Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller

by Ashlei Hawley

  That whispery voice was beginning to stroke insidious, chilly fingers up and down Sam’s neck, raising the hairs in a way that made them resemble thousands of miniature, prickly warning flags. He wanted to look back at her, but his eyes were all for the tiny crib.

  The baby was silent inside. He couldn’t see within until he leaned over, because of the way she had blankets draped over all of the sides. He didn’t want to look inside.

  “They don’t have all of you, at first,” the woman continued. Her voice became more disturbing on each word, the pronunciation somehow wrong, the flow of her syllables somehow grating. “They’ll tell you that, if you listen. They told me after I saw what had happened. After I saw what I did…”

  A hitch in her breathing almost made Sam spin back around. For a moment, he was crazily certain she was about to leap on his back, tearing into him with misshapen teeth or lupine claws.

  “I didn’t want it,” the woman said, and her voice was softer than ever. “I didn’t want it!” The repetition of the statement was louder, almost a shriek, and the words crashed around Sam as he reached the crib.

  Nothing had helped him determine the gender of the baby, and now Sam guessed he’d never know whether the tiny infant was a boy or girl. The shape in the crib was indefinable, unrecognizable for what it was unless you knew what it began as.

  The bedding was red. The huddled ball in the middle of the soaked and stained blankets was torn and shredded to become something resembling nothing more than butcher’s meat. There were no features left, there was nothing left to identify the child for what it had been, and the quickly degrading part of Sam that was still sane was queerly grateful for that.

  “Oh, dear God,” Sam exclaimed thickly as his stomach joined his mind in utter rebellion. “What the fuck did you do?”

  When Sam turned back to face the young woman, he encountered not a shell-shocked pretty girl but something from a nightmare vista.

  Her hands clenched and unclenched. Having grown bird-like talons, scraps of skin were dug away every time she plunged them into and then loosened them from her palms. She drooled heavily, thick yellow and black liquid that Sam could smell from feet away-the sickly scent of pus and infection. Her eyes rolled like they were trying to escape the hated confines of her sockets. As Sam watched, her silky yellow hair began to fall out and her girl-next-door baby blues became milky like the eyes of a fairytale crone.

  “When I did it, I hated it,” the girl said and her voice was a repellant gurgle. “But then I listened and it told me. I didn’t want it. Didn’t want it, so they took it. And now, it will take me.”

  Sam didn’t know what had happened to her from one moment to the next, but he knew that what she had been was nothing like what she was now. This was something alien and infectious; something that had taken away the person she had been and replaced it with a darkness Sam was quite sure could not be eradicated.

  What he was seeing here was the same phenomenon that had claimed the girl that had killed Dennis. Different form, different appearance, but the same sickness. And, he was quite sure; the same ability to kill him the way the small girl had killed his partner.

  “Now just calm down, sweetheart,” Sam said in the voice he used to pacify victims of fires. “You don’t want to do anything rash.”

  She laughed and the sound crawled along Sam’s skin like some slimy, multi-legged thing. Sam was sure he had only a few moments before she was entirely gone and whatever had claimed her would try to do to him what the thing in possession of the little girl had done to Dennis.

  As Sam was starting his next sentence with, “Now just,” she leapt.

  With a grunt, Sam dodged to the left, missing being gutted by those vulture-like talons by scant inches. She came at him again, with a growl more suited to a bear in a darkened wood than what had just been a pretty young woman in a suburban home.

  Sam tried to bolt for the door, but she anticipated the move and caught him across the face with one of those clawed hands. Her nails tore through his skin and he cried out in shock and pain. Blood blurred his right eye and he stumbled into the long dresser with makeup all over it. Bottles of nail polish and perfume tumbled over and hit the floor as Sam tried to avoid doing the same.

  She didn’t say anything, but gave another one of those gurgling, hair-raising giggles as she raised her wicked, harpy-like claws in challenge. Sam knew if he didn’t make it out the door on this attempt, he most likely would not make it out at all.

