Growing Dark

by Kristopher Triana

  “Good,” Marvin said. “Cause you’re gonna need them.”

  “Need what?”

  “Cowboy heroes.”

  The barman’s face grew puzzled, more confused now than starstruck. Marvin kicked back his glass and dropped it on the counter. He spoke with a seriousness that was underscored by his hard voice.

  “Listen, Mac,” Marvin said, “this town and everybody in it is in grave danger. You take one look around, and you can see this place is rotting like it has a curse on it. Who knows, maybe it does, right?”

  The barman straightened up.

  “You’re the saloon keeper in this burg,” Marvin continued, “you hear all the stories. Your finger is on this town’s fading pulse. So, tell me about them so Charlie and I know what we’re up against.”

  “Who?” the barman asked, growing pale.

  “The demons, Mac, the same ones who are going to rain down on y’all like Hell or worse, unless they’re wrangled.”

  * * * * *

  It was like confession.

  Once the barman opened up, he just had to get every last bit of it off his chest. First the crops had started withering, he told them, and then the cattle started giving sour milk. Then the draught made the farming even harder, and led to random fires that destroyed businesses, homes, and lives. Soot filled the air, combining with the Arizona heat to create a new brand of misery. The town began to sink into poverty and despair, but things hadn’t gotten all that bad yet.

  Whole pastures of cattle turned up eviscerated, their guts spilled across the grass in a kaleidoscope of burnt gore. But worse than that, people went missing. What little they found of some of them made what happened in the cattle fields look merciful, the remains mutilated beyond recognition. One of the heads that had been found had a smooth, perfect hole in it, and most of the brain matter had been removed in a manner that suggested it’d been melted away. Another young man’s body was found by the creek, the carcass nude and twisted like a contortionist, the face still intact but the skull inexplicably missing. They found more and more pieces of their neighbors scattered across the plains like so much roadkill, and all the while the black smoke churned in the sky and sluiced through every crevice, enveloping them in a black hell.

  The barman had shaken when he’d talked with them, his eyes glossing over. Though he didn’t speak of it, Bronson could tell that he’d lost someone close to him in all of this madness.

  After a few more drinks, they returned to their horses and headed west, their hearts guiding them and their horses with some internal compass. The steeds carried them across dirt roads that wound through the farmland and up through winding valleys that yearned for daylight. The murk was thick, bloating, and it echoed with a dull roar. It throbbed with an evil Bronson could taste on the air. He sensed it like a familiar ache. It was an ancient awfulness, he knew, though he knew not its form or name.

  “The evil has returned,” Marvin said.

  “I can feel it,” Bronson said, and he felt a twitch of terror flush his heart. It was a deep horror, like what he’d felt when he’d had to break the doctor’s news to Jill that her cancer was malignant. “I’ve felt this before.”

  “Me too,” Marvin said. “In Hell’s Pocket.”

  Marvin fell silent for a moment, observing the darkness that had drowned out the sun. He had the look of a man pained by his own mind as he stared out at the gorge.

  “July of ’44,” Marvin explained, “the Battle of Saipan, during the assault on Mount Tapochau. I was a 20-year-old Marine, fighting the Imperial Japanese Army. We had them licked from the get-go, but they wouldn’t take defeat lightly. They hid in the caves, deploying under the cover of darkness. We’d find their hiding spots in the mountain sometimes and take them out with flamethrowers, Charlie. That was how it was done. Most of my company was killed in that battle. Almost everyone who landed on the island, American or Jap, lost their lives. A machine gun severed my sciatic nerve when it shot me in my ass, and I still consider that the luckiest moment of my life, because I survived a battle that took thousands of lives.”

  Marvin fell silent again and the darkness swelled around the red rocks of the gorge. It was rugged terrain in this part of the valley, desertlike and alien within the farmland.

  “The demons know,” Marvin said. “They know the worst moments of your life, just as they know mine. Our worst memories are their weapon of choice. It can overpower you. It certainly overpowered The Duke.”

  “John Wayne?”

  “The demons killed him on one of our missions.”

