Deep Night

by Greg F. Gifune

  He considered calling Cynthia on his cell phone but didn’t want to have to explain things, not now. Explain things, he thought. Good luck. He didn’t even understand what was happening himself. But he felt a strong sense of guilt he hadn’t been able to shake since that night at the hospital. What kind of man runs from his family, he asked himself, particularly at a time like this? No, he thought, I’m protecting them. Staying away will keep them safer. What was it Louis had told him?

  I can’t ever go home. That’s the worst part. I can never go home.

  When he closed his eyes he saw Louis staring back at him, tormented and crazed.

  I can’t spread this to her and my babies.

  He saw Lou’s face as he fell backwards out the window to the street below. The sound his body made as it hit the pavement ripped through Darian’s mind like a cleaver until it came together into those three discernible words.

  Let Them Out.

  Debra’s beautifully innocent and loving face flashed before him…covered in blood.

  He pushed the horror away, brought his hands to his face and covered his eyes, hopeful they might block the visions from getting to him, from reaching inside him and showing him things no one should ever have to see.

  Silently, Darian began to pray.

  Within moments of crossing the town line into Adamston, Seth pulled up in front of a modest house at the end of a dead end street. He shut off the engine but left the key engaged, allowing the battery to continue to give life to the car. The wipers continued to squeak across the windshield, accompanied by the patter of wet snow against the roof and the hum of the car heater.

  Darian looked up and saw the house before them: small, two-story, yellow with white shutters. What he didn’t know was that it had been off-white years before, with light blue shutters, and that the fancy stone walk leading to the front door was new, as was much of the landscaping. A few large bushes were present and several old trees that had sat on either end of the front lawn had, sadly, been cut down, but other than that, the house and grounds looked remarkably similar to the way they had decades before.

  “Maybe you should wait here,” Seth said blankly, staring at the house.

  “Maybe you should go fuck yourself.” Darian wasn’t sure which had startled him more, the sound of Seth’s voice or his response to it. What’s gotten into you? Isn’t that the expression people always used? If only it were still just an expression, he thought. But something has gotten into me. Visions of shelled bugs and writhing maggots slithering beneath his skin, swimming in his bloodstream, colonizing his organs, flashed across his mind’s eye. Fighting away nausea, he pushed open his door and stepped from the car. “We’re in this together, all of us.”

  Seth joined him outside the car. “All right, but let me handle it.”

  Parked at an odd angle near the house was an older car that had obviously been driven to that point quickly then abruptly abandoned. The driver-side door was still partially open, and as they got closer they saw the steering column had been broken.

  Both men stood silently in the rainy snow a while, oblivious or perhaps just hesitant, then together walked across the small front lawn to an empty paved driveway. They followed it to the side of the house and through to the backyard.

  “This is the house Ray and I grew up in,” Seth said. Without slowing his stride he pointed to a spot now occupied by a large grill covered with a tarp. “There was a picnic table there once, and a birdbath and feeder. Next to them was our swing set.” All of that was gone too, replaced by a freestanding screened-in portable patio of sorts. It looked out of place there, odd and worn. “My mother’s gardens used to be right over there.” Again he pointed, this time to a spot of empty, dead lawn. “She used to work for hours on those gardens. Our father used to lie in a hammock between those two trees there.”

  It seemed an odd time for a tour or trip down memory lane, but Darian understood Seth was making these announcements more for his own benefit than anyone else’s. He was gaining bearing, remembering, focusing, forcing himself to see the house and yard and everything else as it used to be rather than how it was now.

  The present was of no use to him here, though that too would soon change.

  Darian thought of his own parents, wondered what they were doing, if Cynthia had contacted them. Surely they were all concerned, wondering where he was, maybe even out looking for him? He hadn’t been home in more than a day now; he’d never done that before.

  Debra. If anything happened to that precious baby he…

  “Seth,” he said quickly, “do you think Cynthia and Debra are safe?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nobody’s safe.”

  Darian pulled his glasses off, quickly wiped them free of snow and rain as best he could, then slid them back on. As they continued on across the backyard toward an open field beyond, he looked back at the house. Curtains adorning a window at the rear of the house moved, swayed quickly closed. He was certain someone had been holding them open then released them when he looked back, but due to the glare and contrast of light mixed with torrents of thick wet snow, he couldn’t make out anything beyond the window. “Who lives here now?” he asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Then maybe—”

  “We never owned the house, my parents rented. I haven’t been here in years.”

  “—it’s not the best idea to be traipsing through their property. Obviously Raymond stole that car out front and now we’re trespassing. It’s only a matter of time before whoever lives here calls the police.”

  Whether he agreed or not, Seth kept on until they reached the edge of the field. Perhaps seventy yards in length and forty or so in width, it stretched to a distant patch of forest in the distance. “I can’t believe it’s still here,” he said with a sense of wonder. “I figured it would’ve been sold or built on by now.”

