Darkness Falling

by David Niall Wilson

  Damon was at his shoulder as he passed through the door, and he moved in cautiously from behind. "Melissa?" he called out. "Melissa, are you here?"

  There was no answer, but Damon banged almost at once into a couch-like bed, a sort of divan. There was a figure lying prone on it. Sebastian didn't know how the guitarist could be so certain of what he'd found in that clinging darkness, but he cried out almost instantly.

  "Melissa!" He picked her up and staggered toward the door, giving no thought to his own weakened state, and Sebastian had to grab him and steady him before he fell. Father Adolph, whose mind was apparently operating more efficiently than theirs, had gone to the front of the building, and returned with a lamp and a very angry, indignant Innkeeper just as they staggered into the light.

  "Is she all right?" the priest asked, setting the lamp down quickly and moving to kneel at Melissa's side.

  Melissa was very pale, and her breathing was shallow and labored. In the brighter light, they saw the blood running down her neck, and the wounds, two round, roughened punctures in the skin of her throat.

  The Innkeeper, upon seeing the wounds, crossed himself and stepped back, eyes wide with a mixture of revulsion and terror. He had known. They could see it in his every motion. He had known what these things under his Inn were, and where they were, and he had said nothing. Even now, as they stood in full daylight, Melissa's life hanging in a precarious balance, he was more afraid of the creatures he'd concealed than he was concerned for her safety.

  Just then, Peyton came running up, Claudia by his side, and the old man cried out to her, telling her to get away. "Go!" he said. "They have opened the pit, and the demons will return. They will be angry. For God's sake, my little Claudia, go…"

  And then, just like that, he broke down. He knelt on the ground, his head in his hands, sobbing. "Go." he almost whispered.

  "What in hell is going on?" Peyton bellowed, seeing Melissa on the ground with Damon and Father Adolph kneeling at her side. "Did you find Klaus? What happened to Melissa?"

  Meanwhile, still at Peyton's side, Claudia turned to her father. "Get up," she urged him. "Please, Papa. It is too late; it has gone on for too long. You have to get up, and we have to help them. There is no other way."

  He gazed up at her with glazed eyes and shook his head slowly back and forth. He rose, trembling. "We are doomed," he said, and Sebastian saw that he believed it. "It does not matter what we do now. It is over."

  "No!" Claudia grabbed him by his shoulders and shook him roughly, tears in her own eyes. "You have to help us, Papa. People are hurt, maybe dead. It has to stop."

  Leaving Claudia and her father with Father Adolph, and grabbing the light that the priest had brought from the front of the Inn, Sebastian took Peyton and headed back into the shadowy interior of the building. The sun had risen a bit further, and the light seeped in slowly, as if the shadows that had so long ruled that chamber were fighting back. The door to the inner room stood ajar, and a small slice of sunlight leaked in through that as well. Sebastian wondered how long it had been since the last daylight had entered there.

  Even though he was fairly certain that there was nobody inside, he moved slowly. There was an air of foreboding, of decay and death about the place that repelled him.

  "What is this place?" Peyton asked, looking about himself in bewilderment. "I thought they had rooms down here, not a crypt."

  "I don't know," Sebastian answered, but we're going to find out."

  He stepped through the door with an effort of will and shone the light around the chamber, peering into the shadows. It was like a scene from some warped movie about the Marquis de Sade. Several divan style couches littered the room, all covered in stained black leather. The far wall held an assortment of musical instruments on racks, harps, lutes, and a guitar, even a couple of horns. They were cloaked in shadows that were elongated by the flickering light into fingers of blackness groping toward the corners of the room.

  The walls to either side were covered in shackles, chains, harnesses, and every sort of implement one might associate with slavery. There were dark stains running down the walls and onto the floor. Sebastian swept the light around the room. As it crossed the center of the floor he and swung it back rapidly. What he saw wasn't possible, and yet – there it was.

  "Great God in heaven," Peyton breathed, moving forward toward the thing as if mesmerized. "Sebastian, is that a man?"

