Dread the Dark

by A C Utter

  “Then we will cross that bridge when we come to it. We can’t rush this, we have to be careful. We can’t give up on her just because she came back to us a bit different.”

  “A bit different? Really, Todd? Something is wrong with her eyes. I don’t see Emily when I look into those eyes, I see the darkness hiding beneath the blue.”

  “Well, fuck Bev, what would you have me do? She’s here, she’s our daughter, our responsibility. We can’t just ship her off somewhere!” Todd yelled.

  “You don’t have to yell, goddamnit!” Beverly responded. The two argued late into the night, as did many other couples throughout Warwick. The question was always the same, what’s wrong with the children?

  ~

  “So far, so good,” Gloria growled. She had selfishly hoped that the mission would fail, that the children would break past the barriers in their minds, that they would tell someone the truth.

  “I know you wished it wasn’t so, sister,” Donald replied.

  “Of all the ways to get justice for our ancestors, this just seems extreme. As it is, there is only one fair-haired child in the whole lot. Those that took our land and killed our people looked like her, but they are so few now,” Gloria explained.

  “Yes, but they weren’t executed, they weren’t exterminated the way we were. The recessive genes simply couldn’t keep up. It’s amazing that even one of the children in Warwick, hell even one in the whole country, is of fair-hair,” Donald said.

  “Okay,” Gloria began, “so nature punished them to their near-extinction. How many more generations before they are completely extinct? Two, maybe three? Why not just leave it be?”

  Donald and Gloria had this same discussion several times in the past. The fair-skinned settlers had raped and killed their people, robbed their land of its fertility. Many generations had passed since these atrocities were committed. The people of the land look mostly ethnically ambiguous, as ethnic groups have felt less of a need to mate within their own ethnic group. The fair-haired are all but extinct, the young blonde girl, Emily, is truly a wonder.

  For Donald and Gloria, Emily is a stark reminder of their ancestors fate, as well as a reminder of their father’s mission. He had sworn to get justice for his ancestors, and on his deathbed had charged his children with taking up his burden. Their family has a long history of trying to right past wrongs, and many a fair-haired life has been taken at their hands.

  With their father gone, Donald and Gloria wanted to put an end to it for good. Gloria felt as much justice as could be served, had been, since the offending settlers were long dead. She didn’t feel it was their descendants burden to bare. Donald, however, felt one last move needed to be made. Populated primarily by descendents of settlers that had stolen the land, Donald wanted to cleanse the city of Warwick. He believed that the very birth of Emily, a fair-haired child, was a sign from the gods that the land is still infected, that it still needs to be cleansed.

  When their father passed away, Emily was only a year old, and he had just recently been made aware of her existence. He charged his children with destroying her. Gloria refused to allow the family to kill an innocent child, so she struck a deal with Donald. Now that she was seeing their plan play out, she wasn’t so sure she made the right decision.

  ~

  Luckily for Emily and the other children of Warwick, none of them remember where they were for the past year, or what happened to them there. Gloria and Donald had placed a targeted sleeping spell on the town of Warwick, putting all of the children under twelve into a deep sleep. The spell froze them in time; they didn’t age, they didn’t eat, they didn’t drink, they simply slept.

  The hardest part was getting the children out of their homes. They had to transport them one at a time, physically. Their power was not strong enough to move them any other way. In order to accomplish this, they placed another spell over the town, freezing time during the high-pitched screeching sound. While the adults in the city thought the sound went on for seconds, it was actually hours. The entire town was frozen at a moment in time, allowing Gloria and Donald to remove the children one at a time from their houses. They were able to enter without a trace by using magic to move the locking mechanisms.

  Once they had retrieved the children and were in the clear, they removed the spell, allowing time to continue, the town springing to life in the horror of their new reality. While the nation looked for the children, Gloria and Donald watched over the children in a secret bunker built by their great-grandfather in case of a return of the fair-haired.