  Sam looked quickly around the room for a weapon as blood burned his right eye. Through the red film, he saw nothing that would avail itself as an appropriate means of defense.

  Trying to circle the young woman in order to clear his way to the door, Sam only succeeded in pushing her closer to the hallway. She smirked at him from the doorway and clicked the tips of her claws together; one fingertip at a time to the tip of her thumb in a measured pace. The effect of this vaguely threatening display was greatly disturbing.

  Sam wiped blood from his eye and off his cheek with a shaking hand. He didn’t know how to get through her, and he didn’t want to try testing her to a barehanded duel. He didn’t have razors for fingernails.

  With a snarl, she lunged forward. Sam gave a shout of alarm and held up both hands in what he was sure was a futile attempt to stave off her attack. Without realizing it, he closed his eyes.

  The slicing claws he anticipated never arrived.

  A loud, wet thud hit Sam instead of the attacking body he’d expected. He squinted around the blood in his eye as he opened them and saw the young woman collapsed on the floor, the back of her head matted with blood and thicker things. Standing behind her, white as a casket occupant before the makeup and holding a smashed laptop in his trembling hands was Austin.

  The teen dropped the broken piece of machinery like it had burned him and stared with wide, teary eyes at the very still form on the floor.

  “I-” he began, but Sam cut him off.

  “Don’t talk, just go,” the firefighter urged as he moved forward.

  He expected the girl would grab his ankle as he passed, digging those talons of hers into his Achilles tendon and laming him. She remained still, however, and Sam was through the doorway without incident within a few moments of Austin’s last-second rescue.

  “I told you to go if I didn’t come back out,” Sam said harshly as the two of them rushed through the house.

  “I didn’t want to leave you,” Austin said without turning around. He sounded equal parts stubborn and relived.

  Sam grabbed the boy by the wrist and stopped him, turning him around so that he could have eye contact when he next spoke.

  “Well, thanks,” Sam said. “You saved my neck. You’re a hell of a kid.”

  Austin smiled weakly at the compliment, and then his eyes widened as he spied something behind Sam.

  “Holy shit!” the kid squeaked. “Run!”

  Sam didn’t have to turn to know the young mother was up and out for blood behind him. He wasted no time turning Austin around and pushing him toward the exit. It wasn’t far now. They’d be out in less than a minute.

  With a howl that sounded partly like a wolf and partly like a hell spawn banshee, the young woman gave chase. Sam could hear her behind him, crashing through the hallway, thudding after them as they entered the foyer and Austin shoved opened the front door and fell out.

  Sam felt her behind him, those clawed hands outstretched inches from the back of his neck. He pushed his speed and stumbled out the door into the welcome sunlight. Austin was already off the front porch, running to the car with the keys in hand, clicking the unlock button frantically.

  Sam was out. He hit the pavement of the driveway and turned just in time to see the young woman fling herself out the door after them.

  And burst into flames.

  Mouth agape, Sam watched as the harpy-looking woman shrieked and screeched, writhed and burned. She tore at the remnants of her hair, her clothes, flinging burning pie
ces of skin and fabric away from her as she screamed.

  Austin, having turned to look at the spectacle, was shaking visibly as he watched the woman burn. She went up like someone had soaked her with gasoline and lit a match, but Sam knew no such thing had happened.

  He looked up, at the bright ball of daytime and the epiphany struck hard and clear. She’d burned because of the sunlight. Like a fucking vampire, she’d taken one step into daylight and gone up in her own fiery funeral pyre.

  “Holy shit,” Sam echoed Austin’s earlier statement in a surprisingly mild tone as he backed away from the still-burning body of the woman. She’d stopped screaming.

  “Let’s go,” Austin said in a barely-audible whisper as he held out the keys to Sam. They jingled with the force of his trembling. “Please, let’s go.”

  Sam took the keys, and his own hands shook just as badly. They went.