  Sebastian had no answer. The thing that scrabbled about on the floor looked very little like a human being. In several places, bones protruded through dried, cracking skin. The hands, like palsied claws, scratched futilely at the floor, as if it was trying to free itself from something.

  A glittering silver flute protruded from the back of the thing's neck, impaling it. Long, straggly locks of hair lay limply over it like a shroud.

  "Don't get too close," Sebastian said softly, but Peyton was having none of it. He had reached the thing's side, and had grabbed hold of the flute. With this firmly in hand, he started to drag it toward the door.

  "I don't know what this damned thing is," he said roughly, "but I'm not leaving without finding out. Come on, Sebastian. Let's see what this bastard looks like in the light."

  They were both taken by surprise when the putrid, rotting arm snaked out around his ankles and almost tripped him. The thing had hold of his leg and was actually trying to drag him back into the darkness. It tried to lift and turn its head, but Peyton had a grip on the flute, and he didn't let go. He pressed down as hard as he could on the makeshift handle, holding the thing's face to the stone of the floor.

  "Help me," he said, grunting with exertion.

  Sweat broke out all over Sebastian's skin, cold and clammy. The creature looked already dead; how could it have such strength?

  He moved as quickly to Peyton's side as he could, calling out to the others outside as he went, and he grabbed hold of one slimy foot. The skin flaked away almost instantly at his touch, and he felt the bones beneath, but with or without skin, the thing was strong. Sebastian was barely able to maintain his grip on it.

  Peyton began to move again, and the thing was distracted by his efforts, so Sebastian was able to tighten his grip. It seemed determined not to be removed from the room, but it was not quite powerful enough to hold both of them back. They reached the small shaft of sunlight that shone in from outside just as Father Adolph and Damon arrived at the other side of the door.

  The thing spasmed wildly as it came in contact with the sun's rays, writhing and almost breaking free.

  "The light, Peyton," Sebastian cried, pushing with renewed vigor. "Get it into the light!"

  "My God," Father Adolph said, backing away and crossing himself. His gaze was riveted by the spectacle before him. Peyton hung on for all he was worth, pinning the creature to the ground with the silver flute through its neck. Wherever he managed to yank the thing into the sunlight, the skin fell to powder almost instantly, leaving bony limbs to dangle limply as the torso continued to fight.

  It was hideous. Damon, already weakened from his earlier encounter, turned and gagged. The stench that was released as the thing died was horrible. It was as though decades of rot were visiting the thing all at once, concentrated in that spot. And then it was over.

  With a superhuman effort, Peyton flung the thing bodily into the larger shaft of sunlight at the door of the garage. Like a surreal special effect in a movie, it crumbled, losing all substance but the bones. When it was finished, all that remained was a skeleton lying at bent, impossible angles, with the silver flute jutting from between two of the vertebrae in the neck.

  Father Adolph moved slowly toward it, raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, may whatever evil lies here depart. If this was indeed a man, may he rest in peace."

  The priest's eyes were wide, and his hand trembled, but he finished the blessing with a steady voice. There was a light in his eyes, a glitter of purpose that had no
t been there before. Perhaps it was that, after a life of serving a greater good with no revelations or miracles to sustain him, he had finally witnessed something beyond the normal life of man. An evil force, vanquished.

  Staggering back into the sunlight, Damon looked down at the thing and said. "I was almost certain that this was the one who took Melissa," he stated. "Now I can't be sure, but in there, the hair, I think it was him. How could it be? What happened to him?"

  Sebastian had forgotten Melissa momentarily, and I spun to look where she had been lying.

  "She came to almost as soon as you went in there," Damon told him. "Claudia and her father took her inside the Inn to lie down. She's going to be fine, I think."

  Relief flooded through Sebastian, and he let out a breath. He shook, though the sunlight was bright and warm. He suddenly wanted to be far away from that place, from the pit of darkness behind them, and from the thing rotting to dust on the grass at his feet.

