Deep Night

by Greg F. Gifune

  Light splashed into a pool at his feet.

  He swung the flashlight around the cabin in a slow arc.

  The furniture was sparse, but most of it was overturned and scattered about, indicating a violent struggle of some kind. The bed in the corner was standing straight up on end and leaned against the corner, like someone had picked it up and tossed it there, and a chest lay open and on its side, various items of clothing and a few basic supplies spilled across the floor next to it.

  But for the mounting wind, the night had again turned silent, the screams gone, swallowed into darkness.

  Seth struggled to keep his legs under him while continuing to play the flashlight beam across the walls. As the light crept along, it revealed an enormous spray of blood along the back wall of the cabin. It looked as if someone had thrown a full can of dark red paint against the wall then allowed it to freeze there. He dropped the beam a bit, following the arc of gore until the light found a dark form slumped to the side and sitting on the floor. Seth took a shaky step closer, the beam widening against the wall.

  The man on the floor was dressed in old jeans, boots and a heavy flannel shirt. His hands lay in his lap, clutching a large ax. He looked to be in his late fifties or perhaps earlier sixties. Gray stubble covered his face and neck, mixed with snow and bits of ice. His eyes were open and appeared to have been locked on something directly in front of him when he’d died. His mouth was agape and coated with blood, frozen in a silent shriek, his expression one of horror and agony. The front of his shirt was covered with a thick red coating of blood, like he had vomited it onto himself at the moment of death, and congealed paths of blood that had leaked from the corners of his eyes still stained his cheeks like smeared war paint. Both ears were caked with globs of crimson that were connected directly to the enormous spatters on the wall next to and above him. Though his skull seemed to be intact, it appeared as if the man’s brain had exploded within its confines, the blood detonating from every orifice in his head in a single volatile blast.

  Submit, suicide, insanity or eventual overload and death like that poor bastard back at the cabin—Clayton Willis—head popped like a fucking grapefruit on the business end of a Louisville Slugger.

  Seth tried to pry his eyes from the man’s body but could not. He stood spellbound, an icy chill coursing through his veins.

  He was not certain how long he stood there staring at the dead man and listening to the angry wind whip through the forest, but it seemed like hours. The cold had rendered his body nearly useless. His feet were so cold and wet he could barely feel them, and his entire body ached. How could he still be alive in these temperatures dressed only in wet and soggy long underwear? Nothing made any sense.

  But his terror welcomed bedlam, and as the screams returned, calling him back from the precipice of absolute madness, Seth granted his fear exactly what it wanted.

  This time the scream sounded like it might be Louis.

  Seth returned to the cabin doorway, bringing the light with him. He staggered forward until he’d again reached the snow. The forest remained dark but for the moonlight and falling snow, and the wind had quieted somewhat. But the screams continued, emanating from just beyond the tree line and ringing through the night, sirens calling, enticing him to come closer and investigate.

  Seth moved the light across the forest, following it through the spaces between the huge trees, but there was nothing but falling snow and darkness. He stumbled through the snow, closer to the woods from which he’d come. “Louis!” he called; voice gruff and weak. “Louis!”

  And then he saw them.

  Standing shoulder to shoulder to form a boundary that surrounded the entire stretch of forest, countless dark beings waited in silent vigil. Thin and short, with long spindly arms that proportionately didn’t quite match the rest of their bodies, their black silhouettes stood out even against the backdrop of night, just barely detectable in the sparse moonlight.

  The screams were coming from somewhere behind them, deep in the woods.

  It’s all in your mind, a voice whispered, all in your mind, Seth.

  “This isn’t happening,” he muttered. “This isn’t happening.”

  It is happening, Seth. It’s happening in your mind, but it is happening.

  The screams that sounded like Louis stopped.

