Dark World

by Russell C. Connor

  Liz became sullen and listless to the point that she barely spoke at all, and cringed when he walked in a room. He couldn’t decide if this was better or worse than her usual string of insults and nagging. She seemed to age twenty years in the span of a few days, stopped using makeup, moped around the house, wore baggy, shapeless outfits from the back of the closet, even to work.

  The depressed actions of a heartbroken teenager. Harold wondered what she’d made of the situation, what conclusion she’d come to about her boyfriend’s disappearance.

  He also couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her.

  But if it meant Kylie remained with him, where she belonged, then the cheating bitch could stay like that forever, as far as he was concerned.

  And then came the incident with the paint, the day that, to borrow Stratton’s phrase, brought everything to a head.

  * * *

  It was a Saturday. The first Saturday in months, he realized, that Liz hadn’t been called to the office to sign paperwork or meet a client or any one of a string of excuses for her to be out with Stratton.

  God, Harold’s naivety was almost embarrassing.

  Instead, she spent the day on the couch with a tub of ice cream, watching television and shoveling spoonfuls of half-melted mush into her mouth. Harold holed up in the office on the far side of the house. As far as he knew, Kylie was in her room. The girl had obviously sensed the tension between them, and had tried her best to stay out from underfoot. She loved to color, loved to draw, could spend hours at it.

  Harold didn’t know about the paint she’d brought home from art class. Just one of those small plastic trays with no more than a thimbleful of primary color acrylics in separate compartments. He only knew something was wrong when Liz began to yell.

  When he reached the living room, he found Kylie against the wall, silent tears on her cheeks and the little tray of paint overturned on the carpet in front of her, where she’d dropped it while coming to show Liz the picture she’d made for her.

  Meanwhile, her mother threw a tantrum in the middle of the room.

  “Goddamn it!” Liz raged. She marched in aimless circles, shoving over the framed photographs above the television and kicking the coffee table. At least this last act was directed properly; the table was, after all, her boyfriend’s murderer. “I don’t need this, I don’t deserve it!”

  Harold wondered what she thought she did deserve.

  “Christ, would you calm down?” Harold knelt beside Kylie and picked up the tray. The compartments for green and blue were the only ones that had popped open, spilling miniscule dribbles of color onto the carpet. The stains reminded him of the purple mud he’d tracked in from Dark World.

  He looked up and put a hand on Kylie’s shoulder. The girl held the picture in front of her like a shield, a crude rainbow with three figures beneath. “It’s just a little paint, sweetheart, we’ll get it cleaned up, it’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine!” Liz stomped over to them and jabbed a finger at Kylie. “She needs to fucking grow up, Harold! She’s too old for spilling paint and for this goddamn business of calling for water every night! If she wants water, she needs to get up and get it herself!”

  “She’s five-years-old,” he said evenly.

  For the first time, he wondered what Stratton had meant, about her wanting custody of Kylie. Christ, why would Liz want their daughter? She had no more patience for the girl than she did for Harold.

  In lieu of responding, Liz turned, snatched up the quart of ice cream she’d been eating, and lobbed it at the far corner, the same corner where he’d disposed of her dead lover’s body just twelve or thirteen days before. It exploded in a spectacular mess a thousand times worse than their daughter’s paint had made.

  “Kylie, go to your room. Right now,” Harold told his daughter. She ran past him, down the hallway to her bedroom. When he heard the door shut, he stood up and faced his wife, who was red in the cheeks and heaving like an angry bull. He felt like a gunslinger about to step into a duel. “Don’t you ever say that to her. You hate your life so much, go ahead, but don’t you dare treat her like that.”

  “Oh shut up Harold, you’re just as big a child as she is!” Before he could stop her, she ran to the corner—where the remains of her ice cream were still running down the wall in chocolatey rivers that looked a little like blood—raised one leg, and brought her heel smashing down on the nightlight. Eeyore’s plastic head and eternally sad face were crunched out of existence, the tiny bulb shattering. “Sleeping with a goddamn nightlight? What’s wrong with you?”

  He forced a breath into his lungs before he answered. “This isn’t about me. And it’s sure not about Kylie either.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know,” he said, placing just the right emphasis on the last word. “I know all about your little boyfriend. What, did he break up with you? Well, get over it and stop taking it out on us.”

