Hello Darkness

by Sam Best

  The pile of bodies grew larger in the shadows away from the clearing; Karen realized she was only seeing one small portion of the monster’s collection.

  Without making a sound, the beast appeared beside her.

  Karen shouted at it and writhed in her black sludge bindings, even though moving only made them hurt worse.

  “What do you want?!” she screamed.

  The thing stared at her with cold eyes, then scooped off sludge near what should have been its waist and smeared it over Karen’s torso. It rubbed the putrid gunk all over the front of her body, then disappeared into the woods behind her.

  She hung there, breathing heavily, staring down at her sludge-coated body. It didn’t burn like the stuff on her arms and legs, but she felt it moving. The entire mass shifted over her skin, crawling against her and clinging to her like a wet blanket.

  Karen looked over at the bodies on the ground.

  Some of them were women. Mostly she could see only shoulders, heads, and limbs sticking out of the substantial pile. Two of the visible torsos belonged to women, and both of those were split open from pelvis to sternum, their skin peeled outward as if something had crawled out of their bodies from the inside.

  Karen looked down at the sludge that covered her torso and screamed.

  24

  Ben walked a few paces behind the preacher, shotgun in one hand and sledgehammer in the other. The cool grip of each comforted him and made him feel stronger than he suspected he would be if the demon showed up.

  Moses kicked a root and stumbled forward, then straightened up and pushed his thin glasses farther up on the bridge of his nose. He tilted his head sideways to focus out of the one remaining lens.

  He turned a page of the ancient book he held in his right hand. In his left, the flame spouting from a cheap lighter flickered roughly as he walked quickly along the path through the woods. Moses mumbled to himself as he read a long passage from the new page.

  Ben caught glimpses of the text as they walked. Most of the pages were filled with clusters of glyphs that he didn’t recognize but that Moses skimmed over with either ease or intentional ignorance. The preacher spent a long time analyzing different diagrams and sketches that covered whole pages of the weathered book; black lines crossed red shapes that dripped blood. He turned another page carefully, making sure to keep the flame away from the crisp, fragile parchment.

  At first, Ben wished they had brought flashlights to see better in the dark forest but the orange glow from Moses’s lighter made it difficult to see the path; if Ben looked into the light for more than a few seconds he had to blink away the glare before he could once more see into the shadows on either side of the path. A flashlight would have screwed up his eyesight even more than the lighter.

  Looking up through the sparse branches overhead, a nearly full moon drifted between dying leaves that would soon fall. Pinpoint stars flanked the moon on all sides, blinking in and out behind the branches as Ben walked.

  “How far is it?” he asked.

  Moses ignored him.

  The preacher had been doing that a lot ever since they turned off Main Street. He was talkative to a fault before they set down into the valley but getting him to utter more than a few words at a time since then had become a chore.

  When he had first pulled the lighter from his pocket, Ben asked the preacher if he was a smoker.

  “I find the ability to create fire quite useful,” said Moses, and those were the last words he had spoken.

  He was arrogant by his own admission, and the more time Ben spent with the man the less he could argue with the preacher’s self-diagnosis. Perhaps one too many people had thrown his own ego back in his face over the years and he finally started to believe he was fallible. Still, Ben saw a great deal of guilt in St. Croix’s eyes every time he looked at him. It offered a brief glimpse of humanity that warmed his cold exterior.

  The face of his daughter flashed across Ben’s mind and he quickly buried it under his fear and anger. He had to stop himself from breaking down into tears more than once on the walk through the woods—doing so wouldn’t help anyone, let alone Annabelle.

  He hoisted the head of the sledgehammer and looked at the etched markings in the moonlight. Ben was no scholar, but he had seen enough Egyptian hieroglyphs and Asian characters at museums to know that the writing on the steel of the sledgehammer was far different. Moreover, it was written in what seemed to be a spiral pattern, with other sets of glyphs running vertically and horizontally through the spiral.

