The Darkness To Come

by Brandon Massey

  He checked his watch. It was a few minutes to five. Darkness was stealing over the island, and the strengthening winds were battering the palmettos and the live oaks that surrounded the house. The lights flickered for a moment, and then came back on.

  Rachel lit a couple of Kerosene lamps, and double-checked that her flashlight was functional. “Now what do we do?”

  Joshua sat on a step near the bottom of the staircase, the .357 on his hip, a flashlight dangling from his belt, and the Molotov cocktail strapped over his shoulder.

  “Now,” he said, “we wait for him.”

  Chapter 63

  Gravel spinning from the tires, Dexter veered the Mustang into the parking lot of the Hyde Island Visitor Center.

  It was a quarter after four. He’d driven no slower than ninety miles an hour during the trip. He had only fifteen minutes before the day’s last ferry departed.

  He surveyed the lot for some confirmation that this was the right place—and saw two telling clues: Joshua’s Ford Explorer. And an Acura sedan, parked in the far corner. A closer look at the bumper sticker on the Acura—it advertised her hair salon—clinched the deal.

  There’s no escape from me, baby.

  The visitor center was ahead, a small, red-shingled building on a thick concrete slab. He peered around the corner of the structure, and saw a dock at which several boats, include the island ferry, were tied. The dock was accessible via a short stairway.

  He couldn’t risk setting foot inside the visitor center. When he’d seen himself in the car’s rearview mirror, he looked as savage and dangerous as he felt. His appearance would set off alarms, and he couldn’t take a chance on someone alerting the cops before he reached the island. He was too close now.

  So he invoked the cloak, and went around the side of the building. He climbed the steps to the dock.

  A middle-aged black man with a goatee lingered at the gangplank to the ferry. There were few passengers boarding, and the guy wasn’t paying close attention. He was chatting on a cell phone.

  Dexter strolled to the ferry, waited until the guy moved away from the entrance as he attended to something on deck, and hopped on.

  Dexter knew that his body was giving off a strong odor—a wild, musky smell. But the pungent scent of the saltwater sea should conceal him from detection.

  There were about ten other passengers on board. Dexter went aft, away from them, and leaned against the railing.

  A strong wind buffeted the vessel, shrieking across the deck. Dexter worried that the captain would attempt to postpone the trip due to the weather, in which case, Dexter would have to force him to go. He was too close to finding her, at last. He would not be denied, or delayed.

  Thankfully, at four-thirty, the ferry cast off. Dexter maintained his cloak as the ship crested the rippling waves. The first mate went into the cabin, oblivious to Dexter’s presence.

  On the bench seats, Dexter found a booklet about Hyde Island that someone had left behind. He began to skim through it, and when he came across the section about Hall Hammock, he had to smile.

  Now he knew where his wife was hidden on the island.

  * * *

  A half hour later, the ferry, braving powerful winds, docked at Hyde Island.

  The first mate secured the ferry to the dock, and then disembarked from the boat.

  Cloaked, Dexter followed. The captain was messing around in the cabin, and he wasn’t going to wait for him. Besides, the first mate seemed to know exactly where he was going.

  Dexter tailed him across the dock, and to a small, dusty parking lot occupied by a handful of vehicles. He was heading toward a rusty Ford pick up.

  He opened the door, climbed behind the wheel. As he went to close the door, Dexter moved in. He grabbed the guy by the back of his neck and drove his head forward into the windshield, hard enough to hurt him but not with enough force to knock him out. The man’s head rapped against the glass, and he let out a strangled yelp.

  “Shut up.” Seizing the man by his shirt, Dexter shoved him into the passenger seat, and slid behind the steering wheel.

  The man slumped in the seat, dazed, blood streaming down his face from a gash in his forehead. “What the—“

  “I told you to shut up.” Dexter grabbed the crotch of his pants, got a firm hold on the family jewels, and squeezed.

