by Shining in the Dark- Celebrating 20 Years of Lilja's Library (retail) (epub)
He handed it to Bobby, who looked queasy just touching it, but who continued to hold on to it. Good, Johnny thought. He went to another, picked the skull off, and found this one to be a shovel. He went to a third, and Bobby spoke up: “Johnny, I don’t think I can carry more than one of these.”
Johnny placed his hands on a third skull. “I know,” he said, turning away and closing his eyes when the moths flew out at him. “But I want to take them off anyway. They shouldn’t be here.”
When the work was done, he stood in the at the edge of the sunlamp’s glow, looking into the darkness further off into the basement. He thought he could make out a door back there, but he wasn’t quite sure. Moths choked the air now. They needed to move.
He’d unwound his belt and folded it into his back pocket. Tucked into one of the loops at his side was a hammer he had found at the end of the garden. He held the shovel, a little large to carry around easily, in his left hand. Behind him, Bobby held the rake, a little smaller but still somewhat awkward. Johnny’s eyes flicked left and right, surveying the dark they were about to enter into. Nothing registered except for the slow, steady hum of the moths flapping their wings. The moths, the damned moths.
He turned around and slowly traversed the dead garden. “What are you doing?” Bobby asked, but Johnny didn’t answer him. His insides felt somehow cold now, his mind quiet. Was this what being a grownup felt like? He didn’t really want to know.
The sunlamp hung from the corner of the low basement ceiling, shining hotly down upon him. Johnny stared up into the light for a second, twisting the handle of the shovel in his small hands, slicking it with his sweat. Then, calling up memories of last spring’s Little League season, he slung the shovel over his shoulder like he had gripped that Louisville Slugger the day the Sharks beat the Lions. Slitting his eyes against the glare of the lamp, he swung out and up, shattering the glass bulb. A distinctly electric pop sound perforated the air, and several small sparks flew. Behind him, Bobby uttered a small cry.
Now he could still hear the moths, but he couldn’t see them. That was something, wasn’t it?
He also can’t see us, Johnny thought. He wasn’t aware that the thought was going to hit him until it did. For a moment, it gave him pause: how had LaRue been able to see them? He knew everywhere they went, added what they did into his creepy little rhymes. Were there cameras? There seemed to be speakers everywhere, projecting LaRue’s crazy voice. Why not cameras?
That didn’t matter now. What mattered was getting out of this madhouse. Alive, if possible.
He turned, stepping forward gingerly, favoring the leg that still hurt a little. “Come on,” he said, his foot landed in something soft and squishy; some type of vegetable, most likely. It didn’t matter, not now. He continued on, making sure he could hear Bobby’s breathing behind him in the dark, dark room, feeling ahead of himself with the shovel the way a blind person would use a cane. Moments later, he bumped his shoulder against the edge of something, what felt like a door, the one he’d thought he could see when the light had still been on.
“Watch out,” he whispered back to Bobby. There’s a doorway here.
“Okay,” Bobby whispered back, not sounding as scared as he probably felt. Good for you, Bobby, he thought, smiling a bit ruefully.
I wish I could see where we were, he thought, and as if LaRue had read his mind, a high-intensity light came on just above his head. Behind him, Bobby gasped. Moths flew toward the light like starving men shown a feast. Johnny glanced up, an icy splinter of fear poking into his heart. The similarly cold voice of Etienne LaRue spoke up, but the voice sounded slightly distant, as if the speakers weren’t that close anymore.
“I see you
can you see me?
Stop now, dear boys
You’ll never be free.”
“That’s what you think,” Johnny said quietly, glancing around briefly. They were in some sort of pantry. Handmade wooden shelves dominated the walls down here, and dozens and dozens of cans and jars stuffed the shelves. Most of the jars seemed to be filled with homemade jam. A scary sort of longing gripped Johnny suddenly. Grandma makes jam sometimes, his mind announced irrationally. Will I ever see her again?
Sadness threatened to break Johnny’s stoic façade, but he refused to let it. He couldn’t let Bobby see him breaking down, that more than anything. Instead, he swung the shovel upward, smashing this light, too. The smell of ozone filled the air, as well as the sickening, somehow muddy smell of moths being burned alive.
