The first bullet took Harry in his left elbow and spun him round so that the second tore across the flesh of his back. Harry screamed and grabbed for the cleaver. The third shot tore a chunk from the wall. Harry turned and rushed at Kinski. A bullet punched through Harry’s chest. He screamed again and chopped down at Kinski’s head. Steel cut flesh and smashed bone. Harry hacked again, a bullet fired off into the floor and it was Kinski’s turn to scream. The gun fell to the carpet and Harry chopped down again and again until chunks of Kinski lay on the floor.
He stepped off and surveyed the room. Danny tried to pull himself up. Harry picked up the pistol and shot him behind the ear. The smell of blood and gunpowder filled the air. Harry grabbed a suit jacket from behind a chair and threw it on as he walked back out of the room. He paused in front of a mirror in the hall and looked at himself; past sixty with a face aged by a hard life that was rapidly paling as blood fell onto the floor. A dark face appeared over Harry’s shoulder, the dark thing he had kept in check for so long seemed to throw him an inky smile. It looked as tired and worn as Harry. He took a breath, bit down the pain and headed back to Rhian.
“Come on, Baby Girl. Time to go.”
Harry helped Rhian from the flat and hailed a black cab once they hit Wardour Street. He pressed notes into the cab drivers hand and gave him Nicola’s address. He sat down on the kerb and watched the cabs lights disappear into the Soho night.
ETERNAL DARKNESS
—BLAZE MCROB—
Shivering in my room, I cower under a blanket, not needing it merely for warmth. It is my shield between what exists in here and what resides out there.
Damn! I don’t really know what lurks beyond my walls, what lies in waiting on the other side of my door. Who can see in this darkness? Certainly not me. I’ve had night blindness since the age of three.
Darkness brings changed landscapes, one folding into another, embracing the shadows until all is the same. With an absence of light comes a panorama of black, the visuals forcing their way into my mind, being introduced by way of my other senses.
No stars, no moon, no street lamps shining. Not in here. There are no windows, and there is no light to permeate any recesses or cracks present within the shoddy construction of my room. Why? Surely there must be light somewhere. How could it be otherwise?
Pressure on the other side of the blanket tells me I am not alone. I fight against it, trying to hide beneath the gossamer fabric, but it does no good. Whatever is there does not retreat. It merely pushes harder and harder until I fear I will be smothered if I allow the blanket to remain over me.
Fighting back, I battle for my life, the entity forcing itself on me becoming more persistent, using more strength with every passing moment. It wants to smother me! No . . . no, it can’t!
What feels like a hand pushes down on my nose and mouth, forcing the ragged cotton into those orifices. My hands reach up to shove it away, but they meet with nothing. The pressure remains, but there is no solid substance to grab onto and attempt to gain an upper hand.
In desperation, I bite into the pressure, feeling my teeth take hold of my antagonist. The force is released as the startled entity backs away, allowing me enough time to throw the blanket to the side.
Following the sound of it moving across the room into a bare corner, my fear remains. It has not chosen to leave my room. It intends to stay. Shit! How long will this thing attempt to conceal itself? I’ll be attacked again by this monster of limited substance but with strength far beyond mine.
The darkness is its friend. It can see or, at least, it can manoeuvre in the never ending black using other powers at its disposal. Chuckling at me, it knows I’m held in its sway, unable to retaliate.
Where did this thing come from? I searched my room before the darkness came, and I made certain my door was locked. It was not here then, I’m sure of it.
It wants me to come to the corner, but I’m too wise for that. I’m staying where I’m at. I have no wish to be side-swiped in the dark, knocked to the floor and set upon by this heinous creature.
But wait! Behind the sheet rock. They’re back, just as they were last night. My God! How many tonight, and how do they know I’m here, helpless before them?
Scurrying everywhere, their sharpened claws beating a staccato of horror within feet of me, taunting me with their presence, squealing disgusting squelches of venom, they attempt to find a way through the wall. Their goal is me. I am some sort of a prize dangling before their eyes, pulling at their whiskers residing so close to their sharpened teeth.
Rats! Damn, how I hate them.
In the corner, the Evil One hisses, “Come to Daddy, my children. I will find a path so you can escape the confines of the wall. There is someone on a bed in here craving your company.”
Fuck! Now what? Is the bastard merely working against my fears so I develop an anxiety attack and become mere putty in his hands?
The scampering increases. It was not a mental ploy against me. They are going to where he waits, eager for their Pied Piper to set them free and give them access to their dinner.
A thudding sound emanates from the corner. Over and over again it comes until I hear the sheet rock caving in. A horrible stench leaps out of the wall and into the room, the horrid beasts bringing the odor of defecation and rot with them.
The rats . . . the rats know where I’m at, and they waste no time coming to me, crawling up on the bare bed as best they can. Thank God I got rid of the blanket: they could have climbed up a lot easier, but shit, I could have used that blanket to beat away at them!