  "We must decide what to do," Father Adolph said softly. "This one is done, I think, whatever he was. But your friend, Klaus, is not here. Neither is this Rosa, this woman of darkness. The others, those in the car, I don't think we will see them again. They are beyond us."

  "You don't think Klaus was in that car?" Peyton chimed in. "It sure left town like a bat out of hell."

  "I'm almost sure he wasn't in there," Sebastian said slowly, not certain how he knew this. "I have the feeling he's on that mountain somewhere. It's this damnable place that called to him in the first place. I don't think he'd leave without all of the answers he came for."

  "Then we must prepare ourselves," Father Adolph said. He squared his stooped shoulders. "We must go after him. We cannot just go on not knowing, and I have lived in the shadow of this mountain long enough."

  They looked at one another with a mixture of resolve, fear, and confused emotion. They knew they'd have to go, that was not a question. Everything that they were, everything they'd done over the past years of their lives, they'd done together, and Klaus had been the focal point of their combined energy. Now he was gone, probably in grave danger, and it was up to them to follow after him and do what they could, even if it meant sharing that danger.

  "But," Sebastian said, "What are they? I mean, that thing should have been dead long before Peyton and I forced it out into the light. No man could live with the rot of the grave on him and a flute planted in his throat. So, if it wasn't a man, what was it?"

  "Vampyr." Father Adolph said the word so softly that they barely caught it, and his eyes had grown very far away, as though he were lost in some memory. "He was a man, Sebastian, at one time. I have heard of them, I have read the old legends, penned by hand in monasteries, but I never gave them any credence. Now I have seen one, and I know it must be true. He was a dead man, empowered by a force of darkness we cannot explain. He fed on human blood."

  "Melissa!" Damon choked out. "He was draining her blood!"

  "Yes," Father Adolph said, "and it is good that he stopped while she still lived, or she might have become like he. What an evil to find, and now, when I'm so old and feeble."

  Sebastian saw from the look in both Damon and Peyton's eyes that they were ready to mount an all out, immediate assault on the mountain, and he knew he'd have to say something to calm them. With Klaus gone, he fell almost naturally into the position of leader.

  "We can't just go running up that mountain after them without a plan," he said. "If this almost dead ‘vampyr'put up that much of a struggle, what will a live one be like? What will Rosa be like, who has lived so long that the oldest villagers fear her as though they knew her as children? What will we do if we find them?"

  "We will pray," Father Adolph said. "And we will find a way to return her to the grave she has forsaken. What else can we do? We cannot, or should I say, I cannot, go on with such a creature living among us if there is anything I can do to prevent her."

  "It seems like we have some things on our side," Damon said, a thoughtful expression on his bloodstained face. "We know they can be killed. The evidence of that lies here at our feet. We also know they can't stand sunlight. I'd say that means we pretty much have our freedom of movement by day."

  "I wonder," Peyton said, frowning, "if she knows what's happened here? If she and Klaus are gone to the mountain, would they have expected this? It looks as though whoever was in that black limo slammed the flute through this one's neck. Maybe she thinks things are going along fine here, and that we're still just waiting for Klaus to walk up and say 'hey' at any minute. That would give us the element of surprise."

  "The guy who jumped us sure looked crazy," Damon muttered. "And he was unbelievably strong. I'm not a big man, but he tossed me aside so quickly and easily that I might as well have not been there at all. Until Klaus left, though, we didn't see any of them. Maybe she was the one with the reigns of the others in her hand?"

  There were a lot of questions to be answered, and none of them was prepared to face them at just that second, so they turned as a group and headed back around the Inn to the front, where coffee and food awaited.

  They found Melissa shaken, but sitting upright, a cup of hot tea in her hand. The Innkeeper and his wife scurried about, bringing food and drink and busying themselves to keep from thinking about what was happening. Sebastian felt sympathy for them, to a point. They had been raised in fear, held in the sway of a shadow from the past, and we had broken their tenuous hold on safety and reason. They were afraid, and it was obvious that they wished the band had never come. Sebastian had a hard time arguing that point himself.

