|
 |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
Darkness
by
Carlos R Savournin
The images flashed in his head like a quick speed slide show – horrid images that made his blood run cold without notice. Babies being devoured by humans, blood spilling on their chins as they ate away at limbs, a powerful explosive erupting before a man’s face, tearing his flesh right off and leaving him convulsing in a puddle of his own fluids, a terrible car accident in which a pregnant woman’s entire head wound up ejecting out of the back seat’s window… They flashed in his brain, terrorizing his very soul, his every fear displayed before him in random flashes and sounds that were so real, he swore he was witnessing them all. He could hear the smacking lips of the cannibals feeding on their young, he felt the heat of the explosion – even felt the floor shake beneath his feet as he witnessed the poor man’s demise, and he heard the loud, crunching metal of the car accident, the shattering glass and the echoing thump of the impact.
THUMP!
He sat up on his bed – sweat drenched and breathing heavy. The images were terrible – the stuff of nightmares, but it wasn’t the nightmare that woke him. It was the noise. The thud of the accident that, even as he sat on his bed, looking through the darkness, still echoed in his head. A remnant of his dream, perhaps? No, he knew it was something more than that. The noise was not something he brought out of his dream like his current fear, rather, it was something that actually happened. Something inside his very house made that noise, and though he incorporated it into his dream, he could hear the dwindling of the impact. It was a mechanical noise a grating chain pulling, dragging until its end producing the hollow noise - the sound of the house’s garage door closing.
He sat still – thinking, pondering the possibilities. The door malfunctioned somehow? His ex-wife decided on finally coming home? His Labrador accidentally stumbled into the garage and opened the door himself? No. None of these he knew were true. Something else was happening, and as he fought desperately to catch his breath, the realization settled that someone broke into his house. A stranger had come for him, and he knew the intruder’s intentions were not kind. He could feel it as though the air itself carried the warning and covered him like a blanket – telling him to stay absolutely quiet, amidst the darkness, and he would be safe. The intruder would leave eventually. But he knew that it wouldn’t be so simple. He could feel it.
The darkness allowed him no vision – not even as he waited for his eyes to adjust. He was paralyzed; sandwiched between his fears and the shadows that once held still and were now prancing around him, moving through the dark, through him as he realized the imminent silence that had taken over the entire room. Not even the whirling of the ceiling fan could be heard and as he tried to listen for the singing crickets that soothed him to sleep nightly. He heard nothing more than the sound of his own breath as though the entire house itself was murdered, bloodied like the children in his dream. Shaking the terrible suspicion that he was next, he barely attempted to move off the bed, but his better judgment told him to hold still for something within the room itself was not right.
His eyes searched through the abyss of black trying to hold his own breath. Stripped of one sense, his others heightened; his nose sniffing for the distinct smell of sweat that was not his own; his ears listening for the breath of the intruder as his mind conjured thoughts that perhaps the someone was in his room. The intruder he feared so much found his way into his private resting area and was perhaps standing in the very corner which hid beneath the shadows, the very corner beside his bed. Who knows how long the uninvited stood there, watching him as he slept, planning the manner in which he would die. He would fight his way to freedom if he had to, but the killer was hideous; an abomination to science and humans – a monster. He couldn’t see the intruder. He just knew it.
He beckoned to the killer, a pathetic whisper of a noise his parched throat produced; a noise a small girl would laugh at. His fear multiplied at the thought that he would receive a response. A growl, a deep rumbling voice that would shake his every bone – and it would not be an answer from the dark corner of his room but a mere whisper in his ear. Just as the call left his dry lips, he wanted desperately to take it back, but alas, there was no answer. Still, he remained motionless on his bed until his heart rate settled, deciding that his emotions were at their peak caused by the horrible images in his head and the sudden atmosphere to which he woke.
Then, he did, in fact, hear the growl.
