DarkFuse Anthology 2

by Shane Staley

  I hurried into the next room. More bare floorboards. The sun streamed in through the naked windows. I noticed patches on the green walls where the coloring was different and I assumed this showed where mirrors and pictures had hung when the house had been occupied.

  “Gary,” I called. The sound of my voice echoing off the walls was eerie. I hurried through the door and came to a landing with a wooden staircase rising up to the first floor. My initial thought was that it looked too brittle to bear weight, that any pressure on it would bring the structure down into a pile of matchsticks, but then I heard Gary’s voice above my head and I saw his blurred footsteps in the dust on the risers.

  I couldn’t work out what he was saying, but it sounded like he had found someone in the house. I heard Gary’s voice rise to a high-pitched protest. And then his voice ripped into a scream.

  “Gary,” I shouted and ran for the staircase. I hit the steps hard, clearing two risers with each jump.

  The sound stopped as quickly as it started and I was still only halfway up the stairs when I heard Gary’s voice again—soft and restrained, as if he were passing comment on the weather or swapping gardening tips.

  All the doors at the top of the stairs were closed, and for a moment I couldn’t work out which one Gary had taken. It felt like a bizarre game show and I even imagined some slick ex-DJ’s voice asking me, “Do you want to see what’s behind door number two?” I started to laugh. A ragged, manic laugh.

  Gary joined me, his voice perfectly balanced between terror and ecstasy. I punched the door from which the sound came with the heel of my wrist.

  Gary stood inside an empty bedroom. He smiled. There was no sign of the terror that had been in his voice a moment before.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  He looked at me like I was the one who was mad. “No one.”

  “I heard you talking,” I said. He shook his head and I thought there was pity in that gesture.

  “I did,” I pressed him. “I heard you.”

  He wasn’t looking at me when he answered. He was staring into the corner of the room. “He’s always like this. I’m sorry.”

  For a brief moment, the light in the room dimmed, as if something had passed in front of the window. I looked out, even after I remembered we were on the first floor of the house. I looked out and then laughed.

  He held out his hand toward the corner of the room and on his palm there was the rough semicircular outline of a small bite mark. It looked like a child’s.

  “Jesus, Gary,” I whispered. “How did that happen?”

  Gary didn’t shift his attention from the corner. “I’m going to kill him soon.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but there were no words there, just a cold emptiness.

  As I watched, the wound on Gary’s hand filled with blood.

  He screamed. But there was no pain in that scream. It reminded me of the noise kids make on a fairground ride, more joy than fear. The shrill sound echoed around the room and seemed to burrow through my ears and into my skull.

  “We need to leave,” I told him. I reached out to him, but before I touched him I felt a sharp sting on my arm. In a second my shirt blossomed with a red stain.

  “Shit, that hurts,” I said and dropped my arm. There was a cut running from my wrist to my elbow, as if someone had taken a knife to me. I watched the wound rise on my skin. Who did that? How could they do that without me seeing them?

  “He doesn’t understand,” Gary said. He nodded, as if agreeing with whatever the other person said in reply. “I suppose I could.”

  “Could what, Gary?” I heard the urgency in my own voice. The terror rising like the water level in a suicide’s bath. “What could you do?”

  “Kill you,” Gary said. “I could kill you.”

  A stab of pain dragged my attention away from him, if not for that I would be still looking into his blank eyes.

  Scratched onto my arm in ragged letters: Gett.

  I watched the word form as if someone was carving it into the bark of a dead tree.

  Owt

  Gett Owt

  Gett Owt

  “Gary?” My voice was a soft whimper. “Gary, is that you?”

  Gett owt!

  The exclamation mark cut deep into my flesh so I felt the tip of the invisible knife scrape against my bone.

  I grabbed a handful of Gary’s shirt. For a moment he remained standing, but then he tripped forward as if he had been released. I drove him out of the room before me. I didn’t have time for finesse; we made it to the landing and I pushed him over the top step.

  I ran down the stairs after him and, when I reached the bottom, Gary looked at me with the simple confusion of a child. He was holding his body in a strange lopsided manner, his shoulder dropped down.

  “I think I’ve broken something,” he said.

  I nodded. “I think you have.” And I pushed him. I put both my hands onto his crumpled shoulder and I pushed him and the scream he made was pure and human.

  We passed through the first room. The faded patches on the green walls had been painted in blood. Messages daubed in dark brown.

  Gett Owt.

  Kill me.

  Kill them.

  There were handprints at the bottom of the wall. Tiny handprints no larger than a baby’s that reminded me of the walls of Jimmy’s nursery.

  “I want to stay,” Gary said.

  I didn’t even try to argue with him. I pressed on his broken shoulder once again and was rewarded with a scream. I bullied him through the room.

  Light flickered on the opposite wall. From upstairs, I heard voices.

  “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us.” Speaking and then shouting and then crying.

  Low childish laughter bubbled up from the walls. As I walked toward the door, it slammed shut in front of me. I seized the handle and wrenched it open. For a moment there was resistance, like a tiny hand on the other side was trying to keep the door closed, but then it popped free of the lintel and almost smashed against the wall.

  “I need to stay,” Gary said.

