Darkness Rising: A Novella of Extreme Horror and Suspense

by Brian Moreland

  The choking man’s neck and cheeks became so engorged the blades sliced open many holes. At last, he fell dead at Marty’s feet. A second later, what looked like oily black smoke oozed out from the corpse’s bleeding gills, forming into an apparition of the pock-faced man. He looked up at Marty with confused eyes. “What’s happening?” he asked in a hollow Slavic voice.

  “Welcome to the other side,” Cerulean said. “You like torture and mutilation? Well, you’re going to love it where you’re going. Marty, step away from him.”

  The lake began to boil. Marty watched as thick tentacles of dark mist slithered up the hill and wrapped around the legs and torso of the razor eater’s ghost. He kicked and clawed at the earth, shouting in a language Marty didn’t understand, as the tentacles dragged him into the black water. The surface stopped churning and light waves rolled against the shore.

  Where the man’s soul had gone, Marty didn’t want to guess. But now he wondered about his own fate. It seemed that this husk of poetry kept at least one foot anchored to the physical world of the living, but his other foot seemed planted in another realm which no church sermon had ever prepared him for. The strange creatures that had claimed the souls of the people he’d killed stirred the waters inside him with waves of terror. His thoughts turned inward to Cerulean who answered without being asked.

  “Not everyone earns a ticket to heaven, my friend.”

  “Can those…things harm me?”

  “Not as long as I protect you.”

  “What are they?”

  “Soul snatchers. They scour the earth for lost spirits that have nowhere else to go but down. Consider yourself lucky you’ve got a friend like me.”

  Marty looked at the slaughtered bodies around him. This game of vengeance had gone too far. At first, he’d been fueled by rage, but now that he had witnessed the carnage done by his own hand, he was questioning Cerulean’s methods.

  “Why are we doing this?”

  “You called me to help avenge you.”

  “Not like this. This is madness.”

  “There’s no reason to feel guilty,” Cerulean said. “These people have had it coming for a long time. I’ve watched them from the lake. They’ve tortured and murdered dozens of innocent people, just like they did you. Think of yourself as an angel of death, hunting down those who deserve to be punished for their sins. Now, are you with me, Marty, or shall you and I go back to the lake?”

  Marty stared at the dark water, fearing what hellish world awaited him beneath its murky surface.

  “I’m with you,” Marty said.

  “Wise choice.” Cerulean started walking in the direction where Tara had run.

  * * *

  Tara made her way to the van and climbed behind the wheel. She reached to turn the keys, but they were missing. Shit, keys must be in Razor’s pocket.

  Zane usually kept a spare hidden somewhere under the seat. She climbed out of the van and looked towards the campsite. The killer was nowhere in sight.

  Tara crouched by open the driver’s door, felt around the floor beneath the seat, rifling through fast food trash. She found a pack of cigarettes, containers of Skoal, but no key.

  “Looking for these?” At the passenger window Stalker Boy jingled the keys.

  Tara screamed, stumbling back.

  Stalker Boy walked around the front of the van, banging the hood with the tire iron. “Run, run, run, little rabbit!”

  Tara bolted down the hill. Her feet stumbled on the uneven terrain. She reached the bottom and ran along the lakeshore, past the pier.

  Behind her, the killer walked at a steady gait.

  Tara slipped through a patch of deep mud, fell to her knee. She stood, tried to run, but one shoe was stuck.

  She heard the sounds of boots squishing through mud. Saw its shadow stretching across the bank.

  Not looking back, she untied her stuck shoe, freed her foot, continued running. The shore came to a dead end. A steep incline led up to a cliff. She tried to scale the slope, but slid back down. “Shit! Shit!” She ran left, into a forest clotted with trees and underbrush. Twigs and thorny vines sliced tiny wounds on her bare arms and legs. Rocks and pine needles deviled her one bare foot. She limped as she ran.

  The phantom kept coming towards her, his shadow weaving between the pines.

  “You never should have read my poems,” Marty said in a wet, gurgling voice. “The dark ones were between me and the lake.”

  Each time Tara glanced back he seemed closer. Then he spoke with two voices: “You violated us, you cold-hearted bitch. Now we’re going to show you what that feels like.”

  She circled back through the woods, reached a clearing. Saw the parking lot ahead. The van and Dragic’s car.

  Her legs ran faster. Her mind conjured up a plan of escape. She had to get the keys from Dragic’s pocket then escape in his car. But before she reached his body, the tire iron hit her in the back, knocking her down. She skidded on the parking lot, scraping her palms and knees.

  Footsteps crunched behind her.

  Tara turned around in time to see a fist strike her face.

  Chapter 16

  In a dark, cruel place that could only be one of hell’s torture chambers, Tara felt her limbs being stretched. New forms of pain afflicting her muscles and joints awakened her.

  All she could see was dark haze.