  The guy let out a thin whine of agony, his eyeballs swelling.

  Dexter spoke quietly: “You scream for help, you do anything other than what I tell you to do, and I’ll crack your balls in my hands like a couple of peanuts. Got it? Nod if you do.”

  The man bobbed his head feverishly. There was a name plate affixed to the breast pocket of his work shirt. Jimmy.

  “Okay, Jimmy.” Dexter relaxed his grip a little. “I’m looking for my wife. She’s on this island. I think she’s on Hall Hammock—her first name is Joy or Rachel. Her last name is Hall, or Moore.”

  The recognition that sparked in Jimmy’ eyes told Dexter this man knew exactly who he was talking about.

  “You know where she’s staying?” Dexter asked.

  His face greasy with scared sweat, Jimmy nodded.

  “Good boy.” Dexter took his hand away from Jimmy’ little package. Jimmy cried out softly, buckled over in the seat, and vomited in his lap.

  Dexter thumped him on the back. “You’ll be all right, man. But don’t try me. You do what I say, and we’ll be cool.”

  “Please . . .” Jimmy said.

  “Shut up,” Dexter said, and Jimmy promptly swallowed his words.

  Dexter turned the key in the ignition. The truck started with a rumble.

  “Now, Jimmy. Tell me how to get to where my wife is staying.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, they had entered the so-called historic community of Hall Hammock. It looked like the land that time had forgotten. No wonder the place was fading, as the island booklet had said. Who’d want to live in such a dump? These nostalgic assholes should have sold out to some real estate developers and gone about their merry way.

  Jimmy pointed weakly. “She lives there. The house around the bend.”

  “I see it. Where do you live? I’ll drop you off and go on about my business.”

  Jimmy looked at Dexter skeptically.

  “I asked you a question,” Dexter said.

  “The house . . . on the right here,” Jimmy said.

  It was a pathetic home, little more than a shotgun shack sitting on timbers. Dexter parked in the weed-choked driveway next to an old Chevy rusting on cinderblocks.

  “You live alone?” Dexter asked.

  Jimmy nodded heavily. “My wife passed a year ago. She’s gone with God now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Jimmy. I understand as well as anyone what it’s like to lose a wife . . . and then to find her again.”

  “Pardon?” Confusion muddied the man’s eyes.

  “Let me make myself clear.” Dexter put his hand around the back of the man’s neck, like a father figure offering consolation. But his grip was like an iron vise.

  “How would you like to join her today?”

  Chapter 64

  The wind continued to increase in ferocity. It swept over the house, tearing at the eaves, howling around the walls, and punching the windows like a barrage of fists.

  Sitting on the steps, Joshua kept his finger on the flashlight, waiting for a blackout. The lights flickered several times, but remained on.

  Beside him on the stairs, Rachel put her hand on his arm. “What time is it?”

  “Almost six,” Joshua said. “You think the ferry would’ve still run in this wind?”

  “It would take something much worse than this to keep the ferry on the mainland. A lot of people depend on it for their livelihood, you know. Children go to school on the mainland, all of the jobs are there . . . trust me, the boat ran.”

  He nodded, quiet. He happened to glance at her hair, and on impulse, touched it.

  “I found out that your natural
color is auburn,” he said.

  She gave him a curious look. “How’d you find that out?”

  “Tanisha told me.”

  “Oh.” Grief stung her face. “Well, she would’ve known, she used to dye it for me. My hair used to be halfway down my back. I cut it and started to color it after I left home. It was part of my disguise, along with the glasses.”

  He ran his fingers through her soft, dark curls. “I love how your hair looks now. But I’d like to see it how it used to be. There’s no reason to hide any more, is there?”

  “You’re right—” Rachel started to say, but then the lights sputtered. Another gale blew around the house.

  The lights flickered, and then died. They didn’t come back on.