  It was in this bunker that they went about their grisly task. Although the children were not physically harmed, the siblings poured countless hours into pushing the children’s consciousnesses as deep as possible. The children’s minds were stronger than they had anticipated, and it took a year of hard work to seal their minds away deeply enough to allow a passenger.

  ~

  Emily was scared. She knew she shouldn’t have been, since she was unharmed and safely at home with her parents, but things were different now. When her mom hugs her, she can’t seem to figure out how to hug her back. When her father says, “I love you,” she can’t seem to make her vocal cords respond.

  Everything seemed far away, it’s was as though she was watching her life take place on tv, from a lonely room, far away from everyone else. Her body, however, seemed to remember certain things, like how to blink, eat, and use the bathroom. These tasks were all taken on robotically, and Emily, try as she might, couldn’t seem to take control of the wheel.

  She didn’t understand why her parents asked her where she has been, because she thought she had been home the whole time. It’s confusing to her that she’s being told she was gone for a year, and frustrating that she can’t ask any questions. Her parents stopped allowing her to go to preschool, which is her favorite activity. She wanted to cry, but couldn’t, the sadness inside of her threatening to swallow her whole.

  Although Emily is lonely, she, like many of the children in Warwick, soon discovered that she wasn’t alone. There was something between her and consciousness, something blocking her path. It felt old, very old, but confused, and unable to control Emily’s body. However, each day it seemed to get a little bit stronger. The adults didn’t seem to notice, not yet anyway, but whatever passengers the children brought back with them were growing bigger, stronger, and more self-aware with each passing day.

  Being a small child, Emily is innocent and doesn’t quite understand the potential for malous. She hasn’t been hurt before, so she isn’t looking out for it; she isn’t expecting danger. Her instinct is to talk to this passenger, to make friends with it. On the other hand, some of the older children that had gone missing from Warwick have learned to cower and hide from their passenger, wary of its intentions.

  ~

  “I call upon the ancients, upon the ancestors,” Donald begins, absentmindedly rolling his one year sobriety chip between his fingers. “Take charge of the vessels we have gifted to you. Take your rightful place on the Earth. Take back what is ours.”

  Gloria is restless, fiddling with the hem of her shirt as Donald speaks. She knows this was the plan, to suppress the consciousness of the children, allowing their ancestors to take over their bodies. This was the deal she made in exchange for not killing any children, instead they would be locked away in their own bodies. This allows their ancestors, those killed by the settlers so long ago, to have a second chance at life. But now that the time has come she feels crushing guilt.

  “I can feel them gaining power. This land will once again be alive with our people,” Donald says. “An entire generation restored to their rightful place.”

  The incantations Donald is reciting will allow the ancestors to finally take control of the children’s bodies. Up until now, they’ve been passengers, similar to how the children are locked away inside their minds. All Gloria can do is hope that this doesn’t spiral out of control, hope that she has made the right decision, the right deal.<
br />
  ~

  Something has changed. Emily can feel her passenger growing stronger, stretching its legs. She feels herself being pressed further and further into the depths of her mind, the outside world seeming further and further away. It began last night, along with a thrumming in her head. Now that it is morning, the thrumming is subsiding, but the passenger remains strong.

  While Emily usually sits quietly on her bed or on the couch, after lying awake all night, she finds her body off the bed, and directing itself to the kitchen. She is concerned because she isn’t controlling the movement, but also happy to see that she’s doing more than just sitting there staring at the wall.

  She watches from a room far away while her body gathers a chef’s knife, a hammer, and a plastic bag. Her naivety doesn’t allow her to make sense of what she is seeing, so she goes about simply watching the events unfold.

  She soon finds herself standing at the edge of her parents bed, watching them in their peaceful slumber. A powerful voice begins to speak, the voice bouncing around in her skull. “I am Dontuno, leader of the Fortus people. We were slaughtered by these horrid settlers, and now I take our revenge.”

