Darker Than Night

by Goingback, Owl

  Apparently the oaks and elms were part of the old grove, while the pines had been planted in recent times to replace trees once removed. He knew a sawmill had once been located in the area, so maybe the woods he now owned had been part of their logging operation. The pines must have been planted as replacement trees, but he estimated the pines he saw to be about sixty or seventy years old.

  Following a winding animal trail, it wasn't long before he stumbled upon Bloodrock Creek. The creek was about ten to fifteen feet across at its widest point, and no more than a foot or so deep, although there were places where the swirling water had scooped out earth and rock to form pools that were probably deep enough for swimming.

  Soothed by the creek's gentle gurgling, he took a seat on a large rock and watched the dark water swirl past him. He dipped his hand in and took a drink, invigorated by both the clarity and coldness of the water. No way would he ever think of drinking from a stream in New York, but here it seemed perfectly natural to do so. He just hoped the stream didn't pass through a cow pasture farther upstream. Still, drinking water laced with a little cow shit was probably a whole lot healthier than the chemical-tainted poison that flowed from the tap back in the city.

  Sitting on the rock, he allowed his mind to relax as he enjoyed the wildlife around him. He spotted several species of birds, as well as an abundance of squirrels in the area. There were also quite a few insects making their homes along the creek, including a rather pesky yellow fly who insisted on making his presence known. A few well-aimed swats finally persuaded the insect to seek attention elsewhere.

  The serene calm of the forest made it hard to imagine that a battle had ever been fought in the area But according to local history, Bloodrock Creek had earned its name because of a minor skirmish waged along its banks during the early days of the Civil War. The Battle of Bloodrock Creek wasn’t a planned campaign. Two opposing generals had not led their troops in grand charges, as so often portrayed in books and movies.

  On the contrary, the skirmish had been the result of a Union patrol becoming lost and accidentally stumbling upon an encampment of Southern sympathizers. The sympathizers in the encampment, as well as the soldiers in the patrol, had been drinking heavily that day, so many of the shots fired in the exchange missed their target. Only three soldiers were killed: two of the sympathizers, and the Union officer responsible for getting his troops lost. Several other soldiers were wounded, but none seriously enough to be considered life threatening.

  Since blood had been spilled in the battle, the local residents felt inclined to change the name of the creek from Johnson's Creek (much to the displeasure of Nathan Johnson, for whom the creek had originally been named) to its more ominous nomenclature of today.

  His creative juices inspired by thoughts of ancient forests and forgotten battles, Mike decided to head back to the house and take another crack at his writing. Calling Pinky to make sure the big cat followed him, he left the forest and made his way slowly back through the orchard.

  Arriving back at the house, he stopped suddenly when he spotted movement in an upstairs window. The window was one of the two belonging to Tommy's room.

  Alarm bells sounded in his head. Holly and the kids weren't back yet, and Pinky the cat was with him, so there should not be anyone in the house. Yet he had definitely seen something slip past the window. As he stood there, he saw it again, a patch of darkness gliding past on the other side of the glass. It wasn't a trick of the lighting. Nor had the shadow been caused by a curtain blowing, because the window was closed.

  Positive someone was inside Tommy's room, Mike hurried to the rear of the house. He tried the back door, but found it locked. Whoever was inside probably had not come this way.

  Stepping away from the back door, he circled the house, keeping close to the wall so as not to be seen from above. He checked the windows as he went, but they all appeared to be securely locked. Arriving at the front of the house, he stepped up on the porch and slowly approached the front door. The door was still closed, but that didn't mean it had not been recently opened.

  As he reached for the doorknob, Mike suddenly realized that he was unarmed. If there was someone inside the house, a burglar perhaps, then it could be very dangerous coming face to face with him. Hesitating for a moment, he thought about retreating to search for something to use to defend himself. He might find a tool of some kind in the barn, or even a sturdy board that would suffice for protection. But if he went to the barn to look for such an item, the person inside the house might get away.

  He stood there, not knowing what to do, feeling a little afraid at the possibility of coming face to face with an intruder while unarmed. He was also angry that someone had violated the sanctuary of their home. In New York City he had protected his apartment with alarms and triple locks, but had never thought to do such things here. The country was supposed to be safe, or at least it used to be.

  Not wanting to retreat off the porch for fear the intruder might slip away, Mike finally decided to enter the house. Taking a deep breath, he tried the doorknob, and was surprised to find it locked.

  Of course it's locked. The burglar probably relocked the door to make it appear exactly as he found it.

  Fishing the keys out of his pocket, he slipped the house key into the lock and slowly opened the door. Entering quickly, he closed the door quietly behind him. He stood just inside the door, carefully listening to the sounds around him. The house was dark and quiet, slumbering peacefully under a midday sun.

  Moving as quietly as possible, he slowly proceeded down the hall to the living room. He paused just before the doorway, again listening for sounds, before peeking into the room. The living room was empty and apparently undisturbed. A quick glance to the hutch showed that his Bram Stoker Award still sat safely on the shelf.