  Then they heard the crying.

  Raymond was on hands and knees at the far end of the field, just feet from the tree line. Overcome, his body bucked as raw emotion poured from him in great roiling, wailing gusts.

  Darian had never heard anyone cry quite like that.

  The only thing close had been the sounds that night in the woods, the screams and the horrible shrieks. But were those real memories or all in his mind?

  He turned to Seth, who was fighting a losing battle to maintain control over his own emotions. “God almighty,” Darian said softly. “What the hell happened here?”

  Rather than answer, Seth left Darian at the start of the field and moved slowly toward his brother.

  CHAPTER 22

  It shocked Seth to realize how affected he’d felt returning to this place. He had tried desperately to remain aloof and removed, as if he were watching himself from a safe distance, but like a twig swept up by a rising and raging river that carried everything in its path to whatever destination it chose, his control over the situation was only an illusion. He was so certain the person he’d once been, the little boy who had lived here all those years ago had evolved into someone superior, an entirely new person that had mastered this darkness and left it all behind, but now realized he hadn’t changed so very much after all. That little boy was alive and well. Here, in this field.

  Raymond seemed to notice him as he drew closer, but Seth watched the trees, the sky, the field—all of it as clear and familiar as it was decades before—and let the flood of memories wash over him. He forced a hard swallow. “It’s all right, Ray. I’m here.”

  Stretching his arms toward the sky with open hands, Raymond arched up onto his knees. The wet snow trickled between his fingers, continued to drench his hair and face. A madman, a wild-eyed Rasputin praying to the clouds and whatever lay behind them, hands grasping at the robes of God and all that might save him, deliver him from this evil, he reached for the heavens as if salvation were somehow within his grasp.

  And perhaps it was.

  He lurched forward, his hands again finding the ground and his head bow
ed, hair dangling to wet earth. “Get out of my head,” he sobbed. “Get—get out of my head. Please…please.”

  Seth dropped to his knees next to him, took his brother in his arms and held him tight to his chest. “Stay with me, Ray. Stay with me, I’m here.”

  “I’ve tried,” he wept. “I’ve tried for so long.”

  All those years, Seth thought. All those years of torment and madness slowly devouring his brother’s mind and maybe his own. Their lives had always been about Raymond—about this—about dealing with these demons, literal or otherwise, and now those gremlins in his mind had finally finished the job, rendering Raymond a blubbering and broken husk of what he’d once been in long-ago memories, of what he might have been had they spared him such things.

  I am pain, Momma.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Seth whispered, clinging to him. “You’re not alone.”

  “No,” he said, suddenly fighting his way free. Raymond fell back, away from him, splashing down into a fast growing puddle of mud and ice. A moment of clarity seemed to pass over him the way a rolling cloud passes over the moon. There, then gone. Raymond’s tears subsided and he sat there a moment, out of breath, chest heaving. “They took me,” he finally said, his voice small and timid like it had been when he was a child. “They took me, Seth.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know. You don’t understand.”

  He nodded. “I do know, Ray, I do. I remember you running. You always ran here, to the field, to the edge of the woods.”

  Raymond turned, gazed at the woods sadly. “They had no—no right to do that to me.”

  “I remember the first time, Ray. I was twelve and you were eight.”

  “I was just a little boy,” he said so softly it was barely audible. Then, as if to the forest directly, he screamed, “I was just a little boy!” His face contorted and he looked down at the ground, tears overcoming him again and reducing his voice to a quivering murmur. “Just a little boy.”

  “We were both little boys…with nightmares, horrible nightmares about something in our room, watching us, stalking us.” Seth remembered the raw fear that surged through him as a child in that dark room, how it burned through him like he’d swallowed fire. “Only they weren’t nightmares were they Ray?”

  He shook his head.

  “The first time it really happened,” Seth said. “It was all real, they were real, they really were there, and they took you. We ran but they took you. They took you and left me behind.”

  “I led them out here,” he said, strangely calm now. “I ran because I knew I was smaller than you, faster. I led them out here so they’d take me and wouldn’t hurt you.”

  Seth’s heart pounded in his chest and he could no longer be sure where his tears ended and the snow and ice pelting his face began. Even then, his little brother had been the better of them. “You—you saved me?”

  “I tried, Seth, I swear I did, but I fucked it up. That’s what I do, I fuck things up.”

  “That’s not true. This isn’t your fault, it never has been.”

  “All the times after that night were only dreams, my nightmares and memories of what they’d done to me.”

  “I thought it was all a nightmare,” Seth told him. “I remember something was there with us, in our room.” He shook his head, still unable to fathom what he now knew to be truth. “Doc helped me remember that night, that first night. I couldn’t remember but she helped me. Before I went to her it was like my memories of that night had been wiped away somehow. What could do that? What could steal our memories like that?”

