Ash and Darkness (Translucent #3)

by Dan Rix

  I leaned over the manhole. From out of the inky depths a blast of humid air rustled my hair. Gleaming in the starlight, the rusted rungs of a ladder descended into the gloom.

  I had to go down there.

  Swallowing my fear, I sat down at the lip and dangled my legs into the darkness. My toe sought out a rung, and I scooted forward, giving it more of my weight.

  The rung belched out a loud groan.

  I froze. Don’t move.

  Tense to the point of shaking, I guided my other foot down to the next rung, easing my butt off the edge. Carefully, I peeled my palm off the asphalt and gripped the top rung, then grabbed it with my other hand. Inch by inch, toes probing the blackness for each rung, I lowered myself down a vertical concrete shaft. The circle of starlight shrank above me.

  My breach came in hoarse rasps, echoing in the tiny space.

  At last my foot landed on solid concrete—dry concrete, thank God—and I detached myself from the ladder. Pitch blackness engulfed me. I lunged for my pocket, fumbled with my cell phone until the screen flashed on.

  The light blinded me. I jerked it around. The beam lit twenty feet of a tunnel before it vanished into the blackness. Muddy clumps of leaves littered stained concrete.

  I spun in the opposite direction. More of the same. A storm drain. At the very edge of the light cone, something shiny gleamed on the wall. Couldn’t make it out.

  I took a deep breath and ventured to investigate, leaving behind the safety of the ladder. Deeper underground the acoustics changed, my halting footsteps ricocheted up and down the tunnel, coming back hideously distorted.

  There were other sounds.

  Clicks and squeaks and drips.

  I shuffled toward the shiny object, ignoring wave upon wave of prickly fear until at last it resolved itself.

  Duct taped to the wall, a large Ziploc bag gleamed in the blue light. The bag held a leather book embroidered with ornate gold letters, which spelled a name. I tilted my head to make it out. Ashley.

  Her diary.

  I’d found her diary.

  I inhaled deeply and whispered, “Got ya.”

  The duct tape ripped loose under my fingers, but as I tucked the package under my arm, my cell phone light swept to the side, illuminating the receding tunnel in my periphery.

  And a figure standing twenty feet away.

  My heart jolted, suddenly pierced by needles of adrenaline, but the beam moved on before I could react. All that registered was a miniature human shape, a shadow, before the tunnel was again swallowed by blackness. The phone’s green afterglow burned in my retinas.

  Terrified, I yanked the light back down the tunnel. The beam wobbled, jerked over clumps of leaves, glistening stains, reflective letters stenciled on the concrete. My heartbeat pounded against my eardrums, quivering breaths tore from my lungs.

  What else was down here?

  I peered down the tunnel’s throat, scanning the spot where I’d seen it. Suddenly, my eyes focused not to twenty feet away, but to the space right in front of me.

  A humanoid figure materialized out of the murky haze, limbs and body made of the same stuff as shadow . . . walking toward me.

  Fear stabbed my heart.

  It stood four feet tall, almost human-shaped, but not quite. Too thin, legs too long, body too short.

  I tripped on my heel as I spun, crashed onto the concrete, skinned my knee. The cell phone skittered away and went dark. I crawled after it, caught it, and scrambled to my feet only to trip again. Stumbling and clawing at the ground, I half ran, half crawled the rest of the way to the ladder. Panic clamped around my windpipe, cut off my breaths.

  I felt it chasing me, nipping at my heels.

  The circle of starlight floated closer. I threw out my hands, banged a rung, and hauled myself up. The bottom rung screeched and broke off under my foot, and my body careened sideways and smashed into the side of the shaft. Kicking and flailing, I dragged myself up and out of the manhole, sprawled onto Foothill Road, and sprinted into the night.

  Miraculously still clutched in my fist, plastic crinkling as my arms whipped back and forth, was the bag containing Ashley’s diary.