  Boots crunched over gravel. Rough fabric brushed by her side. She felt chain links wrapped tightly around her wrists and ankles. There was no sense of any ground beneath her, as if she were floating on air―not floating, she realized, suspended like a human hammock, the chains the only things holding her up.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  A blindfold was removed. Her eyes fluttered open and saw the starry sky, the moon, a looming pine tree, Zane’s bloody skull. Her boyfriend had been mounted to the tree with the tire iron sticking out of his chest. A red muscled face with wide eyes stared down at her.

  She screamed.

  She tilted her head backward. The chains binding her wrists were wrapped around the tree. She tried to shake loose, rattling the chains. The weight of her body sank, pulling the joints of her arms and legs, sinking her butt towards the ground. She swung her body left and right, hoping the chains would loosen and free her hands. Instead, they constricted tighter, cutting off blood to her hands and feet.

  “Let me go!”

  An engine started up.

  Tara tilted her head forward. The chains around her ankles stretched to the van’s front bumper. Stalker Boy’s silhouette was sitting behind the wheel. The headlights flashed on, spotlighting Tara.

  She panicked, screaming wildly.

  The driver reversed the van a couple feet, pulling her chains taut, stretching her limbs to a new level of agony. Tara had always enjoyed pain, giving and receiving. As with intense pleasure, pain made her feel alive. Powerful. But there were limits to the amount of suffering she could take, and her tormentor was taking her past her threshold.

  She cried for mercy.

  Stalker Boy put the vehicle in park, killed the engine, but left the headlamps on. He stepped out, whistling as he walked up beside her and placed her rabbit mask over her face. Then he ran his paper-skinned hand over her belly. His other hand held her machete.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” she begged.

  “You murdered my friend, Marty,” the phantom said in a deep voice. “You killed an innocent man.” Then another, more fragile voice spoke from its mouth, “I just came to the lake to read my poems and you drowned me. Why?”

  “I… It was Zane and Seth who drowned you, not me.”

  “You were the one who gave the order!” growled the deeper voice. “They only did what you told them to do.”

  The softer voice said, “If you had just let me leave…”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “We were high. We just wanted to have some fun with you.”

  “You destroyed Marty’s journal. Now we’re going to make you
his book of poetry.”

  He ripped off her shirt, exposing her bare breasts to the night. He sliced off her shorts until Tara was hanging in her underwear between the chains that stretched her flat like a canvas. He lowered the knife to her stomach. “What poem shall we carve first, Marty?” the deeper voice growled.

  “Wait! Wait!” she pleaded.

  The blade froze an inch above her belly. “What?”

  She stared into his black, watery eyes, so full of hate. “I read your poems, Marty…the sweet ones about Jennifer and your mother…they showed how much you love them. I know you have a kind heart, Marty. You wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

  His face changed, the features softening. His eyes look confused as if he was recognizing the violence he was about to inflict. He shook his head and then the deep voice spoke, “Marty would never hurt a woman, but Daddy would. He likes to cut up bitches like you.”

  “You’re not your daddy, Marty,” she said. “He’s a rapist and a serial killer.”

  Again the expression on the paper face shifted to that of a conflicted young man. He took a step back. “We shouldn’t do this. We can’t hurt her.”

  “She killed you, Marty,” spoke the demented voice. “She defiled your journal. The bitch deserves to be carved for her sins.”

  Tara watched in horror as her schizo tormentor argued with himself.

  “I can’t hurt her…I don’t want to be like him.”

  “You’re not like him,” his alter ego assured. “Your daddy killed innocent girls. We’re only taking care of the assholes who hurt you. You are the innocent one here.”

  “But this feels wrong,” Marty said.

  The deep voice said, “She’s a cold-hearted killer. She cares nothing about you.”

  “He’s wrong,” Tara said, hoping she could convince Marty to let her live. “I do care. I’m sorry I ripped up your journal. That was cruel of me.”

  Marty shook his head. “I won’t cut her up. You won’t make me do it.” He threw the machete away.

  Tara released a breath. “Oh, thank you, Marty. Please let me down. I can’t take the pain any longer.”

  The papier-mâché man grinned. “Whatever baby wants, baby gets.”

  He headed towards the van.

  “Wait, Marty, come back!”

  He climbed behind the wheel and smiled at her through the windshield. He poked his head out the window and said, “Death is its own form of poetry.” Then he put the gear in reverse and slammed on the accelerator. The chains stretched Tara’s limbs beyond pain.

  Chapter 17

  Marty sat behind the steering wheel, shaking. He couldn’t see what was left of Tara’s body. It was on the ground somewhere in front of the van. At the oak tree, her severed arms hung from the chains.

  He slammed his fists against the steering wheel. “Christ, I didn’t want to―I didn’t want…” Tears poured down his face.

  “It had to be done,” Cerulean said.

  Marty braced himself for what was coming. He stayed in the van with all the doors closed.

