Darkness Ad Infinitum

by Regalado, Becky

  why why why why why why why why why?

  He woke screaming.

  “ . . be aware of what you do. Wrath, like love, has to be earned. Be determined which one you truly seek. Because all is possible, and all is truth . . .”

  Was it love he wanted, truly? Or was he really seeking the boy’s wrath? He closed his eyes and saw the boy’s face, heard screaming, heard the breaking of glass and shrieking of tires. He lived the moment that his son died, over and over.

  Died because of him.

  Because he took the boy from his mother in a drunken rage, drove in a drunken rage, killed his son in a drunken rage.

  He read the words again. In a second he knew. Knew everything. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he could never have lived with the sculpture like he would have his own son. And so love was not his aim here. That left only wrath, and as soon as he thought it, he felt a great weight lift. At last he felt the burden of his son’s death lift from his shoulders, and he knew where to find him.

  The door stood open still, flecks of clay marring the surface. It was a short walk to the bridge. The place where he had driven from the road, plunged the car into the icy river. To this day, he could not have said it was truly an accident or truly deliberate. But it happened, and as the black water flooded the car, and he struggled with his own seatbelt, he heard his son screaming and screaming until water smothered them both. He lived. His son did not. And now as he approached the small bridge, the replacement railing his car had destroyed still a shade lighter than the original all these years on, he saw the figure sitting on the wooden boards. It had lost its clothes, and he saw again how unfinished its body was. A mere suggestion of form, and yet hands as perfect as they had been in life covered a face he knew better than his own. It sobbed as it sat there, whispers of pain and sadness reaching the sculptor’s ears. He bent to it and rested a hand on its shoulders. It reacted violently, snatching itself away, its mouth open in a silent scream, a suggestion of fear in its eyes. It locked gaze with him, and in a heart-lifting moment, its mouth curled in a smile. Faint and stiff, as the clay had dried . . . but it was there.

  daddy

  it said.

  my son, he replied, holding his arms out wide. It came to him then, and wrapped its arms around him. He sobbed and sobbed, tears dappling the dome of its head, running along the cleft of its parted hair. He dropped to his knees, knowing what was to come, and yet feeling nothing but the joy of finding his boy. He smiled and kissed the face lightly. He picked the boy up, rested his weight on the railings above the roiling water. It was as black as he remembered. Reaching a hand up to the creature’s forehead, he whispered two words into its tiny ear.

  i’m sorry

  Its grip on him tightened and its eyes widened slightly as it somehow realized what he was about to do. He rested a thumb on its forehead, and with a scratching stroke, scraped out the first symbol drawn there. He remembered the text from Earth, Risen; remembered the symbols perfectly. In scratching out that first, he effectively turned truth, אמת, into death, מת.

  The transformation happened quickly. Suddenly, the sculpture was just that. In its eyes, there was nothing. He looked down into its face and saw not life there, but only the numerous faint marks of the tools that he had used to render it. The body was a dead weight, and its arms a hardened clay sculpture around his middle. As it dropped and he had neither the strength nor the desire to stop its fall, it took him with it.

  The water hit him with a slap of iciness, and he didn’t hesitate to finish what he had started. His first breath was air and foamy water, and he coughed it out reflexively. His next, and the next, and the next, were not air. It was black freezing water he was filling his lungs with now, and he welcomed it. His son would have breathed the same water, would have felt the same panic; the same pain in his chest that was fading remarkably quickly now that he had resigned himself to it. As darkness came over him, he felt the clay sculpture begin to disintegrate in his hands. Faintly, he felt the scrape of its hands as it released him into the water, and he reached with the last of his strength and wit to catch hold of its face. Clay crumbled under his touch, and he brought his hand back and kissed the residues. The action of the water gave the face a lopsided grin—one he remembered so well—and his tears added infinitesimal volume to the raging river.

  The pain was gone. His sight and hearing were gone. There was no feeling as the current tore him this way and that, scraped his trailing legs along the river bed, tore into his flesh with loose rock and branch. There was just the feeling of floating and the heart-bursting joy as a small hand took his and a whisper of love from a small voice echoed in his ear. He was content to lose his life for this; as if he had sculpted love from the very bones of despair and guilt.

  To have that hand in his, and those whispers of love and forgiveness in his ear.

  To have those, without life?

  It was enough.

  Pete Clark has a number of stories published on webzines, and in the anthologies Detritus (Omnium Gatherum), Short Sips and Here There Be Dragons (Wicked East Press), Fresh Blood (MayDecember Publications), Thirteen Volume 3 (13 Horror) and Time of Death (Living Dead Press). He was awarded an Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest (2nd Quarter 2011). He includes Stephen King, Clive Barker and China Miéville among his many influences. Writing numerous short stories and his first novel, he lives in North West England with his wife, two children and a growing collection of guitars.

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  The apartment was perfect.

