Darkness Wakes

by Tim Waggoner

  Aaron turned and ran across the yard, around the side of the house, and into the backyard. He stopped and looked around, breathing hard, skin slick with sweat. There was no sign of his father, not that he actually expected — or wanted — there to be. The backyard was empty.

  He remembered the sensation of the Overshadow’s cold tendril penetrating the flesh of his forehead, boring through his skull and burrowing into the soft pulp of his brain. Somehow, the Overshadow had left no mark of its passage. No physical mark, that is. But what if its touch had done something to his mind … something bad?

  Though it was still hot out, a sudden chill gripped Aaron.

  “What the hell is happening to me?” he whispered.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Aaron pulled into the parking lot at 11:20, a full forty minutes before he was due to meet Caroline. He knew he was early, but after what had happened with Colin — not to mention hallucinating his dead father — Aaron had been too worked up to sit around the house any longer. He parked in the same spot he had the night before and sat with the windows rolled down and the radio playing softly. The treacly tones of easy listening music filtered out of the Lexus’ speakers, and though Aaron usually didn’t listen to this crap outside of a dentist’s office, it suited his mood at the moment. After the evening he’d had, he could use a little audio tranquilizer. He sat and stared straight ahead, listening to the banal music and trying not to think about anything. But despite his best efforts, he kept sneaking glances at Penumbra’s closed door and wondering who might already by inside and what acts they might be performing on each other’s bodies.

  At 11:35 Caroline drove up in her white Infiniti and parked next to Aaron. Her windows were down and the booming bass line of some pop song Aaron didn’t recognize drowned out his smooth jazz. Caroline flashed a smile as she turned off her lights and killed the engine, cutting off her music in mid-thump and leaving Aaron’s ears ringing. He put up his widows, punched a button to turn off his radio, then removed his keys from the ignition. Caroline was already standing outside waiting for him by the time he got out of his Lexus.

  “You’re early,” she said. “Mr. Eager Beaver. Or maybe that should be Mr. Eager for Beaver.” She waggled her eyebrows in mock lasciviousness, and Aaron couldn’t keep himself from smiling.

  Caroline was dressed more casually than last night, but she was no less sexy for it. Her jeans were so tight they might have been painted on, and they rode low on her hips, leaving several inches of her taut abdomen visible. Her short-sleeved green blouse was unbuttoned almost all the way to her navel, providing a more than generous view of her cleavage, and the fabric was sheer enough to reveal that she wore no bra. Her nipples jutted forth, stiff in the night air. Her shoes were black fuck-me pumps, and she stood in them as easily and comfortably as if they were old sneakers. Her make-up was understated, and her only accessories were a pair of diamond-stud earrings. Her perfume was subtle as well, and as Aaron breathed it in, he felt his cock begin to harden.

  I’m no better than Pavlov’s dog, he thought.

  Caroline took a good look at his face and frowned. “Something’s wrong.”

  He didn’t bother trying to deny it. “Yeah, something strange happened to me tonight.” On the way over here, Aaron had mentally rehearsed what he was going to tell Caroline, but now that the moment had come, he found himself reluctant to speak. Not so much because he was concerned with how she would react — though that was part of it — but because despite everything, he still wanted to go to Penumbra tonight. More than wanted: needed.

  But before he could say anything, Caroline glanced at the watch encircling her slender wrist. “We’ve got some time. Why don’t we have a drink before tonight’s festivities begin?”

  “Okay.” That sounded good to Aaron. Maybe a little alcohol would help him to get out what he wanted to say. Caroline took his hand and started leading him toward the shops. He expected her to take him to Penumbra, but once they reached the sidewalk in front of the video store, she headed in the opposite direction. Aaron realized then that she intended for them to have their drinks at the bar located at the end of the shopping center — the oh-so-cleverly named Deja Brew. Aaron had never been there before. He didn’t go out to bars much, and when he did, he tended to patronize more upscale establishments. But he wasn’t so much of a snob to prevent him from having a drink or two in a strip mall dive. What did make him reluctant to go was the chance that one of the others customers might recognize him. He wasn’t the only vet in Ptolemy, but there weren’t many, and it wasn’t inconceivable that one or more of his clients might be there. And if they saw him walk into the bar with a woman other than his wife — and holding hands with her yet — it wouldn’t be good. Especially if the news somehow made its way back to Kristen.

