Made for the Dark

by Greg James

  “Time to move out,” he breathed.

  Adam dropped the torch and fled.

  *

  There was nowhere else to go in the city. Prices had risen as the economy sank deeper into recession and the few places he went to interview at turned him away. The same rigid mask of unease and revulsion clinging to the skin of their faces as they closed the door on him. He would wait a moment on the doorstep, listening to the muffled sound of their shocked and disgusted words. Nowhere to go but home to the district. Home to the chattering darkness and the empty houses it inhabited. No family. No friends he could call on. The streets beckoned. The university wouldn’t help. He’d told his story to them and they merely looked at him until he went away and left them in peace.

  He had to go, just take his stuff and leave; find something, someone, anything, anywhere that was not there.

  When he came to the door of No. 53, it was opened for him as it had been on his first visit by the girl he took to be a pregnant junkie. He had heard her shuffling and moving about downstairs in her digs on a number of occasions but he had not seen her since then. And she was different. The swell of her belly was gone entirely.

  Despite everything, he smiled and asked, “How's the baby doing?”

  Her dilated eyes turned towards him. Her lips parted and the teeth ground together as if preparing for speech, but nothing came out except for a low, lingering hiss and an odd, wet scraping sound. Adam smiled, uncertain, and walked around her so as to make it to the stairs. In his periphery, he noticed how her eyes followed him and how she turned, seeming to drag her feet and stumble. A child who had forgotten how their body works. A stream of drool ran out from her lips. Adam increased his pace, taking the steps of the stairs two at a time, closing his eyes at the sound he heard emanating from below, coming from her. The sound of a darkness that was not darkness, the ceaseless chatter of its penumbral ebb and flow; the voice of the district.

  He grabbed what he could of his belongings and stuffed them into his rucksack. Straps over his shoulder, he made to leave when the pain first scythed through him. It travelled from his abdomen, up through his stomach and oesophagus to erupt inside his mouth. He fell to his knees, dry-heaving, gagging, feeling something come up from deep inside; tearing soft muscle, pushing out of his throat and into his mouth. He dry-heaved again and spat it out; segmented, white and writhing with a burnished pale brown knuckle for its nascent head. Pain shot through him once more but he was on his feet this time; stamping and dragging his foot through the bulbous pupa until it was a dead smear. More cramps, more aches reaching through to his bones, but he was moving now with a drunk's alacrity. The room twisting and veering on its axis around him as he battered open the door and crashed down the stairs. The pain drove through him again and again; making him stumble, stop and buckle. More bulging pupal bulbs fell down the stairs before him, robed in his phlegm, bile and blood. He came to a stop at the feet of the once-pregnant girl. She was looking up at him with those eyes of hers as she opened her mouth to show him what was inside. What might, on first sight, have appeared to be pregnancy as the pupae hatched and multiplied. What might look to be a tide of overflowing darkness and a welter of waning shadow to the uninitiated.

  He saw mandibles stirring in her mouth; heard them click, chatter and call as his insides tightened and burned with the unseemly birth-pangs of their young. He understood something of what was being said. He understood the gnawing aches would only last as long as his bones did and that his stomach would only hurt as long as they needed him to be a walking womb – a hive. After it was all over, all done; he would find his place with the other meat in one of the basement graves. There, to be digested and reborn in a darkness that was not darkness; where he would become one with the district – one with its voice.

  It Follows You Home

  Warm shadows of evening were gathering in the cemetery. Cheryl drew her coat tighter around her shoulders as the world began to grow dim. It wasn’t cold but it felt colder as light was gradually overtaken by darkness. The shutter of the camera clicked shut for the final time and Damon nodded at her. The shoot had come to an end. The cemetery had been a good choice and she knew Damon’s pictures would be superb, but there was still the thought she had been not been able to shake of all the dead people sleeping under her feet.

  “It’s a spooky little place even in daylight, eh?” Damon said as he packed his camera and tripod away.

  “You’re not kidding,” said Cheryl, “I think I had a dream about it last night.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, that the people buried here were watching us, I could hear their fingernails scratching away against the lids of their coffins and they were saying something. Something strange, I can’t remember what it was though.”

  “Brrrr – that’s some imagination you’ve got on you there.”

  “Well, I am a writer, Damo.”

  “This is true. Maybe you want to hop in the SUV so we can get on our way. You don’t want it to follow you home.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “What?”

  “That last bit.”

  “Uh … you don’t want it to follow you home? It’s just an old saying, I think. Something my gramps always used to say when he’d call us in at night. ‘You kids come in here naowh, ‘cos you don’t want it to follow you home.’”

  “That’s a great accent, Damo,” Cheryl laughed.

  “What I don’t make as a photographer, I make up for by being an impressionist.”

  “Yeah sure, don’t give up the day job.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Cheryl nodded. She looked at the way the shadows were lengthening in the cemetery and how her own shadow was blending in among them. They all looked like long, shapeless fingers scratching their way across the dusty ground. She thought something was there, for a moment, behind one of the tombstones. Low and dark; a small, crouching form. She was sure it had eyes. It looked like it was about to stand up and be seen. She felt a sudden prickling sensation; looking down, she saw that the shadows of the cemetery were touching the tips of her toes.

