by Greg James
Thank god for Charlie though. He took the fear away.
Maureen touched a metal square in her pocket. It was a paint set, not an expensive one but it would get Charlie started. The school said that his art classes were where he really came alive and that he had a lot of talent. She smiled, imagining the look on his face when he unwrapped it on Christmas morning. The sight of his eager hands at work, the smiles and hugs he would give her. Yes, he was her light and despite everything she was looking forward to Christmas, just the two of them together.
There was a slight movement in the corner of her eye. Maureen followed it to an empty driveway that led into a dilapidated yard. She passed it every day and had never really paid it much attention. There was a single-storey brick building in there. Its windows were darkly barred and a dirty, peeling sign was mounted on top of it: Welcome to Christmasland.
Maureen was sure it hadn’t been there before and they couldn’t have put it up in less than a day. She picked up her bags and walked towards it. No workmen were that bloody fast, not these days. The closer she came, the more she saw it was brand new, mostly. The mortar between the bricks was still glistening and moist but the windows were not. They were grimy and the thin bars over them were heavily mottled with rust. The sign looked to have seen better days as well. Old windows and an old sign on a brand-new building – why?
It looked like it belonged on a building site. There was nothing to suggest it had a thing in common with the Father Christmas grottos in shopping centres or the festive markets in the parks and by the river.
Movement again, and this time she saw it was inside the building. Maureen used her sleeve to scrub away some of the dirt from one of the windows. The glass was wired. The dark cross-hatched lines before her eyes made her wonder why there was so much being done to keep a Christmas attraction so secure. She glimpsed something hanging from the ceiling inside, slowly swinging back and forth. The shape was soft, dark and heavy but she couldn’t see what it was exactly. There was too little light for that.
Time to go home, she thought, stealing a last glance back at Christmasland.
It was getting dark with evening and, as the streetlights came on, a light ignited inside the building, vaguely outlining the object hanging from the ceiling. More than one light came on, and they were all different colours; blue, orange, red and green, flickering on-and-off in irregular sequence. Maureen turned away sharply, grabbed her bags and walked towards the Estate. She’d seen what the hanging object looked like, to her eyes.
Charlie would be home by now. She hoped he would be.
It was getting too dark outside for young boys and she needed some light.
*
Maureen leaned over Charlie and kissed him goodnight on the forehead.
It had been a long evening and she was tired. She loved him very much but on Christmas Eve, every child has too much energy for an adult to cope with for long. The pain was burning intermittently through her calves as she padded out of his room and closed the door. The television sat silent in the corner. The old radio murmured and muttered away to itself, occasionally hissing as obscuring clouds of static passed by. The essentials were what she spent their money on these days. The telly and all the channels you could get cost too much so they spent their evenings listening to the radio instead, with Charlie chatting away as he drew and drew in his sketchbooks. It was like things had been when she was a little girl, she thought, everything coming full circle again. Not enough money to go around. Enough for what was needed, no more, no less. There wouldn’t be turkey for Christmas, just breaded chicken from Iceland. Tomorrow, she thought, he’ll be painting not drawing. Things would change and be better, just as they should be on Christmas Day. The radio suddenly cleared up and she made out a few words creeping through the white noise.
‘ ... god bless us ... everyone … ’
*
Maureen didn’t sleep well. The wind was up. There had been reports on the news of a Christmas storm coming in. She shut the window against it but even with the duvet over her head, she could still hear it braying away until all hours. A window blew open somewhere in the flat. She was on the borderlands between dreams and waking when she heard it. Behind her eyes, she saw a creature that was not Father Christmas riding bitter, northern winds. It came in through an open window. She could hear the dry rustling of its old skin and the leathery sound of its feet. It was searching for something to eat, a child, nice and warm, a slice of tender Christmas meat.
“Charlie!”
She was awake, her slippers were on, and she was slamming the door to Charlie’s bedroom wide open. The winter wind was blowing in through the window, turning the room’s shadows to black ice.
“Mum ... wassup?” He was in bed, pawing at his eyes, blinking at her, yawning. “Wha’ happened?”
Maureen closed the window and then closed her arms tight around him. Charlie returned her embrace as she said, “Nothing. Nothing happened. I love you, sweetheart. You know that? You’re the light of my life.”
“I love you too, Mum. Don’t worry, it’s only the wind. Everything’ll be all right in the morning. It’ll be Christmas Day.”