  “Fuck off.” I pushed him through the doorway before someone in the house could come up with another trick to try and keep us there.

  Now back in the first room we had entered, the lozenge of sunlight on the floorboards broiled with shadows. The dead bluebottles buzzed against the window, as if trying to escape. Silhouettes of children blurred the sunlight.

  There was a heavy thud and then I saw a single bloody handprint appear on the glass. It took me a minute to determine if the smudge was on the outside of the glass or in the room with us.

  The handprint was on the inside.

  I propelled Gary in front of me, the pair of us almost tripping over the door frame and each other, but finally we were out of the house and standing in the overgrown garden. We ran, rubber legs folding below us, and did not stop until we reached the first tree, where the body of a small child hung in a noose.

  I stepped beyond the tree and looked behind me. The houses of Nether Goole were lost amongst the swaying golden Lincolnshire wheat fields. But I could still feel them pulling on my heart, like tides drawn by the moon.

  I looked at Gary and I knew he was feeling the same. Perhaps the urge was even stronger for him—after all, he had been the one to find the place on the map originally—and I wondered how long we would be able to stay away.

  Imago

  F. Charles Murdock

  If Bailey Meyers hadn’t lied to me all these years with tight jeans and short skirts, maybe she’d be on top of me now instead of the other way around. I tried to explain this to the posh gutter-slut, but the one time I asked if she understood me, she screamed “fire!” like they teach in those bullshit self-defense classes and I had to clamp a hand over her mouth before somebody found us in the storage room behind the biology lab.

  She bit down hard on the hand gagging her and I hissed. Without pulling away, I hunched over her and sank my own teeth into the bri
dge of her pretty little nose, the skin there breaking against the bite. I felt blood run along my tongue, its tang mixing with the sweet smell of her long blonde hair.

  “Yeah!” I snarled as I pulled away. “How do you like it?” I put all my weight against her, wanting to bite her again, to take away her allure with brute savagery.

  Not one to surrender so easily, Bailey began to pitch her body upward, trying to buck me off, but I was between her legs, my chest on hers, and I just happened to be on the varsity wrestling team: there’d be no escaping this pin.

  “Try that again and I’ll gag you with something else.”

  “And I’ll bite that too!” she screeched, her words dulled by my heavy hand.

  And when she finally realized how useless her struggling was (and how all that grinding was backfiring), the sobbing began, then the pleading, then the tears. But I’d prepared my sympathetic heart for Bailey Meyers. I had to teach her to stop lying to me.

  “If only you’d paid attention, Bailey,” I whispered. “If only you’d kept your body’s promises to me.”

  Her face screwed up and she began to bawl, chirping like a bug beneath my palm. Her sudden ugliness was startling. I turned my attention to the swell of her breast and realized her face had little to do with what was to come. All that face was in the moment I cupped her tit with my free hand was a mouth that could scream…oh, and eyes that could see and remember. Yes, that too.

  She was drawing erratic breaths through my fingers as I slid my free hand down the tight crease of her abdomen and under the waistband of her black skirt. Right away I could feel the slick of her silk panties on my probing fingers and the hot mound beneath, that lovely place her revealing clothes and come-and-get-it stride only whispered about in the hallowed halls of our high school, one I’d coaxed her out of with a dumb little song of all things. And when she’d giggled and asked what I was doing, I’d forced her into the darkness of this back room.

  I realized then my own breathing had grown erratic, my skin pricking and my thoughts buzzing with exhilaration, my own lovely place hot and stiff and wanting.

  “This is going to happen, Bailey,” I whispered, trying not to let her shiny red face disgust me. “And you’re going to pay attention, right? Now you’re going to pay attention to me instead of playing your little games.”

  She bucked one final, futile time and then loosened beneath me, her legs spilling apart in surrender.

  “There you go,” I said as if in consolation. “You just lay back and enjoy.” I pressed a hard finger into the thin silk veil beneath her skirt and the tender, no doubt worn flesh beyond.

  “Please…Cole...”

  She was asking for mercy, but I heard an invitation, one I’m sure she’d extended to dozens of other guys since she’d discovered the innate power of sex.

  “Hell, fake it if you need to,” I continued. “God knows you’re such a capable actress. So yeah, lie to yourself, Bailey, just like you’ve used your body to lie to me all these goddamn years.”

  Then I looked into her eyes, through the film of tears and past the baby blue of her irises to see if she was paying attention. I could see a warped reflection of my grinning face, but no light of comprehension, no focus. She was trying to slip away, to escape through some mental trap door reserved for emergencies, and I felt the familiar sting of denial and the rage that often trailed it. How many nights had I lain awake in bed picturing this moment, satisfying myself to images of her conquered body writhing beneath mine on this very floor? How much planning and courage and initiative had it taken to arrive at this sweet moment when promises were kept and secret debts were paid? There was no way in hell I was going to let this teasing bitch take this from me. I was the taker.

  I dug my fingers deeper, trying to bring her back, to break her body and heart. And yet her eyes were still emptying, her face still an ugly red, though soft and lax. Then I’d just have to be quick about it...