  It was everything Alan had been looking for and had begun to think he would never find; a central location, open plan, modern fittings, sleek white fixtures. It even had a floor to ceiling window that looked out over the city, but from a high enough vantage point that nobody was looking back—and even if they did, the exterior glass was tinted to avert their gaze. Living there would be like living inside an iPad. It smelled of pine and lavender when he was shown around, a smell that stayed with him for days afterwards—and he knew in one glance that every item of furniture he owned would fit in there snugly.

  And on top of all that, it was a vacant possession.

  “Guy who lived here just up and went,” the realtor told him. He looked about twelve years old, wearing a slick suit too big across the shoulders, like it belonged to someone else and this kid was just playing make believe. “Happens all the time these days. Property becomes such a burden that folks just hand their keys in to the bank and run rather than stretch out another payment. This guy, he didn’t even do that. Just left his stuff here and bailed.”

  “Anything decent?” Alan asked, sniffing for a bargain. After all, one man’s misfortune was another’s gain.

  The realtor sniffed. “Just the kind of shit you’d see at a yard sale, if you pardon my French. Guy had a fucking eight-track and a Betamax in the closet.” He leaned closer for a conspiratorial whisper. “Fantastic stash of porn though. Imported stuff. European. Real sick shit, you know?”

  “I’ll take it,” Alan had said. And he hadn’t meant the porn.

  It was his within the week. A cash sale at a bargain price. Ten days after he’d first seen the apartment, he was unpacked and had his feet up on his sofa with a beer in hand, watching Dexter on his 50-inch plasma in his brand new home.

  And that was when he noticed the smudge.

  In was in the far corner of the apartment, on the ceiling to the right of the window. He could have lived there for months and never noticed it, but he’d placed an uplighter directly beneath it and it was the one spot in the room that would shine the brightest when he turned off the regular strip lighting. It wasn’t much, the size and shape of a saucer. But as soon as Alan had seen the smudge, he couldn’t see anything but the smudge.

  At first he’d stood on a chair and reached up to the ceiling to examine it. It was yellowish-brown, but wasn’t wet or cold to the touch. Water damage, perhaps? So
me old piping between floors that had leaked and stained the paintwork? The damage didn’t look new, but there hadn’t been anything about it in the realtor’s report. The fact that Alan didn’t notice it before didn’t mean that it hadn’t been there.

  “Son of a bitch.” He squinted at the damage. That close to the ceiling, he could hear the sound of footsteps in the apartment above. It occurred to him as he listened to his vertical neighbor that this might be someone else’s fault, that the liability for repair might not have to be clawed out of his own insurance broker. If the guy (or girl—he really hoped it would be a girl) in the apartment above had left their tap on for too long and flooded their bathroom, then let them foot the bill. He found this thought comforting.

  Alan’s apartment was on the seventh floor. He took the elevator up to the next level. The fucking thing cost him enough in maintenance charges . . . he was going to use it at every available opportunity. The ride took a couple of seconds, which he spent happily scrutinizing his own reflection in the mirrored walls. He liked what he saw.

  It was a simple task to find the right door. The layout was identical to his floor: four doors leading to four different apartments, a stairwell at the very end of a straight corridor lined with tasteful carpeting. The same brand of fire extinguisher, the same safety notices. If it wasn’t for the plaques on each door showing the apartment number, you’d never find your way home.

  Alan knocked at number eighteen. He waited, and was toying with the idea of knocking again when the door opened inward and the occupant glared out. It was a guy, of course; younger than Alan and, by the look of him, just as successful. A media type. You could tell from his carefully cultivated beard and the small black spectacles that screamed affectation rather than requirement. The space behind him looked sparse but carefully considered, cold blue neon light spilling out like an open refrigerator in a dark room. The guy gave an irritating sigh that instantly flagged him as a prick of the highest order.

  “The new guy in fifteen, right?” he asked.

  “Right.”

  “Well, before you even start, I haven’t got a dog and I’ve never had a dog. I’m never going to get a fucking dog. Let’s make that perfectly clear.”

  Alan didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, and said as much.

  Number Eighteen just took it in stride. “I had your predecessor up here once a week, regular as clockwork, moaning about my dog,” and he used his index fingers to show the inverted commas, the universally accepted warning that the speaker was an asshole, “and how much noise my dog was making on his ceiling, and how my dog was against the rules of the building. I’ve never had a dog in my life. I fucking hate dogs.”

  “I’m not here about noise,” Alan said.

  “Okay then,” Eighteen said, and suddenly looked a little apprehensive as to what it was Alan did want.

  “There’s a stain on my ceiling that looks like water damage. I wanted to know if you’d had any leaks or such, anything that might have run down through the walls.”

  “Oh,” Eighteen said, and pushed his glasses up. “I’m not getting into any of that. You got a problem with your pad, take it up with the building super. I’m not saying any more in case it gets taken as an admission of liability.”

  And he shut the door on Alan without another word.

  “Prick,” Alan said, though it probably went without saying.

  So he called the super, and the super called his guy.

  The guy looked as if he’d been doing this job since the Eisenhower administration. He was seventy if he was a day, maybe five foot five in his workman’s boots with a barrel chest and a thick white moustache that made him look like an aging Mario brother. He seemed to know what he was doing—Alan certainly hoped he did, as the old man had smashed a two foot hole in the ceiling before Alan had a chance to object.

