Darkly Rising

by J. D. Matheny

  Sophie smiled back sweetly.

  “Yes, a king,” James said through bulging cheeks as he looked thoughtfully up toward the ceiling. “King James. Sounds about right.”

  Kai gaped, then snorted again, looking in amazement first from his mother then to his uncle. Neither seemed to think anything of the man’s odd behavior. But it wasn’t just odd. It was insidious. Disrespectful. In his own home.

  “King, is it?” The word came out as a sneer. He could feel his anger bubbling up inside him, and for just one moment, it made him nervous.

  Thomas and Sophie went on as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening, each picking obtusely at their portions of food.

  James stared back at him, his eyes bold and unflinching. “You haven’t touched your food, Kai. Your mother was kind enough to prepare it for you. Go on then, eat up.”

  Kai stared back, his eyes blazing. “Don’t think for a second that . . .”

  “EAT IT!” James shouted, slamming a fist down hard onto the table. Dishes jumped, and silverware rattled, and still Sophie and Thomas stayed quiet.

  Kai sat dumbstruck, then stood slowly and bent over the table, his eyes fixated on the old man across from him. All manner of thoughts and ideas were springing forth into his head. He could see himself wrapping a hand around that turkey of a throat, squeezing until the man’s face turned black and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. But he refrained from taking any physical action.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, old man. You were invited here, for what reason I don’t know. You sit here and shovel food into your fat face, calling yourself king. You shout orders at me like I’m some peasant.” He bent closer, stretching his long frame out over the table to within a foot of James’s face. The old guy sat there, looking stern, but Kai noticed two beads of sweat winding their way slowly down the man’s temple.

  “You’re no King, are you James? You’re barely a man. Sitting in that ratty chair in the back of your shitty bookstore night after night, getting buzzed on cheap beer and watching trashy reality shows on television. You dine on Salisbury steak out of the microwave and crawl into bed each night in dirty underwear. Try taking a shower every day, King James.” He spat the title out then pushed himself up straight and stormed off to his bedroom.

  James let out a gust of air. He’d been holding his breath. Beside him, he heard the exhalations of his two conspirators.

  He looked over to Thomas. “Did you tell him about my place, Thomas?”

  Thomas only shook his head and scratched at the large scar on the side of his face.

  The kid knows things . . . and those eyes . . . “OK, I’m interested. Let me do some more digging and we’ll see where this goes.”

  Kai swung his door shut, reveling in the cracking thud it made as it slammed home, then his revelry passed, and the storm cloud of anger washed over him again. Four long strides took him to the edge of his bed, though he stared down at it in confusion, unsure why he would want to go there. Sweeping back around, he passed by the dresser, eyes passing briefly over the dive magazines and loose bills splayed out over its surface and taking no interest. He moved to the closet, ran his hands along a long line of hanging clothes, lost in the flickering of colors passing by like an old picture show before flinging them all aside in frustration.

  He stomped over to the window that looked out on the backyard and beyond and lost himself in that space. Seeing it all but taking in none of it. At that moment, he was less like a petulant teenager than he was a caged tiger. He wanted to stalk something, sink his teeth in and rend the flesh. No, not even that was enough. He didn’t just want to inflict pain and fear, he wanted to possess. To dominate and overcome. To feel the old man’s will wash away before him like sand beneath the waves.

  King James. Who the fuck was this guy and why did his mother and uncle sit idly by while he acted like he was king of the goddamn castle? Maybe he could see his mother being sweet and polite and brushing such boorish behavior aside. Maybe. But uncle Tommy? Not a chance. He would have expected Tommy to grab the guy by the scruff of his neck and give him a boot firmly up his wrinkly old ass while he was tumbling through the doorway.

  Something was wrong with the whole big picture.

  Kai moved back to the bed and dropped down on his back to stare up at the ceiling. The energy that was so frantic to escape his body had moved to his brain, which was turning things over faster and faster.