  “Uh, I don’t want to be a jerk about this …” he began.

  Caroline stopped and turned to look at him. “About what?”

  He lifted their hands to shoulder height.

  “Oh, right. We’re going into a public place. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Since I have a spouse that plays with me, I usually don’t have to worry about being discreet.” Caroline released his hand, then turned back around and continued down the sidewalk toward the bar. Aaron was still hesitant about going inside, but he couldn’t see any way around it now, and besides, after the night he’d had, he really could use a drink.

  The parking spaces in front of the bar were filled even though it was a weeknight. No Lexuses or Infinitis her. Instead, the clientele of Deja Brew drove dented and rusted-out pick-up trucks, Fords, and Chevys, many with Nascar decals in the windows and Support Our Troops stickers on their bumpers. The bar itself was nothing special to look at. Plain brick façade, weathered wooden door, front window with neon signs advertising Budweiser and Coors. Above the window DEJA BREW was spelled out on a wooden sign in crudely painted green letters against a white background. Whatever the owner did with the bar’s profits, investing them in remodeling obviously wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

  Caroline stepped up to the door, opened it, and gestured for Aaron to enter.

  “Age before beauty,” she said, smiling.

  The situation was so similar to how Caroline had introduced him to Penumbra that it gave him a chill. Deja Brew, indeed. He took hold of the door and said, “Pearls before swine. Why don’t you go first tonight?”

  Laughing, Caroline did as he suggested and Aaron followed her inside.

  He expected to have his ears assaulted by the twang of country music and his lungs clogged with cigarette smoke. But to his surprise, seventies soft rock was playing on the speakers — America’s “Sister Golden Hair” — and while the place smelled faintly of smoke, there wasn’t a thick cloud hovering over the tables as he’d feared. The place was crowded with a fairly even mix of men and women, though most were middle-aged or older and shared a similar beaten-down-by-life look.

  “I think there are a couple seats at the bar,” Caroline said. Without waiting to see if Aaron wanted to take them, she began threading her way between tables. Aaron followed, trying not to look at the people they passed just in case any of them might be clients. He felt their gazes on him, though, as if they sensed that Caroline and he didn’t belong there and were trying to decide whether it was worth doing anything about.

  Aaron told himself that he was just been paranoid — and perhaps indulging in more than a bit of class prejudice — but that didn’t make him feel any less uncomfortable as he joined Caroline at the bar. A TV was mounted to the wall near where they sat, and Fox News was playing with the sound muted and closed captioning turned on.

  The bartender was a man in his late twenties, with a round face and a neatly trimmed reddish-blond beard. He came over, took their drink orders: vodka on the rocks for Aaron, a glass of Merlot for Caroline. While they waited for their drinks, Aaron had the sense that someone was staring at them. He scanned the faces of the other patrons seated at the bar — half-afraid that he was
going to see Scab-Head sitting there, compulsively rubbing his scalp. Instead, Aaron saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early thirties with a black goatee and thick back hair bound in a pony tail that reached down to the middle of his back. He wore a black muscle shirt, jeans, and brown work boots. He was no body builder, but he had more muscle than flab, and the knuckles of his large, hairy hands were scraped, red, and swollen, as if he had recently been in a fight. Mr. Muscle-Shirt didn’t notice Aaron looking at him, though. He was too enthralled by Caroline and stared at her with undisguised lust. Aaron felt a surge of jealousy, and though he knew it was ridiculous — Caroline wasn’t his in any meaningful sense — he couldn’t help it. She’d come in here with him, and to the primitive side of his male ego, that was what mattered. If Caroline knew or cared that Mr. Muscle-Shirt was staring at her, she gave no sign.

