Darkly Rising

by J. D. Matheny

  He smiled down at her and she looked back at him with a glassy-eyed look of wonder.

  “Or maybe you’re conflicted, Jenny.”

  “Me?”

  “Why are you out here?” He took a step closer to her, closing the distance to less than a foot between them. His black eyes simmered at her. “Is there something you want? Something you need?”

  She stood there, her lips slightly parted as if to say something, but nothing came right away. It took a deep swallow and an almost imperceptible shake of her head before she could continue.

  “I just thought . . . it just seemed that . . .”

  “Yes?” He leaned down over her.

  “I think we should see each other again. For study, maybe.”

  Of course we should, he thought.

  12

  Dark smoke poured forth from him, blotting out the sun and muting the screams of the people scattering all around him, their forms no more than indistinct shadows blurred against the already murky backdrop. Most were running away, but a random few, lost and blind in the chaos, stumbled near enough to him to realize their mistake. His fingers dug into their flesh, tossing some aside, rending others to tatters.

  Gradually the screams faded to distant echoes. He slogged through the saturated sand, pools of blood framing in his feet as his heavy form pressed down deep with each step. The slaughter had only begun moments ago, yet the carnage was already building to an astounding degree. He kicked aside an arm, a wet string of flesh spinning like a propeller as it sailed through the air. Some tiny particle in him, where his humanity hid, protested at the savage destruction of those that fed his power, but the beast was at the forefront and it demanded blood and fire. If he had lips, he would have smiled.

  Clearing the boundary of the smoke and entering air that was still mostly unpolluted, he tracked the backsides of dozens of villagers as they hit the tree line running to try to disappear. It was a good distance from there to the water, though. He would make their flight a memorable one.

  Before setting off, he cast one backward glance over his shoulder at the Bure, making sure it was unharmed. If they were smart, they would have set it to the flames, but they weren’t smart. They were simply scared. The woman was there, struggling feebly in the doorway, her arms wrapped uselessly across her round belly. Sunlight cast a sheen off the blood slicking her thighs. Another one he managed to get with child, and another one that would fail to deliver. His body burned with the sight and the rage was on him again. He ran.

  Long legs crossed the sand in seconds and carried him bursting through the trees. The stragglers were only just now ascending the small mountain. Others were cresting the top and moving beyond. Exiting the trees, he caught the first of them halfway up the incline, an old man and a mother carrying a small child. The man’s head he swept from his shoulders without so much as a glance, but the woman he pinned in place, bringing his terrifying countenance within inches of her own beautiful face. He drank in the scream with orgasmic delight before silencing her with sole of one blood-stained foot.

  He caught four more at the peak of the mountain, and two more beyond that, as they rolled down the side in a clumsy effort at escape.

  Looking beyond and into the jungle, he caught sight of two figures that he recognized instantly and let out a scream so ferocious he could see them stumbling and grabbing at their ears. Even without a mouth, his rage could be heard. It was the fat chief and his alluring wife. The first time he’d seduced the wife the thought of killing the chief had crossed his twisted mind, but he knew that keeping the people happy was vital. Not so important that it overrode his baser desires, but enough that it stayed his urges on many occasions, as it had then.

  That made no matter now, though. The people were abandoning him, and the Chief was fair game. He blazed through the trees so quickly he caught them while their screams were just forming on lips. They would have been delicious to hear, but he was too overcome with vengeance to wait. The fat man’s mouth was opening like a steam whistle to issue a shrill wail. He shoved his hand down the throat all the way up to his elbow, rooting around in euphoric pleasure, then let the body fall, a hot gush of blood bursting forth from the expanded oral cavity.

  The woman screamed, different from the screams she had bellowed out those times when he had mated her, but just as pleasing. That thought cooled his bloodthirsty rage to some degree and awoke another lustful sensation in him that he was well familiar with.

  The others could go. He’d never get them all now anyway, but there would be time for him to figure that out. For now, he had other desires to satiate. He pressed down on the woman, her screams never once fading as he did.

  Kai came awake with a start, sweat cascading off his feverish skin and soaking into the sheet beneath him. He’d kicked his top sheet off at some point during the night, so he stretched it out and lay on it to avoid having to get up and change his bedding.

  The dream played out in his mind in vivid detail and he relived it once in all its fading glory before closing his eyes and drifting back to sleep. The hope of a continuation was the last thought he had.

  In the morning, the dream would be no more than dandelion seeds, blown in the wind.

  Kai studied himself in his full-length bedroom mirror. As tall as it was, it still cut his image off at the chest and shins, but he could see enough to be satisfied. He dressed simply; but clean and flattering. Formfitting black T-shirt, faded Lucky jeans, and dark purple, low-top Chuck Taylor shoes. Judging from the cardigan she’d been wearing, he knew Jenny would like purple.

  He shouldered his backpack, swept through the kitchen to grab an apple off the counter, and made for the door.

  “Kai, do you need a ride to school?”

  “I got it!”

  Mother knew he wouldn’t need a ride, but she felt better asking. More than once she had offered to buy him a vehicle, something to fit his long frame, but he had so far declined. Most teenagers dreamed of the moment they would have their own wheels, but he preferred being driven.