  Seth felt his legs give out, and he sank down onto his knees, the flashlight at his side and casting its beam over the snow. His eyes wide and mouth open, he stared at the beings, trying to understand what he was seeing. Something unholy and terrifying, something his mind had become infected with and now fought to make some sense of. Were they really there? Did they really look like that? Or was his mind filling in the blanks to give them faces and bodies—substance—so he might comprehend even on some fundamental plane what was taking place?

  Kneeling in the snow before them, body convulsing and shivering, mind melting as all sanity abandoned him, he realized it no longer mattered.

  “I’m dreaming,” he heard himself say through tears of horror. “I’m—I’m dreaming.”

  A horrendous pain fired through his skull like an electrical charge. He dropped the flashlight and brought both hands to his head, clutching it violently. And as the flesh across his temples began to bubble and extend, the sounds of skin and bone tearing and cracking beneath it, he realized the beings were no longer stationary. They were moving slowly forward through the swirling flakes of snow.

  Closer…and closer still.

  Darkness fell over him—a cold and inexorable darkness—and within it, things began to touch him. Inhuman things. Foul, vile things walking across his bare skin with long, spidery fingers.

  As Seth’s mind finally ripped open and split in two, they slithered in, submerging themselves in the warmth of his bloodstream and the endless hiding places in the vastness of his human brain. He felt them passing through him like a contaminated wind, sneaking across his dreams and nightmares, his thoughts and fears, all the places his soul might rest. Coiling and sleeping within him forever.

  Forever, Seth. Forever.

  This time when the screams returned, they were unmistakably his own.

  * * *

  Seth could see them, but from a distance. Raymond and Christy were in the forest together, unaware of him and encased, as if he was watching them through some large crystal without their knowledge.

  Where am I?

  Dusk settled and the horizon loomed above the trees, an endless canvas painted with great brushstrokes of celestial blue and black. Amidst the slowly dying light, the moon sat high in the sky like a hastily hung ornament pasted above the darkened edges, and but for the beginnings of delicate snowfall, all was quiet.

  Raymond watched her awhile, careful not to reveal himself too soon.

  Christy lay on her side at the edge of the forest, her weight supported on one elbow, her face turned to the sky. The snow increased a bit, becoming a light flurry, but she seemed unaware of it, absently blinking away flake after flake while sorrowfully gazing straight ahead, seeing everything, and nothing at all.

  “Where are they?” he asked softly, still concealed in the shadows behind her. When she didn’t answer he asked again, this time more forcefully. “Christy, where are they?” He stepped forward, allowing the moonlight to touch him. “Where are they?”

  “Where do you think they are?”

  “Where’s my brother, Christy? Where are the others?”

  “It took them,” she said, this time looking back over her shoulder at him.

  “The snow?”

  “The night.”

  Raymond looked out at the vast expanse of forest. Blood dribbled from his nose. He touched a finger to it, held it away from his face so he could see. It ran along the space beneath his nose to his upper lip, seeping in and trickling along the line of his mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sullenly.

  “No, you’re not.” He stepped closer, an ax clutched in one hand and held down against
his leg.

  “Weren’t you all the times you did it?” she asked.

  “I’m always fucking sorry.”

  Seth reached out and tried to touch the scene playing out before him, but he could not reach them. When he touched the strange material separating them it rippled like water disturbed then slowly returned to normal.

  “Raymond!” Seth called. “Raymond!”

  Whatever it is I’m able to do, to see and sense, it helped me to see something that night at the cabin, Seth. Something I shouldn’t have seen. Something I wasn’t supposed to see. So I ran.

  Seth continued to call him even though he knew he couldn’t hear him.

  I ran, don’t you get it? I ran.

  “We don’t have any choice,” Christy said softly.

  I ran. Like a coward. Because I knew what was coming.

  Though it was still down against his leg, Raymond gripped the ax with both hands and assumed a wider stance. “But they might.”

  Christy glanced at the ax, just then noticing it. After a moment she turned away and looked again to the sky.

  “Raymond!” Seth called. “Stop!”