  "God be praised," Father Adolph said, taking a seat at Melissa's side, "that you are all right. Do you remember anything?"

  "I'm not sure," she said, staring down into the swirling tea in her cup. "After that man threw Damon aside and grabbed me, it was like a dream. His eyes…there was something about them that compelled me. I tried to struggle, but I was helpless inside the shell of my own skin. I remember him biting me, the sensation of my blood leaving me, but after that it became a blur."

  Her face was drawn, her eyes almost vacant. "I heard voices, though. I think that there was another man, and a woman. They were angry with the one who'd brought me. He attacked them, and all I remember after that was a terrible scream. It seemed to come from inside me and from outside at the same time and it echoed forever. It was horrible, and it went on and on and on." She fell silent, taking a deep breath and fighting for control of her voice. "The next thing I knew I was waking up on the grass outside."

  "You don't know, then," Sebastian asked, "if one of the voices you heard belonged to someone called Rosa?"

  "I heard no names." she said. "Only the fighting and that awful, awful scream."

  "You have helped us a lot," Father Adolph assured her, patting her hand and smiling grimly. "But one further question. Do you think the man's voice you heard could have been Klaus?"

  She looked at him quickly, as though awakening from a daze, a curious look in her eye. "No, I'm sure it wasn't Klaus. It sounded as though it might have been a black man; the accent was very strange. Definitely not Klaus, though."

  There it was. Klaus had not been there, and had therefore not been in the limo. That left the mountain, hanging over them like a huge, groping hand.

  "I'm going to leave you for a short time," Father Adolph said, rising. "There are things I must prepare, and I must pray. We will not be leaving today, I think, in any case. We don't want to be caught part way up that mountain in the night. I have a feeling we will find our hands full if we meet this Rosa in the daylight, let alone in her own element.

  "I'm not sure her reasons for stealing away with your friend, but she seems to have shed herself of her other companions. Perhaps there is a greater purpose to what is happening than we realize. These others were apparently no more to her than diversions, and now she has a new one."

  "Tomorrow then?" Sebastian asked, not wanting to wait a moment longer than was actually necessary.

  "At daybrea
k," Father Adolph agreed. "We will take such weapons as we can and provisions enough for several days. Perhaps our friend the Innkeeper will help us with those?"

  The man nodded, though he wrung his hands and looked about the room searching for some non-extant escape route. Claudia stood beside Peyton. She turned and wrapped her arms about him tightly. It did not seem to register any longer on her father, or he had resigned himself to fate. He turned to his wife and gestured toward the kitchen, and the two of them were gone.

  They broke up then, Peyton and Claudia walking off toward the cottages, and Damon following, supporting Melissa, who was still shaky. That left Sebastian and Father Adolph, and the older man rested a hand on Sebastian's shoulder.

  "Before we can rest," he said, "we must dispose of the one in the back, and seal that room. It must never be opened again."

  Sebastian nodded. They left the in and returned to the skeleton of the demon-thing. They stood and stared down at it. "What do we do?" He asked finally, not wanting to touch it.

  "Fire is the great purifier," Father Adolph said, moving about and gathering branches and twigs from the ground. "We will burn him. I don't think even such as he could rise from that. Perhaps we will set his troubled spirit free."

  Sebastian wasn't all that concerned with the creature's spirit, but he set about helping to pile leaves and sticks about the skeleton, packing them in among the dried and cracking bones. He used a stick to pack the material in tightly, not wanting to make actual contact with the bone. He felt a strange, skittish aversion to the thing. He was still afraid that it would reach out and grab him, dead as it was.

  When the bones were completely packed and surrounded with firewood, Sebastian reached into his pocket and pulled out some matches, moving forward to light the blaze.

  "Wait," Father Adolph said, and he hurried off toward the chapel. Sebastian waited nervously, watching the motionless pile of wood and bones with trepidation. It was only a few short moments until the priest returned, and Sebastian saw that he had one of his tea-cups in his hand.