  From the tree several yards away, Tara’s ghostly severed arms crawled on fingers across the parking lot and disappeared in front of the van. Then she groaned, a hollow disembodied sound. Her hands gripped the hood of the van, and the arms, having reattached themselves to her shoulders, pulled her body up. Her ghost looked at him with enraged eyes and howled like a banshee. Now that she had crossed over into his plane, this purgatory of damned souls, for a split second, Marty feared she could enter the van and hurt him. But then familiar snarls echoed in the distance. Tara whirled around, released a gasp.

  From across the lake, a thick fog rolled in, drifting towards the van. The surrounding forest and lake became shrouded until all Marty could see was a small section of parking lot beyond the hood of the van. Then they attacked from all directions, the black phantasms, growling and biting into Tara’s arms and legs. A spiky appendage wrapped around her throat. An ebony hand with long claws gripped her head. She fought for several seconds. Her shrieks caused Marty to cup his hands over his ears. He couldn’t bear watching, but Cerulean made him look. Nightmarish creatures that looked like no species that had ever walked the earth tore Tara’s soul apart. All the pieces of her released a chorus of screams as they were dragged off into the fog. The gray mist rolled backwards towards the opposite end of the lake.

  Marty waited for the shrieks to trail away, the mist to vanish. Only then did he feel brave enough to climb out of the van.

  His three murderers were dead, banished to hell or some macabre place just as horrific. Having avenged his death, he should have felt at peace, but instead he felt empty.

  He hiked down to the end of the old pier and stared at the placid lake. He thought about his body down there. How foolishly he had given it to the lake as an offering. The demon, who lived here, owned him now. It was inside him like a leviathan swimming in the dark water encased by his own poems. All these years he had thought Cerulean was a friend, a protector against bullies, a dark superhero he could call upon in a jam. But now Marty began to wonder if he had been duped, seduced into believing Cerulean had his best interest in mind. Marty had spent half his life pouring his prayers into this lake. He had paid the demon with his flesh, his soul. All for what gain? So his ghost could spend eternity walking in limbo with a sadistic serial killer?

  Even in the afterlife Marty played the fool.

  Standing here now at the end of the pier, he looked around at the private cove that had at one point been a magical place for his family. He could almost imagine his parents and a younger version of himself having a picnic on the grassy banks. What happened that caused his father to turn mad and murder his mother?

  That was Marty’s mission now, uncovering the truth about his parents.

  Part Three

  Cerulean

  Chapter 18

  As Marty drove his Monte Carlo back to town, heavy rain pelted the windshield. On the stereo, the Doors’ ominous song “Riders on the Storm” warned of a killer on the road.

  It was now 4:30 a.m.

  Marty wanted to close his eyes and drift off into some peaceful dream. But there was no sleep in the afterlife. No feeling tired. Just endless consciousness. And Cerulean’s relentless quest for vengeance. Marty wondered if he would ever ascend to heaven or if he was destined to walk the earth with his dark side forever. Perhaps God had banished Marty for all the people he’d hurt, or maybe he was suffering for the sins of his father.

  You and I come from the same foul blood, boy, his daddy used to say. What’s bad in me is bad in you.

  Marty tried to put his father’s face out of his mind, but it was always there with his chastising voice running in the background, as if he weren’t locked up at a state prison, but residing in a cell at the back of Marty’s mind. Your bitch mother deserved the knifing she got, he had said after stabbing her over twenty times. She didn’t understand my art.

  Marty slapped the sides of his head, trying to make the voice stop. When it didn’t, he glanced towards the passenger seat and saw the thick book that Jennifer had given him, The Illustrated Edition of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Plays. Marty touched the hardback cover. He drew strength from it, remembering how thoughtful the gift had been. It meant that she did care about him, at least a little. As he traced the etchings of Romeo and Juliet on the cover, Marty thought of Jennifer. Her friendship with the potential for something more had been the only thing to make him feel good inside.

  A memory surfaced of the two of them walking through the gardens at St. Germaine last week. Jen hadn’t been herself that day and finally he’d asked why. Beneath a trellis of wisteria she had opened up to him, sharing the troubles with her family. Jennifer’s mother suffered with bipolar depression. When she drank, it was worse.

  “My mother needs to go back into rehab,” Jennifer confessed. “But she won’t listen to me, and Dad seems too busy with work to notice. I’m worried about her.”

  While Jennifer cr
ied, Marty had held her for the longest time. There was a moment when she pulled back, her hands on his shoulders, and stared up with teary eyes. She had looked as if she’d wanted him to kiss her, but he couldn’t be sure, so he’d just consoled her until the moment passed. Now, banished forever from his warm, human body, he wanted that moment back again. But just thinking of Jennifer made the tightness in his chest loosen a little. As Marty kept his hand on the Shakespeare book, his last connection to her, his father’s voice retreated and finally went silent. Marty could tell by the stirring waters inside him that Cerulean didn’t like these feelings, but he said nothing, as if giving Marty the silent treatment. Marty welcomed the reprieve.