  Chapter 10

  I slammed my front door, locked it, deadbolted it, backed into my bedroom, shaking. My eyes darted across the dark rectangle of the doorway, the empty hallway beyond. I wheezed from exhaustion, gasping, throat tight with fear.

  Had it followed me?

  I pictured its smoky body marching through the deserted streets, passing right through walls, making a beeline straight for me.

  What was it? What did it want?

  Ashley’s diary. The answer. I still had it. By now my frozen knuckles had turned white from gripping the book so tightly.

  Light. I needed light.

  I set down the diary, fumbled around for a candle, and held a trembling match up to the wick. It took several tries. Finally, the wick caught and a flickering orange filled the room. I lit another candle, and another. Every candle I had—twenty-four in all—until the room glowed like a church.

  I still didn’t feel safe.

  I would never feel safe. Not here, not in this nightmare world.

  Why had she hidden her diary in the sewer? Why the riddle? Why not just leave it in her room? Thoughts flashed in and out of my brain, still wired off adrenaline. Maybe because she didn’t want someone—or something—to find it.

  I cracked the diary open under a candle, read from the first page.

  December 26

  Dad came back from South Carolina today and gave this to me, so, here goes my lame attempt at keeping a diary . . .

  A creak sounded in the living room. My gaze snapped to the doorway, my pulse drummed. Nothing. I’ll hear the door open, I’ll hear it come in.

  I went back to reading.

  He said he bought it for me because he was gone for Christmas, but I know why he really got it. It’s my stupid sleepwalking. He treats me like I’m fragile and I might break at any moment. He didn’t get Emory anything. Wow, three lines in and I’m already confessing my sob story. This is going to get really morbid. Okay, I know I’m being ADD, but this sticky stuff on the pages is getting really annoying.

  I couldn’t focus. My gaze kept flicking back to the hallway, thinking something was there. Just the flickering candlelight. I rose to shut the door, then collapsed again and continued reading the diary of the girl I’d murdered. At the reminder, an uncomfortable sensation stirred deep in my stomach.

  December 29

  I woke on the beach this morning with blood on my hands and no memory of how it got there. They took me to the hospital because I had hypothermia. I hate my life. Why can’t I just be normal?

  The pages were rumpled, and the ink had bled into splotches. I recognized the pattern. Dried tears.

  A lump formed in my own throat.

  January 1

  Something really weird happened last night. I made a New Year’s resolution to learn how to control my sleepwalking, and then a voice spoke in my head and said, “I can fix you, Ashley.” I don’t believe in ghosts, but I swear something really weird is going on. I think it’s this sticky stuff.

  I stared at the page.

  Dark matter had spoken to Ashley just like it had spoken to me. It had preyed on her weaknesses, her vulnerabilities.

  The next entry gave me chills.

  January 2

  It says if I put it on, it will heal me.

  A loud thump startled me, and I jolted back from the pages, eyes wide. Outside. It came from outside. Heart slamming, I peeked out into the hallway.

  The front door was still shut.

  I hesitated, then tucked the diary into the back of my shorts—I was not losing it. My fingers closed around the
nearest candle, and I crept toward the foyer, all my nerves on high alert. Any moment, that creepy four-foot midget shadow would pop into view and stride toward me, I was sure of it.

  The hardwood floor creaked underfoot. I was so fucking sick of sneaking through dark houses.

  Another bump pricked my ears, and my eyes honed in on the windows. Movement beyond. I blew out the candle, so whatever was out there couldn’t see in. Blackness. Gradually, as my night vision acclimated, the dim blue windows separated from the darkness. I crept forward, pressed my forehead to the glass.

  Where the hell was the moon? I hadn’t seen it once.

  The driveway glowed a ghostly silver in the starlight. A strange lump drew my gaze, and I strained to make it out. A trashcan lay on its side, spilling garbage bags. The cause of the thump.

  As I stared, the trashcan rolled to the side and something stood up behind it, what at first looked like a gigantic praying mantis. I recoiled as the animal stepped out of the shadow.