  Distant echoes of screams leaked through, accompanied by visions of Louis and Darian on their knees in dark and distant snow-covered landscapes, their heads splitting open, cracking apart like shattered eggshells and crumbling to pieces. Christy was there too, standing over them and reaching inside their opened bodies, pulling things loose and holding them up in the moonlight the way a chef rips things free of an animal’s carcass and dangles them over a boiling pot.

  Then Seth was there in the vision with them, collapsed in the bloody snow, the world around them exploding into a whirlwind of rapid images and memories, their lives from birth to death—cradle to the grave—and all that lay between playing out beneath the flickering pulse of the eerie strobe-like lightning.

  The visions ceased, returned him to the forest where Raymond held the ax.

  As Christy watched the sky, a small smile on her lips, Raymond raised the ax and brought the blade down into the top of her skull with a single savage swing.

  Seth closed his eyes as the ax made impact.

  Blood droplets sprayed his face and eyelids, somehow transcending the material.

  Without bothering to wipe it from his face, Seth opened his eyes and watched Raymond plant a booted foot against the side of Christy’s face and yank the ax free of her head. He let the ax rest against his shoulder, and with his free hand took Christy by the ankle and dragged her deeper into the woods, her limp body leaving a deep and bloody corridor through the snow in its wake.

  Raymond buried her in the snow, along with the ax he’d used to end her misery, leaving her body for the thaw and the wildlife, out there in the deep forest…the same forest where they’d all died on that strange, cold and snowy night.

  CHAPTER 37

  Peggy stood staring at him, the dark curtains drawn behind her.

  “The next thing I remember,” Seth said softly, “I was waking up and the door to the cabin was open. Raymond was missing. We went looking for him but couldn’t find him. We were getting ready to go back out searching for him when he turned up at the door with no real explanation that made any sense. None of us remembered what had happened before all that. It was like we’d all been drugged, or like our memories had been erased or altered somehow. We knew something had happened but we couldn’t remember exactly what. It was only flashes, hints…until now.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Seth.”

  Still sitting at the foot of the bed, he looked down at his hands. The tremors wreaking havoc with them were in full swing, and the things he had just remembered and stated continued to swirl about in his mind, leaving him shaky and lightheaded. His face was wet from tears that had fallen just seconds before. “I know it sounds crazy,” he finally offered. “And it is crazy. But it’s the truth, Peg. Whether you want to believe me or not, whether you even have the ability to believe me, it’s the truth. It happened. It’s what’s happening now.”

  Peggy nodded; her expression one of sympathy peppered with consternation.

  “It’s why Louis threw himself out that window, why Ray and Nana killed themselves.”

  “What about Darian?” she asked.

  Seth stood up, ignoring the lightheadedness and the sudden vision of the pen smashing into Ruthie’s eye. He removed the towel from his waist, tossed it aside and began to dress. “It’s too late for him.”

  “Is he dead too, Seth?”

  “No,” he said, thinking, but Ruthie might be. “He’s…”

  “He’s what?”

  Seth pulled on a shirt, buttoned it. “He’s one of them now.”

  “One of them…I see.”

  “Do you?” He looked at her. “Do you see?”

  “All I know is that we have to fix this, we have to find a solution.”

  “We need to get away from here,” he said. “You and me and Petey.”

  Upon hearing his name, Petey’s tail thumped the floor a few times but he remained curled up in the corner, eyes closed.

  “Where would we go?” she asked.

  He returned to the foot of the bed, put his shoes on. “I don’t know,” he sighed.

  “Seth, I…I need to know you’re OK. I need you to be OK. I can’t do this alone. I either need to know you’ll be here and together, or I need to know you won’t be.”

  “You think I’m out of my mind, don’t you.” When she didn’t answer he felt himself deflate. “I don’t blame you, but as God is my witness, sweetheart, I’m not.”

  Peggy slinked across the room with her usual effortlessly seductive gait and crouched before him. With tears in her eyes she took his hands in her own. “You’re trembling,” she whispered.

  “I can’t seem to stop.”

