by Dan Padavona
He turned right, and his right foot smashed into the bottom stair.
He stumbled, palms landing on the cold, rough concrete surface. She was coming.
He scrambled up the first steps. Ahead was the faintest of early evening light spilling out of the hallway and into the kitchen. As he took the stairs as quickly as possible, still unable to see the steps, the thing was behind him. She hissed and mocked him, and he was sure that if she reached out she would grab him by the ankle and drag him down into that icy hell.
Halfway up the staircase, the hallway glow had spilled onto the top steps. The stairs groaned from no more than two steps behind him.
The outline of the kitchen appeared to him near the top of the landing. Then the second step squealed like an injured animal and snapped beneath his foot. The stair gave way, and his leg plunged knee-deep through the board. Jagged edges ripped through his pants leg and tore at his skin like a bear trap.
As an ice-cold hand gripped his shoulder, he heard the thing's wicked laughter. He ignored the pain and pushed himself up with arms, hoping the top step would not also give way. As he struggled to free his leg, he felt the unearthly cold of her breath on his neck. She was leaning closer...closer...close enough to...
Two snaps followed behind him as the steps cracked under its weight, and then he heard her slip down the steps.
His arm and neck muscles standing out like cords, he pressed himself onto the landing.
He limped into the kitchen with the monstrosity from the basement near the top of the stairs. He pivoted and fired, the blast giving light to her nightmare face—a funhouse monster momentarily seen in a strobe light. The top step squealed. She was out of the basement.
Diffused light crept through the front door, a dreary shimmer in the entryway. The glow had retracted considerably from its previous depth, as the sun's downward arc accelerated.
The thing paused inside the kitchen, wary of the dim glow ahead.
“Help me,” she mocked him.
She did not seem to fear the gray.
The pain in his leg flared as he reached the salvation of the front door. He threw it open, and dim light flooded into the entryway. The glow was anathema to the thing, and she was caught in the final spark of daylight’s flame. She screamed in a wolf's howl.
As he stumbled onto the front porch, blood pounding in his temples, he turned to see her drop to her knees. Smoke curled off her flesh, and he smelled burning skin.
The hideous shape crawled toward the darkness, struggling as though she slogged through quicksand.
She had nearly reached the darkness when his shot rang out. The bullet didn't kill the nightmare. But the bullet felled her within the light. She flopped onto the floorboards, writhing like a worm on a hook. Smoke increased, billowing off her body in acrid clouds. Bits of skin slid away and splattered on the floor.
As the thing reached a gnarled hand into the air, like a drowning woman grasping for a branch above the river, she started to quiver.
The vampire entered into death throes as he limped off the porch steps. He ran toward Jensen, into the final rays of the setting sun.
Nine
The sun accelerated toward the horizon. The fiery orb turned blood red and burned the sky in variegated swaths of ocher and scarlet.
As Mary Giovanni stood on the front steps of the Moran farmhouse and watched the sun descend, she clutched the cross to her chest. Her lips moved in silence, not aware that she prayed.
At the Storberry Police Department Art Stults called Greg Madsen again on the walkie-talkie, as ruby streaks caressed the glass door to the parking lot. There had been no reply from the police chief in over an hour. The lack of communication was probably due to a dead battery or interference in the signal. But Art Stults still worried. He had filed over fifty missing persons reports since early afternoon.
Where in the hell did everybody go?
Clark Samson ran his hands through his receding hairline. The Pink Flamingo desk clerk didn't trust the woman who called herself Jody Rogers. She had recently returned to the hotel, and as usual she had kept her head low and her eyes averted when passing the front desk.
He wondered if her name really was Jody Rogers. He wondered about the validity of her credit card, too. He didn't recognize the bank name, and something about the flimsy texture of the card seemed counterfeit. But there was little he could do about it now. Without phone service, he couldn't run the card or call the bank to verify.
Black, sinuous trepidation dawned with the dusk. As Tom Kingsley and Jen Barrows watched the sunset from the top of her backyard, she held him close, even though, or perhaps because, there was nothing romantic about the nightfall.
When the sun dipped fully below the horizon, its bloody fire flared as though the land would be engulfed in inferno.
Her eyes centered on the garage crawlspace. So much had happened in the last 24 hours that she hadn't thought again about the garage or the sounds that emanated from within at night. She shivered despite the heat, and he walked her back to the perceived safety of the house. Darkness was coming.
Erin Lawrence, also known as Erin Kent, Jody Rogers, and about a dozen other names, sat on the stiff double bed of her hotel room. The carpets had a musty smell, and she smelled the years of cigarette smoke burned into the drapes. Wallpaper peeled in long strips and hung like snakes' tongues.
The stagnant air made her feel queasy, so she ignored the DO NOT OPEN sign on the window and shoved her shoulder into it. Squealing in anger, the window popped open and jammed at maximum width. There was no screen, which was probably why the hotel didn't want anyone opening their windows. The drapes swelled and fell back like bay-side waves.
She had waited several hours for Dell to exit the Watering Hole. He hadn't, and she had temporarily lost track of the closest link to her daughter. At least she knew where he lived. She would pick up his trail again tonight. Perhaps, if she could muster the courage, she would enter the bar.