  Chapter Seven

  Amy decided to stick to the freeways in order to get back to her family. She knew it was probably slower than going straight over land, but she also knew she was wont to get miserably lost if she tried any way except the way she was familiar with and that meant driving on the freeway.

  With this plan in mind, Amy gathered her meager supplies, dressed her warmest and laced up her boots. She hoped to commandeer a vehicle of some kind to make the trip an easier one, but she had no qualms about walking the whole way, and no illusions about the fact that it would very possibly be a necessity.

  Moving her barricade from in front of the door, Amy listened closely, pressing her ear to the wood before she opened it. She heard nothing in the corridor outside her dorm. With a deep breath, she turned the handle and pulled the door open.

  Nothing accosted her. No one jumped at her with a gun or knife or some kind of crazy weapon she’d never seen, intent on committing some kind of violence against her. From the insanity she’d seen the night before to the graveyard stillness that claimed the hall now, Amy was disquieted by the change.

  Perhaps whatever madness had claimed the students and teachers of the college had vacated them, leaving them to return to their normal lives and behaviors. But if so, why were no students rushing through the halls, intent on making their classes on time? Why was the silence such a full and heavy one, anticipatory and somehow threatening?

  Amy didn’t believe for a moment that life had returned to normal around the college. She wasn’t tempted to call out a greeting down the hallway, and her reluctance wasn’t because she’d feel foolish if someone quite calm and normal answered her. She hesitated to make her presence known because she knew in some newly awakened part of herself that if anyone did answer, she wouldn’t like the response she would get.

  With this thought in mind, Amy slipped out of her dorm and quietly closed the door. She was trying not to draw attention, and the slightest sounds seemed to her like they’d be a giveaway, broadcasting her position to any nefarious enemies lurking silently in the shadows for the time being.

  She had her dorm key on the lanyard about her neck, so her door was locked as she closed it. She didn’t feel like she’d be returning there, and for a moment felt pangs of panic ripple through her as she thought of all the things she was abandoning. She rationalized herself away, silently scolding herself that pictures could be retaken, books could be reacquired and keepsakes taken to college weren’t really all that important to her, anyway. She wouldn’t keep any true treasures in a space she shared with three other people.

  Nodding to herself, Amy took her hand from the door knob and turned away from her dorm. That was behind her now, and the road to her family would be ahead of her shortly. In this in-between space, this limbo of doubt and indecision, she was more scared than she wanted to admit, and felt more timid than she knew herself to be.

  “Get yourself moving, Miss Amy,” she whispered. It felt like she did it just to test how her voice would sound in the empty hallway. “Got a lot of ground to cover no matter if you can get a car or not.”

  Stepping away from the closed door, Amy felt the need to tiptoe through the halls, trying her hardest to be inconspicuous and silent. Though equal parts of rational and fanciful mind told her it was a good idea, Amy refused to creep like a criminal down those familiar corridors.

  She saw no one in the halls as she moved, quickly and quietly yet trying hard to present a confidence she certainly didn’t feel. No doors opened to track her passage, no music sounded from the rooms. They all seemed empty, and yet somehow teeming with malevolent life. She was alone and yet observed. Outwardly ignored but clandestinely watched.

  “You’re giving yourself the heebie jeebies,” Amy declared in a scolding whisper. “Just quit thinking and keep moving.”

  ‘Keep moving’ seemed to be the motto Amy needed to adapt. If ever she paused for more than a moment, either to listen for the sound of human activity or to readjust her pack, the sensation of being watched intensified and began to take on a threatening air. It was as though whatever observed her-and she truly felt there was something-became more hostile with each act of fear or indecision.

  It almost seemed to Amy that she had regressed to a time of throat-closing, breath-stealing childhood terror, where the beastie in the closet would only come out to tear off her skin and eat her bones if she acknowledged said beastie’s existed. If she acted normal and ignored the imagined presence, morning would eventually come and she would be safe from the horrors of the night.

  These horrors weren’t made up monsters in the closet. What Amy felt creeping in on her was a real and corporeal threat. And she knew they were coming closer.

