by Anthony Izzo
It was when he turned back toward the truck that the hairs on his arms shot up. He was being watched. He had felt that same thing in a thicket of jungle near Da Nang, that prickly sensation, and he had looked over and saw a VC raising his AK, ready to blow Milo into the next life. One of his squadmates, Ricky Piper, turned the VC into red mist and had saved Milo’s life.
He turned slowly. Between the main building and the brewery’s garage, the alley continued. At the far end of the alley stood a silhouette in the darkness. Milo guessed him to be about six-and-a-half to seven feet tall. He had long stringy hair and was dressed in a tattered trench coat. The moonlight reflected in the guy’s eyes like they were shiny quarters. Milo felt afraid, more so than when Charlie had nearly capped him in the jungle. There was something wrong with this fucker. He stood perfectly still, and Milo knew it wasn’t some bum or junkie looking for cash, but someone bad, someone who would hurt Milo, maybe just for sport.
Still holding the saw, Milo backed toward the truck, not taking his eyes off the guy. The figure stood and watched. Milo expected him to come charging down the alley anytime, but instead he stood still, which somehow made it more disconcerting.
He bumped into the front fender, then felt his way to the door handle. Watching the alley, he set the saw on the passenger seat. Then he climbed inside, shut the door, and pressed the lock button. He smelled his own cold, sour sweat.
He watched the guy for a second, the big dude standing, watching. From inside the truck, he thought he heard a raspy chuckle coming from the guy. Once again his arm hairs stood on end.
He backed the truck down the alley, thinking it would be a big mistake to turn the truck around and leave his back exposed. He fully expected if he turned around he would see the guy charging down the alley after him. As he reached Iroquois and Broadway, he backed onto the street, turned, and floored the gas. The tires gave a screech as he peeled away.
CHAPTER 5
Sara awoke, her face pressed against her duffel bag, which she had propped between herself and the window as a makeshift pillow.
A quick look at her watch told her it was eleven thirty.
She sat up and immediately noticed the sour smell of vomit. It made her stomach roll. She scooted over and peered back down the aisle and saw a green puddle with chunks of food in it. She also heard the soft sobs of a little girl and the woman’s attempts to soothe her daughter. Poor thing must have gotten sick and not made it to the john.
She turned back around and held her hand over her nose and mouth. The bus was slowing and the gears whined as they pulled off an exit on I-80. The driver turned right. They passed a white farmhouse and then about a mile down the road they pulled into a gas station/convenience store. The driver parked next to the building and announced they would take a ten-minute break.
The heavyset woman got off, the little girl in tow, and as the little girl passed, she looked at Sara, her turtleneck spattered with food. Sara waved to her, and to her surprise the girl smiled and waved back. Little kids were tough. Puking one minute and smiling the next. If that happened to her, Sara would have been curled up in a ball, wishing she were home.
The guy in the Duke T-shirt got off next, and Sara followed. She needed to pee, and the prospect of bouncing around on a bus toilet and the subsequent cleanup it required did not thrill her.
She stepped off the bus and under a pole-mounted sodium vapor light. The fluorescents from the canopy over the gas pumps provided the only other lighting. She looked around and to each side of the store saw only the ribbon of highway and an expanse of shadow-shrouded fields. To the rear were woods, maybe fifty yards from the parking lot.
Sara entered the store behind the others and asked the clerk where the bathroom was. The clerk pointed to the rear of the store and said, “Through those double doors.”
She saw the bus driver approach the counter with two rolls of paper towels, a package of yellow cleaning gloves, and a can of Lysol. She didn’t envy the guy and he gave a shrug and said, “Comes with the territory, I guess.”
The guy in the Duke T-shirt bought a sixteen-ounce cola and a bag of pretzels and went outside. Sara reached the double doors just as the woman and her daughter came out.
“She okay?” Sara said.
“Next time she’s going to tell mommy when her stomach gets flopsy, right?”
Flopsy?
The girl nodded, her pigtails bouncing.
Sara used the restroom and exited the store. The bus was the only vehicle in the lot, and she watched the highway for a moment, but not one car passed. It was as if they had docked at a remote space station on a distant planet. She felt small out here and longed for the protection of the bus.
From around the corner, she heard a voice say, “Lookit that.”
She rounded the corner, where the young guy in the Duke T-shirt stood sipping from his giant soft drink, the bag of pretzels tucked under his arm. He was looking at the woods.
“What is it?” Sara asked.
He looked down at her. “Those branches, look how they’re whipping around. I’m Ritchie, by the way,” he added.
Sara introduced herself, but she didn’t look at Ritchie. She watched the woods, the low branches on the pine trees brushing back and forth, as if pushed by wind. Except there was no wind tonight, and the tops of the trees stood still.
“You think it’s some deer? Or maybe a bear. Hell, I grew up in Gary, never seen anything like that,” Ritchie said, and took a swig of his cola.
She didn’t want to get that close to a bear. “We should get back on the bus.”
Now, in the woods, branches rustled across a thirty-yard front, and she could hear whispering. The branches whipped back and forth. A sparrow shot out of the trees, as if fleeing from an unseen predator.