  No, just a pelican. A pelican?

  What was a pelican doing this far inland?

  It waddled around the spilt trash and began stabbing the bags with its shovel-like beak. Feasting on my trash, apparently. Like I cared. Go ahead.

  But as it gorged itself with savage ferocity, I felt my upper lip curl. It didn’t move right, like there was something very wrong with it. And there was a hole in its wing.

  Enough of this. Everything freaked me out at night, and I was burning through my candles by staying awake. I could figure all this stuff out in the morning when I could actually see.

  I was about to turn back to my room when out of the corner of my eye, a glimmer of light winked between two tree branches. I spun back to the window, scarcely breathing.

  C’monnn, where’d you go?

  Then it winked again, a tiny blue-white dot nestled up against the dark mountains. This time I could pinpoint where it was coming from—the Riviera, floating among the sea of blacked out mansions overlooking Santa Barbara.

  I’d seen a light up there yesterday, too.

  It took me forever to find the light again through my telescope—row after row of dark houses, it was like finding a needle in a haystack—and when I did I scarcely believed my eyes. Slowly I lifted my hands off the device, careful not to bump it and ruin my delicate adjustments.

  I’d set up the tripod on my roof, and I had the anomaly centered perfectly in the field of view.

  It was a house.

  A Mediterranean-style house with red tile roofs, balconies, wrought iron railings. But the house itself was dark. It was the garage. Set into the garage door, a row of grimy windows exuded a harsh, sputtering blue light which spilled into the street in blinding ribbons.

  I stared into the eyepiece, mesmerized.

  In an abandoned city without power, where nothing at all worked, there was a random garage on a random street on a random hill that housed an inexplicable source of blue light.

  I had to find out what it was.

  The eerie sight brought a sinister chill, though, and I let out a shiver. My gut told me to wait until morning, that it would be safer to go in daylight.

  But what if the light was gone when I woke up? What if I couldn’t see it during the day? What if that thing got me first? This could be my only chance.

  I was already climbing down the ladder, drawn to the light like a mindless moth.

  Up close, the light was even more sinister. I stood in the driveway, the dark city at my back, panting from my bike ride up the switchbacks of Loma Media Road.

  Light poured from the garage windows, bathing me in an unearthly blue. A deep rumbling emanated from inside, rattling the windows, quaking the ground beneath my feet, shaking bits of dust from the roof.

  I surveyed the mansion, considering my options. It was an attached garage, windows too high to look through, door made of an impregnable slab of oxidized copper. Not even a handle to try. Probably a lineup of Lamborghinis and Porsches inside. The easiest entrance would most likely be through the house.

  The humming grew louder, buzzing the cartilage in my knees. Like machinery.

  I couldn’t even hear myself think.

  Maybe that was why I ignored the fear stabbing my gut and walked right up to the house’s front door and tried the handle. Unlocked. I pushed the door in and slipped inside.

  A dark living room. Empty. Light from the garage spilled in through the huge windows and lit a plush living room, pearl-white leather furniture, glass coffee table piled with magazines. I glanced at them as I passed. Airman Magazine, Guardian, The Combat Edge.

  Military and Air Force magazines. Huh.

  In the dark kitchen—all modern stainless steel and granite countertops—a glowing, flickering blue rectangle outlined the door to the garage. Bingo.

  I opened it, and stepped over a pair of black combat boots into a foyer-like space lined with coat hangers and shelves. The light came from beyond, and I shielded my eyes, slunk forward into the hazy odor of smoke and burnt electricity. As the rest of the garage came into view, my heart pounded at the back of my throat. I swallowed, then peeked around the corner.

  At first, squinting into the glare, I had no idea what I was looking at. Then, one by one, the details registered.

  Fully decked out in suit and helmet, a human being—a real human being—crouched over a boxlike contraption, wielding the dazzling, crackling blue-white flame of an arc welder. Anchored to the cement nearby, a propane generator growled and rattled like a monster trying to escape its cage.