  Emily can’t tell if he is talking directly to her or not, but the voice isn’t audible, she can only hear it because she is trapped in her body with him. But she doesn’t have time to think about it for long before her hand raises, chef’s knife gripped tightly in her right hand. She’s standing at her father’s side of the bed, and as she watches him sleep, she sees the knife forcefully thrust downward and into his throat. She tries to scream, but without having control over her vocal cords, no sound comes out.

  The moment the knife plunges into his throat, Todd’s eyes snap open, panic gripping his entire being. He reaches for his neck as Dontuno uses Emily’s body to pull the knife from it, bringing it back down quickly at the nape of his neck. Todd looks confused, gazing up at his baby girl as she kills him. He tries to stop the bleeding with his hands, but there’s too much blood. He tries to scream, but only a weak whistling comes from between his lips. Within seconds he loses consciousness, slipping quietly into death’s embrace.

  Beverly seems to have slept through the ordeal, which isn’t surprising judging by the brightly colored ear plugs sticking out of her ear canals, as well as the bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand.

  Emily watches in terror, shielding herself when she can, as Dontuno walks her body around to her mother’s side of the bed. Beverly is still softly snoring, so Dontuno is able to quickly and quietly slip the plastic bag over her head. The moment those tiny hands attempt to tighten the plastic bag around Beverly’s neck, she wakes up, groggy but still able to move. She begins to fight back, and Dortuno quickly realizes that Emily’s body isn’t strong enough to fight Beverly. Instead, the hammer appears in Emily’s right hand, Dortuno using her little arm to bring the hammer down in the center of the bag, approximately at Beverly’s nose.

  If Emily could puke, she would. There’s a crunching sound as the hammer hits bone, the squelching sound of blood, and the sound of her mother’s screams. She continues to bring the hammer down until there’s no movement, no noise. Before long, those screams have subsided, leaving only the crushing silence.

  ~

  The town of Warwick is eerily silent this morning. There are very few cars on the roads, very few people anywhere. The police begin to get requests for wellness checks because many citizens didn’t make it into work this morning.

  The first stop the officers make is at the Smith household. They knock on the door, but there’s no response. However, through the windows they can see a little boy, around age eight, wandering throughout the house. Deciding they need to get in the house, the officers kick in the front door.

  “Warwick police! Incoming. Speak up if you’re in here!” The ranking officer yells. However, there’s no response. They continue to cautiously move through the house, soon finding the little boy who has sat down on his bed. He is covered in blood. They try to communicate with him but he remains silent, and after a quick check, it seems the blood is not coming from him.

  As officers move into the master bedroom, they get the surprise of their lives. The boy’s parents are both lying in bed, their heads severed from their bodies, a chainsaw lying between them.

  ~

  Reports flood in from all over town. Every household that had a missing child return, has reported dead adults. Although no one wants to believe it, it is obvious that the children are the ones who have killed their parents.

  The town is in a panic, not knowing how to handle the situation. How do you lock up a bunch of children? The police recruit help from the remaining townspeople in gathering the children and placing them in cells at the police station. It is here that Dortuno uses Emily’s body and voice to make his plans known. As soon as the police come to ask more questions, Dortuno begins.

  “My name is Dortuno,” comes a deep voice from Emily’s little body, her blonde curls no longer bouncing, as they are caked in congealed blood and bits of flesh “I am the leader of the Fortus people. We were mercilessly extinguished by the fair-haired a long time ago. But never again, for our time has come. We claim these young bodies to let us live again! To let us conquer the lands and take back what is rightfully ours. This place will once again belong to the Fortus people.”

  Officer Grey stands in shock at the voice coming from the small child’s lips. His eyes dart around, from blood covered child, to gore covered child, trying to make sense of all of it. “So, you are the people that were slaughtered here by our ancestors?” Officer Grey asks.

  “Yes,” Dortuno replies. “These are our lands.”