Will he recognize me?
The warm sunset bathed the parking lot in golden hues, Midas turning everything he touched. The shadows of the few cars parked in the Pink Flamingo lot stretched away as carnival figures, long and exaggerated by the sun angle. Then the quality of the light changed to a dingy blue, and the sun bled into the horizon.
The sirens ceased, and Erin was thankful for the quiet. She heard the buzz of chainsaws and the metallic thud of logs dropped onto truck beds, as the crews finished their work for the day. Those sounds soon ceased, too, and the little town drifted toward sleep.
Her trembling had diminished, though she hadn't relied on her medicine since morning. She felt the bottle in her front pocket, tempting her.
She kept the lights off, content not to survey the drab surroundings and unable to recall the last time she’d slept for more than a few hours. Twilight was underway outside her window, and the blues soothed her like a lullaby.
Erin rested her head on the moldy pillow. She just needed a few hours of sleep. With any luck, Dell would lead her to Katy tomorrow. What she would do once she found her daughter was anyone's guess.
She entered semi-sleep and was vaguely aware of the sounds beyond the room—a door closing down the hall; coins rattling against metal and a snack tumbling from a vending machine; a car door slamming in the parking lot; the low hum of the motor as the car pulled away.
Her eyes moved under closed lids, and she dreamed of the daughter she had left behind. At the window, the drapes danced with more urgency, and a baleful wind descended from the hill forest.
Chapter Six
Seated on the Barrows’ deck, Tom put his arm over Jen’s shoulders. Already the darkness crept down Maple Street. The gloom advanced unhindered, pushing away the failing light like dust from a broom, rushing through the backyards to drape a dark cloak over gardens and swing sets. Jen watched the garage out of the corner of her eye as shadows spilled down its exterior.
There was a void on Maple Street. The void was in the abse
nce of barbecue smoke that was always evident on fair weather nights, in the lack of bicycles which did not speed down the street as children raced to beat curfew, in the empty sidewalk that radiated stored heat and in the vehicles which sat untouched in driveways.
“Where is everyone?” asked Tom, his voice little more than a whisper.
She put her hand on his back and rested her head on his shoulder, thinking, had her parents been alive, they would have arrived home hours ago. The realization clutched at her chest and sank to the pit of her stomach. Her throat tightened, but she did not cry this time. Guardians were not immortal, and when they departed, they left their children alone in a world where nightmares broke free of the world of dreams and ran amok.
“It doesn't make sense,” he said.
“Nothing makes sense anymore.”
“No. I mean, they've been clearing the roads for twenty-four hours. But nobody is driving their cars. And look,” he said, pointing at missing shingles and at scattered trees down outside of the copse. “There is damage everywhere, but I don't see anyone fixing anything.”
“Maybe everyone is just scared that there will be another storm.”
“Storm,” he said with a laugh. “A storm with no rain, no lightning, and no clouds.”
“We were inside. Maybe it came through without us noticing.”
“The worst of it must have gone right down Jensen. I could hear them working there all day.”
“I guess so.”
“So where did it start? Don't tell me you don't know.”
“Tom—”
“The forest. It started at the freaking forest.”
“Are you saying the forest caused the wind?”
He sat in silence.
“What did I kill last night, Jen?”
“Tom, please don't. I don't want to think about it,” she said, burying her face in her hands.
“After everything I have seen, how can I deny the possibility? Jen, I put a stake through her heart. And now it seems that everyone on Maple Street has disappeared. Are there more of those…things out there?”
While she cried into his shoulder, he held her. Through the blur of tears, she looked down Maple Street at dark house after dark house. Tom and Jen weren't just abandoned, they were alone. Who knew what lurked behind those darkened windows? A pall descended on her.
“What do you think we should do?” she asked.
He was no longer seeing the windows. He was seeing the dangers which could be behind any one of them.
“We can't stay here alone.”
“We can't walk to town from here. Not in the dark. Not if you really think there are more of those things out there.”
“Then I will find us a car.”
As the first stars flickered overhead in the growing twilight, like lighthouses from a distant ocean, he stood watching the black mass of the hill forest above the copse. The shadows seemed to slither. He began to believe that at any moment they would take form and descend upon them.
“We need to get out of here.”
Its kind had walked within the forest for centuries. Hidden within the forest’s deepest confines, where the gnarled sentries wrapped upon themselves to block out almost all but the palest light, they existed unseen with fleeting lives.
But the vampire lord had existed for centuries, because it was as intelligent and patient as it was powerful. Sunlight was anathema to it, yet it could conceal itself within the shadows next to a person and not be seen. It had learned to sleep for long periods of time, even decades.
Given requisite darkness, the vampire could regenerate indefinitely while its power grew. It had done so for over twenty years within Storberry, sustained by the proximity of the forest.
Even now the forest roots spread through the cemetery, burrowing unabated through the loam, reaching the decayed remnants within.
The vampire lord had been patient, awakening only when the forest had released its new-found power. Now there was nothing strong enough to stand against it.