They’re on my body now and start crawling across me, teasing me with their presence. I know they’re going to bite. I just don’t know when. The pillow; I still have my pillow! I pick it up to attack the bastards, but the space between the pillow case and pillow is loaded with them and I fling it against the wall. They squeal in pain, but their anger will not let them back off. If anything, their zeal has increased, and I can sense them throwing their companions out of the way so they can be at the vanguard of the attack.
Leaping off the bed, landing on dozens of the squirming beasts, feeling their warm blood ooze from them as they are crushed beneath my weight, I throw the mattress off the frame and grab one of the wooden slats. Not knowing where they are, I swing wildly, parting the air with many missed passes, but connecting on many more.
The blood of my defeated foes whips around my face, joining that from the ones I stomped on, but they don’t stop coming, and when they do reach me now they waste no time in attacking me with their teeth and claws, my blood joining theirs.
They crawl up me and some even leap higher, managing to get on my chest and . . . and approach my face. I drop the slat and start tearing them off, whipping them against their brothers and sisters, creating weapons out of them. My fear of contracting rabies is over. If I do, I do. I have so many bites now that the damage, if any, from that is too late to worry about.
Like a whirling-dervish of madness, I kill every rat I can get my hands on. I slam them not only into each other, but into the walls, the floor, and the frame of my bed.
The survivors move towards the hole in the wall as fast as they can. Soon, other than those still twitching on the floor in their last throes of death, they are all gone. Not caring about the choking Demon from earlier, I follow the rats to the corner, ready to face him once more, the adrenaline from my battle with the rats removing all fear. I am in attack mode. Let him come at me.
But he is gone. I can not sense him anywhere. And the hole in the wall: I can’t find it, search as I might.
What the . . .
I tip toe through the darkness towards my bed, trying to avoid stepping on the dead and dying rats, but no evidence of their presence remains. The entire area has been returned to the way it was before the altercation with the beasts. The mattress is even back on my bed, along with the pillow and blanket. Still, I am reluctant to get back on the bed. What kind of trick is this?
My
skin still hurts from the bites, and there is blood all over me. Heh, heh. Whatever tried to convince me this was all in my head failed miserably. It forgot to remove the evidence from my body.
I slowly walk to the bathroom and attempt to turn on the light. Just as I expected: still no power. It’s been a week with no change. The last I heard, it was because of severe solar flares reversing the polarity of the electrical lines and blowing up the transformers. Supposedly, the damage has occurred across most of the planet. There is no power, no cars running because of micro-chip failure, no computers, nothing. At least I filled the tub with water and as many containers as I could before the faucets refused to release anymore. The water pumps need power too.
Stripping my clothes off, I grab for a wash rag, dip it into a pot I placed in the sink before the sun went down, and wash up as best I can. One thing in my favor is all the hand sanitizer I had stashed away. Sure comes in handy now.
The door slams behind me, and a shadow darker than the rest of the black in the room works its way up the wall and stretches across half the ceiling. Some strange power forces its way throughout the room and shoves me into the tub. As I try to scramble out, I am shoved back in, but I manage to get out the second time. Close call.
But it’s not over yet: the sound of water pouring out of the sink faucet mimics that of a major waterfall. I rush to turn it off, but I can’t budge the faucet. I feel the water running out of the sink and onto my feet. Soon, it becomes a river, knocking me down and smashing me into the side of the tub, the toilet, and the walls.
“I hope you can swim,” the Shadow says. “And, it would be good for you if you are able to hold your breath for a long time.”
It vanishes into the darkness.
The water rises rapidly, and even though I am a powerful swimmer, I am not used to raging torrents such as these. The very size of the small bathroom restricts my movements, making it difficult for me to maneuver with any kind of efficiency, and the constant bombardment continues. Soon, I am floating around the ceiling, any source of air gone.
No windows to smash out; no way to open the door to let the water out. I’m about to drown. There is no escaping this. I’m trapped.
I gag on the water forcing its way into my mouth and then my lungs. My mind is starting to cloud. I can’t think straight. Reasoning is an abstract, a thing of the past.
Only one idea comes to mind, and it is a long shot. Swimming down towards the medicine cabinet, fighting off the current and oxygen deprivation with every stroke, I kick through the mirror, the glass cutting my leg to shreds. Once through that, I open the cabinet and resume my kicking efforts, only this time I pound away at the back of the cabinet. Hopefully, I can create a new avenue for the water to move about in. The hell with where it goes. As long as it drains from the bathroom, I’ll be happy.
My lungs are ready to burst, and my brain is ready to go for its final sleep when I hit pay dirt. The water flows through the hole I made, and I get out of the way so my body doesn’t plug the opening I worked so hard to create.
Drifting to the top of the ceiling, I find an air pocket and hover around it, needing to get that life-giving oxygen back into my lungs. The darkness obscures exactly where I am and, as the water level drops, I fall with it, once more slamming into everything, but I can tell from my speed of descent that soon I should be able to stand in the midst of the swirling currents and hang on to something.
Water stops pouring from the faucets and the overflow still flows into the holes. I shove more water through with my hands and, inch by inch, I work down the wall, smashing away at it until I reach the floor and make my final thrust. All the water leaves the room. Thank God! I am safe now.