  Damon sounded the horn of the SUV.

  Cheryl came back to herself. She wiped at her eyes as if she had just been asleep and rudely awoken. There were grains of sleep on her fingers and they appeared black in the fading light. Looking back over to the stone, she saw nothing was there.

  “That’s definitely some imagination you’ve got,” she said to herself. She dusted her hands, turned and walked out of the cemetery gates. She paused as she crossed the threshold. She heard something scratching away, like dead fingers in a dream.

  It was warm and stuffy in the vehicle as it pulled away. The lingering heat of the day had dissipated. Cheryl watched the cemetery recede in the wing mirror. She was sure that she hadn’t seen something small and hunched crawling out through the gates.

  “You’re quiet, Cheryl. Are you all right?” asked Damon.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Just thought I saw something back there. That’s all.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry. I spooked you with my old gramps’ stupid superstitions.”

  “No, no, no. It’s okay. I’m a writer, I’m more than capable of spooking myself without anyone else’s help.”

  Cheryl squeezed his knee and gave him a reassuring smile. She hoped it was convincing. What could it have been back there? A desert animal, shaped by the shadows into something more sinister? It had to be. It couldn’t be anything else. Too small to be a grown man. Too big and the wrong shape to be vermin of any kind.

  ... something in-between ...

  Now, that was a horrible thought.

  “You sure you’re okay, Cheryl?”

  She smiled and nodded, hugging her coat tight around her body despite the warmth being pumped out by the dashboard heater. She watched the road disappearing behind them and the shapes that seemed to come into and out of being along its boundaries. None of them looked like a frail, withered fo
rm, wrapped in rags, slowly and steadily pursuing them. No, none at all.

  *

  “You sure you’re going to be okay at home tonight?”

  Cheryl was standing beside the SUV, looking at her house and how dark it was inside. Lily was away at college and Phil was on another business trip.

  Yep, just me, myself, and I tonight.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine, Damo. You get on home and develop those pictures.”

  “Sure thing, boss. That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

  “I sure do. See ya, Damo.”

  “Take care, Cheryl.”

  There was a sincerity to his gaze as he spoke those words that she found touching. They hadn’t known each other long and were still more colleagues than friends, but his kindness made her feel better about going into the house alone. He was right. She had managed to spook herself back at the cemetery and the feeling of it was still lingering in her gut. It was easier to be scared on your own than it was when other people were around. She watched his SUV’s tail-lights wink out around the street’s kerb and felt the urge to run after it and wave him down – but she didn’t. A shape by the fence across the street was just a sack of garbage, nothing more. It hadn’t moved. Some stray animal must have been at it; that’s why the black plastic was torn and fluttering like that. Whatever was in the sack must have been last night’s dinner. She could smell it in the air. It had gone rotten in the heat.

  “Isolation is the root of all fear,” she whispered as she took out her door keys. She let them hang there in her hand for a moment and clink together a few times. She waited until she was sure she could not hear a scratching sound coming from behind. She headed for the front door and unlocked the house. She should feel safer here; in her street where there were no tombstones and dead people under the ground.

  But what about those not under the ground?

  “Stop it.” she said to herself.

  Everything around her was suffused with the elemental night-time blue of the moon. The houses, sidewalks, fences and front gardens with their bushes were arranged in serene, familiar patterns, which soothed her eyes and mind. Still, she squinted at the garbage sack across the street. It seemed to be more ragged than it had been a moment ago – had it moved? Were those tatters of cloth and not plastic?

  Maybe some kid had torn up a shirt and they’d had to bag it up. Yeah, something like that. The moon’s light was not shining on dirty old bones and there were no eyes over there, looking at her from a face made more of shadows than flesh and bone. Cheryl pushed the door open, stepped into the house and shut the front door hard. After a few minutes, her breathing settled down.

  Dinner was lukewarm pizza from the microwave. Leftovers from last night’s takeaway before Phil and Lily left town. The house was not a home when it was this empty. She felt like a stranger. Cheryl turned the television on and cranked up the volume, creating false sounds of life to echo through the house. As time went by, she found it difficult to concentrate on the old film playing across the screen. It was one of her favourites; Some Like It Hot. Maybe it was because Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon were in black and white and, in her periphery, the shadows of the house seemed to be moving in time with the monochrome patterns. Whenever she turned her eyes to look though, the shadows became still. She went back to watching the film. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon were walking through a blizzard in downtown Chicago. It was cold there, so cold. She felt the cold biting at her like shadows in the cemetery. Her mind kept returning to Damo’s words until it was running through her mind like a ritual chant drowning the dialogue of the film.

  ... you don’t want it to follow you home ...

  Rubbing her eyes, Cheryl got up and turned off the television. Silence closed over the house like a mouth. Her fingers made fists in response. At least the play of shadows seemed to have come to an end. I must just be tired, she thought, too tired.

  She decided to make a coffee to steady her nerves. It was late for coffee but she didn’t have much desire to sleep, not just yet. The quiet of the house was broken only by the sound of her own footsteps on polished wood and then lino.

