Darkness and Silence

by David Beers

  Regina’s hand dropped to her lap, then her body to the floor—her neck landing in such a way that drove the knife through the back of her throat.

  Amy held herself in front of her mom, blood leaking onto the rug before her, spreading much faster than the material could absorb it.

  “Mom?” She said to the body. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  Amy remained, letting blood run between her toes and past her heels. When her legs tired, she sat in the blood, letting it soak through her pants.

  “I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  “I sat there for three days before anyone found me. The blood had caked to my face by then, because I just laid down in it.”

  “Did your mother die?”

  “She said she wouldn’t. Said she would always be watching.”

  “What did she do after she said that?” Patent asked. “Whose blood was on your face?”

  Amy said nothing.

  “You know the answers and you know what they mean regardless of what your mother told you. She died that day. She told you those things to keep you frightened, to keep you behaving the way she wanted. Your fear of the dark, of silence, that’s the way your mind adapted to her death. It doesn’t want to go through something like that again, so it created this block against what it associates with her death. The darkness of the kitchen. The silence in the room, lying next to your mom. It’s only in your head, there’s nothing waiting for you.”

  “And if you’re wrong? If she’s been watching me and the only way I’ve made it this far is because I avoid darkness, then what? Because God knows I haven’t lived the way she wanted me to.”

  “If I’m wrong, we turn on the lights and she goes away. Plus, you will have disproved the past hundred years of science in about ten seconds. If I’m right though and nothing is waiting on you, then you don’t have to live in this hospital for the rest of your life. You’ll be putting yourself at risk for ten seconds and your reward is your freedom.”

  Amy held her loose ear bud, rubbing it with her finger. “No.”

  * * *

  The light from above made Amy’s legs cast shadows on the floor. Those shadows were made of darkness, perhaps not as dark as the nights Amy spent next to her mother’s corpse, urinating on herself and floating in and out of consciousness, but darkness all the same.

  Darkness lived under her cot as well.

  She stood from the bed and kneeled down, dropping her face to the floor. Yup, more shadows there, darkness but emptiness as well. Nothing under the bed looking back at her. No mother with a slit throat. Just the wall, floor, and dust. Darkness lived around her even if it didn’t immerse her. Where was mother in it?

  Are you trying to forget the hands that grabbed you?

  She remembered being in that black office, warm fingers touching her, pulling her close so all those arms could wrap around her. Could smother her. Only, when the lights came back on, all the people around Amy were bleeding and none of them were her mother.

  Amy sat back onto her bed and looked at the tiny window in her door. From this angle she could see the ceiling of the hall outside and nothing else. No other rooms. No other people. Her eyes scrolled over her own room. White walls. A sink. A toilet. How many years would she spend in this tiny box? How many years locked away from whatever life she may have?

  If Mom came for her, if she felt those fingers trying to choke her off, Amy would scream and the lights would come back on. Mom would disappear. The important question was how long Amy would have to be shrouded in darkness? How long would she have to hold back screams in order to leave this place? All night? That wasn’t possible. No way could she do that. A few seconds maybe, but Patent wasn’t letting her out for that. Patent wanted her to last an untold amount of time and she couldn’t do that.

  She looked back to the window, knowing her answer wouldn’t change. Knowing that even if she spent the rest of her life in this building, talking with that man, begging him to allow her to put new music on her iPod—she would never be able to withstand the length of time he wanted.

  Patent’s face appeared in the window, dismissing Amy’s view of the ceiling and the thoughts in her mind. No smile. He looked at her as if she was an animal or some inanimate object. He looked at her, but his eyes said she wasn’t really there.

  The decision she had been wrestling with was no longer hers. Patent’s face said he’d already made it.

  * * *

  Patent saw the terror cascade down Amy’s face as she realized what this meant. Locked in her room with nowhere to go, she was little more than a rat. Amy’s face screamed that knowledge, but he knew it was only a reflection of his own. Patent was going to run this experiment, not for the good of science or himself, but his patient. The experiment would prove nothing waited for her in the dark. Her mother was only in her mind, gone from this world.

  He was going to turn the lights off. She could have her music for now, but not light. She would scream at first, for full minutes probably, but eventually her voice would lower and she would sit in the dark by herself. Sit and see that nothing was coming for her. He would turn the lights back on and they would talk. Her anger would be palpable, but it would subside, and when she could sleep in the dark without music blaring, she would thank him. When she walked out of this building, able to function in society, she would thank him.

  Patent reached for the light switch, flicking it down and at the same time touching a button on the remote he held, turning the lights in the hall off as well.

  Darkness surrounded him.