As the residue of the light filtered out of the darkness, Johnny thought he saw another small shaft of light up ahead. Not the artificial high-intensity lamps that LaRue kept flipping on, but what seemed like natural light. Outside light.
“Is that…?” he began, but then Bobby burst into a shrill cry behind him.
“That’s out!” Bobby pushed him aside as he ran forward, toward what really did look like out. Johnny moved to run after him, when fear gripped him. What if it was a trap? What if it was like the room where Chip was killed?
“Bobby, stop!” he yelled, but Bobby kept running, calling out, “That’s out, that’s out, we made it out!”
Slowly, carefully, Johnny followed. He could see Bobby’s silhouette now, outlined by the light coming in through a square pane somewhere up ahead. The silhouette stopped up ahead, and from where he was Johnny could hear Bobby call out, “It’s a door out!” with unmitigated glee.
Johnny willed himself not to run. It could still be a trap. Sharp things could come out of nowhere to chop their heads off. Still, excitement bubbled in his brain. Bobby had found a door out, and they could finally escape. Johnny hoped it wasn’t too good to be true.
As he came closer to his friend, he realized with mounting dismay that, yes, it was too good to be true. Even before Bobby spoke another word, Johnny understood. LaRue wouldn’t let them off this easy. He probably still had plans for them.
When he reached the door, Bobby was pulling at the handle, twisting it back and forth. The top half of the door was divided into four small panes of glass, separated by a plus-sign of wood in the center, kind of like one of those old-fashioned windows Grandma had at her house. The bad news was that the small windows had been fitted with cast-iron bars, situated so close together that Johnny didn’t think he could even get his hand through them.
The door, of course, was locked.
No fancy traps, Johnny thought, peering through the unreachable windows. Far off, he could see some bright lights dancing in the night. The lights of Scary World. They were really that close to other people, but they were trapped here like animals. How long had it taken them to walk over here from what Johnny remembered as the perimeter of the park? Ten minutes? Ten minutes away and already one of them was dead.
“Jesus,” Johnny barked, for the moment unable to think about anything but the hope of escape so close, only to be yanked away. No fancy traps, he thought again, he doesn’t need that here. He just needs us to see the lights of outside and he knows it makes it easier to hurt us. Well, dammit, he’s right. This hurts more than anything.
“Let’s go,” he said tiredly to Bobby, expecting another incident of shrieking and crying to rival the moment Bobby awoke to see the skulls. Off to the left there was another dark corridor, and Johnny trudged in that direction, steeling himself for the outburst. Instead, there was bare silence. He looked back for confirmation that his friend was following him, and stopped. Bobby was staring out at the bright lights of the theme park they had been led from. He wasn’t crying, or going into hysterics, as Johnny had thought. Only staring. “Bobby?” he asked.
A year before, Bobby, Chip and Johnny were in Chip’s treehouse, hanging out and reading comics. No one wanted to talk about what was so obviously on all their minds. A week before, Bobby’s father had been killed in a bus accident commuting home from work. Bobby, who could be as loud as Chip if you really got him going, had been pretty quiet since then. The air in the clubhouse that day felt so
thick, like it was that beef stew Johnny’s Mom made once in a while. Without warning, Bobby put his comic down—Batman, his favorite—stared at the two of them with glassy eyes, and said in a flat, cold voice, “I’m gonna die. You two are, too. Everyone. We’re all gonna die.” Then, he picked up his comic and began reading again.
Now, as Bobby looked out the window, a window that could have meant freedom, Johnny watched the amusement park lights play over those same glassy eyes. And in that eerily adult voice, Bobby said, “We’re never getting out of this house.”
“Bobby, no,” Johnny said, putting his arm out. Bobby didn’t shake it off, but Johnny felt some cold chill grasp him and he lowered his arm.
“You saw what happened to Chip. It’s gonna happen to us, too. Me and you. We’re gonna die in here.”
“Not if we keep moving, Bobby. Maybe if we get upstairs…”
“You promised me, back there. You promised me that we would get out.”