  I pulled my hand from her skirt and, as she shuttered, brought it to my own crotch, to the zipper of my jeans, the only thing truly separating us. And as I was moving into position, a strange noise stopped me like the coo of a baby.

  I looked down at Bailey, swearing I’d beat the pretty right off her if she was making that god-awful screeching, but she was still looking past me, her eyes distant and unaware, her face blank and unbelieving. Another jarring coo drew my eyes left where a small, bulbous insect was writhing on its back, its wings twitching, its jagged legs pedaling lazily. A cicada, a male by the sound of its deathsong. Mr. Ambrose, the biology teacher whose room I’d chosen for Bailey’s little lesson because it was dark and secluded after school let out, had called it an imago when we’d studied them. Vile, disgusting bastards.

  I turned to Bailey and was about to carry on when the cicada buzzed again, its whine that of a sobbing child. I froze, my attention drawn back to the...

  A newborn baby lay there now, its pale, naked body thrashing, its cry piercing and incessant. And with that angry, puckered face and those lifeless gray eyes, wasn’t he familiar? Yes, I recognized him even in such scant light, but...

  “You can’t be here,” I hissed. “You were gone. I made you go away!”

  The baby and Bailey screamed in chorus.

  “Shut up!” I screamed, any pretense of silence voided by the rage surging through me. I brought my free hand from between us and brought it down hard across Bailey’s face, making her flushed cheek violet with a welt in the shape of my hand. Both fell silent, but before I could untangle my thoughts, another creak gave me pause.

  I forced myself to ignore it and, after a moment, my mind was back on the girl and all those times she’d walked by me in the hall, ignoring me though her ample curves called out. I was thrusting against her now, the few layers of clothing between us doing little to deter the rising pleasure inside me. I slid my hand up her cotton blouse and forced it into the right C-cup of her bra, her nipple taut and chilled against my hot fingers.

  Then came the distinct sound of laughter beside me from the baby who hadn’t stayed away.

  “You’re not here!” I snarled, keeping my eyes on Bailey’s slack face, trying to continue her lesson. “This isn’t happening! Now go away before I...”

  I caught movement in my periphery and when instinct turned my eyes to it, I was once again forced to stop.

  The baby had stilled, his pudgy legs set apart, his arms at his sides. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, Bailey all but forgotten in that strange moment except for the slight sensation of her shallow breaths on the hand still cupping her mouth.

  The baby laughed again, turning to face me in the dark. I recoiled at the sight of his terrible eyes, no longer the recognizable dull grays, but the bulbous, wide-set black eyes of a cicada set into his tiny skull. A chill ran through me and I looked away, my mind already trying to forget the dark intelligence I’d seen there.

  I was looking at Bailey again and when I saw the new round of tears building on her clumped lashes, I was overtaken with the urge to rip and tear and break until there was nothing left for her to tempt with, no more promises her body couldn’t keep. But I restrained myself in favor of the heat I felt beneath me.

  A moment later and my roaming hand was planted up her skirt. I wasted no time finding the ruffled top of her panties, grabbing it with a fist that wanted so much to bruise and maim, but instead tore the silk away from that even softer thing beneath. My eyes were not drawn back to the baby so much as forced there by my desire to watch the baby watching this happen. I wanted the little shit to remember when I’d overpowered him on that long-ago summer afternoon and made him go away because he’d come between me and those who loved me.

  The thing staring up at me now was neither a baby nor a bug but some lowly abomination between the two. Its eyes were still dark and menacing, but now hauntingly familiar. The body was puke-green and stiff with a bizarre hybrid of skin and exoskeleton that clicked when it moved. Its six legs were human until their second joints, where
they tapered off to slender, jagged notches, each ending in what looked like a single purple finger. The legs pedaled, folding along its many sharp joints toward its misbegotten body, each finger beckoning me to come.

  I wanted to be away from it, but was lost in the nothingness of its eyes so when it opened its fleshy, toothless maw and began to creak, I could only stare dumbly as old memories were awakened.

  * * *

  I was three then and happy…well, happy before he came and ruined everything. Before him there was only me and I alone had the hearts of family and friends. I relished the attention of so many.

  I didn’t necessarily hate Adam when Mom and Dad brought him home from the hospital, but only because I didn’t realize how quickly things would go to hell with him around. By his third day, he was already getting most of their attention. Friends and family, the same who’d fawned over me my whole life, would visit, but not to see me. They only wanted to see the baby, to pass him around as he slept, to whisper him quiet when he threw tantrums. Nobody gave a shit about little Colie anymore. Boo-hoo, right? Well, I took care of the problem.

  On Adam’s fifth day home, I crept into his nursery room while he napped, having made damn sure Mom and Dad were busy across the house so I wouldn’t be interrupted. I remember the sunlight on the carpet before my old crib and the raspy snores of the baby within, the mistake I was expected to call “brother.” And I remember its shrill warble, the cicada in some faraway tree beyond our house.

  With some effort I climbed into the crib and looked down on the baby, feeling an intense bitterness in my bones that I would eventually learn was called hatred and that my heart was full of it. But then why wouldn’t it be?

  And then I was sitting on his stomach, looking down on that red and wrinkled face.