak took the steps two at a time. His ragged breaths hissed through the basement, sending shivers down Kevin's spine. What am I doing? I'm a trapped rat. All the Freak had to do was find him holed up in there, and lash out with one fist, and…

  The Freak ran across the concrete floor, immediately coming to the window well with the bent metal grate.

  "Fuckingshit-human!"

  Kevin listened for any sign the Freak would fall for it, if he would go through the window well and outside, into the wide, opening night. All he could hear was his ragged breaths. And he was inhaling deeply, filling his lungs, sniffing the air.

  He's tracking me like a bloodhound.

  Panic surged through Kevin. Regardless of the noise he was making, he started shimmying up the chute. He braced his feet against the sides, clamoring above with his hands, searching for handholds.

  "Found you, little boy. I thought you had gotten away. But here you stay, a holed up larva, waiting to be set free," the Freak said, backtracking to the washer dryer set.

  His mom was right--the chute was full of cobwebs. They covered his face, ripping apart near his ears with the sound of tearing cotton candy. Something crawled across his naked arm. Straining to climb up the chute, he couldn't spare any energy to shoo away whatever it was. A small opening branched off to his right, and from the size of the door, he knew it was the chute door leading to the kitchen. Too small to escape through. He continued on, sweat drenching his skin, crawling higher into the darkness. The pain in his arm eased a bit. Either his arm was unbroken, or his adrenaline dulled the pain. He no longer cared. He reached above, grabbed a handhold, and pulled.

  The trap door leading to the laundry room flew open, and a cool blue light illuminated the tunnel. Kevin glanced over his shoulder, and looked into the beast's red flame eyes. As Mr. Freakshow held onto the lip of the chute, his body appeared to shrink. His nightmare broke his own bones--clavicles, ribs, scapulas--audibly snapping like twigs. He dislocated his joints, tore and refitted sinews and cartilage. Shrinking to fit inside the cramped chute.

  But the light. Emanating from his skin. Like a hidden light. Mr. Freakshow's hidden color.

  The Freak's hidden color illuminated the shaft enough that Kevin had an easier go of it. He reached ahead, grabbing hold, climbing higher. But the Freak was in the chute, writhing, digging into the wooden walls, propelling himself higher. Gaining on him.

  "Why Kevin? Why must you torment me like this? I should be done with you and on to better things. Collecting skulls, eviscerating humans, destroying petulant dreams."

  "Your color…" Kevin watched his own arm reaching over his head, watched the skin of his arm glowing with the same cool blue glow as Mr. Freakshow. "You're just like me."

  "You're right, I am just like you. You want to live. Just like I want to live. You fight to get away to extend your life, while I will do anything in my power to end your life to extend mine. Forever."

  Kevin reached the summit of the chute, and reached out for the door to the linen closet in the second floor hallway. So it was hopeless. Mr. Freakshow would never stop chasing him. He would never get away.

  Mr. Freakshow slashed with his fist, ripping through Kevin's calf. The beast chuckled. Blood gushed from the wound, and Kevin heard Mr. Freakshow lapping up the hot droplets of blood as they fell.

  Kevin opened the chute door and saw clean moonlight shining though his old bedroom window. He kicked back with the heel of his foot, caught the Freak in the bridge of his nose, and used him for leverage as he kicked clear of the chute. He flopped from the opening like some kind of animal borne of the wild, gaining his feet and running within seconds of hitting the ground.

  Mr. Freakshow's face appeared in the narrow opening as Kevin backed into his old bedroom. "Ah, how you tease me, Kevin. You give me a taste of your blood, and I think your will is broken. But then you continue your fight."

  The angles of the room looked sharper, the length and width elongated with its emptiness. The Freak extricated himself from the chute, a smashed version of himself. He bowed his head, clenched his fists, and forced his body to his full form. Sinews and muscles became taut under his deadman skin. His bones reformed, snapping back into place. The wood slivers piercing his nipples rose and fell with the rhythm of his breathing as his chest expanded to full size.

  Kevin raced to the window and threw it open. He peered down and his eyes boggled at the height. Had he climbed that entire shaft from the basement?

  "Kevin. Be careful. You don't want to misstep out there. The ground can be even less forgiving than I."

  To the far left, over a two foot chasm of emptiness to the ground, was the upward slant of the roof. When he lived in Warren Cove and looked out the window, Kevin had never imagined trying to reach for it, but now he had no other choice. As the Freak easily closed the distance behind him, he leaned out with his stomach braced against the windowsill, measuring the distance with his arm. At the far reach of his fingertips, he was able to brush the lip of the overhanging gutter. Too far away, just too far…

  Kevin looked down, and his stomach flipped. He could sense Mr. Freakshow waiting behind him, waiting to see what move he would make. Waiting nervously. It dawned on Kevin. The Freak had said the ground was unforgiving. He wondered what would happen if he let himself fall to the ground, let the ground take his life instead of handing it over to his nightmare. They shared the same color. They were one in the same.

  "Kevin… you don't want to do that. It's dangerous."