  * * *

  Blackness came down on Amy like God himself had decided the world should end. Even her window no longer showed Dr. Patent’s face. Darkness reigned.

  Amy’s mouth distorted into an ugly, unseen caricature of its normal shape. Her left hand moved automatically to her headphones, bringing them to her ears. Music flooded her mind, but it didn’t take away the darkness around her. Didn’t bring light to this room.

  A loud, hoarse cry erupted from her open lips, not consciously called on but brought up out of the terror upon her.

  “I told you I was watching.” The voice came from the darkness, gurgling out like the blood had her mother’s mouth in her last few seconds of life.

  “Moooooooommm!”

  “You knew I’d see everything.”

  * * *

  Patent gripped the plastic remote hard enough to make it creak. The wail from inside the room did it. His whole body tensed up at the word he heard, the stretched out vowel of mom.

  He didn’t hit the button though, didn’t allow his hand to move to the light switch that controlled her room. He would wait. The screams would dissipate, despite how terrifying they sounded.

  “NOOO!”

  “NOOO!”

  The words echoed and nurses on the hall moved slowly in the dark, making their way to the room Patent stood outside of. Three people waited at Amy’s door, listening to the cries inside. No one moved to open it, to free her of the horror she thought she saw. Screams were everyday occurrences, perhaps not under these exact circumstances, but nothing to worry about—curiosity had brought these people to this room.

  The cries turned into unintelligible shrieks.

  Patent pressed his face to the window, but the darkness was too deep.

  * * *

  “Shut up.”

  Amy felt her mother’s lips against her ear, whispering in that horrible gargle. Her shrieks turned to whimpers as two hands made of iced iron pinned her own arms to the bed. The fingers grabbing her wrists felt sticky, like the blood that had surrounded Amy as a child.

  “I told you I was watching. I told you I would be here waiting. Did you not believe me?”

  Amy couldn’t see her mother, but she heard her, felt her, smelled her. All of Amy’s senses, besides sight, were filled with Regina.

  “I believed you, Mom. I always believed you.”

  “Then you should have behaved.”

  Her
mother kissed Amy’s cheek, the sticky substance smacking against her skin.

  A sharp pain.

  A loud scream.

  Then Amy fell silent in the darkness of her cell.

  Her headphones and iPod lay on the floor, playing music into the otherwise quiet room.

  * * *

  Patent listened, and in hearing nothing, sighed. Amy was inside, probably curled up in a ball, but no longer screaming. Scared out of her mind, but seeing nothing accompanied her. She was alone in the darkness and perhaps always had been.

  A few more seconds. He didn’t want her to say that had he left the lights off longer, her mother would have showed.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He reached for the switch and simultaneously pressed the button on his remote. Light spewed on the floor beneath him, surprising his eyes and temporarily blinding him.

  He heard a nurse gasp.

  Then he saw.

  The bed was bare, sheets missing, but that wasn’t what he focused on. His eyes went to Amy, hanging, her ass a few inches from the floor, her feet actually touching it, and the bed sheet wrapped tight around her neck. The white sheet extended upward, wrapping around the sink’s faucet.

  Amy hung in the air from her sink, nearly sitting on the floor, her face a brutish shade of purple. Her tongue lolled from her mouth and her eyes were blood shot, with large blue veins poking from her forehead. Her hands hung at her side.

  Nurses pushed Patent away, rushing inside the room, untying the knots as they reached her. They tried to hold the body up as they worked at the noose, trying to allow air to flow through her neck again. Finally large sheers were brought in, slicing through the sheet, and Amy’s body fell to the floor. Not moving, not breathing.

  CPR came next.

  Breathe. Pump. Pump. Pump.

  The only air that moved through Amy’s body came from other’s lungs.

  Amy Hillen lay dead in front of Dr. Ryan Patent.

  * * *

  The patient created a noose, wrapped it around her neck and attached the other side to the faucet. She then hung until dead. The coroner confirmed this was a suicide. Her internal fear of the dark was so great that at some point during the two and a half minutes of darkness, it drove her to killing herself.

  Patent read over the document and then signed his name to it.

  There would be an investigation, obviously, as a death occurred under his watch. Patent thought he’d be okay. The patient had no history of suicide, neither threats nor actual attempts, and had never mentioned it as even a thought. Two and a half minutes of darkness wasn’t out of line, not when trying to convince someone their fears were unfounded.

  That’s what Patent couldn’t stop thinking about. The short time she was inside. She had been sitting on the bed when he looked in at her, the sheet perfectly spread out. A few seconds later the sheet was knotted so tight, grown women had to cut her down. More, how does one hang themselves when all they have to do is stand up? Or simply kneel? So many questions but only one answer.