  Withdrawing from the living room, he continued down the hallway. The kitchen was on the left, but it also proved to be empty. He quickly circled the kitchen table and removed a butcher knife from the drawer beside the sink. Feeling much better now that he was armed, he quietly slid the drawer closed and left the kitchen.

  Holly's studio and his office were also empty and apparently undisturbed. As he entered the office, he thought about snatching up the phone and dialing 911, but refrained from doing so. He had no proof yet that someone had broken into the house, and was reluctant to make a call to the police without it. Better to wait until he was sure than look like a complete idiot later.

  The bathroom on the first floor was also vacant. That left only the bedrooms and bathroom on the upper floor to be checked.

  Truthfully Mike didn't expect to find anyone lurking on the lower level, because he had seen the movement in the window upstairs. Still he wanted to check each of the rooms as he passed them to prevent anyone from sneaking up behind him. Approaching the stairs, he paused, again listening for noises from upstairs: drawers being slid open, furniture being moved, footsteps, voices, something to indicate an intruder was present. The house remained quiet; the only sound was from his nervous breathing.

  He took the stairs slowly, cautiously, one step at a time. His heart nearly skipped a beat when the fifth step squeaked as he placed his weight fully upon it. He certainly had forgotten the step squeaked, and now he was certain the noise would warn of his presence.

  Knowing he no longer had the element of surprise on his side, Mike charged up the rest of the stairs and raced down the hallway. With the butcher knife gripped tightly in his right hand, he threw open the door to Megan's bedroom and stepped inside. The bedroom was empty and looked exactly as he had last seen it that morning.

  Quickly entering the room, he checked under the bed and inside the closet, making sure no one was hiding. Satisfied the room was empty, he stepped back out into the hallway.

  The bathroom was next, followed by the master bedroom. Both proved to be empty. That left only Tommy's room, the same room in which he had spotted movement from outside the house. The door to his son's room stood open a
few inches, but as he started down the hallway that door slowly closed.

  Mike froze, his bowels turning to ice. No doubt about it, someone was inside Tommy's room. They must have heard him coming and closed the door. Were they waiting for him just inside the door, a weapon in hand? Or were they trying to seek a place to hide, maybe an avenue of escape? Was it a kid who waited, a local teenager, or was it a full-sized adult?

  These questions bombarded him as he stood there in the hallway, wondering what action to take. Mental images flashed through his mind, pictures of being attacked and beaten, perhaps even killed, by the man — or thing — waiting for him beyond the door.

  Yes, thing. For now, at the worst appropriate moment, his writing muse decided to go on line, conjuring up images of werewolves, vampires, and slobbering creatures waiting for him inside the tiny bedroom. Facing danger was never easy, but it was especially difficult when you were a horror writer gifted with an imagination that always portrayed the worst cast scenarios.

  What are you, a man or a mouse?

  He continued to think of all the things that could be lurking on the other side of the door and knew the answer.

  A mouse.

  But this was his house, damnit, and he was not about to back down from a possible threat to the sanctuary of it. He owed it to Holly, Megan, and Tommy to be the protector, the brave knight in shining armor.

  Determined to do or die, he took a deep breath and stepped forward. The door wasn't closed all of the way; he could see a tiny crack between the door and the frame. Knowing he didn't need to turn the knob, he stepped forward and kicked the door as hard as he could.

  The door slammed open with a bang, hitting the wall behind it hard enough to render unconscious anyone foolish enough to be hiding there. He had started through the doorway when something lunged at him with an unholy screech. A howling demon of yellow fur and claws shot past him and raced down the hall.

  "Pinky!"

  Mike thought he had left the cat outside, but Pinky must have slipped past him when he entered the house. He was so intent on searching the lower rooms he hadn't even noticed the big cat following him. Tommy must have left his room door open enough for the feline to slip in. Pinky probably bumped into the door once he was inside, trapping himself. Kicking the door had scared the hell out of the cat.

  Pinky scared the hell out of me too.

  A troubling thought crossed his mind. What if something else had frightened the feline?

  Turning his attention back to the task at hand, Mike hurried through the open doorway into Tommy's room. He looked quickly right and then left as he entered the room, but no one was hiding on either side of the door. Nor was anyone in the closet or under the bed. The room was empty.

  "There's no one here. I must have been imagining things."

  He was just about to step back out of the room when he heard a strange banging coming from downstairs. Three bangs and then silence. Very loud. Very sharp. Like someone striking wood with a hammer. It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen.

  "I'm not imagining that!"

  Rushing out of Tommy's room, he hurried downstairs to the kitchen. He again found the kitchen empty, but someone must have been there only moments before. Entering the kitchen, Mike discovered that the bear kachina had been knocked off the table and was now lying broken in several pieces on the floor.

  Certain an intruder was in the house with him, he left the kitchen and rechecked all of the rooms on the first floor, again finding them empty. He also checked the basement and hallway closet, and went outside to look around, but found no one. After checking the barn, he returned to the house and went back into the kitchen.

  Setting the butcher knife on the table, he picked up the broken pieces of the bear kachina. Someone had to be playing a prank on him; there could be no other logical explanation. Someone must have gotten into the house, hiding when he searched the rooms on the lower floor. They must have then broken the kachina and run away before he could get downstairs. But why? And who?