  Unable to stop myself now, I drifted forward, emerging into the light. The person glanced up, face inscrutable behind the visor, then jumped back in a wild flurry of shrieks and curses.

  The arc welder clattered to the ground and went dark, leaving only the dim glow of a battery-powered lantern. Slowly the person stood up, slid off the helmet, and shook out a tangled mane of red hair.

  It was a girl.

  “Jesus fucking Christ you scared me,” the girl croaked between gasps. “So it finally got you too, huh, Leona?”

  I gaped at her, jaw slack.

  It was Sarah Erskine, the grad student Megan and I had first shown dark matter to.

  Chapter 11

  “Yeah, I tried to get your guys’ attention that night,” said Sarah, wiping sweat off her forehead as she uncapped a bottle of Fiji water and drank deeply, belching out a satisfied gasp when finished, “but I was stuck in that invisible state where I could only observe the world but couldn’t interact with anything, which should have been impossible since you can’t observe something without changing it—an innate feature of quantum mechanics—but whatever. I did manage to write help me on the fogged up mirror. Fat lot of good it did.”

  I couldn’t tell if it was elation or shock. I stared at her with a dumb expression, too stunned to speak.

  I wasn’t alone.

  “I remember it was a Saturday . . . September twenty-sixth, I think,” she continued, recounting her version of the night. “That was smart of your friend Megan to bring out the Ouija board. The little wood piece was easier to push.” She took another long swig. “Not that it mattered in the end. We both wound up here anyway.”

  “That night in Megan’s room . . . your journal . . .” After days of not talking, my words came out raspy.

  “Yeah, I wanted it back. Had all my notes in there.”

  “But I thought you were dead,” I stuttered. “We went to your grave, Megan and I—you have a grave, you know?”

  “A niche at Forest Glade Cemetery, I saw that too.” Seeing my eyes widen, she added, “I was floating around for a while after I went completely invisible.”

  “So you’re not buried there?”

  “Nope.” She tilted the bottle back again, clearly thirsty after her welding
work.

  “Then who is?” My eyes lingered on the bottle, the water splashing around inside. I licked my dry lips.

  “No one,” she said. “It was a cover-up.”

  “But I . . . we thought you’d . . . we thought you’d killed yourself,” I whispered.

  Her expression darkened. “I tried. When I realized I couldn’t get it off . . . believe me, I tried. I got out the note, even managed to force down a bottle of sleeping pills, but it didn’t take. I threw it all up. I swear, the stuff knew I was trying to take it down with me. It fought back. And after that, I couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t try again.” She pressed her lips together. “Guess I missed my chance. It got me.”

  My hand went to my mouth. “I’m so sorry,” I breathed.

  Her gaze grew distant. “They went with that story—suicide. This Air Force guy came by to quarantine my apartment. A bunch of other guys too—CDC, NASA—all of them. They told people I’d been infected with a deadly virus and had committed suicide, and they had to cremate my body to prevent an outbreak. They even told my parents. It wasn’t that far from the truth, except I was still alive. I was there. I watched the whole thing. It was bullshit.”

  “Was it Major Rod Connor?”

  Her eyebrow cocked. “You know him?”

  “Not intimately,” I said.

  “Yeah, he was the guy. Air Force Space Command, or some crap like that. I followed him for a while. This is his house, actually.” She gestured around the garage.

  “Really? This is Major Connor’s house?” I surveyed the garage—the flickering lantern, the tangled heap of pipes she’d been welding, the now quiet generator clicking and radiating heat behind her. “He has power. How does he have power?”

  “Portable generator.” She drained the last of her bottle and tossed it into a recycling bin overflowing with empty Fiji bottles.

  “No, I mean . . . how? How are you burning gas? The rest of the city . . . nothing else works. And water. You have drinkable water?”