  “Killed his ghost? How can a ghost die?”

  “Just because we’ve already died doesn’t make us invincible.”

  “Well, where do we go if our ghosts are killed? To the next level of existence?”

  “I don’t know,” Marvin admitted. “I haven’t had the misfortune of finding out yet.”

  Marvin unhitched his rope from the latch on his belt. There was a louder rumbling now. It wasn’t just the smoke above, but something below, as if the earth itself was having a seizure. Their horses stirred and Bronson filled his hand with his revolver. The silver of it shined as if it were reflecting sunlight, even though they were in the belly of those shadows. It was warm in his hand, and gentle, like a mother’s touch. It felt entirely one with his body, to the point where he felt like he could discharge it with his mind.

  “They know we’re here,” Bronson said. “They’re coming, I can sense them.”

  Marvin nodded but didn’t take his eyes off the ridge. He remained so still that the ash that had been snowing down began to pool in the brim of his Stetson. He looked like a statue, reminding Bronson of Greek mythology.Legends, he thought, breathing deep.

  “What do we do when they get here, Lee?”

  “Simple,” Marvin said. “We herd them back to Hell.”

  Bronson cocked his hammer and ground his teeth.

  That’s when the horizon exploded in white flame.

  * * * * *

  Suddenly they were everywhere.

  They were as fast as they were hideous, these things with bodies like massive, skinned dogs covered in horns. The horns gleamed out of every fold, lining up in rows to form mouths that snapped the air hungrily. Dust created even more haze at the hooves of these abominations as they thundered across the plain. They moved instinctually, for they had no eyes, writhing like injured serpents in the mist. They surged all around like biblical locusts. They moved in what looked like rapid spasms, making them hard to predict. It was a wonder the beasts could gain as much ground as they did in their clumsy twitches, but in a quick lunge one went for Bronson’s leg. His pistol turned it into soup. The sound of the shot was like lightning striking his very soul, reverberating throughout his entire being. He trotted the horse backward and saw that where the demon had fallen, the ground opened in a pond of black oil that boiled about the thing’s body, melting it back into the nightmare realm from which it had sprung.

  The stampede began. The demons spun about the ridge in a tornado of flesh. They barked blood into the air as they charged in frenzy. Marvin lassoed one of them and kicked his heels into his horse’s ribcage. The steed bolted and they dragged the beast behind them in a violent spray. Bronson set his own horse into a gallop and began blasting as he rode, splitting a few monster skulls as he followed Marvin toward the wall of flame at the edge of the ridge. When Marvin reached the gorge, he flung his lassoed beast forward, sending it into the hellfire with a scream.

  “Show yourself, you son of a bitch!” Marvin howled into the smoke.

  Bronson didn’t understand, but he stopped trying to. Whatever Marvin was yelling at had listened. The flames twisted upward to reveal a silhouette within: the thin shape of a man. The demons behind them were charging closer, but Bronson and Marvin waited for the shadow to emerge. They had to. It oozed forward like bubbling molasses, and Bronson felt somehow cold despite the growing fire, because the face that formed before them was one that Bronson knew. The
fallow hair and sunken eyes had not changed, even if his body was now comprised of demonic sludge and mangled tallow. He remembered the gruesome headlines with crystal clarity. He had no doubt who stood before them.

  This was Jeffrey Dahmer’s demon.

  He seemed to levitate there in the white fire. His body of oil began to pulsate with fresh veins as pieces of flesh flew around him like wasps. A red circle formed, bathing him in an orb of blood. He was a horror to behold. He swam there, within his ocean of gore and madness, a testament to all that was sick and depraved. Looking upon him, Bronson remembered what Marvin had said about the power of belief. He wondered then if people’s mass fear of such serial killers could empower a demon, just as mass belief in movie heroes could empower majestic cowboys in the hereafter.

  He fired off a shot, but Dahmer vaporized and then reappeared as if he was one with the darkness. Bronson sensed now that the darkness was of the Dahmer demon’s own crafting, and these other demonic dogs were merely lesser abominations accompanying this master monstrosity on his return from the beyond.