  He felt a little guilty about this low blow, but when the fury on her face melted into dumbfounded horror, he decided it was worth it. This all had to end, one way or another, and if their marriage was a rabid, wounded animal, then one of them had to be strong enough to put it out of its misery.

  Liz stared at him for a several long seconds, then walked stiffly past him to the bedroom. She paused on the threshold and mumbled over her shoulder, “I want a divorce,” before going inside and shutting the door.

  * * *

  Kylie’s scream woke him that night.

  Harold had moved into her bedroom, where he’d hoped the girl’s presence would give him enough security to sleep. It must have worked; when her terrified shriek reached him, he clawed his way up from slumber and sat up in the nest he’d made on the floor, blinking around in confusion.

  Her bed was empty. The door to her room was open.

  And when her shout came again, it sounded impossibly far away.

  “No, no, no,” he moaned. He jumped up and bolted through the house, cursing himself for getting so distracted with Liz’ bullshit that he didn’t find a way to end to this sooner, to close off Dark World once and for all. For once again ignoring a problem until it was biting him in the ass. Harold reached the shadow-filled living room just as Liz opened the bedroom door and stuck her head out.

  “What’s going on?” she asked fearfully.

  “Stay in there!” he commanded.

  “What? Why?”

  “If you ever want to see your daughter again, keep the door closed and for Christ’s sake, don’t turn on any lights!” Only when the words were out of her mouth did he see how much they sounded like a threat, but there was no time to explain. She continued to stare at him, so he grabbed her shoulders and shoved, driving her back across the bedroom and into the closet. Harold slammed the door, then grabbed the chair at her vanity and wedged it under the knob. A split second later, she began to rattle and pound from the other side.

  Harold sprinted toward the corner, faster than he’d ever run for anything before in his life. If the wall had been there, he would’ve broken his nose against it, but all that waited for him was Dark World.

  He ran out into it and screamed his daughter’s name to the black heavens. There was no hesitation in him this time, no fear, no worry about how he would get back. The perpetual night was silent this time, as if all the creatures that lived here were holding a collective breath. He heard no answer from Kylie, no sound at all to give him a direction, so he used a different sense this time.

  As a famous cereal mascot once said, he followed his nose.

  That stench. That rotten, spoiled meat stink. Instinct led him toward it, his nostrils flaring as he sucked at the air to determine where the smell got stronger. The land rolled beneath him, shallow hills where the strange grass grew taller, tickling at his sides. Harold pumped his legs until his lung burned, but he had no idea how far he’d gone before his eyes picked out something amid the darkness.

  It wasn’t a glow exactly, sin
ce no light could escape in this place. It was more like when he’d turned on the flashlight, the mere suggestion of color against the otherwise black landscape, but to starved eyes, it might as well be a lighthouse. Without any point of reference, he had no way of judging distance, but the splotches of color grew larger as he angled toward them.

  The stench grew also, coating the inside of his nose and throat, inescapable. Harold slowed his pace and began to gag as he came upon the only two objects that reflected the darkness here, rather than absorb it.

  The first was Kylie, his precious, beautiful baby girl, lying peacefully on her side with her eyes closed, just as she’d looked so many times when he came in her room to check on her while she slept. There wasn’t a mark on her, but the sight of her lying there, so still and unmoving, filled him with terror until he noticed her chest moving up and down. Since he couldn’t see the ground beneath the girl, she seemed to be adrift in a sea of darkness, a cartoon without a background painted in yet, the contrast so steep it defied the eye and hurt the brain. But Harold didn’t waste time trying to understand why he could see her when he couldn’t even see himself; she’d been the light of his life since the day she was born, so why shouldn’t the same be true here?

  The rotten meat smell came from the shape that lay just beyond her.

  There were two forms, but they lay so close together, he could only discern that now that he was up close. Both adults, but no more than shriveled shrunken skeletons entangled in each other’s arms.

  The one on the left wore a wedding dress, the right a tuxedo. Harold recognized the outfits that he and Liz had worn to their ceremony, held at a tiny chapel with only a few close friends to attend, as if they’d been embarrassed of their union even at the beginning. As far as he knew, Liz’ wedding dress was boxed up somewhere in the attic, the tuxedo he wore returned to whichever store they’d rented it from.