  There was more to the old man. He wasn’t just some casual visitor invited over for an innocent dinner. There was a purpose. Mom and uncle Tommy were in on it. They knew what was going to happen.

  Why?

  He pulled his pillow up under his head and rubbed at his face, his long hands reaching from his chin to the top of his head. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. The strong beat of his heart washed over him in a soothing cadence that made him think of the sea, though he had never been to the sea. Now he pictured it, water moving back and forth as the Earth rocked in its galactic cradle. Foam pushed up on shore as the tide rolled up sandy shores, then was left as a thin white line marking the reach of the water as it pulled away.

  His breathing slowed, the rhythm of the waves slowed and became still. The darkness behind his eyelids grew deeper and blanketed him. Soon, bright lights popped out from a distance, like pinpricks being punched through the blanket from the opposite side by some childlike God. His eyes watched as more popped into existence, and soon he was staring up at a whole sky, alive with stars.

  Other light caught his attention, this light bright and active. He looked down from the expanse of the distant universe and out over the peculiar old building from his dreams. Its roof stretched high to a point and its base was animated, moving with the flickering of a soft orange light that danced out from its doorway.

  Kai felt at peace. At home. With a smile stretching wide over his handsome face, he moved away from the lake at his back, across the sand that was glowing under the clear sky, and up a long staircase of rough stone. He took in all the features of the peculiar structure as he passed. Its foundation, built tall with native rocks that ran upward enough to create thick walls. On top of that, a wooden thatched roof climbing at a steep angle that would be a challenge to replicate.

  As he moved through the doorway he absorbed every feature he could, though there wasn’t much in the way of design or decoration. Two torches were mounted to the walls, giving the place a beautiful but eerie light. He could see what appeared to be wooden tables in three corners of the room, partially hidden by shadow. The fourth corner was likely the same, but he couldn’t see that part of the space. It was blocked by a long, white hanging cloth that draped down over the middle of the room.

  Behind the cloth was the faint hint of a shadow, a man maybe, but too dim to tell and, unless his eyes were tricking him, much too large. Slowly, he backed up, his heels edging blindly behind him until he felt his left foot bump quietly into the wall. He kept his eyes fixed on what might be a shadow.

  With the wall at his back, he began to step to the side, like a man walking along a thin ledge high up on the side of a downtown high rise. With each step the mystery behind the curtain came gradually into view. First, a shoulder blade, then the wide expanse of a powerful, and impossibly large, back. One torch was overhead now, the other shining out from the opposite side of the room, flaring up behind the man’s head as if it were a burning crown.

  He took in the full figure of the man, who was taller than any basketball player Kai had ever seen on television, and realized that the figure was naked, standing at the foot of a lidded sarcophagus.

  And he wasn’t alone. On the slab in front of the man, two bronzed legs splayed out to either side and Kai realized what was happening. He was watching a coupling, and just as the thought crossed his mind, a woman’s voice rang out in a loud moan of pleasure.

  He was just about to turn and walk quickly but quietly from the room when the head of the massive figure before him turned and regar
ded him. He froze, suddenly full of shame and guilt for the invasion, but only for the briefest of moment, then his shame turned to curiosity. He peered at the face, wanting to see, but the torchlight over his head didn’t seem to reach the face. It remained framed in a pool of darkness, while the torch at the creatures back remained hovering in the background directly over the man’s head, the halo of a crown still flickering with life.

  Unable to see the face before him, he moved his attention down toward the woman and stretched his neck to the side, trying to bring her face into view. He saw the cascade of dark, wavy hair running over a toned shoulder. Craning his neck a little further brought the face halfway into view. He recoiled.

  “Mother!”

  With a sharp pivot, he stretched back and high over his head to remove the torch from its placeholder and turned back toward the couple. Unafraid of the tall figure, he stepped forward boldly, holding the light high overhead. Quickly, the pool of shadow cloaking the figure before him gave way to the flame and he saw the face.