  He slipped out the door and made his way through the crisp morning air and down the long driveway, feeling Sophie’s eyes boring into his back the whole way.

  She watches me more and more these days. Like something bad is going to happen to me. No, he corrected himself, like I’m going to make something bad happen.

  Coming to the end of the drive, he waited at the main road for his morning lift. Across the street Ms. Garrety was already out, toiling away in her flower garden. Having retired the previous school year, shortly after the savage murder of three of her students, she didn’t seem to do much else with her time that he could tell. She was always working the yard, even at the ripe old age of seventy-one. Kai liked to help, and did so when she allowed. It wasn’t because of his kind heart. He had the suspicion that Ms. Garret didn’t like him all that much and that wasn’t something he was used to.

  Her constant companion since the passing of her husband Frank, an annoying little yapping machine she called Ralphie, was trotting around her in circles. As Kai trotted across the street and up to her short cyclone fence, Ralphie came storming across the yard, kicking up leaves and baring his tiny fangs with a pitiful snarl. He hated that dog, all dogs really, and the feeling was mutual.

  “Kai,” she called out, pushing herself first up to one knee, then slowly to her feet. No good morning, no how are you, just his name.

  “Good morning, Ms. Garret. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” He put on his most award-winning smile as she tottered across the yard, eyeing him shrewdly as if to say yes, but you did anyway. “The garden is looking fine. I just wanted to let you know, I’d be happy to do a rake or a mow for you after school. Looks like it will be a fine day for it.”

  “I see.” She looked down at her little rat of a terrier, still snarling away, itching for a fight. “Ralphie doesn’t seem to care for you much, Kai. He never has. I wonder why that is?”

  Kai looked at the pathetic creature, wanting to
reach over the fence and snap its scrawny little neck. He could do it, he thought. He knew that for a fact. It would be quick and easy. Instead, he met those squinty eyes again and kept the smile going.

  “Who knows? Maybe he just needs to give me a chance.”

  “You have been to my home to rake my leaves, mow my lawn, clean my gutters, how many times now? Ten? Twelve? I never pay you, yet you return. Like a Boy Scout. You aren’t a Boy Scout, are you Kai?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “They say dogs are a good judge of a person’s character.”

  Kai felt his face begin to heat. The muscles in his shoulders tensed and his eyes started to burn. For a moment he forgot completely about the mutt and pictured reaching over and wringing her neck instead. Ms. Garret stared back at him, bringing one gloved hand up to fan at her face, despite the coolness of the early morning.

  “I’ll stop by after school. If you’d like the help, just leave the tools out front. I’m happy to do it.” He watched those thin lips smile, but the sentiment never reached her eyes. Then he turned around to see Derek Mays pull up in front of his driveway.

  With a wave over his shoulder he jogged across the road and hopped into the passenger seat.

  13

  Jenny brushed out her hair in front of the mirror until it shone with its own radiance. She wore a light pink sweater with long sleeves over a grey, pleated skirt that stopped just above the knees. Her lips shone with a glittery sparkle, and she admired them in her reflection. She hadn’t used lip gloss before. She liked it.

  There was something else she hadn’t used before today, either. It had taken her an extra thirty minutes to get ready that morning. At the flowery age of sixteen, she had finally tried makeup for the first time. Not a lot, just a bit of mascara to lengthen her eyelashes and a light blush to make her cheeks rosy. All supplied by her good friend, Sara.

  Daddy wouldn’t like it, of course. He thought that makeup and jewelry were ostentatious and made a poor example of a good Christian girl. She had asked just once before, while shopping at the store, if he would buy her some of the basics.

  Your mother liked to wear makeup, he had replied. Simple as that, and that had been the end of it. She didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, and she couldn’t even remember her mother. She had died in a tragic drowning accident in their pool when Jenny was only six.

  No, he wouldn’t like it at all, but she was willing to risk it. Today she planned on seeing Kai, somehow. He would be around, and she would make her presence known. Boys weren’t much of a consideration for her before now, but there was something special about Kai, with his dark hair, mysterious black eyes, and charming smile. All night she had thought about him, until sleep took her. The way he had challenged the Word during youth group should have offended her, and normally it would have, but when he did it, it hadn’t offended her at all, for some strange reason. In fact, it had titillated her. She had found herself contemplating the questions he had brought up about her faith and she had never once done that before. There was something dangerous and exciting about that.

  With a last nervous look at the mirror, she slipped on a light jacket, grabbed her schoolbag, and made her way down the stairs from her second-floor room and into the kitchen. Daddy wasn’t around, giving her a glimmer of hope that she might slip out unseen and be on the bus before he could witness her act of defiance. As she skipped lightly across the living room and toward the front entrance, she passed the open door to his study and his commanding voice rang out.

  “I got a call this morning from Jeremy.”

  She froze, her nerves tingling, but whether from the failed escape attempt or the meaning of that single sentence, she couldn’t be sure.

  He looked up from his desk, where he would be preparing his upcoming Sunday sermon, and stared at her. She waited for the explosion, but it didn’t come. Not yet, anyway.