  “Amy!”

  When the distinctly male voice whisper-shouted her name, Amy gave a shrill shriek and jumped away from her would-be attacker. She turned; arms out, ready to ward off blows or perhaps deal some of her own. She didn’t know how much damage she could inflict, but she knew she wasn’t ready to just let herself be taken without a fight.

  “Amy, calm down!” The voice was becoming more recognizable, but Amy was still backing away in fear. “Amy, it’s Ray. It’s Ray. Calm down.”

  When Ray grabbed her by the forearms, Amy cut her scream off with a squeak and took a deep breath. She knew him, of course she knew him. Ray was one of her friends; he had been since she’d come here two years ago.

  Ray Barrett-commonly known among their small group of friends as Barrett the Ferret-was a sandy haired young man with soft brown eyes hidden behind thick, dark-rimmed eye-glasses. Ray’s usually heavy-hooded eyes were wide open and alert now, edged with fear and concern for Amy.

  “Ray,” Amy gasped in relief.

  His hands eased off her forearms and she took them in her own, validating that he was real and not some specter of the recently-vanquished night. His skin was clammy and wet with cool sweat, but Amy was relieved by the human touch.

  “Ray, it’s good to see a friendly face,” Amy admitted breathlessly, but Ray was dragging her down the hallway. Perplexed, Amy said, “Ray?” in a questioning tone.

  “We have to get out,” Ray declared, and it sounded like he was talking to himself. “Out of the dark. We have to get out of the dark.”

  “Ray!” Amy exclaimed as he pulled harder on her arm and she stumbled. “Ray, stop! I can’t run that fast!”

  Though not the most athletic individual she knew, Ray had a good seven inches on the 5’ 2” Amy. While Amy was in fairly good shape, it was still hard to keep up on someone with such considerable height on her.

  “We have to get out,” Ray repeated, and continued to drag her through the hallways, unheeding of her pleas to slow down.

  “Why, Ray?!” Amy practically wailed. She was now more afraid of whatever had turned cultured, timid Barrett the Ferret into this single-minded freight train of fear and desperation than of whatever may be drawn to the sound of her voice.

  Ray stopped momentarily, whipped around toward Amy and gave her the most deadly serious look she’d ever encountered. The expression chilled her bones and the marro
w beneath.

  “The things are safe in the dark,” he whispered conspiratorially. “We have to get into the daylight. They came in the night, and they’re only safe in the darkness. Now let’s go.”

  The chill Amy felt deepened and slid like electric ice down her spine as she heard a door open behind her. She didn’t have to turn to know that a threat lurked beyond the threshold, nor did she have to wait for Ray to pull her into a run before she knew they would shortly be pursued.

  Amy knew the things came after them, and they ran.

  Down one hallway and another, Amy pushed herself to run like she had in high school, trying out for track and field. She kept her arms tucked tightly by her side, kept her head down and pumped her legs for all they were worth.

  More doors opened, in front of them and behind them. Creatures were stirring, hearing their frantic passage and knowing the game was up. Amy was no longer convinced she could sidle through the darkened hallways, ignoring the monsters like a child beneath the blankets. These monsters chased, they hunted, and Amy fled like the stalked prey she knew she was.

  Ray and Amy burst out the dorm doors, gulping air and looking around anxiously. The world outside was silent, but it did not buzz with the heady anticipation of secret life as the interior of the dorm building had. This was a more relaxed, normal silence, expected to be broken by the hum of a passing car or conversation of companionable youths.

  Amy pushed back her hair and stepped a good distance away from the closed door, into the near-white sunlight of the winter morning. Her breath plumed on the air, and she watched it almost joyfully. She was glad to be out of there. Now that she was in the open, breathing clean air, she realized that the building had felt polluted. It had almost been like breathing smog or some toxic gas.

  “Ray, you gotta tell me what’s going on,” Amy said between panting breaths. “What was that? Who was chasing us?”