  It was like looking into a mirror. He saw only himself looking back, staring with mirthful eyes and a sardonic smile.

  Kai flashed the torch down around the creature, the other He, and looked down over the woman that was spread naked upon the altar. Where there had been bronze skin before, the light of the torch now shone the truth. The skin wasn’t brown and tanned, nor the hair flowing down dark and wild. Instead, the girl before him was pale as cream, her hair reflecting the red of a late evening sun behind a hazy sky.

  “Help me,” Jennifer said in a begging voice. “Kai, please. Don’t let the Other have his way.”

  He stared down at her, so vulnerable and fragile, her pale form glowing against the backdrop of that grey, stone slab. He wanted to sweep her up and carry her out of this strange place to somewhere safe. Away from the Other that she spoke of.

  You can’t get away from Him, a voice whispered from somewhere close. Just beside his ear, deep inside his head and from his very center. You can no more run from Him than you can from yourself.

  Held in place by that voice, he soaked in the sight of the sweet fruit he was offered. His black eyes followed the trail of her tears down along her smooth cheeks, across the mounds of her breasts and large pink nipples, traced the curve of her hips and delighted in the mound of soft fur below. He hungered at her sleek thighs and took hold of them.

  The heat was rising in him, fierce and overwhelming. His whole body seemed to burn with an intense but pleasant heat, yet the skin of the fruit broke out in a thousand tiny goose pimples, as if she were awash in a cold breeze.

  The sight was more than Kai could bear, and it drove him forward.

  24

  What does it mean?

  The dream . . . the vision . . . whatever it was, had been stuck on a loop running continuously through his mind all night. His restless sleep was evidenced by the tangled mess of sheets. He never slept with a blanket or comforter. Didn’t need to.

  As the loop went on and on, he began to make a connection with the formidable figure that had been standing at the foot of that stone altar. The long, dark limbs lined with bulging muscles. The hands, he remembered those hands. He had watched them reach out for people, tearing and rending.

  In that earlier dream, he’d been the creature. Last night, the creature had been his own entity. At first. But that had changed, like a magician’s illusion aided by flickering lights and moving pools of shadow. He’d realized that the figure had been him after all. No, it hadn’t started out as him. The face had been hidden, but there was no mistaking that the rest was different. Kai was a freakishly large boy, and his skin was like that of a dusky sky, but the creature was midnight. The creature was a giant.

  Yet they had joined. Was that it? Or Kai had taken his place. Just as before, in those other dreams.

  And there had been Sophie . . .

  He grabbed a pair of jeans and slid into them one leg at a time. The button, he found, showed reluctance at doing its job, so he sucked in his belly and made the connection. Pulling a T-shirt down over his head, he stood sideways and scrutinized himself in the mirror, looking for a telltale bulge that would show his days of carefree eating were already at an end. There was no bulge, though. His stomach was flat as ever. If anything, the hint of a six-pack from before had turned into a declaration. As if, overnight, his boy body had melted away and his man body had emerged. The bicep of his left arm formed up into a cannonball as he flexed and examined himself, the T-shirt looking now to be a size too small.

  He stared at himself curiously. Eyes looked back from the mirror, scrutinizing him. For a moment, the veil of reality seemed to lift, and he was two separate beings, standing feet apart and yet divided by great distances, or whole other dimensions. The old him and the new him. But which one was he?

  Tossing a dirty towel over the mirror, he grabbed his shoes and made his way out of the room toward the kitchen. He was starving.

  Expecting to see his mother at the stove, cooking up breakfast as was her custom, he was surprised instead to see that she was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, cell phone in hand. A crooked smile played out on her lips as her pointer finger swiped away at the phone’s screen.

  “Good morning, what’s for breakfast?” He watched with satisfaction to see her jump, her smile replaced by a guilty scrunch of eyebrows.