  “They bury them,” he said. “But they come back slowly, in pieces. For me the nightmares never stopped, and my mind it—it was different. It was changed. They changed me.”

  “What did they do to you, Ray?”

  “You don’t come back the same way you were when they took you.” His face twisted into a helpless expression, the terror rising in him again. “You come back different.”

  “Able to do things you couldn’t before? Able to see things and know things you couldn’t before?”

  “Diseased,” he whispered.

  “Why, for what purpose?”

  “Because then we’re not like everyone else. Our minds can do things the human mind can’t do. They do it so we’ll have them with us always. The pain and horror it allows us to see and experience and leave in our wake—that follows us like a storm cloud no matter where we go or what we do—makes us like them, less human. It’s a disease—they’re a disease. Even when it gets quiet sometimes, you know they’re still there. You know there’s a switch in your head because they put it there, and one day they throw that switch and they move through us to others. Those others become the afflicted, and they change too. Slowly, quietly, it kills everything they were before, destroying them a little bit at a time.”

  “But why, why now, why did it take years? Why are they doing this?”

  “We can’t even begin to understand.” Raymond’s eyes found him through the rain and snow. “They’re not human, Seth. Why would their motivations be?”

  “But why us? Why you?”

  “Chance, luck of the draw, or maybe they know who’s more susceptible to them somehow and that’s where they start. I don’t know how, but they know who we are.”

  Seth ignored the cold, unable to tell whether it was caused by the snow and rain or the chills of terror running through him. “And Christy was there that night, too?”

  “Not just her. There were a lot of us.”

  “But they let you go, they—”

  “They didn’t let me go,” he said. “They sent me back.”

  “Why?”

  “They kept Christy,” he said as if he hadn’t heard the question. “For years, I guess. They sent her back later. That’s how they do it. Different people, different places, different times and—and like I told you, time isn’t the same when you’re with them. Nothing’s the same.”

  “But why, Ray? Why did they send you back?”

  “Because Christy and me and the others like us are…”

  Seth crawled closer and took him by the shoulders. “Tell me.”

  “We’re the carriers.”

  Seth released him, pushed his hair from his forehead, sweeping away rainwater and snow along with it. “Carriers of what, some apocalyptic endgame, murder and disease and famine like in the Bible? Is this how it happens? Not with horsemen galloping through the clouds bringing death and misery, but like this?”

  Raymond looked away but didn’t answer.

  “Or is it something demonic taking us over through our dreams and childhood fears?”

  The wind answered with a distant howl.

  “Is it some alien species?” Seth asked; searching his mind for any possibility he could grab hold of, however initially absurd it seemed. “Posing as insanity and moving from mind to mind, invading us one at a time?”

  “Answer him.”

  They both looked up; saw Darian standing over them, as drenched and cold as they were.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Raymond said. “If it’s one of those things or something else, it doesn’t matter.” His hair was sodden and clinging to him. He pushed it away from his face so they could better see him. “Because sooner or later they come for everybody.”

  Whatever was left of Raymond’s rational mind seemed to be evaporating right before Seth’s eyes. These things revealed had turned back his scalp, exposed his mind to raw and unforgiving possibilities, all of which led to certainties of absolute madness, as if such things could never be faced and survived with a mind healthy and intact.

  “You know how they always tell you something’s all in your head? It’s all in your mind, man, all in your mind.” Raymond turned back to the forest, looking for a moment like he might get up and move toward it. “The thing they don’t tell you is, just because something’s all in your mind doesn’t mean it’s not real.” He shook his head and sighed. “Now you know just how fucki
ng crazy I am.”

  “How crazy we all are,” Darian mumbled.

  “None of us are crazy,” Seth said.

  “Of course we are, don’t you see?” Raymond watched them a moment. “It just doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Who are they, Ray? Goddamn it, what are they?”

  “The end…they’re the end.” Raymond began to laugh the sad, quiet, hopeless laughter of the damned. “The end of us.”

  Darian glanced back at the house. Whoever was watching from the back window was at it again, but this time didn’t bother ducking from sight. A cross-looking elderly woman in a housecoat glared at them from just behind the pane of glass, one hand holding open the curtains, the other with a cordless phone pressed to her ear. “We have to get out of here. There’s a woman in the window on the phone, and I think it’s safe to assume she’s calling the police.”

  “They can’t help us,” Raymond said, still laughing quietly.

  “That car’s stolen and we’re on this woman’s property uninvited, Seth. We have to go.” Darian stepped closer to him, drawing his full attention. “Now.”

  Seth nodded, rose to his feet and held a hand out for his brother. “Come on.”

  “You go,” he said, staring at the mud surrounding him. “Leave me here.”

  “Raymond, they’ll arrest you. They’ll lock you up, now come on.”

  He shook his head sadly. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s happening.”

  “We don’t have time for this.” Darian turned and started back toward the car.

  Seth crouched next to him. “I’m not leaving you here, Ray.”