  Because no one else was in the room to tie the noose.

  No one else was in the room to hold her down while she suffocated.

  Patent told himself again.

  Did you love Darkness and Silence: A Short Story? Then you should read The Devil’s Dream, Book One by David Beers!

  **For updates please sign up for David Beers’ mailing list: davidbeersauthor.com/mailing-list/ **

  _______

  The Devil’s Dream is a serial novel. This is Book One, Book Two will be released July of 2014 and Book 3 (Final Book) November of 2014!

  How far would you go to bring back someone you love?

  At the age of thirty, Matthew Brand left the world in awe at his accomplishments. It appears the world’s problems will be solved by one man, all in one lifetime.

  And then, Matthew’s adopted son—Hilman—is shot down by police officers. When the cops are let off without so much as a suspension, Brand’s purpose in life changes: To kill those that murdered his son, and then use their bodies to bring Hilman back to life.

  Revenge. Love. Two sides of the same coin…

  Following a year of terror, Matthew is captured and cryogenically frozen in case the world needs his incredible brain some day in the future.

  Ten years after this imprisonment, Brand amazingly escapes, intent on killing as many people as necessary to fuel his son’s rebirth.

  The second manhunt for Matthew Brand begins.

  The smartest man to ever live facing the largest police force in the world…

  Read more at David Beers’s site.

  Also by David Beers

  The Devil’s Dream

  The Devil’s Dream, Book One

  Standalone

  Eat: A Short Story

  Dead Religion

  Darkness and Silence: A Short Story

  Watch for more at David Beers’s site.

  About the Author

  I used to deliver pizza. I was pretty good at it, too. I mean, it’s not that hard, but if I’m not going to brag, who is, right? Anyways, so I’m delivering pizza while I’m in college, and my boss has been in the pizza industry like six years. He’s supposed to graduate from college this year, and I ask him, what are you going to do after college? We’re all supposed to go out and conquer the world right after college, so this guy has to have some kind of plan.

  He looked at me like I was delusional.

  “I’m a writer, man.”

  Those four words changed my life more so than anything else ever spoken to me.

  I’d always written, since I was twelve participating in online-wrestling forums in which you acted out your character. I wrote because it came naturally. Never once, in the entirety of my nineteen years did I think that writing could be a career though, until a Pizza Sage said those four words to me.

  So what did I do? I went home and wrote a short story and immediately understood that I was the greatest writer to ever touch a keyboard. I brought it to the Pizza Sage and he told me what anyone could have told me–it was horrible. I might be dumb, probably am, but I’m also tenacious.

  I spent the next seven years writing almost every day. My first novel grew to the length of 40,000 words, then I threw it away. My second novel grew to 140,000 words. I didn’t throw it away, but it was rejected about 50 times by agents. My next novel ended up at around 55,000 words, which I showed to a few friends and shelved. Then I wrote Dead Religion, and haven’t stopped publishing since.

  All that aside, I’d like to own a yacht.

  Read more at David Beers’s site.

  About the Publisher

  Dear Reader,

  I truly appreciate you taking the time to read this story; it gives me a joy greater than I can put into words (a problem for a writer, I know). If you’ve enjoyed the book, and don’t mind being kept up to date about future works/spreading the word for an independent author, here are some things you can do:

  1. Sign up for the mailing list. Go here: http://www.davidbeersauthor.com/mailing-list and fill out your email address to stay up-to-date. I send free stuff out monthly, give readers sneak-peeks at new books, covers, etc.

  2. Check out my other works: http://www.davidbeersauthor.com/my-work/

  3. Follow my blog: http://www.davidbeersauthor.com/blog/ I do a good bit of writing outside of my novels, and it’s all interesting and amazing, so I’d check it out if I were you.

  4. Share your opinion. If you like anything I’m writing, let a friend know. Let them borrow your book, or tell them to download it for free, or if they want to buy it—that’s fine too. I’m happy as long as people are happy reading my work.

  5. Write a review. Most of the sites where you can buy e-books have a way for you to post a review, so you can share with other readers whether a book or story merits their attention. Also, there are a variety of book review websites like GoodReads, where members discuss the books they’ve read, want to read or want ot
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  6. Connect with me on any of the following social media networks: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidbeersauthor, Twitter: @davidbeerswrite

  7. Send me feedback. If you have a question about this book (or others), like to point out errors and typos, discuss issues raised in the book, want to know how to become one of my beta readers, or just embarrass me with totally undeserved adulation, I urge you to send me an email at DavidBeersAuthor@gmail.com. I love to hear from readers and answer EVERY email.

  All the best,

  David Beers