Just outside his bedroom, beneath the door where a gap no larger than half an inch allowed his last breath to escape, his Labrador sniffed heavily between its growls. Instinctive relief fell upon him at the animal’s noise, but just as soon as he was alleviated, he was terribly frightened. What was the dog growling at? Why was it scraping against the door, begging to get in, or asking its master to get out? Something disturbed it, and the thought finally gave him the strength to get off the bed.
He didn’t jump off, nor did he run toward the door. He took his time, making certain his moves were as quiet as possible. The darkness was still very prominent, so much that he tried to open his eyes as he moved only to realize his eyes were open. He took his steps to the closet door from memory, his bare feet muffled against the plush carpeting. Since childhood, there were two things he would check before going to sleep; a habit he could not sleep peacefully without fulfilling – 1) To make sure the doors were locked and 2) Making sure the closet door was closed. The second was a silly ritual he picked up from his sister when, as children, she told him the closet was the gateway to all sorts of realms that hid even more creatures. He prayed that he would find his closet door closed as he approached it, convincing himself that these habits were all a prelude to the night which he now stood.
A small bit of relief fell over him when he found the closet door, and without a sound, he opened it. He reached for the baseball bat tucked in the far corner – the only weapon a star athlete needs, but where had that star athlete in him gone? Why was the athlete hidden in the most private of places within him when he needed him the most? Usually, with his hands around the chrome metal, the bat ready to swing, he felt protected; nothing could harm him. Bring on your every gender-bending, shape shifting monster, and he would face them. But his sweaty palms found no comfortable grip around the bat, and though his will told him to run to the light switch – reveal every hidden corner of the room, he decided against it. As much as the darkness was his own enemy, he could not risk the possibility that perhaps the darkness was the only reason he was alive. As much as it hid the intruder, it hid him as well. He made his way toward the bedroom door to face the rest of the house.
After making sure he closed the closet door, of course.
Slowly, he opened the door to his room and found his pet standing on all fours, its tail tucked between its hind legs while small cries escaped its every breath. His fearless dog was reduced to a crying mouse, much like he was as he stood between the doorway of his bedroom and the living room. The large picture window leading to the acres of nothing that was his backyard provided some light. As though the moon were biased, its pale light cascaded throughout his home in such a brilliant manner which he never saw before. Tucked far from the winding labyrinth of the city streets, his home was part of a secluded neighborhood which provided a clear view of the night’s stars and the sky’s moon – but never so bright as he witnessed then. The darkness was so prominent, even the slightest of lights were more powerful, and for that, at least, he was thankful.
He stepped onto the tile, his feet beneath him feeling the warmth of what was normally chilled throughout the night. The air conditioning usually cooled the ceramic while the room was emptied, but the stuffy atmosphere only convinced him of someone else’s presence. His entire body broke into a light sweat as he slowly crept through the living room, his dog slowly following and they both searched for their killer. He could feel the drops of perspiration roll down his bare back, and he knew it was not caused by the fear within him. The house itself was warmer than usual. He could feel the invaded space around him by someone following him or watching him. A ghost, perhaps, that would show its pale, wicked face just as he passed it, a raven perched on his window sill that would call out “nevermore,” or the demon he expected to find in the darkest corner of the room. Despite the aid of the moonlight, he saw no one.
The wet grip on his bat tightened as he paced his way to the side table where a portable phone unit rested. It was his final resort. He decided he couldn’t look for the killer himself, fearful of what he might find; something more terrible than the images in his dream, a maniac with no control over his mind or body – someone who took pleasure in tearing his victims into shreds with his bare hands. He saw enough movies to know that only stupid people were killed in situations like the one he was in; the girl who should have run out of the house instead of checking on the noise upstairs, or the young man who never called the police when he suspected an intruder, and by all accounts, he planned to avoid the cliché. He reached for the portable unit and clicked the receiver on.
His heart raced against his chest. His breath fell heavy, and his shoulders slumped as the last bit of energy within him drained through his feet. There was no dial tone. The killer made certain that there was no escape for his victim – cutting off all communication to the outside world. He knew then that his attempt at running for the front door would be in vain. If the intruder went to such lengths to kill the phone lines, there was no doubt he was lingering near the house’s exit. The intruder would not allow his meal to escape; but he would play with his food until his undoubted appetite to kill would strike.