  “There’s something you need to know,” she told him, gently rubbing his hands. “You have some…some problems right now…and we need you to get help regardless. But something’s happened, something important, and you have the right to know. But I also have the right and the responsibility to do what’s best for both of us. I wanted to tell you a few minutes ago, but you started explaining about that night so I couldn’t.”

  The trembling grew worse. “What is it?”

  “Seth, I’m pregnant.”

  He stared at her, unsure if he’d heard her correctly.

  Her grip on him tightened. “I need to know you’ll be in our lives, and that you’ll be well and able to function. I’m going to have a child, Seth. Our child.”

  “But you—you’re not able to have children, Peg. It’s not physically possible.”

  She smiled somewhat condescendingly. “That was before.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he said, voice cracking, “no.”

  “It’s all right, Seth. It’s all going to be all right.”

  “That’s why they didn’t chase me when I ran from Ruthie’s apartment.” He looked at her, watched her distort and blur through his tears. “They knew where I was going.”

  Peggy reached out, stroked his cheek, clearing the tears away with her thumb. “I’m still me and you’re still you. It’s the memories we have to deal with for now, but like all memories they’ll only stay with us for so long. Doctor Farrow, Ruthie, Darian—the others—it’s all happened to them, to me, relatively recently. They all still remember it now, like I do and like you will, but none of us will remember it forever. Eventually it’ll slip away, become absorbed into our consciousness. Then, for a while, this will all just be another random memory. It’ll be something more, something less, confusion, a memory, a dream—just a nightmare—a fantasy, something thought of but not realized. And eventually, it’ll vanish altogether, gone like memories from when we’re young. Do you remember anything from when you were two or three? You were here. You had experiences and memories of them for a time. But you lose them, they fade, we change. We’re not the same people at twenty-three that we are at three. We’re not the same people at thirty-t
hree that we are at twenty-three. We change, and yet, do you remember all those changes? It’s all so vague, isn’t it? Do you remember being born? Do you remember taking your first step or speaking your first word? Do you remember any of it? Photographs we look at in albums, with relatives bouncing us on their knees, relatives we have no memory of because they died when we were so young—were they real? Was any of it? Is it real to you? Was it ever? Does it even matter now that all this time has passed? They’re all just other people’s memories told to you. But to you, they’re nothing. There is no memory. Just like that, these memories will go, too. They’ll change, grow, go to the next step and they’ll just be. We’ll just be. Whoever and whatever we are, we’ll just be. With no memory of any of these things, because we don’t need to remember, we don’t need the memories.”

  “So during the spreading of this fucking disease we all know and remember what we’re doing and what’s happening, but in time, we forget, it all goes away, it’s all absorbed into who we become. The thoughts and memories of who we were and what we are now are gone, they cease to exist. Forgetting is the final stage, and that’s supposed to make it all acceptable? That’s supposed to make it all right? We sell our souls for pocket change but we won’t remember so what difference does it make?”

  “We only need the transformation,” she said, “the evolution and the chance to be reborn. Come with me on this, Seth, just come with me. Trust me.”

  Seth wanted to pull his hands free of her, but couldn’t. In his mind he pulled away and ran from her, but all he could truly feel was a sense of loss and dim hope that perhaps this woman he loved so desperately might somehow be telling the truth, a truth that could somehow include him, deliver him from this horrible and relentless evil. “Whatever’s growing inside of you isn’t ours. It’s not human.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Of course it’s human, what else would it be?” She released his hands and stood up out of her crouch. “This isn’t some science fiction movie, it’s real life. There’s no such thing as monsters. There’s only us, Seth, and we’re still who we always were. It’s all an illusion—life, being alive, what we know and feel and see and hear and think—all of it. For God’s sake, do any of us really know who the hell we are or where we came from? Do any of us really know what we’ve evolved from or what we’re truly evolving to? All we know is what we’ve been told to believe. Do you really know what swims in your blood, what sleeps in the deepest recesses of your mind? Do you have any idea?”