  Dangerous for you, Kevin thought. "Just leave me alone."

  "I'm afraid I can't do that."

  Kevin took this as his cue. Bringing his right knee up to the windowsill, he pushed off, lunging for the overhang. In his adrenaline-drunk mind, he thought he would land feet first on the roof. Instead, his palms slapped against the shingles, taking a precarious hold, his legs kicking out beneath him into nothingness. Pain shot through his right arm, and his hand quickly fell away. The fingers of his left hand began to slip, and Kevin felt the sudden fullness of his bladder, the pulse in his temples, felt the grit of the shingles grating his skin. He was too weak, too injured. He held fast to the edge of the canting roof, but couldn't kick his legs high enough to take hold of the gutter. His grip was slipping away, the sweat of his palms slicking the surface of the shingles.

  The moment his hand broke contact with the roof, the Freak reached out with blurring speed, digging his claws bone-deep into the meat of his shoulder, holding him dangling in midair. His tormentor, this nightmare created from his own mind, had for the second time tonight saved his life. Mr. Freakshow whipped Kevin up onto the roof, well away from the edge and a certain death from falling.

  Kevin's shoulder felt like a mound of raw hamburger. He was tired, so incredibly tired. He was also mad, not realizing just how mad until he rose from his haunches to see Mr. Freakshow immerging from his bedroom win
dow. With agile ease Mr. Freakshow leaped from the window sill to the edge of the gutter.

  "I can't do this." Blood flowed from his wounds to the shingles at his feet.

  "I was hoping you would come to that conclusion. My only hope was that it wouldn't take you this long." Mr. Freakshow spread his wings behind him, flapping them gently. The blue glow of his skin, his hidden color, glimmered with his wings' movement.

  "I can't let you kill me. I can't go on, but I can't let you kill me."

  Mr. Freakshow's expression drained as he noted the strength of both Kevin's intentions and his resolve to follow through.

  Kevin took a deep breath and then ran, picking up speed on the downward slant of the roof, kicking up grit from the shingles as he sprinted toward the edge and the open sky. Gravity took him in its welcoming arms and pulled him in. The freefall blew the sweat from his brow, and the ground approached with maddening speed.

  "No!" Mr. Freakshow cried, taking flight, following the trajectory of Kevin's death spiral.

  Kevin closed his eyes, but could feel the closeness of the ground, could feel its ascending finality.

  His body raced Mr. Freakshow to the waiting earth, and finally, his mind cherishing this moment like a hard fought victory, he impacted the ground, crushing the soil beneath him with nothing more than his bones and blood.

  It didn't hurt. He didn't know what position his body had taken as he landed, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered any longer. Kevin could feel his life draining away. When his eyes fluttered open, all he saw were the twin embers of Mr. Freakshow's eyes hovering over him in a flagging blue background. Such torment in those eyes; projecting fear, hatred, and nothing resembling remorse. The embers cooled, turned to soot, and then they disappeared, taken away from this place. Forever. Kevin was dead.

  "Kevin… my baby… please…" Carin sobbed, dragging her twisted leg behind her as she crawled out the front door. His body was a sprawled mess, his eyes open to the final minutes of night. The sun was at the horizon, pushing away fears of the dark, pushing away the dreams and nightmares until tomorrow.

  The pain had woken her rudely. Her face felt like a monster mask of swollen bruises and bleeding lacerations. Her leg was useless and she didn't want to look at it until she found her son. She would never make it up the stairs or into the basement. When she left through the front door, she would crawl to the nearest neighbor's house. Plead for them to call the police.

  But when she looked around when she left the house she saw Kevin's body pressed into the ground like a squashed bug. And his eyes were empty.

  She hobbled to his side, her trembling hands searching his wrist for a pulse. Nothing. She pressed her fingers against his neck, and still found no sign of life. Touching his cheek, she wiped a bloody streak away.

  She sobbed, her tears falling onto Kevin's face. The fact that he didn't react to their wetness made her cry even more.

  "I can't do this… You can't die! Baby…" she screamed, feeling as helpless as she had ever felt.

  Carin didn't hear the sirens of the ambulance or the squad cars as they pulled up in the empty driveway and along the street. She did not recognize Officer Mullens, a man who was not only a Warren Cove police officer, but also a former tax client of Carin's, as he took hold of her shoulders and tried to look into her eyes. The paramedics slid a gurney from the ambulance and joined them in the grass.

  "Mrs. Dvorak? What happened here? Can you tell me what happened? Who called 911?" Carin watched as a paramedic examined her son's body, hearing the officer, but not understanding. Not caring to. "Mrs. Dvorak? Carin? Is this your son? Are you hurt? Oh God. Look at her leg. Guys, get her some attention. The bone's sticking clear through the skin. She's in shock."

  Soon after the paramedics valiantly went to work on a body no one thought would survive, Kevin's heart caught the fleeting spark of life. He took hold of that spark, and held it until he was breathing, shallowly at first but with ever-increasing strength.