  Setting the broken pieces on the counter, he started to leave the room. As he turned to leave, Mike noticed a large crack in the floor directly beneath the kitchen table. The crack was about thirty inches long and a quarter inch wide, running zigzag between the oval stains.

  "Son of a bitch," he said, kneeling down to examine the crack.

  It was the second crack to appear since their moving into the house. Like the one in the library wall, the crack beneath the kitchen table must have been formed by severe stress or pressure of some kind. Perhaps the house was settling, but surely a house so old would have settled long ago.

  A panicked thought entered his mind. What if they were living on an unknown fault line, and the cracks were the result of two land masses moving? The infamous New Madrid fault was only about two hundred miles south, so maybe there were other, smaller, faults running through the area.

  Mike shook his head. He had seen the geological reports for the region, and there was no indication of any faults in the area. Nor, as far as he knew, had the house been built over an underground cavern.

  If the sudden appearance of the cracks could not be attributed to nature, then there had to be something wrong with the house itself. A flaw in the foundation, or even in the building design. Maybe there had been other cracks before, and his grandmother had covered over them.

  Running his fingers over the crack, he felt a cool dampness seeping up from the floor. For some strange reason the dampness reminded him of ancient tunnels and deep, dark wells. Again he wondered if there was a water leak somewhere.

  One thing for sure, he would call the contractors the first thing in the morning. He already had to call them about the oval stains, so he might as well kill two birds with one stone.

  He was just about to stand back up when he noticed that the oval splotches on the tile floor looked considerably darker than they had earlier in the day. Oddly enough, they also looked more defined, as though someone had shaded them in with a colored marker. Like the first two stains, the other splotches also looked like faces... faces with eyes that watched his every movement.

  A chill danced down his spine. He had been trying to pass off the stains as a flaw in the tiles, or a leaky pipe. But he could no longer deny that the splotches were anything other than faces. Angry faces.

  13

  Holly and the kids arrived home from church shortly after 1 p.m.. Hearing the van pull up in the driveway, Mike went out on the porch to greet them. He could tell form Holly's expression that things had not gone as planned, but he waited for her to tell him about it rather than ask. Taking a seat on the steps, she waited for the kids to go inside before telling her husband about what had happened.

  "I still can't believe the nerve of that man," she said, finishing her story. She dug a pack of cigarettes out of her purse, lit one and took a puff, then added, "And to think he calls himself a minister of God. A minister of bigotry and stupidity is more like it. He really pissed me off. I'm still furious."

  "That's what you get for marrying the spawn of Satan," Mike teased, knowing he too would have been upset had he been there to hear the reverend's words against him.

  "This isn't funny," she said and frowned. "How are we ever going to be part of this community if the locals think we are bad people?"

  Mike shrugged. "Country people are kind of funny. Most of them are real slow about taking to outsiders. He sat down beside her and took a puff off of her cigarette. "I'm sure they'll come around, eventually, once they see that we don't ride around on broomsticks or sacrifice small children during the full moon. It just might take a little time to win them over."

  "It's going to take a lot of time with that minister telling everyone we're evil and no good."

  "Actually, I'm the one he said was no good," Mike corrected. "And it's not like I haven’t been called such things before, and by much more influential people. I'm quite sure the good reverend will quit ranting once he sees we're not all the things he thinks we
are. The best thing for us to do in the meantime is to go about our business and just ignore him."

  She let out her breath, releasing some of the anger inside of her. "Maybe you're right. I'm just worried about the kids. They have a hard enough time trying to fit in and make new friends the way it is."

  He smiled. "Our kids are New Yorkers. They can make friends anywhere. And if they can't, then they can kick ass with the best of them."

  Holly laughed, the anger she had felt earlier all but gone. "And how was your day?"

  Mike told her about finding the bear kachina lying on the floor broken, and about the crack in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  "Do you think there's a connection between the two?"

  "I don't think so," he said. "Truthfully, I don't think there could be a connection. Not unless we got hit by an earthquake tremor strong enough to knock the statue off the table and put a crack in the floor. And if that's what happened I would have felt it, because I was in the house at the time."

  "Do you think Pinky could have knocked the statue off the table?" she asked.

  "That's possible, but not likely," he turned to face her. "That kachina is made of cottonwood. It wouldn't have broken into so many pieces just from falling off the table."

  "I don't understand. I thought you said you found it on the floor?"

  "I did, but I don't think it just fell off the table. I think it was slammed on the floor, and maybe even stomped on."

  A look of surprise crossed her face. "Stomped on? You think someone broke the kachina on purpose?"

  Mike nodded.

  "But that would mean someone was in the house. Who. And how did they get in?"

  He shook his head. "I don't know. I was having trouble getting started on the new chapter, so I decided to take a walk with Pinky. I wasn't gone long, maybe an hour at the most. I locked the front door when I left; the back door was locked from the inside. Both doors were still locked when I got back, and there was no sign of a forced entry. Even so, I could have sworn I saw someone in one of the upstairs windows."