  “What do the markings mean?” asked Ben. He tried to break the barrier of silence that was making him more and more uncomfortable.

  Moses sighed loudly and carefully closed the book in his hands. The lighter went out and he returned it to his pocket, then gently put the book back in his satchel as he walked.

  “Nobody knows what they mean,” he said at last. “The men who did are long dead.”

  “How do you know it will work?”

  Even in the soft moonlight, Ben could see the edges of the preacher’s cheeks rise in a smile.

  “Faith,” he said.

  “But what if it doesn’t work?”

  “It will.” Moses stopped walking and pointed off into the woods at his left. A small trail branched off from the main path and ran deeper into the valley. “This path leads past the church, straight on to the pit. I have walked it many times.” He stepped toward Ben and reached for the sledgehammer, which Ben hesitantly relinquished.

  Moses pushed aside a low-hanging branch and left the main path for the smaller, steeper trail. Ben looked up into the sky at the continuously rising black smoke and thought of Annabelle, then followed after the preacher.

  “The pit,” said Ben, sampling the words.

  “Yes?”

  “This thing didn’t crawl out of the center of the earth.”

  Moses chuckled. Ben furrowed his brow in confusion; the preacher seemed genuinely amused.

  “No, it definitely did not,” said Moses. “That beast is straight from Hell. The pit is merely the physical representation of its entry into the human realm. From fire into fire—and so on.”

  “Will more come through?” asked Ben.

  “No. Each demon emerges from its own pit.”

  “Is that shown in the book?”

  Moses nodded.

  “What happens to the pit after the demon is dead?”

  “Presumably, it will close once the demon is destroyed.”

  “So this has happened before.”

  “Oh, yes. But not with a creature capable of such…devastation.” Moses hopped over a rock sticking up from the hard-packed dirt of the path.

  “What put you in such a good mood?”

  “Hmm?” said Moses absentmindedly. “Oh. Simply the realization and acceptance of the inevitable.” He ducked under a fallen tree trunk that crossed over the path.

  “Are you saying you don’t think we can kill this thing?”

  Moses laughed. “You’re smarter than I thought you would be, Benjamin, but no. That isn’t what I mean at all. With your help, I’m sure the demon will die.”

  Ben walked for a moment in silence and watched the path roll by under his feet. “Listen,” he said. “I just want my daughter back. If we get a chance to hurt that thing, fine, but I’m getting her as far away from this place as possible.”

  “Then you sacrifice the rest of humanity.”

  “Give me a break. There has to be someone more capable of killing this thing than we are. I mean, who are we, really? A preacher and some guy.”

  Moses shook his head. “How many others will say the same thing when the demon comes for them? How long until the responsibility can no longer be deferred?”

  Ben had no answer.

  The path bent around a wide curve and leveled out. They crested a small hill atop which sat no trees, and in the distance saw the white crucifix of The Last Valley Church. Moses’s chest swelled at the sight.

  Next to the stee
ple, a couple hundred yards away, rose the black smoke.

  Ben turned quickly at the sound of a snapping twig near the base of the hill. He squinted into the shadows of the path behind him but saw no movement.

  “How many rounds do you have in the shotgun?” said Moses.

  “Seven or eight.”

  “I hope it’s enough.”

  Seemingly at his words, several of the small demon offspring jumped from the woods surrounding them and scrambled up the bald hill. Moonlight glistened over their wet, mottled, transparent black flesh.

  Guttural throat-choking gasps escaped their bleeding lips; their teeth chattered with loud, bony clicks. They moved on all four limbs, scurrying up the sides of the hill with manic quickness.

  Ben aimed his shotgun at the closest demon and pulled the trigger. Its head exploded to the side and sent chunks of flesh and matted hair onto one of its companions, who growled violently and extended its snake-like neck upward into the air. It raised up on its hind legs and its eyes widened to the point where Ben thought they would pop out from the too-human face. Its black pupils swiveled in their sockets.