  “Thought so,” the old man said, his voice carrying down from the hole his head was stuck in.

  “Thought what?” Alan called up.

  The old man pulled his head out and climbed down his step ladder, wiping his hands on his overalls. “There ain’t no pipes up there, just supports. Any water leaked through, must have come through the structure from the outside, and I can’t see any sign of that. No sir, best bet is you got a rodent stuck up there at some time, couldn’t find its fool way out again, just died and just rotted through the boards.”

  “That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence regarding the general state of this building.”

  The old man shrugged. “Where there’s a city, there’s gonna be rats. Fact of nature. Just coz can’t you can’t see the little sons of bitches, doesn’t mean they ain’t there.”

  Alan tilted his head, indicating the cavernous hole that his uplighter would now shine into. “I take it you’re planning to put that right.”

  “Why, naturally,” the old man said with a well-practiced grin.

  And he did. Eventually.

  For a week or so, everything was fine. And then one evening, Alan happened to look back at the spot on the ceiling, now masterfully re-plastered and repainted so that you’d never see the join, and there was the smudge again. It was smaller now, little more than a dime in size and circumference, but it was back all the same.

  Alan pulled a chair over from his breakfast bar, hopped up and scrutinized the smudge. It had the same dirty brown center, the same yellowing edges. Whatever had caused the original damage had also caused it to return.

  Alan cursed. He’d have to call out the not-so-super Mario brother again. The old man was going to get a fucking earful this time—whatever was tainting the apartment, it was no dead rat.

  Then he heard footsteps upstairs. It was a scampering, scratching sound, not at all like the padded footfalls of a human occupant, but the scuttling, sharp clawed passage of an animal.

  No fucking dog!

  Suddenly, the smudge made perfect sense if that prick in Eighteen had a mutt pissing all over the place. No wonder he had tried to hide the fact. And more than that, the damage was going to be his fault as well.

  “Admission of liability, my ass.” Alan got down from the chair and headed up to Eighteen. “Let’s see who’s so fucking superior this time.”

  He called the lift. The indicator above the golden call button was flashing 3. Alan waited, and still it flashed the same apologetic number. He stabbed at the button, but nothing seemed to move.

  “Four hundred bucks a month for this shit,” he said, and kicked the steel door. He stomped down the corridor, pushed open the emergency door, and made his way up the stairwell. It was the first time he’d had to take the slow route since moving in, and he didn’t like it. The stairwell was made of narrow, concrete steps and a metal railing painted white, with none of the finesse reserved for the more commonly used areas of the building. There were strip lights encased in clear plastic boxes that hummed as he passed them. It was cold on the stairwell; a chill breeze seemed to whistle past Alan as he climbed. Suddenly, four hundred bucks seemed a small price to avoid this pleasure on a daily basis.

  There seemed to be an awful lot of steps. He looked over the railing and thought that the ground floor looked a lot more than eight flights down. But he swallowed that idea for now.

  He pushed the door to the next floor open, and as soon as he stepped through, he knew something had gone seriously wrong. He’d only been up here once before, but once was enough for him to know that this time round, he was somewhere else entirely.

  The layout was the same: a straight corridor, four doors at regular intervals, a window at the end that looked out onto the brick façade of the adjacent building. Not that you could see anything through this particular window. It was filthy, smeared with a black, greasy residue that you wouldn’t have been able to see your own reflection in if you were standing two feet away. There was no plush carpet here; the floor leading up to the window was bare concrete—bare if you choose to ignore the layers of dirt that had accumulated and the scattered piles of str
ange garbage and debris that lined the walls. Two of the doors hung from their hinges; one of them was missing altogether. The rooms were sheathed in shadow, but they appeared to be barren and unoccupied.

  Only the door to what should have been apartment Eighteen was still intact. Across its warped and swollen surface someone had written the words

  Not here, Not there, Not anywhere!

  The penmanship was clumsy; the letters dripped and smeared into one another. It might have been made by a finger dipped in something that Alan did not want to imagine. He put out a tentative hand to touch the words, but withdrew it as if he had been stung.

  He stood there for a minute or two, confused but not completely disturbed by what he had come across. Alan had heard of things like this, of buildings where one of the floors had been sealed off and forgotten due to some colorful event in the past best left forgotten, or to avoid some tiresome building regulation. Landlords plastering over their sins and hoping they’d just go away. Shit, hadn’t he read about a hotel somewhere in the city that had left the whole thirteenth floor empty?

  But as he pondered, he began to appreciate that it made no sense. He’d seen the plans; a surveyor friend of his gave them the once-over before he’d signed the lease. And he’d stood outside the building the first time he’d looked over the apartment, and then a dozen times since, just taking in the smooth beauty of its glass exterior, the sheer windows that looked out but wouldn’t let you look in. I want to live in a building like that, he’d said back then, and had there been the scar of a dirty level, a tainted watermark across the otherwise perfect canvas of his new home, he’d have known before now. He’d have seen it and he would have walked away.