  After several minutes, the bartender brought their drinks over, collected their money, then moved off to serve other customers. Mr. Muscle-Shirt was still staring at Caroline, and Aaron told himself to just ignore the asshole.

  As Caroline took a sip of her wine, Aaron said, “I hope for your sake that didn’t come out of a cardboard box.”

  Caroline grimaced then set the glass back down on the counter. “I’m afraid you hope in vain. So … what’s on your mind tonight, Aaron?”

  Aaron took a drink of his vodka to stall one moment more, then he began telling Caroline about what had happened with Colin earlier that evening — and about seeing the hallucination of his father.

  “I guess I’m worried that something’s wrong with me, that after the — ” He didn’t want to say Overshadow in public. “After it touched me, it caused some kind of brain damage.”

  Up to this point Caroline had listened with silent, sympathetic attention. Now she lay a hand on Aaron’s leg and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

  “You poor thing! No wonder you seemed preoccupied when I showed up tonight. This might be hard to believe, especially after having such an … intense reaction, but the sort of experience you had tonight isn’t uncommon for those who are new to — to the touch. But the more times you visit the club, the more acclimated your system will become until you don’t have any more bad experiences like the one you had tonight.” Now she took Aaron’s hand and gripped it tightly. “You’ll be fine, Aaron. Trust me.”

  Aaron wanted to believe her, but though she sounded sincere, there was a hint of strain in her voice, as if Aaron’s revelation had disturbed her more than she was letting on.

  “I do trust you,” Aaron said, unsure whether or not he was lying. “Even so, I’m considering not going tonight.” He smiled and tried to make a joke of it. “I think my addled brain could use the rest — not to mention several other organs of mine.” But as soon as he said this, a wave of nausea rolled through his gut, and the first stirrings of cold panic fluttered in his chest. It seemed his body didn’t like the idea of not going to Penumbra tonight and was making its preference known.

  Caroline looked at him for a moment as if she were trying to decide how best to reply. “I understand how you feel, I really do. During the first few weeks after my initial experience at the club, I thought about quitting too. But I didn’t … and do you know why? Because the experience kept getting better. Stronger, more intense, beyond anything I’d ever imagined was possible. We’re not like the others in here, Aaron. You and I, we’re explorers. Adventurers in the realms of sensation. People like us can never be happy settling for bland tapioca lives like them.” She gestured to indicate the bar’s other patrons. “We need to live, Aaron — live big. And Penumbra allows us to do that, to transcend mundane day-to-day existence and be more than just walking-eating-sleeping meatbags.”

  Caroline became increasingly passionate as she spoke, and Aaron found the intensity of her words surprising — and a little disturbing. She sounded almost like a religious fanatic.

  “No matter the potential cost, both to our health and to those who love us?” Aaron was thinking of Kristen and Lindsay, of course, but most of all about Colin, of the tears in the boy’s eyes and the quaver in his voice just before he’d run out of the yard, fleeing from a father who’d seemed to have suddenly lost his mind. And who maybe had.

  Caroline leaned forward and squeezed his hand so hard it hurt.

  “No price is too high when it comes to reaching your full potential, Aaron. Never forget that.”

  Aaron didn’t know how to respond, so he changed the subject. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something, but with everything that’s happened in the last day or so, it keeps slipping my mind.”

  Caroline released his hand and arced and eyebrow. “Oh? I hope it’s something dirty.”

  “I’m afraid not. At least, not in the way you mean.” Aaron went on to tell her about his encounter with the filth-encrusted bald-headed lunatic in the parking lot outside his office the previous evening. “While he was plenty strange all by himself, the strangest thing was that he seemed to know about you and the club. He acted as if he wanted me to, well, to spy on you, I guess. It’s hard to say; he wasn’t exactly the most lucid conversationalist.”