Johnny stared at his friend, a little scared. There was hate in Bobby’s voice. Hate, not against LaRue or the house or the situation. Hate against him.
“I meant it, too, Bobby,” he said, trying on a smile he knew felt fake.
“Liar,” Bobby said in that same emotionless voice. It was chilling in a way that the skulls and the moths weren’t. Those were new things, scary things in this suddenly scary world. But this was Bobby, a kid he’d known since kindergarten. His world had turned dark and scary and that was okay, not great, but okay. But not Bobby. Not now.
He was about to say something, anything to smooth things over and get them going again, when Bobby suddenly moved, brushing past him down the dark corridor. Without allowing himself to think, Bobby followed behind blindly, not daring
to speak.
What if his promise was a lie?
More stairs, but for some reason these seemed more solid. Johnny tapped a step with the shovel a little ways up. In the darkness, he saw a brief, fiery spark.
“Concrete,” he muttered.
“Okay,” Bobby said. Johnny didn’t detect the cold grownup voice there, and that made him feel a little better. Not much, but a little. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” Johnny responded, feeling ahead with his shovel to find the first step again. “Keep against the wall and keep feeling ahead with your rake.” Bobby grunted something Johnny assumed he had to take as “All right.”
He heard Bobby’s sneakers skiffle on the gritty surface of the step just above him. Johnny followed nervously. The memory of the last time he and Bobby were on stairs together was still fresh in his mind. One hand on the shovel, feeling ahead, and one hand on the wall, he slowly ascended the stairs. Nervousness simmered in his stomach.
A few moments later, he heard Bobby say from above him, “I’m at a door!”
Emotions bounced like superballs throughout his insides. Was this another trap? Could this be a way out? What was behind door number one?
“Wait for me!” he called up, and then he was there, touching what felt like a wooden surface. “It’s heavy,” he whispered to Bobby, placing his ear against the door. “I can’t hear anything on the other side.”
“You think it’s another trap, like with Chip?”
“It could be,” Johnny said, feeling around for the knob and finally finding it. There was silence for a second.
“I think I got something,” Bobby said, sounding a lot less like the unfeeling boy down at the basement door, but not exactly like his old self again. His old self is gone, Johnny, you know that. His mind whispered. Yours, too. You can’t be children
like that again.
Johnny closed his eyes and said, “What?”
“How about we open the door and stand off to both sides. That way, if something comes at us, we can stay back and it won’t hurt us.”
Johnny couldn’t really think of any problems with this idea, and since it seemed to be the only thing to do, he agreed.
“All right, count to three,” he said to Johnny. Johnny nodded, smiled when he realized Bobby couldn’t see him, and said, “One, two, three!”
Johnny grabbed the knob, turned it violently toward him and pushed the door open in one swift maneuver. For a moment, nothing moved. Then, the dark, terrifying voice of their unseen host spoke up over an equally hidden loudspeaker.
“Now you both know my little pets
and seen it when I feed them
but now you’ve found their special place
for this is where I breed them!”
“Oh shit,” Bobby said, and the moths came from everywhere.
Johnny threw his arms up in the now-familiar warding-off pose, his shovel dropping and clanging to the ground. Between his closed arms, he could see into the room beyond the door. Obviously once a kitchen, this room now housed what seemed like millions of moths, all swarming in the blue hues of black lights toward them. He couldn’t make much else out; what seemed like a small stand of trees and a few large piles of rocks stood against the walls of this former kitchen, but the moths choked his vision as surely as they had choked Chip’s lungs.
Bobby stood across from him, high, girlish shrieks peeling out of him. It was almost impossible to hear over the thousands of wings flapping furiously past them. Johnny turned, panicked, to stare at Bobby, and saw a moth bullet into his open mouth.
Not again! Johnny thought, his heart popping a bit in his chest. He bowed his head a little and stepped across to Bobby, who was spitting out the moth out onto the floor. Johnny glanced down and saw the thing, ugly and brown, squirming sluggishly on the stair at Bobby’s feet. Johnny stepped forward, squashing the moth under his sneaker, and blocking Bobby’s mouth with one of his hands. His other hand was clamping his own nose shut. Leaning closer to Bobby’s ear, Johnny opened his mouth slightly and yelled, “Keep your mouth and nose blocked! They can get in!”