  But here they were, worn by these rotting corpses, and he thought he even understood why.

  A wave of dizziness swept over him. He went to his knees, then rocked back on his heels beside Kylie and looked up at the sky. Even now, he expected to see stars up there, but there was only the thick, cloying darkness of this place, like the inside of a cocoon, except cocoons were meant to be nurturing, comforting, and supportive, but this place was a tumor, a cavity, a rotten sore spot that had been growing in their home for years because neither he nor Liz had the courage to excise it.

  Dark World was the weight he had felt, in the most physical sense. A malignant black hole born of their slow decline from apathy to dislike to outright hatred of one another, but a refusal to just cash in their chips and walk away.

  And it would consume them all, if they let it.

  He put a hand on Kylie—a hand that he could now see, with all its wrinkles—and gently shook her. “Kylie, baby, wake up.”

  Her eyelids fluttered and she looked up at him. “Daddy, I tried, I tried to be a grown-up and get my own water, but I got lost.”

  “I know, sweetie. We all did.”

  Harold picked her up and held her small form against his shoulder. At the same time, he heard those thudding impacts off to his left, much closer than last time. He stood still and waited.

  The thundering footsteps halted. Harold sensed a massive presence standing over him. Warm breath blew down the length of his body, the smell a bit funky but positively rosy compared to what was wafting from the corpses. The breaths got closer as the thing leaned toward them.

  “Stop,” Harold said.

  The presence hesitated.

  “Go away and leave us alone.”

  The creature stayed where it was a moment longer, regarding them with reptilian hunger, then turned and stalked away.

  Nothing could hurt them here anymore.

  * * *

  Harold had no problem finding his way out of Dark World for the last time. The walk seemed much shorter this time. He supposed once you’d acknowledged a problem, it became that much easier to solve.

  He carried Kylie back into the living room of their home. The girl was sound asleep in his arms, so he ignored Liz’ furious screeches and took his daughter to her bedroom. Only then did he come back and turn on the lights just before he moved the chair and let Liz out of the closet. She came flying out, slapping him on the shoulders, the face, and the neck, and chased him back out to the living room.

  “You son of a bitch!” she yelled, when she’d finally had her fill of hitting him. She backed away across the room. “I already called the police! I’m going to have them arrest you, I swear to Christ!”

  “Okay,” he said simply.

  “I’m divorcing you and you will never see Kylie again! I’ll tell them you locked me up! I’ll tell them how you’ve been sleeping in her bedroom and doing god knows what to her! You’ll be lucky not to end up in prison!”

  “All right,” he agreed. Because the important thing now was to end this, to cut out that dark tumor in their lives once and for all.

  Liz—never an Elizabeth, but apparently sometimes a Beth—regarded him through slit eyes. “No,” she said, “No, that’s too good for you, Harold. I’m not going anywhere, I’m going to stay right here and make your life just as miserable as mine!”

  Of course. That’s what it had always been about, punishing Harold. The only reason she’d wanted Kylie in the first place was to hurt him, he saw that now.

  Beyond Liz, in the corner where the stain from her ice cream was still visible on the wall, a shadow unfolded with a lightning quick speed. It was the exact opposite of the process he’d seen before, a tiny inkspot that blossomed into a black cloud, the darkness stretching across the walls and eating up the carpet. Harold saw it clearly over her shoulder, the opening to that other world forcing its way into this one, too insistent now for even the lights to stop it.

  Because ignoring a problem…well, that was the quickest way to make it worse, wasn’t it? Nobody knew that better than Harold.

  A gigantic hand reached through from the darkness, no more than a thumb and three curled, freakish fingers. Each digit was as long and big around as Harold’s entire body, the flesh a mottled greenish-brown, the color of rot and decay. Ragged claws jutted from the ends. It snatched up Liz before he could warn her, those huge fingers wrapping around her midsection like King Kong with his bride. She looked down, saw what had her, and screamed, then began smashing her fists against that putrid flesh.

  The hand retracted, taking Liz into Dark World.

  The shadows folded into themselves, and faded away for good.

  When the police got here, Harold figured he would tell them his wife had run away with her lover.

  In the meantime, he went to go check on his daughter.