“That it will. Good night, dear.”
“G’night.”
She lingered for a moment as he laid down and wriggled under the duvet, which was adorned with various colourful superheroes. Maureen couldn’t help thinking how, without the light, the illustrated empty smiles and white eyes were not reassuring at all. She closed the door, returned to her own bed, and tried to sleep though the wind continued its hollow song outside. Not safe. For some reason. Not safe at all.
Charlie ...
*
Christmas morning came and Maureen awoke.
11:30am said the clock. She’d overslept.
She couldn’t hear Charlie. He should’ve been up and about by now.
Not safe.
“Charlie!”
She shuffled into the living room and then the kitchen. The cold floor played merry hell with her veins, awakening the pain with a severity that made her gasp and bite the inside of her mouth.
He wasn’t there.
She went to his bedroom; telling herself it was the pain coursing up her legs making her breath catch. She opened the door. Charlie was still in bed; quiet and still. She sighed and went over and sat down by him. The little devil had overslept, same as her.
All was well.
She reached out. His cheek was warm and soft as she stroked it. His eyes fluttered as she tousled his strawberry blonde hair, like Matthew’s when she’d met him as a younger man before it turned to grey and then went away altogether.
“Mum? You okay? You look tired.”
“I’m fine now, sweetheart. Fine now.”
They both got ready for breakfast with smiles on their faces.
Christmas morning and afternoon passed as a time of quiet pleasure between mother and son. Charlie loved his paint set. He also loved the cheap and cheerful Christmas lunch she made. The stuffing was a bit chewy and undercooked but he didn’t mind. There was a constant warmth in the air between them as the day passed and the sun went down in the evening. Maureen rested on the settee and stretched her aching legs out. It had been a rough night followed by an exhausting but heart-warming day. She fell asleep to the sound of Charlie’s paintbrushes stroking their way across paper. When she awoke, Maureen stared at the time on the clock for a minute or so before it registered.
11:30pm.
It was late. She hoped Charlie hadn’t been too bored with her asleep on the settee. He was a sweet boy letting her catch up like that.
“Charlie?”
She sat up straight, shuffled into her slippers, stood up and looked around. Charlie had been painting a lot. There were pictures all over the table. She looked closer and saw they were the same picture, or of the same thing, over and over again; broad strokes of red, black, and white forming a bloated man-shape with jagged fingers and crooked toes. It could’ve been Father Christm
as but it wasn’t.
“Charlie?”
She got to her feet with a wince.
“Charlie, where are you? Is this hide-and-seek we’re playing?”
She hoped so. She really did. Maureen made it to the front door. It was wide open.
His trainers were gone.
“Charlie!”
*
Maureen took the stairwell. The lift was broken again and it smelled like something had died inside. God, the pain. Every step was like treading on white-hot needles. No, don’t think of it. Not of pain, because pain is the start of death and he’s too young for it. There was no-one out and about as she hobbled across the desolate concrete forecourt of the Estate. She wielded the stuttering beam of the torch, flensing the dark with its light. The image from Charlie’s paintings played over and over in her mind as she trudged across the open ground. Someone would ask her later why she didn’t ask someone for help – and she said because she knew where he’d gone, or been taken.
Her shoes crunched on gravel as she made her way to the narrow street and the driveway. The night was populated with dustbin shadows and ragged shapes that seemed to crowd in and then retreat away from the torch’s beam of light.
I will find him, she thought, I will. It’s all going to be okay. This is Christmas Day. Like the doctor said, it’s all going to be all right. She cast the torchlight up the driveway to the building and its miserable sign.
“Welcome to Christmasland.” She said.
She walked towards it. Her hands shook but she gripped the torch hard, ready to use it as a weapon if she had to. Anything for her son. She’d do anything. Maureen had called the police before she left. They were on their way – but she was going to get her son back. He was going to be all right, okay. This was Christmas Day.
The lights were still flickering behind the filthy windows of the small brick building and she could see shapes inside. They were swinging slowly back and forth in time with the changing colours – blue, orange, red, green – except there had only been one shape hanging there yesterday evening.
One, two, she counted them again.
There was one more than there had been before.
The pain, she thought, it made me too slow, too tired.
Too old for a son.
“Charlie!”