  “Oh, blast it, Kai I’m sorry, is it that time already? I didn’t realize. Let me see what I can whip up for you.”

  She glided into the kitchen, pushing her phone into the back pocket of her pants.

  “Don’t worry about it. I can grab something on the way to school. You were chatting with somebody. By the dopey smile on your face I’m guessing it was your new Romeo?”

  She met his hot look with a cool one. “His name is Blaine, and he’s a very nice man. Please don’t judge before you’ve even met him. I haven’t dated a man since you were born, Kai. Let that sink in for a moment.”

  Kai’s eyes focused on the far corner of the ceiling for a moment or two. His face was blank, but inside both Kai’s were wrestling for control. The one of yesterday and the one of tomorrow. That other one.

  Sophie waited.

  “I need five thousand dollars.” His eyes remained, for the moment, focused on that hidden world in the corner that only he could see, and his voice was without emotion. It was simply a statement, casual and sanitized. Then his eyes drifted back down toward her and he returned.

  “Five . . . sorry, what? You said five thousand?”

  “Five thousand dollars. Ideally, double that amount, but it would be enough to do the basics.”

  “The basics. Five thousand will get you the basics?”

  You’ve got a lot of money, mom. You could afford much more than the basics, if you wanted to. I want to build a cabin on the back of the property. Like a retreat.”

  She stared at him for a moment, analyzing him like he’d just sprouted horns. “You’re different.” Her eyes moved from his face and traveled the full length of his body. It was a long trip. When she met his gaze again, she appeared to want to say something, but nothing came out.

  “My buddy Lee was telling me how he and his dad built a small cabin on their property,” he said, continuing without a hitch. “They use it for poker games, quick camping trips, all kinds of stuff. It sounds cool, and it will even add a little value to the property.”

  When she spoke, her voice sounded skeptical and guarded, the tone one might take when speaking to a mechanic who they know is trying to rip them off. “Like a wood cabin. Square, some windows, couple cots, that sort of thing?”

  “Sure, typical cabin you find out in the woods. We’ve got I don’t know how many acres back there, mom. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you set foot on it. You offered to buy me a car, I passed. This will be something productive, something I can learn from, something that will benefit the family and friends.” His throat bobbed up and down once as he swallowed. “Please.”

 
; Her head turned slightly to the side as her eyes examined him once again, head to toe. Then she shook her head and sighed. “You’ve got help with this?”

  “Lee and a few other guys.”

  “No electrical or plumbing?”

  “No, just the basics. Nothing modern.”

  “I’ll transfer the money into your account this afternoon.” At least it would keep him involved in a constructive project, she thought.

  He stepped forward, placed a hand on each of her shoulders, and stooped over to kiss her lightly on the forehead.

  “Thank you.” Then he was moving for the door. As he opened it, he let in a bright ray of early morning light that stretched out just far enough to capture her in its brilliance. “And mom?”

  She looked at him, squinting into the light. Standing in the doorway, backed by the blazing light, she couldn’t make out his features. He looked like nothing more than a giant black shadow. When he spoke, his voice seemed to flow out of a dark, black hole where his face should be.

  “He may be a nice man, but you know that you belong to another.”

  Then the door was slamming shut and she was left to puzzle at his meaning. Was he talking about Jacob? Himself?

  Thomas stood out on the front edge of the parking lot facing the park where James asked to meet and passed his time waiting by blowing hot breaths into his cupped hands and rubbing them together. The weather channel called for a nice fall day in the low sixties, but it was only mid-morning and those pleasant temperatures might be a few hours off. The chill didn’t seem to bother the younger generation. On the small blacktop in the center of the park three boys played a heated game of basketball with their shirts off. There didn’t seem to be any formal rules to their game, whoever rebounded the ball took it to the outer part of the court then tried to score on the other two. Of the six picnic tables placed around the park, three of them were already occupied, all teenagers from the look of it.