  Rachel had already lit two kerosene lanterns and placed one of them on a table in the front room, giving them pale light, but the blackness that devoured the rest of the house was so thick it might have been a solid substance. Joshua realized that on a sparsely populated, mostly undeveloped island, there were no streetlamps to light the neighborhoods, no big buildings blazing in the night. He had lost power at their home in Atlanta yesterday, but that had been nothing compared to this. Here, the absence of light was breathtaking.

  He switched on his flashlight. Rachel did the same.

  Darkness, at last, had come.

  * * *

  Upon closer inspection, it was a nicer house than Dexter expected. A two-story Cape Cod, in good shape, with a fresh coat of light paint. He could see the beach, and the wind-whipped sea, through the palmettos and live oaks that flanked the property.

  The bitch had never told him that her family owned a house on a goddamn island. It had been wise of her to keep it from him. He would have forced her to sell it. Developers were probably frothing at the mouth to get their grubby hands on this prime piece of beachfront real estate, and would have paid a handsome price.

  Night had come, and the fierce wind had knocked out power. As he stood at the mouth of the long driveway, he reflected that he probably did not need to cloak himself in order to approach the house. The natural darkness would conceal him.

  Keeping to the perimeter of the front yard, he walked through the short, dry grass. He took refuge behind a live oak that bordered the driveway. Wind tore through the boughs overhead, ripping crisp, dead leaves from the branches.

  He deliberated his next move. The bitch and her illegitimate husband were likely anticipating his arrival, and would have made preparations. He could not simply walk to the front door, ring the bell, and hope to draw them out. He would have to be more cunning.

  Clouds as tattered as cheesecloth scudded across the sky, pushed by the high velocity winds. A nearly full moon, freed of the masking clouds, cast a deathly pale glow.

  The silvery luminescence bathed the beach house, making it appear to shimmer like a magical place in a fairy tale. There was actual glitter around the front porch, as if a Christmas party had taken place there a short while ago and they had neglected to clean up.

  Dexter looked closer.

  Not party glitter. Broken glass. Mixed in with leaves that had been disturbed by the wind.

  Cloaking himself again lest the moonlight give him away, he circled to the rear of the house.

  There was a wide patio. A set of steps led to a balcony, too. Slivers of crushed glass, half-concealed with a blend of wind-blown leaves, covered both areas.

  He didn’t see glass twinkling in the grass beneath the first-floor window on the west side of the house, but he was sure that it was scattered inside, underneath the sill.

  “Smart,” he said.

  He returned to the oak tree in the front. The long, sturdy branches extended to embrace the roof of the house. A dormer window reflected the ghostly moonlight.

  “But I’m smarter.”

  He hadn’t climbed a tree since he was a kid. But he made quick work of this one, scaling the trunk and branches with relative ease.

  The powerful wind hardly slowed him. He was on a divine mission. It was not his destiny to fall from a tree and crack his skull on the ground. Matter of fact, he’d become so impervious to injury that he doubted falling to the earth from a height fatal to a normal man would have harmed him at all.

  A thick, sturdy bough stretched toward the roof and the dormer window. With the sure-footedness of a ninja, he crept across the bough, and hopped lightly onto the steeply pitched roof, confident that the screeching wind masked the sounds of his drop.

  However, the wind did rattle loose a branch. It spun to the ground, snapping against the pool of broken glass around the porch steps.

  They might have heard that—the wind had suddenly abated. It would put them on high alert, which the broken glass was obviously designed to do.

  He looked inside the dormer window. An attic lay beyond the pane, as he’d known it would.

  He waited until the wind howled again.

  Then, when it was at its peak, he drew back his elbow and swung it toward the glass.

  * * *

  Holding their flashlights, Joshua and Rachel waited in the front room, listening for the telling tinkle of glass. The wailing wind, however, posed a problem. If Dexter stepped on the glass shards while the gale was screaming at a high pitch, they might not hear him.

  “He’s out there,” Rachel said, suddenly. “I feel him.”

  “Feel him, like psychically?”