The moisture has warped the bathroom door, but after a few efforts of shoving my body up against it, the door opens into my room . . . my room of indescribable darkness.
I’m glad I only have this one room and my bathroom. An efficiency apartment is perfect when groadies are hiding in the darkness. They can’t come at me from around a corner somewhere. The doors and walls—ah yes, I can not forget the walls—are their only avenue of approach.
Once more, I’m not alone. There is that tingling on my body, every hair, regardless of where it is, saying that evil surrounds me. The sensations are enhanced because I’m still naked. Shit! This can’t be good. While I am more privy to the aura of what is after me, I can’t help but feel that I am leaving more of me exposed to it, or them, waiting for me in the dark. Shyness has nothing to do with it. As thin as the fabric might be, there is still a feeling of security, however false it might be, when I am clothed.
But . . . but how do I get to my clothes? Disorientation has set in. What part of the room am I in? Where is my dresser? Maybe I can find it. I need to: I’m an open target the way I am now.
“Your clothes won’t do you any good, you fool.”
The voice, the same one from the bathroom, is back, taunting me once more, only this time there’s no dark shadow, nothing pushing me down. Yet, he’s up to something. What is his game?
Placing my hands against the wall, I make my way around the room. It’s small; it can’t possibly take me too long to find it. Yes! I get to the door. I’m not far away now.
A few feet farther and I touch my door again. No, this is impossible!
I did not change directions, and this is not the bathroom door; I know it’s not.
The wall turns into a series of doors, one right next to the one I just left. Panic looms! Am I retracing my steps without realizing it?
One by one, the doors open and close on their own. Louder and louder, faster and faster. There is no stopping it. I place my hands over my ears, unable to handle the noise, my eardrums ready to burst. Something, seemingly many things, rush past me, not touching my body, but getting as close as possible without doing so.
I fall to the floor, rolling around in pain, begging whoever or whatever is doing this to stop. Blood comes from my ruptured eardrums and, with it, a cessation of the reverberations in my head. I’m deaf, but I will be spared the agony.
Lying there until I can regain my equilibrium, needing to challenge my other senses because my hearing is gone and my ears are worthless, I force myself up.
Two senses down; three to go.
I can not feel the doors opening and closing as I wander the perimeter of the room once more. There is no need any longer. The damage has been done. The silence is as unnerving as the loss of visual perception. Something can sneak up on me—hell, it could make all the noise in the world and I wouldn’t know it until it was too late.
Still, no shadows are hovering over me. Whatever did this to me is still in the room, though. He doesn’t talk to me, but he doesn’t have to. I feel him.
And, I feel others, circling me, staying just out of touch, my efforts to swipe at them proving pointless. My arms reach nothing; touch nothing; but wasn’t that what happened before? The pressure! Will it come after me again? Are the others the same?
A stench, one of decay and mold, assaults my nasal passages. It’s not the rats this time: it’s something else; something worse. My God, how much more will happen to me? What is causing this?
The source of putrefaction rubs itself against me, forcing the filth against my naked body. Trying to remove it only makes it intensify its efforts, and I am enclosed within some sort of a cocoon where a cesspool of garbage flows from everywhere, not only laying siege to my body, but forcing itself into my nose and mouth. I gag on the effluent and attempt to regurgitate it, only to have it forced back in again.
The huge shadow laughs. I can still no longer hear, but the sound waves attack my skin, beating a staccato of delight on my tortured, defiled body.
Kicking my way free, sliding around on the floor, having crashed down once more due to the disgusting lubricant left in the beast’s wake, I am finally able to upchuck the contaminants in my body.
The bathroom! I need to get in there again. More than before I need to wash the filth off me.
The door opens before I reach it. I . . . I hear it! My hearing is back.
“You smell like shit. You need a shower.”
Wait! This is another trick. If I go back in there again, I’m doomed. This thing knows what I did the last time. The kitchen! I have water pots stashed over there as well. That’s where I’ll wash.
Around and around I go, but I cannot find my kitchen. The beast has removed it! I don’t know how, but he has.
His shadow, darker than before, engulfs the entire room, dancing about everywhere, teasing me with its demonic rhythm. Other shadows, lesser ones, join in, cavorting with him, coming close to me, then backing off. All of them laugh at me, creating a Satanic choir.
They all merge together once more, the room becoming even darker.
“Is this the way you like it?” the Shadow whispers hoarsely. “Do you like it dark like this so you can’t see your antagonists?”
I refuse to answer. Hell! I can’t answer. Fear has taken away the function of my tongue.
“Heh, heh. If light were to suddenly fill this room, you would be shocked at the visuals before you. Maybe it would push you over the edge.”
No, no! The dark . . . the dark is what I’m afraid of. With light in the room I could see what I’m up against and find a way to defeat it. The dark is my enemy.
As if in response to what I’m thinking, the room becomes darker yet, more and more of these creatures converging here, unseen this time, adding their blackness to what is already here.
For The Night Is Dark Page 18