He felt his finger tight grip on sanity slowly slipping and he did everything in his power to remain calm, finding it within him to control his breathing as the room stretched and the darkness enveloped him as much as his own fear did. Perhaps the hollow noise he heard that woke him, the noise he incorporated into his dream, was nothing more than a stray cat outside his house, chasing a random critter until it collided with his garage door. There were a million possibilities to account for the noise he heard, but the one thing he was certain of was that it did, indeed, come from his garage. He was as certain of it as he was about the fact that it wasn’t any of the other possibilities he thought of. Someone broke into his house through the garage, and the door that led to the garage from inside the house was closed, locked, even. For the first time since he woke, he thought that whoever broke into his house was still in the garage and not actually inside the house.
He looked to his dog, cowering by his feet before making the decision to head into the long, door narrowed hallway that lead to the front of the house. The dog followed, its claws clicking on the tile floor as it held its breath as much as its owner did. Both of them reached the door and looked to each other as though for approval. Would one defend the other if need be?
He looked through the peep-hole, the small, magnifying outlet allowing a distorted, elongated glimpse of the dark, outside world. All appeared still – an eerie calm that was the prelude to the storm. Once he opened the door, there was no telling what he would find on the other side; the monster he expected, or worst, nothing at all. Fear of the unknown: it is an unfounded reaction to the unrestrained behavior of the mind. Fear of the every day however, of the prowling stranger, the sound of footsteps in the halls of an empty house, the fear of violent, brutal death and the primal instinct to survive are as frightening as any nightmare, and as real as the acceptance that it could happen to him the moment he opened the door. One of two things would occur once he was outside his house; he would find the killer and struggle for his life, or he would realize his fear was nothing more than a product of his time and place. Though one would seem irrefutably worst than the other, at that precise moment, he wasn’t so sure. Finding an answer to his fear was diagnosing the mysterious illness that befell him. Without an answer, he was left with his own mind to refute the questions that would not stop, not even when the sun began to rise over the eastern skies. Unable to decide whether he was able to face the truth, he opened the door.
Normally, the Lab would run into the street, the outside a world of unexplored freedom where it was allowed to run, jump and bark without a care. But it stayed beside the owner’s feet once the night was uncovered, even backed into the house as though a presence only detectable by the dog was menacingly calling to it, and it knew not to respond. Don’t answer Death’s call.
He looked upon his front yard, looked at the porch set before the seemingly undisturbed parkway. With his bat in hand, he stepped onto the humid cement taking slow steps and keeping his eyes everywhere at once. The night was silent – slumber falling over the entire neighborhood as it normally does past certain hours, but it was darker. He didn’t take the time to look at the brilliant stars that twinkled above him, nor did he realize that none of the neighboring homes’ porch lights were burning. The darkness inside his house engulfed the entire land, but he did not make any assumptions as he walked onto the dew fallen grass on his way to the garage door.
It was closed. As far as he could tell, it was undisturbed, much like the rest of his yard. Without the aid of the remote, the door would not open, could not be opened unless it was forced in an unnatural manner. It was locked, and if there was an intruder in his house, he/she/it did not enter through the garage.
He hit the door, lightly at first. The door rattled, echoing throughout the hollow room behind it, but it was not the thud that woke him. He hit it again, harder, hard enough to wake the sleeping, but still, he could not match the noise. Perhaps it wasn’t the garage door that alarmed him so – but if it wasn’t, then what was it? Despite his doubt, the indescribable feeling he was overwhelmed with, the undeniable sense that someone or something was inside his house, waiting to attack, was not something he could dismiss, and he questioned the method of entrance over and over again as he stood in his front yard, baffled, a bat in his hand and an unsettling feeling in his stomach. It occurred to him, suddenly. What if getting him out of the house was just the intruder’s plan? The intruder may not have been inside the house at all, causing a strange noise, knowing that the house’s owner would come out to investigate, unwillingly allowing the intruder entrance. As he stood by the garage door, inspecting it, the front door of his house was out of view – and wide open.