  Bronson felt himself moving forward, and held on as his horse went up on his front legs to kick a demon with his hind ones. The wretched thing burst upon impact. Marvin charged for Dahmer and began firing his pistol. The blasts seemed to slice the gloom like small rays of sunlight creeping through window blinds, and Bronson remembered how they had rode out of the sun, and wondered about the significance. He fired randomly then at the demons in the murk. Small beams of light lingered, trailing the path of where he had fired, and when one of the demons collided with it, they went up in flames. They fell to the earth, and the oil of their realm returned to claim them. With each one, the darkness began to give way, and now he could see the sun setting on the edge of the valley.

  Bronson charged to catch up with Marvin, who was chasing Dahmer with the kind of fury only a Marine could muster. Watching him ride after that ghastly thing, his gun blazing, Bronson was glad to know Marvin was buried in Arlington. He deserved it for more reasons than the living would ever know. Marvin had died long before Dahmer’s story broke. He didn’t know him. But he knew demons, and he refused to tolerate them. He accepted that it was his job to destroy them, just as any good soldier would have.

  When Bronson caught up with them, they’d reached a jagged part of the gorge that led downward into a rocky pit. Dahmer had fleshed out but wasn’t human-looking, as they were. He was more like his minions, only bigger. His face was as it had been in life, but he had a bull’s body, making him resemble a Minotaur with translucent flesh. He was covered in veins that pumped black blood. Bronson could actually see it moving through him, fueling his savagery. The demon opened his mouth to reveal a smile full of razors, and cackled at Bronson before running into the gorge.

  They followed him into the pit. The horses, not of this world, fearlessly charged down the twisted terrain. A few of the demon dogs tried to follow, and tumbled to gruesome deaths. When they reached level ground, they followed Dahmer as he thundered through the chasm, the ground cracking beneath him in small earthquakes. His hoofprints seeped formaldehyde.

  Bronson noticed that the blackness was thickening again.

  “This is his domain,” Marvin shouted. “This is where he’ll be strongest.”

  The horses slowed to a stop.

  Dahmer stood before his cave, waiting. The cave was lined with bones and rotting body parts in a morbid shrine to murder. The darkness above them rumbled and began making strange clacking sounds. It took Bronson a moment to recognize the rumbling as not thunder but the sound of bombs going off. The clacking, he realized, was machine-gun fire.

  He turned to Marvin, who was nearly paralyzed now as all around him the horror of his experiences in World War II came alive. Out of the murk, the images of Japanese soldiers moved back and forth, fusing with the faces of Marvin’s fallen Marine brothers. The only thing louder than the gunfire was the screams, including Marvin’s.

  “Fight him!” Bronson yelled, but Marvin was stunned. It was like shell shock, multiplied.

  Bronson began to fire at Dahmer’s demon, the beams of light singeing the beast like a branding iron. Dahmer bucked from the pain, screeching. Bronson knew he had pissed him off. He knew the demon would chase him now. He had to get him away from Marvin in order to give him time to snap out of his waking nightmare.

  He charged up the embankment and Dahmer followed, sure enough. The smoke in the chasm had become so thick that there was weight to it. His horse struggled just to maintain its stride. They raced on through the valley, his heart leading him west again, where he knew the sun must be, even if he could not see it. Fireflies danced at the horse’s hooves. Twilight was settling. Something told him there wasn’t much time, and so he refused to look back, even as the Dahmer beast roared like a freight train in pursuit.

  But the darkness grew more personal.

  It didn’t rain down ash now. Instead, it rained down soot.

  His horse charged on, both of them praying for light.

  The soot was from coal, just like what had polluted the air of his hometown of Ehrenfeld. Not that it was really a town; it had been a company fief. The workers toiled there in the mines, and their families lived in the company houses and shopped in the company stores. The coal miners were forever enslaved to the company machine. His father had hacked away at that coal for long hours throughout the years, breathing in black soot until it had eaten away his lungs. In the end, he was choking on every breath. His poor father had died when Charlie was just a child, and his closest brothers, George and Tony, had soon followed. Bronson had found himself having to help support his family at the age of 16, going to school by day and working in those mines by night. Even after graduating, there was nowhere else to turn but to those black pits, because the Great Depression was in full swing.