  “It seems there was a newcomer to the youth group last night. A cynic. Jeremy was a little disturbed. By the newcomer, and by the fact that you seemed to be intimate with the young man.”

  He rose from the desk. Reverend Dennis Sykes was a large man, with a hefty build and a commanding presence that served him well at the pulpit on Sunday mornings. He walked heavily across the room to stand in front of her. A large, meaty hand clamped onto her jaw and tilted her face up toward him.

  “This is a new development.” His voice remained calm, but the reddening of his cheeks betrayed the anger that was rising inside him. “Is this for him? The unbeliever? Your new friend?”

  “No daddy.” Her voice came out meekly and her eyes searched for the floor, “I just wanted to look nice.”

  “You look like a whore. In Godlier times, whores were taken outside the walls of the city and stoned to death. Those times are long past, but God always gets his justice, Jenny.” He paused, his eyes crawling over her face. “So beautiful, like your mother. But your mother liked to wear makeup, as well.”

  Jenny’s eyes filled with tears and she tried her best to swallow them down before he could see, but they rolled down her cheeks nonetheless.

  Dennis flicked her head away. “You’ll go back upstairs, wipe that filth from your face, and go to school looking like a respectable young lady.”

  Momentarily defeated, she did as she was told, marching to her upstairs bathroom to wipe away the lip gloss and the small bit of makeup she had so carefully put on. But then a devilish thought occurred to her.

  He didn’t ask where I got the makeup. He didn’t take it from me.

  She glanced through her bedroom door to check that he hadn’t followed her up. Seeing that the coast was clear, she slipped the gloss, mascara, and blush into the side pocket of her bag and made her way down stairs.

  Daddy was standing by the front door, waiting. A cool sheen of sweat popped out on her forehead and upper lip as she approached, doing her best to look completely normal. As she neared, he bent his head down toward her and gave her his customary kiss on the mouth. Then favored her with a smile as she slipped out the door.

  Dennis watched his daughter walk down the walkway and out onto the sidewalk. As she made her way down the street, he found himself staring at her legs, noticing how they were taking on a definition that hadn’t been there only a year ago. Then it struck him that he was watching the muscles of her thighs flexing with each step.

  Her thighs. He had been so shocked and angered to see the filth she had spread on her beautiful face that he hadn’t even noticed that she was wearing a skirt that ended above her knees.

  He ground his teeth in anger, thinking about all the dirty-minded boys that would be admiring his daughter’s legs, and almost shouted out to her. Before he could, she was passing by a row of tall hedges and out of sight.

  The makeup, the skirt, where did she get that stuff? What else does she have up there that I don’t know about?

  Feeling a righteous and jealous anger, he stormed across the living room and to the stairs up to her bedroom. His God was a righteous God, and He could be a jealous God, too.

  He opened her closet, thrusting aside article after article of crew-necked shirts and long pants. The shelf above her closet held some drawings, mostly of nature and butterflies, and a small book. Suspecting a diary, which he had not given permission for, he snatched it up in a huff and leafed through the pages, but it was empty. He tossed it on the floor of the doorway to take with him when he left.

  Next, he peered on her small desk but found nothing of interest. There was nothing under her bed either, but for a pair of dirty socks.

  He stood and moved to her dresser, going from the bottom up. Blue jeans, folded T-shirts, socks, then the last drawer. He paused, knowing what was in the top drawer. He slid the drawer out slowly, wondering what he would do if she had managed to purchase any of those thong panties that women seemed to think was OK to wear these days. He rifled through each pair, but found nothing inappropriate.

  Then he realized just how hard his heart was hammering in
his chest. His stomach burned, but it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation. Staring at a fistful of pink, yellow, and blue underwear in his clenched fist, he slowly brought them up to his face and ran them along his cheeks. Across his red and damp lips.

  She won’t turn out like her mother, he thought. Her mother had been a beauty of a woman. The kind of woman that people looked at for a second too long when she passed. Not just men, either. She had worn makeup. She had even surprised him by wearing thong panties, saying she thought he would like it, but he knew what that meant. It wasn’t just him she would dress like that for. There must have been another. Probably more than one.

  That had been a problem to the good Reverend Sykes. A problem that he had gotten rid of.

  He stuffed the pair of yellow panties in his pocket and dropped the others. Then he snatched up the would-be diary and made his way back down to his study to do the Good Lord’s work.

  14

  “So, it’s the tall one, right? With the dark skin and hair and the big shoulders? He’s a senior, Jenny, and popular too. Especially with the girls. They flock around him like he’s the second coming or something. I mean, he’s handsome, and there’s definitely something intriguing about him, but doesn’t he kind of creep you out? I mean, he looked at me one time with those black eyes and I swear, I felt like he was seeing me naked.”

  Jenny sat in the passenger seat of Rachel’s sedan and put on the finishing touches to her face. “He’s not like the other boys, that’s for sure, but creepy? That’s not very nice, Rachel. He’s very polite.” She flipped up the visor and looked at her best friend. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re hot! You’ve never worn makeup before. This boy must have really done a number on you. I loaned you that skirt a month ago and this is the first time you’ve worn it.”