Slowly, he returned to the porch and peered into the dark foyer, where he left his dog, only his Lab was nowhere to be seen. He knew his pet did not run into the street after seeing the way it cowered at the dark neighborhood, and he didn’t assume that it would simply retreat into the house after witnessing the manner in which he stuck by his master with fear. Standing on the porch, he feared the intruder destroyed his dog, silenced it immediately before it posed a threat. He called to his dog, the trademark whistle that woke the dog during the deepest of sleeps, or called him back whenever it did run free. But the dog did not answer its owner’s whistle.He felt his heart sink, his adrenaline begin to pump as the fear settled in his mouth, pondering the possibility that perhaps he would share the same fate as his pup. Not without a fight, he decided. As he stood at the doorway to his house, he weighed his options – stay outside and call for help, or go into the house and have the intruder pay for the untimely demise of his dog. Taking a deep, emotional breath, his back stiffened as he looked into the darkness of his house. The grip on his bat tightened. A neat line of sweat formed on his forehead.
And he entered the darkness, closing the door behind him.
The noises in his house were not unlike the ones he heard nightly; the house settling onto the foundation beneath it, the plates shifting in their cabinets, the sound of the battery operated clock in the foyer tick, tick, ticking away. But there was a difference. They were all happening at once. And amidst all of these noises, the prominent silence was still as loud as a jackhammer pounding on his brain.
Tick, tick, tick.
He entered the living room, his eyes scanning every square inch the darkness allowed. The swaying trees caught in the moonlight were the source of the dancing shadows upon the floor, cascading impossible figures that played with his mind, but he held his own. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Tick, tick, tick.
He called for his dog again as he entered the kitchen, but his breath was robbed as his eyes befell the figure hidden at the furthest wall of the room. He froze.
Tick…
It moved, toward him or away from him, he couldn’t tell which. The noise it made was animal like, crunching, breathing heavily and - slobbering.
Tick…
He wanted to ask it what it wanted, wanted to threaten it with words he could only form in his head as his mouth would provide no sound.
Tick…
And suddenly – there it was again; the noise that originally woke him from the images of cannibals, exploding heads and terrible car accidents. The hollow thump that caused the riot of paranoid thoughts in his brain. It filled the house with a terrible mechanical cling nearly making his knees give out underneath him as he couldn’t pinpoint the original source. It was all around him.
THUMP!
And one by one, the electrical hum of the kitchen appliances were resurrected. The refrigerator sang with power, the microwave beeped, as did the portable phone in the living room. And just as he took a calming breath, the lights above him flickered, then remained burning at full power. The darkness disappeared, the silence exorcised.
The intruder, reduced to nothing more than a power outage, was gone.
His dog looked up from his food dish for a mere second, inspecting its surrounding, then looked across the kitchen to its master. Without a care, it returned to its food, crunching and slobbering over the dry pebbles.
There was no intruder, no killer, no monster in his closet, but he was a victim – a victim of his own overactive imagination, a victim of the dependency on appliances to aid his sleep, a victim of that which is the most terrible to face and it can vary from person to person: the fear within.He was able to sleep again – without the worries he woke with. The various noises echoing in his house soothed him to the land of slumber where he found his own comfort. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he told himself that he wouldn’t overreact again. He slept peacefully, dismissing the remnants of shock he put himself through, and he didn’t dream of cannibals. He didn’t dream of explosions. He didn’t dream of car accidents.
And as he slept, he didn’t hear the sound of his closet door slowly opening.
TO COMMENT ON THIS STORY CLICK HERE
© Savournin, 2006
Carlos R Savournin lives in Miami, FL where he spends most of his days working as an accountant and writing on his free time. If he had his way, he'd be writing full time and accounting would not be a part of his life at all. And yeah, he works for one of the best literary web-zines out there...