by Victor Allen
**********
Jean snapped her eyes open to a darkened bedroom. Fear shot through her veins like cold dye. Something bumped against the window and shadows moved across the floor like black, scurrying animals. The blackness wound around Jean’s feet like tar, writhing and twisting with hunger, almost dancing. They clawed their way up her legs and into her lap, obscuring the white pages of the book that had come to rest there when she had fallen asleep.
She bolted from her chair, the shadows spilling harmlessly from her lap. After all, they were only the shadows of the Oak tree outside trembling in the moon’s silver smile.
Jean looked at Lance. He slept peacefully, the covers drawn up, his face serene with untroubled dreams. The luminous numerals of Jean’s digital clock floated through the darkness. 3:45. So three thirty had come and gone and no Ruby. No ringing of the telephone. A sort of hollow relief settled on Jean, making her feel light and ephemeral. There was a high pitched, ringing hum in her ears as she listened intently in the silence. There was nothing. Ruby was afraid. She felt it in her heart. She would turn on the light and scatter the darkness.
She hurried over to the light switch and flicked it, frowning as she noticed it was already in the “on” position. She flipped the switch up and down fruitlessly. Nothing. Not even the flare of a bulb burning out. Fresh fear closed in on her like out of date clothing that has grown too tight. Ruby had done this. Had put her to sleep and put out the lights; had conspired to get her away from the bed. The knowledge that Ruby was here was clear and hard, like a window that opens onto a sideshow of horrors.
Turning her head to look at the bed was the hardest thing Jean had ever done.
Ruby stood over the bed, her back to Jean. The bedroom door slowly swung shut, creaking on a hinge, but not so slowly that it could have been natural momentum. Something had pushed the door shut, locking her in with Ruby. The walls of the bedroom darkened and seemed to become obdurate, like stone. The boards creaked with the movement of things behind the walls, shuffling about and staring in at the three players of this tragedy with cold, indifferent eyes.
Ruby leaned over the bed in her black, funeral dress, her arms reaching out to scoop Lance up and take him down, down into the void where he would never sunlight, snowy fields, or gentle rains ever again.
Jean streaked across the room to her son, not thinking, her vocal cords as soundless as the moon and stars, refusing to let her cry out. She reached Ruby and an odd thing happened. Jean crashed into the Ruby thing, but it was like careening through smoke. Her knees hit the bed and she flew through the air and thudded into the wall. Hot metal streaked across her field of vision and a cycling sledgehammer started thumping in the soft, befuddled tissue of her brain.
She struggled to her knees and put one hand on the bed. Lance had awakened, staring with terrified eyes at the Ruby thing leaning over his bed like a dark and sinister priest. Jean slapped her other hand on the bed and clutched Lance with both hands, pulling him towards her with every last ounce of maternal strength and courage she had. She seemed to be caught in some kind of hellish tug of war as something held Lance back. She finally felt Lance begin to slide towards her and she looked up at Ruby.
Beneath the thick, black grave wig, Ruby’s face had disappeared, replaced by a shining blank, smooth as stone and effusing a fevered, white light. Even as Jean watched, the blank face darkened to bloody red and the features of a skull burned themselves into its smooth surface. Empty eye orbits yawned like craters and the nasal cavity opened in the face like a camera lens. The jawbone dropped open and hung agape, exposing an endless, black tunnel stretching down the thing’s throat.
The Ruby thing was still leaning, but had begun to draw its arms back, the loose sleeves of its dress hanging down like veils over the faces of the dead. Jean had gathered Lance to her and he clung to her tightly.
Before Ruby faded into the blackness, her cheated scream blasted through the house, but it was only in Jean’s head. She heard many voices, all angry and disappointed and terrible. But the one that screamed louder than the rest was Ruby’s, saying: You win this time. But I’ll take him a year at a time, a piece at a time, until he’s all mine.