  She nodded. Shivered. “It feels like cold air coming from an open freezer.”

  “Can you feel what he’s doing, too?”

  “No, I can only sense him. His aura is . . . very strong. Much stronger than it was the last time I saw him.”

  The coldness she felt seemed to have transferred to Joshua, as if by psychic osmosis, because he shivered, too.

  He removed the .357 from his holster and thumbed off the safety. Rachel followed suit with the .38.

  The wind wailed for a few seconds . . . and then faded. In the well-deep silence that followed, Joshua heard a soft crackle. Breaking glass.

  It came from near the front porch.

  “He’s right outside.” Joshua’s pounding heart felt as if it had crawled into his mouth, making it difficult to breathe. Beside him, Rachel’s jaws were clenched, and her knuckles were milk-white around the flashlight and the gun. “Rachel, I want you to go upstairs.”

  “What?” Her whisper was indignant.

  His voice was low, but firm. “You’ll be safe up there. You’re the one he really wants. Hide in one of the bedrooms. Please.”

  The wind spoke again, a mournful keening. Joshua thought he detected another crackle of breaking glass, somewhere around the front of the house again.

  Rachel seemed to hear the sound, too. She turned to the staircase, paused. “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m going to stay down here and hold him off. Cut him down, if I can.”

  “Okay. Be careful.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She gnawed her bottom lip. He could tell that she didn’t like what he was asking her to do, but she wasn’t going to debate it with him further. Holding the gun and the flashlight in front of her, she edged past him and climbed the stairs.

  Joshua watched the darkness swallow her above. Then he moved away from the staircase, sidled into the hallway, and extinguished the kerosene lantern in the front room. He angled the flashlight toward the floor, too.

  From outside, though the blinds were drawn, Dexter might’ve glimpsed light. Joshua wanted him to think that they had left the front room, to lure him into attempting to enter.

  In the hallway, he waited in darkness. Heart knocking. Finger tensed around the trigger.

  * * *

  Rachel didn’t like being separated from Joshua. His strength and clarity of purpose had bolstered her confidence, and leaving his side brought back all of her old fears and worries about Dexter.

  She would’ve run, if there was anywhere else to run to. She understood running was not a solution, but it would have delayed
the inevitable confrontation. Her old scar was tingling, as if remembering her last violent encounter with Dexter.

  I won’t have to fight him this time. Joshua’s going to keep him away from me.

  She wanted to believe that was true, but her nightmares were fresh in her thoughts. Nightmares were not necessarily prophetic—they were sometimes only manifestations of deeply-held fears—but it was impossible for her to push them out of her mind. This entire day had the quality of a terrifying dream.

  The second-floor hallway was pitch-black. She’d spent some of the best times of her life in this house, but her fear was so sharp that she might have been wandering through a foreign place, where every shadow held a latent threat.

  She panned the flashlight around, to ensure that she was alone. Joshua had asked her to hide. But no room—nowhere on the entire planet—was safe from Dexter.

  She was so damn tired of running, of living in fear. She wanted to kill the man. She’d never wanted to harm another human being, but she would hurt him, eagerly and gratefully.

  Don’t think like that, girl. You’ll lower yourself to his level, and then where will you be?

  Her meditation room was on the right. It was a chamber of peace that held nothing but comforting memories.

  She would hide in there.

  * * *

  Joshua’s finger trembled on the revolver’s trigger. Dexter was outside—he’d heard him. But the asshole hadn’t tried to break-in yet. What was he doing?

  Perhaps he had figured out Joshua’s broken light bulb ploy. Perhaps he was looking for another way inside the house.

  But there was no other way inside. They had covered every entrance.

  Joshua cut off the flashlight. He moved to a front window on the right of the doorway.

  With one finger, he lifted one of the slats in the blinds, giving himself a narrow side-view of the porch.

  A large tree branch had landed at the bottom of the steps, in the midst of the glass shards and leaves.