  As Kevin took his first breaths, Carin was in an ambulance, getting attention for her own wounds. Being sedated. She didn't know that her son was alive. As the police officers canvassed the house for clues as to what had happened, and wondering who had called 911 from the payphone at the abandoned Michael & Son's service station, no one wondered who Mr. Freakshow was. There was no body to find, no trace that he even existed, but for the battered basement door and scrapes in the floor from his tearing claws. The Freak was gone, vanquished by Kevin's ephemeral death.

  Chapter 25

  The last Indian Summer ended, followed soon after by bitter winds blowing in off Lake Michigan, an angry marauder let loose on the city. Ever since their standoff with Mr. Freakshow, Sophie hadn't felt quite right. She felt drained, utterly exhausted. She spent days on end in bed, watching as Andrew painted a new mural over the old. He painted a red sun low at the horizon, a wisp of cloud skirting the diffuse sunlight, the rolling wheat fields reaped of their summer seed.

  She watched his hands flex as he moved through a brushstroke, his artist's hands--long, agile fingers, the ridged tendons close to the surface. His blood flowing through his veins. Her thin lips spread in a gray-lipped smile.

  "Andrew?"

  "Yeah, hon?"

  "Come to bed. I'm cold."

  "Should I turn up the thermostat?"

  "No, it's fine. Come here."

  Andrew was about to set down the brush, but made one last dabbing stroke. "I was just finishing anyway." He wiped his hands dry on a paint-caked rag and then came over to the bed. "It's done."

  Sophie pulled aside the blankets, and her husband joined her. Andrew fit one arm in the crook of her neck, the other arm on her side. His rough hand rested on the small of her back. She sighed deeply, her eyes closing in contentment.

  Sophie's breaths became shallower, more erratic. She stirred as if dreaming and Andrew held her gently, lovingly.

  At some point, Sophie stopped moving, her lungs at rest for the first time since before they formed while she was still inside her mother. Her breath expired. Such a subtle transfer of energy, of life. So subtle as to be almost unnoticeable.

  But for Andrew. Her husband of so many years, waiting for her in the afterlife for these last twenty years. Finally, they would reunite.

  The Andrew dream faded away, the blankets falling where he once rested next to his dreamer. The beautiful murals, the thousands of brushstrokes covering Sophie's walls, her ceilings, they too faded.

  Carin had three surgeries to fix her leg. After two months, she had graduated from her walker to a cane. Kevin playfully teased her and called her an old lady, but Carin did not care. She had her son again. He had come back to life, by some miracle, he had come back to her.

  Until the end of winter, Kevin had to wear a fitted helmet to guard his broken skull. On impact, he also suffered a broken pelvis, a bruised liver, and a shattered ankle. Pressure had built up in his brain, and shortly after they removed him from the lawn of his old house, he was in surgery at Warren Cove Community Hospital. When he woke, the doctors told him he was lucky to be alive. If he had landed at a slightly different angle, he would have died from any number of his injuries.

  While he called his mom an old lady for walking with a cane, she quickly forgot he was even wearing the helmet. The public was less forgiving. People would stare at him, curious. Some children pointed at him as if he was some kind of freak. Their parents would have to force away the pointing fingers and gawking expressions. It was one of the happiest days of his life when he was able to leave the helmet for good.

  In the springtime, Carin was getting around well enough without her cane, except for particularly damp days, and then she would only use it if she were on her feet for extended periods. Kevin, being so young, had healed almost completely. He still walked with a slight limp as his healing ankle regained strength to match its twin.

  They never returned to live in Agnes's house. They could no more live there than in their old house, or anywhere else i
n Warren Cove. They needed to find a place to start fresh, where they had no ties, but where they would be happy to start new ones.

  On an early Sunday afternoon, they shared a plateful of warm doughnuts at a coffehouse near Carin's childhood home. The house had recently sold, well under market value because of the stigma of what had happened inside, and they were staying at a nearby hotel. Kevin was gulping down an orange juice chilled with ice cubes. Carin's coffee was getting cold as she searched a stack of newspapers for inspiration for their next move. Should they stay in Chicago? Neither one of them wanted to deal with the traffic or craziness right now. They wanted to live somewhere peaceful. Quiet. Peoria? Too far in the sticks. Out of state--where? Seattle, San Antonio, Philadelphia? She was searching for a clue, a hint that would lead them to the end of this frustrating quest.

  Kevin set down his empty glass, smacked his lips, enjoying his juice. "How about Bakersfield?"

  "You want to move to California?" Carin asked, a grin on her face. "I haven't heard the best of things about that area."

  "Not Bakersfield California, Bakersfield Illinois," he said with exaggeration, as if it were the most obvious place imaginable.

  "There's a Bakersfield in Illinois? I've never heard of it."

  "A friend of mine used to live there. So did her husband."

  Carin gave him a skeptical look. "I'll look into it," Carin said, returning her attention to the newspaper.

  "Mom, can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "I feel bad."

  "About what, dear?"

  "When I was running away from… when I was running, I took money from that friend I was telling you about. The one from Bakersfield. I left a note saying I would pay her back. Now I feel bad."