He pulled back to see Bobby nodding frantically, and let go of him. Bobby ducked his head a little, throwing his arm over his eyes. His rake fell from his hands and leaned drunkenly against the doorframe. Immediately, he plugged his own nose and kept his mouth shut the way you did when you were demonstrating that you were going to keep a secret. Bobby’s lips were sealed.
He was also looking out into the kitchen, his eyes wide with shock. Johnny could almost hear him thinking about Chip. Hell, it was hard not to. It took him a second to tear Bobby’s attention away from the incoming moths. When he finally touched Bobby on the shoulder, his friend wheeled around and stared at him the same way. Bobby flicked his eyes toward the kitchen. There was probably a door out of the moth-room, and if there was, Johnny intended to get on the other side of it. After that, he didn’t know, but they certainly couldn’t go back down the cellar stairs, where the skulls were. The skulls, and little else.
Bobby finally got his meaning. He shook his head no, squeezing his eyes shut. You can’t make me, the gesture said.
Johnny opened his eyes wider, cocking his head toward the door. Anger was fighting panic in both his gut and his brain. Can’t make you, huh?
Again, Bobby shook his head, closing his arms tighter over his face. The moths deflected off the clenched arms like bullets shot against hard stone. “Stop it!” Bobby yelled, sounding panicked. “Please stop it!”
Johnny stepped toward Bobby again, letting go of his nose and grabbing Bobby by the sleeve. I don’t think he’s angry anymore, just scared, Johnny thought, for some reason feeling sad. Bobby had been a little unbearable when he was mad, but scared he was a challenge. And, Johnny thought, he really didn’t need any more challenges tonight.
He leaned close to Bobby’s ear. “I’m going in there!” he shouted. “I think there’s a door at the edge of the kitchen! You can come or you can stay, but I’m going!”
Bobby turned, glaring at Johnny through his encircling arms. Angry again, Bobby thought, some vague relief creeping into him. “Let’s go,” he said, ducking his head and letting go of Bobby as he turned into the giant flurry of moths. He glanced down lo
ng enough to locate his dropped shovel, and hold it across his chest like a soldier with a rifle.
Then, he was off, racing right into the heart of Moth Country. Beside him, obscured by the storm of dive-bombing moths, a small forest of potted plants flickered by. Stands of rocks were scattered throughout, and Johnny narrowly missed tripping over one. In the dim neon of the black light, Johnny squinted to see better ahead of him. He had been right. Tucked into the last space of west wall up ahead was a large wooden door with two giant, but dead, spotlights situated over it. It was closed, sure, but closed didn’t always mean
locked, right?
In this house it does, his traitorous mind whispered, and he tried hard to ignore it.
A particularly dense swarm of moths came toward him, and Johnny realized almost too late that he’d left his nose and mouth completely exposed. Acting on reflex alone, Johnny stopped and slammed the shovel into the air, battering the swarm back. A small group of tinny bong! sounds reverberated in the close air space just above him. A tiny rain of dead moths showered down upon his head. He didn’t even bother to shake them off. Moving the shovel back across his chest, Johnny got moving again.
Something large brushed past him on the left. He cried out, at once terrified. Visions of giant killer moths danced in his head. Then, he saw Bobby rushing ahead of him, holding his rake as Johnny was holding the shovel. It’s like one of those horror movies from the 50’s Dad likes, Johnny thought, The Army Boys and the Killer Moth Invasion. And, despite everything that had happened and everything that was happening around him, Johnny began to giggle.
He reached the door a few seconds after Bobby, who was holding the rake under his arm and blocking his mouth and nose with his hands.
“What’s so funny?” Bobby asked, his voice muffled: Whz zo unny? That only made Johnny laugh harder, grabbing the door frame and bending over. His mind screamed at him: You’re at the door, you idiot, go! Go! But for the moment, he couldn’t. This laughter, hysterical as it was, felt like the first taste of food a starving man takes. He clung to it desperately. If he could still laugh, he was still alive.