  As Aaron told his story, he watched Caroline closely to see how she’d react. For the most part, she remained expressionless, but as he went on, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed as if her wine had left a sour aftertaste in her mouth.

  “Do you have any idea who he is?” Aaron asked. From her reaction, it was clear Caroline knew something. The question was, would she lie to him about it, and if so, how much?

  “Not specifically. But at a guess I’d say he was one of the Forsaken. At least, that’s what they call themselves.” She paused to take another sip of her wine. “Penumbra has been around for over thirty years. My mother and father were two of the original members. It was the seventies, and drugs, sex, and the occult were all in fashion, all part of the self-focus of the Me Generation. Mom and Dad owned the Valley View shopping Center — among other properties — and they decided to turn the one unleased unit in the building into a personal playground for themselves and a few of the friends. They wanted to create a place where they could explore the limits of experience physically, chemically, and spiritually.

  “Things were fine for a while. Penumbra — the word means the shadow zone between light and darkness — served as an outlet for my parents and their friends, a respite from the pressures of jobs and families. And no matter how wild their fun became behind Penumbra’s locked door, they managed to lead normal lives outside its walls. Normal enough, anyway. Their families and coworkers never suspected what was going on. I was just a child, and I thought my parents played cards once a week and left me with a babysitter. They played, all right, but not with cards.”

  Caroline let out a little laugh then finished off her wine. She signaled the bartender for another, and he brought it over, along with another shot of vodka on the rocks for Aaron, though he still had two-thirds of his first drink left. When the bartender left, Caroline resumed her story.

  “After a while Penumbra began to bore my father. He’d always had an interest in magic — not stage illusions but the real thing — and he began voraciously reading occult books, researching various rituals, the more obscure and bizarre, the better. He then convinced the others to incorporate some of these rituals into their playtime at the club. I don’t know all the details about what happened next, but somehow my father came in contact with a strange man who wore an old white suit, kind of like the stereotypical image of a southern preacher. But there was nothing holy about this man. I never saw him myself, but my mother described him to me once. She said he had the coldest smile and the darkest eyes she’d ever seen.” Despite the bar’s stuffy atmosphere, Caroline shivered. “My mother said that one night this man stopped by Penumbra and brought them a present: a tiny shapeless black thing that fit in the palm of his hand.”

  “The Overshadow,” Aaron said.

  Caroline nodded. “How he could touch it without being harmed, I don’t know, b
ut he did. The man had previously instructed my father to pour concrete in the back room of the club and draw a circle into the floor while the concrete was still wet. Then the man in the white suit carried the small dark creature into the back room and gently placed it in the middle of the circle. He told Dad and the others what the creature was, what it could do, and warned them never to cross the circle no matter what. And then with a last cold smile, he left. They never saw him again.”

  Caroline paused once more to take a drink of wine, and Aaron took the opportunity to down the last of his first shot of vodka and start in on his second. Several days ago, he would’ve thought Caroline’s tale was nothing but insane fantasy. But after having experienced the touch of the Overshadow for himself, it sounded all too believable.

  “So the sacrifices began,” Caroline said, “and the members of Penumbra were rewarded with pleasure beyond anything they’d ever imagined. And as the years went by, the Overshadow grew from a handful of darkness to what it is today.”

  Aaron hadn’t been able to see the Overshadow last night, but he’d been able to sense it. He figured it was human-sized, if not larger.

  Caroline went on. “The membership roster of Penumbra has changed over the years. Some members grew old and passed away, while some … made mistakes.”

  Aaron thought she was referring to the warning about not crossing the circle. He had a pretty good idea what would happen to someone who was careless and got too close to the Overshadow. They’d end up like the rabbit last night.”

  “New members are carefully chosen for specific qualities. Sexual appetite, a willingness to push past the boundaries of what so-called normal society considers acceptable … but perhaps most importantly, a strong mind. Over time, the Overshadow’s touch can cause those with weak minds to become … unbalanced.”