  Behind him now, the beast howled and the darkness thickened. Coal dust began to cake his duster and his horse.

  Bronson remembered being 18 years old, working double shifts in the mines, worrying about a collapse with every shudder, but worrying about supporting his family more. They were so much in hock to the company store that they could barely scrape by. He’d never in his life felt as trapped as he did down in those deep, dark mines. He would never forget chopping away at all that goddamned coal and weeping at the sheer hopelessness of his life.

  The Dahmer beast changed his howls now. They had become the heartbreaking cries of Jill when the cancer had turned into agony. Bronson felt every muscle in his body flex. A scream filled his throat. Outrage fueled him now. Dahmer had pushed him right past pain and fear into war mode. He spun his horse around, sitting upright in the saddle, his chest out. Dahmer skidded to a halt, confused.

  “Clearly, you don’t know who you’re dealing with,” he told the beast.

  Bronson fired, over and over again, moving the hammer back rapidly with his free hand in true gunslinger fashion. Even the cordite from his pistol glowed, splitting the darkness and thinning it out. Dahmer was jolted from the close-range shots, and his wounds erupted in black geysers. Not wasting the demon’s moment of pain, Bronson lassoed him, pinning his arms to his sides.

  The darkness began to clear, and he saw the last bit of sunlight on the horizon. It was a gorgeous display of golden light and pink sky. It was not just the sun, Bronson knew, it was the portal. He charged forward, letting Dahmer catch fire as the last bit of that gleaming touched him now, and letting him burn as he dragged the beast, racing onward, a cowboy hero riding off into the sunset.

  * * * * *

  Marvin caught up with him once the Dahmer demon had been flung into oblivion as a smoldering carcass. The horizon had swallowed him. Bronson had just turned around to head back for him when he saw him galloping out of the gorge.

  “It is done,” Bronson told him.

  Marvin looked around at the blooming twilight and the newfound peace of the valley.

  “I can tell,” Marvin said. “Nice work, Charlie. Sorry I froze up b
ack there.”

  “Don’t be. He pulled the same mind tricks with me. He had me almost in tears at the memory of my childhood. But then he pissed me off by using Jill’s death against me. As if losing her wasn’t enough, he had to taunt me with it.”

  Marvin grinned.

  “Pushed too far,” he said. “Just like in the movies.”

  Bronson grinned too.

  “Maybe this fate isn’t so crazy after all,” he admitted.

  “Well,” Marvin said, “this moment in time is safe again. Time to head back.”

  “You go on without me.”

  Marvin stiffened in his saddle.

  “What was that?”

  “You heard me, Lee. I’m not going back. I’ve done my good deed. The universe owes me.”

  “Owes you what?”

  Now it was Bronson’s turn to stare off into the hills, lost in the corridors of his mind. Silence was an art of his, but Marvin knew where he was coming from.

  “You can’t go see her, Charlie,” Marvin said.

  “Don’t try and stand in my way.”

  “Look …”

  “No,you look!” Bronson interrupted. “She was the love of my life. She and the family we made together were the best part of my life. Fame and fortune meant nothing next to that. I just want to see her one more time, the way she was before the cancer tore her apart. I want to see her young and beautiful and full of life. Why is that so much to ask?”

  “Because if you start to change history, you’ll be transforming the future. You’ll be doing exactly what the demons want.”

  Bronson let that sink in, but it still didn’t convince him.

  “I won’t ruin anything.”

  “You could ruin your own past. You could tear the fabric of reality so easily, and ruin not just your own existence, but Jill’s, too. You had a wonderful life with her. Nothing can destroy that memory except you. Don’t you think I have regrets? You were a loving family man. I was a bad boy living in a man’s body. I lived for good times and loose women. I wish I could turn back the clock, too, but you can’t change destiny.This is our destiny now.”