She went around to the side of the building. There had to be a door. She went around to the other side. There was no door. There was no way in or out. Maureen hammered on each window. She could hear police sirens coming closer – echoes of the winter wind’s lonesome song. The torch shattered as she tried to break the bars on the windows. She wrapped her fingers around them and pulled – nothing. She could smell the rot of the metal and see the soft, waning shadows of the hanging forms within, which began to twist and turn violently rather than gently swinging back and forth. It was a dance, a struggling – they were dying once again. Charlie and the boy who came before him. It was mocking her, the thing that took her son away.
“Charlie …” she whispered, gently, to herself.
The police sirens pierced the air as the squad cars pulled into the driveway. The hanging shadows’ dance came to a halt. The coloured lights inside flickered and faded out one by one. The light of my life. Gone for good.
The police broke into the building by the time Christmas Day was over and the sun was rising. They carried out the bodies of the two boys with care. The corpses were pale but the bruises around each throat were livid with colour; blue, orange, red, and green. There was no sign or trace of anyone else having been inside the building. There was no record of the space being hired for months. Maureen told them what she had seen. The officers nodded and made their notes. No-one believed her. No-one disbelieved her. The plastic evidence bags held what the two boys had been strangled and hung with; half-a-dozen strings of broken Christmas fairy-lights.
‘ ... god bless us ... everyone … ’
Bibiliography
Zombies by Moonlight – originally published in Hell of A Guy: Fans on the Rampage anthology, Sinister Horror Company, 2016
It Follows You Home - originally published on DLS Reviews (www.dls.reviews.com) 2015
The Bus Shelter – originally published in The Eclective: Time Collection, Cyberwitch Press LLC, 2013
The Lift – originally published in Horror for Good: A Charitable Anthology, Cutting Block Press, 2012
Pteronophobia – originally published in Phobophobia, Dark Continents Publishing Ltd, 2011
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Made for the Dark. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a moment, I would also greatly appreciate it if you left a review on the site where you purchased this ebook. No matter how big or small it is, every review counts and matters to a writer because without you, the readers, we are nothing.
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Find out more about Greg James at his Website, Twitter and Facebook.
Titles available by Greg James
The Age of the Flame Trilogy – YA Fantasy
The Sword of Sighs
The Sceptre of Storms
The Stone of Sorrows
The Chronicles of Willow Grey – YA Fantasy
The Door of Dreams
Voyage of the Pale Ship
Khale the Wanderer – Grimdark Fantasy
Under A Colder Sun
Lost is the Night
Hordes of Chaos
The Vetala Cycle - Horror
The Eyes of the Dead
Shapes in the Mist
Hell’s Teeth
The Sevengraves Cycle – Horror
Sevengraves
The Thing Behind the Door
Standalone Horror
This Darkness Mine
London Ghost Story
The Clowns Outside
Zombies by Moonlight
The Oeuvre
Short Story Collections
Made for the Dark
Night Residue
Poetry Collections
Untitled I
Untitled II
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their help and support:
Lora, Henry & Natalie Kalevi – as always, as ever.
Robyn Porter – for putting together a suitably atmospheric cover.
Daria Lee, Robyn Walker & Charlie Oughton –the faces and non-faces for the stories in this collection.
M. Edward McNally & Heather Marie Adkins – you guys are the best author buddies a struggling writer could ask for.
Finally, to all of my friends, fellow authors and fans – thank you for your friendship and support. It means more than you could know.
Cheers all!
About the Author
Greg James is the critically-acclaimed author of the Vetala Cycle series and the best-selling Age of the Flame trilogy. He was born in Essex and grew up along the south-east coast of England. He has taught English as a foreign language in the Far East. He lives in London where he can be found writing into the small hours of the morning during the week, and sleeping in on Saturdays.
Table of Contents
Made for the Dark
Dedication
Author’s (Very Brief) Foreword
An Upstairs Room
The Face in the Picture
Tangerine Dream
The Curse of Amen-Ra
Fear and Wonder
Zombies by Moonlight
The Writhing
Bernice
A Soul who Wrote by Strange Starlight
Ode to a Night-Gaunt
The Hives
It Follows You Home
The Lift
A Perfect Day
Pteronophobia
His Loathsome Kiss
The Shed
The Bus Shelter
Waiting
Christmasland
Bibiliography
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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Greg James, Made for the Dark