  BOOM.

  Another shell spent, another dead demon.

  Behind him, Moses grunted with exertion as he brought the sledgehammer down onto the head of a creature with a high-arced swing. The demon squealed right before the head of the sledgehammer crunched through its skull and sank six inches down into the dirt. The flesh of the beast sizzled and gave off a putrid stench as Moses wrestled the steel out of its flattened head.

  Ben fired off two more rounds. The first hit one of the demons in its crooked torso and sent it tumbling down the hill, its body curled up like a dead spider’s; the second shot landed wide and sent up a burst of dirt, the impact barely skirted by a fast-approaching offspring.

  Ben brought the barrel of the shotgun up as the thing jumped into the air. He was too slow. The demon landed heavily against his chest and knocked him back to the ground. Ben managed to grab each end of the shotgun and use it as a barrier; he rammed the side of the gun into the demon’s throat and pushed its gnashing teeth away from his face. It was in a frenzy, jaws snapping wildly and sliding its neck back and forth across the barrel of the gun as it lunged down.

  A hollow THUNK and a flash of silver, and the beast was gone.

  Moses reached down and pulled Ben to his feet, the sledgehammer in his other hand shiny with black blood.

  “Thanks,” said Ben. “Is that all of them?”

  Crowning the top of the hill were the craters of four other dead demons, each one sunk into the earth by the sledgehammer.

  “For now,” said Moses.

  Ben walked to the crater of the nearest demon and stared down at its broken body. “How long before Karen…” He looked up at Moses. “Before she, you know…”

  Moses shook his head. “I don’t know. We should hurry.”

  Ben nodded and followed Moses as he jogged down the hill and into the woods toward the direction of the black smoke.

  25

  Loud gunshots echoed over the valley.

  Tommy sat in the back seat of Ben’s Jeep, window slightly cracked, waiting. The old woman, Heidi, was in the driver’s seat with her head leaned back against the headrest and her eyes closed.

  The two of them had made it to the big bend in Highway 70 just outside of town, exactly where Ben told them to wait. The road curved along the side of a mountain. A solid rock wall on their right extended up toward the peak and to their left was a gentle slope that swept down into the valley forest.

  The moon shone brightly in the blue-black sky and stars sparkled everywhere he looked, but Tommy did not find it beautiful. There was a weight in his chest that was being pulled lower into the pit of his stomach whenever he thought about his parents. It hurt worse than anything he had ever felt and he wanted nothing more than for it to go away, but it wouldn’t. It lingered and worsened and gnawed at his spine.

  Heidi sniffed quietly from the front seat and Tommy looked at her in the rearview mirror.

  Tears lined the edges of her closed eyelids and her bottom lipped quivered gently. Without really meaning to do so, Tommy reached forward and rested his hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes and smiled at him in the mirror.

  Ben’s double-barreled shotgun rested next to her on the passenger’s seat. Tommy had lied when Ben asked him if he knew how to use it; Tommy had never held a gun before in his life. His father was always telling him that he was going to take Tommy shooting just as soon as he was old enough.

  One more thing he was never going to do with his parents.

  Tommy was certain that both of them were dead. After Deputy Raines drove back to his house and found the huge blood streak under Tommy’s bed with no body to go along with it, he would have to be stupid to think his dad was still alive.

  The thing that had been killed in Annabelle’s bedroom—the thing with his mother’s face—screamed at him every time he closed his eyes. Its wild hair and sharp teeth shook as if its whole body were being electrocuted. Tommy could not even escape the vile image when he blinked.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” he asked quietly.

  Heidi looked down into the valley. “Trying to save Annabelle and Deputy Raines. And anyone else that’s still alive.”

  “Do you think anyone else is still alive?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “Do you think they can save anyone?” asked Tommy. “Do you think they’ll die?”

  She looked at him in the mirror again and the corners of her eyes wrinkled from her smile. “No, I don’t think they will die.”