Two
Art Stults tested the walkie-talkie again. He hadn't heard from Greg Madsen since late afternoon, and his attempts to reach the police chief were met with static. He heard back from a patrol car and from a work crew clearing the east side of Jensen, but Madsen seemed to have vanished into thin air.
The police chief could have lost battery life, but Stults didn't think so. Madsen was careful and would have ensured he had fresh batteries. Perhaps the chief had finished his shift and gone home. But that, too, was unlikely, for he would have radioed the station before he shut down for the day.
Whispered rumors existed of Storberry’s having become a ghost town. Art Stults had been in law enforcement for multiple decades and knew well the tendency for stories to get exaggerated.
More likely, most people are avoiding the streets because they don't know the crews have cleared them for safe passage.
As to why there were so few people walking about town, he surmised that had to do with the number of stores still closed along Main Street.
Give it a few days, and things will get back to normal.
Stults put his worry aside. Storberry had survived its worst windstorm in decades, yet the phone lines were expected to be live within 24 hours. The streets were cleared for traffic, and Hallelujah! The cable had flickered to life in the last ten minutes, and he had a Braves game to keep him company.
The only problem was that his salami and cheese sandwich didn’t sit well in his stomach, and he was forced to acknowledge nature's call and leave the front desk unattended. He had just sat upon his throne when he heard the bell ring over the front door.
“Perfect timing. Storberry turns into a ghost town, and the only remaining soul walks in as soon as I sit down on the crapper.”
He could hear the tinny buzz of the crowd through the television speaker beyond the bathroom door. The announcer was talking about Ozzie Virgil throwing out a base stealer.
“Be right with ya.”
A few moments passed without reply. He shrugged his shoulders. His stomach could wait a little longer, and the bathroom wasn’t going anywhere.
He buckled his belt, snapped his holster on, and stepped out of the latrine. The television was the only sign of life. He was sure he had heard the door open, but maybe the person had departed when he saw that the front desk was empty.
So why didn't I hear a second bell?
A sudden uneasiness overcame him. It would be damn brazen for someone to sneak past a front desk in a police station, but he didn't put anything past people these days. The world was full of cuckoo birds, and they seemed to multiply every year.
Nobody was locked in the back cells, and there wasn't much worth stealing—that ruled out common thieves. But you never knew what a psycho with a weapon might decide to do.
Cuckoo birds.
Stults removed the gun from his holster.
As the television reflected an animated haze across the floor tiles, he checked under the front desk and found nothing but two cardboard boxes of paperwork to file and the remains of his brown-bag dinner. The two work desks behind him proved to be empty too.
Bright fluorescent light worked its way across the ceiling in strips, humming like bumblebees. Other than the bathroom, few hiding places could be found in the well-lit office.
But a tinge of worry prickled at him when he looked toward the back of the office. Greg Madsen's desk was near the back, and he saw the chief's bicycle propped against it. The light fell short of the corner coat rack. He approached the rack with weapon in hand, uncertain why he felt on high alert.
When he was ten yards from the coat rack, he felt the sensation that someone stood behind him. He swung around with his weapon drawn. Shadows formed under the rows of desks.
He turned back to the rack, and something was different.
Two uniforms and a sweatshirt hung from the rack, just as they had before, yet Stults sensed that part of the puzzle no longer fit, although everything looked
to be in place. When he turned his head, the scene wavered in the corner of his eye.
He hadn't noticed the shadow shape before. The shape stood in the darkened corner, stretching halfway to the ceiling, and he had no idea what it was. The shape appeared to be a black, rolled rug, but bulkier. Whatever it was, he had never seen it before. Just looking at the shape made his heart pound like thunder.
Then it moved.
Art Stults clutched his chest. The shadow took shape before his eyes and grew upward until its head brushed the ceiling tiles. He held the gun on the figure, yet never considered pulling the trigger. He was too afraid to move.
Crimson eyes opened and regarded him, a night terror come to life. The police officer's lips moved in silent prayer as the Goliath stalked out of the shadow.
Stults' reflexes fired the gun three times, for his mind was too far gone to react. The monster strode forward, as though he hadn't hit a thing. But Stults knew he had shot the thing. He had...
The smell of gunpowder and decay mixed in the air around him. He dropped the weapon from his trembling hand.
Death swept down upon him.
Three
While Benny Marks sat at the dining-room table with a pencil and pad, Evelyn Dickson finished cleaning up the dinner dishes. She found him well-behaved and courteous, if a little quiet. Maybe he just needed to warm up to her and accept his temporary surroundings.
He was such a polite boy. Rory would have approved of the way Benny always said Please and Thank You whenever he needed something.
Wiping dry the last of the dishes, she found it remarkable that he didn't doodle, or draw racing cars and dinosaurs on the pad. He solved math problems, wrote short stories, and drew maps of imagined fantasy lands. But she got the impression that there was something below the surface, that he occupied himself to avoid darker thoughts.
He was brilliant—she was sure of it—and in a day or two, when the town was back to normalcy and his parents were located, she would talk to them about Benny. Accelerated programs in the school were made for children like him, and since Principal Davis was an acquaintance of hers through church, maybe he could help the Marks’ ensure that Benny was appropriately challenged in the classroom.