  “What can I do to make this stop? What can I offer you?” Officer Grey asks.

  “You can’t offer us anything. We will continue until this place is cleansed, and we will use these new bodies to live the lives once taken from us,” Dortuno replies.

  Officer Grey is at a loss. He’s looking at a pen of children, all under twelve years old. They are covered in blood, bits of flesh and bone, vomit, and shit. The atrocities found in the homes of Warwick are unspeakable. But Officer Grey knows that he is all that stands between these children and the rest of the world, which means he has a difficult decision to make.

  I have to do this fast or I’ll shit out on it, Officer Grey thinks to himself, pulling his service revolver from it’s holster. God forgive me.

  And with that, Officer Grey opens fire on the jailed children, aiming for their heads, hoping to make it quick and painless; if the children are in there at all, he thinks to himself. His bullets aren’t met with screams, but with the deep, guttural growls of an ancient people, their souls twisted from a violent death, and amplified by their resurrection. He has to reload more than once while he goes about his grisly deed. Once the cell is still, he loads one last bullet. Although he is only twenty-eight and has a lot of life ahead of him, he can’t live with the decision he had to make today.

  Placing the muzzle of the gun against his temple, tears streaming down his face, Officer Grey asks one more time for God’s forgiveness before pulling the trigger.

  ~

  “He’s fucking killing them!” Donald roars. He can feel the ancestors dying out once again, one at a time. Gloria is horrified, not knowing what to make of the entire situation.

  “You see, all revenge brought is death. Dead children, dead parents, dead, dead dead! Was it worth it? Do you feel good about yourself? Did you fulfill father’s mission?” Gloria screams.

  “Shut up you stupid bitch!” Donald roars.

  “Make me, asswipe. I’m tired of following your lead, of being the dutiful sister. I’m over it! I’m going to go help the townspeople!” Gloria replies. But before she can move, Donald has flicked his wrist in her direction, her lungs immediately collapsing and robbing her brain and muscles of oxygen. Donald watches as his sister collapses on the ground, trying and failing to take in breath. He stares as the last light of life flickers out of her
eyes.

  Donald suddenly finds himself alone in the world. His sister was his only family, and now even the ancestors are gone. It took him years to plan their resurrection, and in a flash it’s all gone again. I’m the last of my people, the very last, he thinks to himself. I might as well give this one last try.

  Donald gathers a few items, preparing for an incantation. He anoints himself with oils and herbs while calling out to Dortuno. “Come to me, dear leader. Dortuno. Please, take this vessel which I offer you. Bring our people back. We can thrive once again.”

  But after several hours of chanting, Donald realizes that Dortuno isn’t coming. The ancestors have been returned to the afterlife, and without his sister’s power, he can’t pull them back into his realm.

  Grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, he walks out to the porch and sits down on a bench. He rolls his one year sobriety chip between his fingers, feeling the weight of it in his hands.

  After a few moments, he flicks the coin into the grass, opens the bottle of whiskey, and begins to drink, feeling the delicious liquid as it coats his throat, leaning into the fuzziness it creates in his mind.

  The Skeptic

  Will Work for Food

  My confidence has always been in overwhelming supply. I know exactly who I am, what I believe, and what is important to me. Being confident is great for my career and for picking up people in bars, however, there are downsides. I can come across as cocky and self-absorbed. Sometimes I run headfirst into a new situation and realize that I should have been more cautious; this is one of those times.

  It started last April when I received a phone call from a friend of mine. I had recently been laid off and found myself unemployed. He was calling to tell me about a job I might want to look into. I’m a software developer, or at least I was before the layoffs, so he warns me that this job isn’t exactly in my field, but that it would pay well enough. All I needed to do was follow a few guys around town for a couple of days, hold a camcorder, and probably haul some equipment. It sounded easy enough, so I took down the hiring person’s name and email address, making quick work of sending an inquiry email.