  She was sure answering footsteps did not come from somewhere upstairs.

  *

  Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, as the old English saying goes.

  Cheryl swallowed her coffee in one gulp and then stayed in the light-saturated space of the kitchen until her feet began to feel numb from the cold, tiled floor. If Phil and Lily could see me now, she thought, literally jumping at shadows. I’d never live it down. But I’d never be like this if they were here either. I’ll feel better in the morning, just need to sleep this evening off. I’ll be fine.

  The house felt quiet and heavy around her. A weight settling from out of nowhere. A presence following behind. It was there on the stairs and it was there when she showered. It always seemed to be hiding behind another sound, another something. When she stopped on the stairs, paused crossing the landing, or turned off the showerhead there was nothing but the silence of the house to greet her. I heard something though, she thought. Each time, she heard it. Something in the walls, lightly scratching away. Cheryl took a sleeping pill to ease the effects of the caffeine, and listened out for the scratching once she was in bed. Almost willing it to come to her so she knew that she wasn’t hearing things. Clouds of the night passed across the bedroom window. She stared at them until she saw that horrible, hunched shape drawn across the curtains. She imagined its dirty bones under the light of the moon.

  ... you don’t want it to follow you home ...

  Cheryl rolled over in bed, away from the window and faced the wall. The wall where the scratching waited. She was sure it was there even though she hadn’t heard a sound. It was waiting for her to sleep, then it would begin. Light and scrabbling, enough to wake her. It was there, she knew it, so she waited for it to begin. She could almost hear it, coming from some far-off place. Somewhere very, very dark where no light had ever shone and the dead hopelessly scratched away at the coffins trapping them in their graves; lost to eternity, desperately seeking a way out. A way to live again.

  Minutes came and went. Hours passed by. Cheryl did not sleep. The scratching did not begin, but it was there. It had to be. She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t close her eyes. She got out of bed, went to the window and opened it. The cool air felt good as it bathed her face. She breathed it in and then looked down on the street below.

  It was there on the sidewalk. The sack of garbage; it had moved from the other side of the street to hers. She could see clearly it was no sack of garbage. The eyes glimmered like old coins. Perhaps they once were; a payment for passage along the paths of the dead. Its body was a hunched twist of rags and old bones. She could see its teeth working over the gnawed remains of a tongue. It came rushing, soundlessly, towards the house. Cheryl slammed the window shut and sat down on the bed. She drew her knees up against her chest, shivering violently. It was here. It had come for her. She had let it follow her home.

  Cheryl reached for her cell phone on the bedside dresser. She turned it on, waited for the bars to fill and then thumbed in Damo’s number – and listened to what she had expected to hear. A light, insistent scratching. No dialling tone, no static, just that steady, grating sound. She couldn’t even leave voicemail. The computers and laptop were too far away for her to reach. They were buried in the darkness downstairs. This was not her home anymore. It belonged to something else. She could hear it in the house. She knew if she opened the door to the bedroom, it would be there. It could wait all night. The dead were patient. There was nothing else for them to be.

  Don’t sleep, she thought, that’s all you have to do. Stay awake and don’t leave this room because that thing wants to scratch its way inside you. Stay awake, that’s all you have to do. Cheryl sat on the bed and waited for dawn. Just. Don’t. Sleep.

  She stifled a yawn.

  *

  Morning came, natural light filtered into the bedroom and Cheryl’s cell phon
e began to vibrate its way across the bedside dresser. Her slender hand reached out, picked up the phone and thumbed the touchscreen to answer it.

  It was Damon.

  “Hi, Cheryl. How’re you?”

  “I’m good, Damo.”

  “You sure? I got a missed call from you.”

  “No, I’m fine, just fine.”

  “Okay ... you sure you’re okay? You sound a bit … I dunno … rough ...”

  “I had a rough night. Late night. Too much coffee”

  “Careful now, boss. That stuff’ll kill ya.”

  “I’ll try to take it easy.”

  “Okay, cool. Well, gotta go. Need to develop those shots for ya. Just wanted to phone and check you were okay.”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

  “Great. Bye then, boss. Take care.”

  “You too. Bye.”

  Cheryl’s hand put the phone down. She got up and stretched, welcoming the morning light with a broad smile and bright eyes. She breathed in and felt dryness lining her throat. It was no longer dark downstairs so she could get something to quench her thirst and wake up some more. It felt like so long since she last drank and ate. As she padded out of the bedroom, she pushed something under the bed with her foot. A ripe bundle of rags that scraped and rustled to itself. She would put it in the garbage later. No-one would know what it was even if they found it. As she showered away the night’s tiredness, Cheryl closed her eyes and rejoiced in the feeling of hot water on her soft flesh, and listened to a sound only she could hear. It was the sound of fingernails hopelessly scratching away inside a coffin, which was a good hour’s drive away. Soon, it would be long forgotten. She heard and felt the cries of a woman trapped there. She would never be found. She should have known better. She should have listened to her friend, it thought as it stretched out arms that were supple and alive, admiring the young body that was now its own.