  The smile faded quickly and Tommy knew she didn’t believe her own words. He didn’t think they would survive, either. The way that thing moved in the forest when it was chasing him—Tommy was sure no one could escape once it decided to kill.

  And yet Tommy had survived.

  He was a fast runner—the fastest in his school by far—but the monster was faster. It had jumped from tree to tree as if it were running through the air and was even faster on the ground. It had knocked Tommy to the ground twice on his mad dash from his house to Main Street—but it had let him live.

  Why?

  Tommy closed his eyes and saw the monster in Annabelle’s room. It lunged for him and his eyes bolted open. His throat throbbed with his quick heartbeat and he took a deep breath. Maybe that’s why it let me live, thought Tommy. So it could torture me with images of the monster.

  Another gunshot clapped in the valley. Tommy saw the blink of an orange flash in the trees—a tiny burst of light far below. It made him feel like he were looking down on a model of a forest, complete with an old-timey church and a special-effect forest fire.

  “I think they’ll die,” Tommy said aloud. He closed his eyes and didn’t see the nightmare beast. “I think they’ll die,” he said again, only louder.

  “Tommy…” said Heidi. She looked at him in the mirror. Her eyes were very sad.

  Tommy grabbed the door handle and kicked the door open. He wanted to take the shotgun but would have felt too guilty leaving Heidi without any sort of protection.

  She started to open her door but Tommy leaned against it roughly, slamming it closed.

  “I can’t just sit here,” he said.

  He turned and ran off the highway. He lost traction and slid down the graveled slope as if he were skiing over small rocks. Chalky dust plumed up into the air behind him as he crunched down toward the valley.

  Heidi shouted his name from the highway above but Tommy didn’t look back.

  The rocky ground underfoot turned to grass and Tommy stumbled forward, barely twisting out of the way of a large tree that stood at the edge of the valley forest.

  Soon he was running deeper into the woods, the moonlight fading all around him. The trees were spaced far enough apart so that he didn’t have to worry about finding a trail—he just barreled in the direction of the black smoke and tried not to think about the idiotic thing
he was doing.

  He found it impossible to ignore his instinct, though, and when the image of the monster disappeared from his mind, his instinct had told him to act. He felt better for doing it, almost like it was something he was meant to do.

  There was a trail somewhere in that part of the valley—he knew from one of the old hiking maps he had studied when he was building his forts. Ben probably knew about it as well, which is why he had Tommy and Heidi wait at that particular part in the highway. Hopefully someone would see Heidi on the side of the road and offer to help, although Tommy was uncertain if it would do any good.

  Ben and Pastor Moses were probably dead already and there was no reason to believe Deputy Raines and Annabelle were alive.

  Yet still he ran.

  As Tommy ducked around the trunk of a large pine tree, he suddenly found himself wishing he had gone to church more often. His parents dragged him there a couple of times a year—Easter and Christmas, usually—and he always complained. They made him wake up early and forced him to wear stuffy clothes. His tie was always too tight. The congregation sang boring songs and Pastor Moses always talked way too long.

  Still, picturing the church in his mind’s eye gave him comfort. Maybe if he had gone more often someone would have told him how to kill the monster that had killed his parents.

  Tommy passed a tree with a shiny yellow reflector nailed to its trunk. He stopped and looked behind him. Several other trees lining a barely-visible path ran back up toward the highway.

  He had found the main trail that ran through the valley. Tommy slapped the reflector as he ran past the tree and followed the path deeper into the woods.

  The forest grew thick around him as the trail rose steeply. It jackknifed back and forth several times on the side of a thirty-foot cliff and Tommy was forced to slow his run or else he would lose his footing and fall to the ground below.

  He jumped down off the lowest switchback and ran full-speed along the trail. Leafy branches slapped his face. Sweat covered his entire body. His pajamas clung to his skin and his pants chafed his thighs.