Ritchie stood transfixed, watching the woods. Sara gripped him by the elbow and said, “Ritchie, get your ass back on the bus.”
He gave her a quizzical look and said, “Yeah, yeah, probably should.” He strode across the lot, sipping his drink.
She had a gnawing feeling that this is what Dad and Reverend Frank had talked about. She had laughed at the idea of the Dark Ones, but now she wasn’t so sure, and she wasn’t going to risk others’ lives if Dad and the Rev were right. Had something been following her?
She jogged back toward the bus. The driver stepped off the bus, a bunch of paper towels in his hand, his face twisted in a look of disgust. Sara said, “Where you going?”
“I thought I’d keep these for my collection, along with my kids’ shitty diapers. I’m throwing them out, what do you think?”
“Hurry up,” she said. “Please.”
He walked toward the trash can shaking his head and muttering. Sara climbed the bus’s three steps and peered inside. The old guy was on board, as was Ritchie. The heavyset woman walked down the aisle, checking seats as she went, and said to herself, “When I find that girl ...”
“Where’s your daughter?” Sara asked.
“I told her to go out to the bus and I’d be right there. I thought maybe she’s playing tricks and hiding, but she must be back in the store.”
“What’s her name?”
“What business of that is yours?”
“Ma’am, what is her name?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “It’s Melanie, why?”
“I’ll find her.”
Sara turned and descended the bus steps. She hurried across the lot, walking under the canopies and stopping at the building’s corner. She peeked around. A mist, black as spilled oil, rolled from the woods. It approached the store, swallowing up moonlight. So thick, it looked like you could punch it and your hand would disappear inside.
Got to find the girl.
She entered the store. The clerk had the phone to her ear and she looked over at Sara and said, “I can’t get anyone on this line.”
“Come with me. Now.”
“I ain’t going nowhere. I leave the store, Caesar’s going to have my job.”
>
“Then find somewhere to hide.”
Sara moved down the first aisle, past rows of chips and pretzels and cans of fake nacho cheese. The girl was not in the first aisle, nor the second, which contained automotive supplies.
“Melanie? Melanie!”
She jogged up and down the aisles, but there was no sign of Melanie. She glanced at the front windows, which now looked as if someone had draped a black cloth over them. The clerk, sensing something wrong, ducked down behind the counter.
Maybe the girl had gone in back, through the silver doors.
Sara pushed through the double doors. To the left was a doorway and she peeked in and saw a desk with a heap of pink and yellow papers stacked on it. A filing cabinet was the only other piece of furniture in the room. Farther down the hall was a receiving area, where cases of soda, canned goods, and cases of dry goods were stacked. She scanned the area and saw the white toe of the girl’s sneaker poking out from behind a stack of cases.
Sara knelt in front of her. The girl recoiled. “It’s dark,” she said. “I want Mommy.” She sniffled, and wiped a trickle of clear snot away from her nose with her sleeve. “I forgot my doll.”
“I’m going to take you back to the bus, but we have to go now.”
Sara reached out her hand and the girl’s arm crept out, as if Sara were a dangerous animal. Sara gripped the girl’s hand and pulled her to her feet. They went back through the double doors and into the store. The front doors were chocked open. The cool night air rushed in and brought with it the scent of something old and rotten.
She stopped and Melanie halted with her. Shapes formed in the darkness. One of them, the size of a large man, stood in the doorway. From the front of the store, Sara heard the hidden clerk whimper.
“What’s that?” Melanie asked. “What is that? Where’s the bus?”
What would happen if the unnatural darkness engulfed them? The thought of being shrouded in the oily dark sent a chill through Sara. She had to do something. The little girl clung to her. Sara hugged Melanie close to her hip.
Now the mist seeped inside, engulfing the walls, blocking out the hanging beer posters and the lotto sign above the counter. The clerk popped up from her hiding spot, threw the phone at the coming shadow, and ran back through the double doors.
Sara had to use the Light. It would be only the second time. How had she done it before? By thinking of the sunlight. It had been a cool, dark night and she was walking home from the library. She had taken a back road to get home quicker. Shoulder-high weeds surrounded the road, and she had heard rustling, most likely a deer. But fear had gripped her and she wanted to be home in bed. She thought of how the sunlight slanted in her bedroom window in the morning. The bubble of Light surrounded her, and she walked the rest of the way inside it.
Now she closed her eyes. She pressed the girl closer to her and thought of the sun’s rays warming her face and hearing gulls in the background at Stoney Point.
The Light speared from her with a FOOMP! She felt good and warm and she stood in a bubble of white-gold glow. It surrounded her and the girl and now she could see the enemy backing up into the darkness. The pools of blackness that had clung to the walls like sludge receded, and she started forward, toward the doors.
As she reached the doors, the wave of blackness parted around her. She saw the bus and thought it best to keep the Light glowing until she reached it. She walked with Melanie in the bubble of light until they reached the bus door. Sara nudged the girl forward and she climbed the steps. Sara followed, and when she stood on the step, she turned and faced the store. The fog receded from where it had originated, rolling back over the grass and into the woods.
The bus driver closed the doors behind her, and she thought done and the Light dimmed around her and faded. She felt warm and tired. Melanie ran to her mother.
The bus driver said, “You do this all the time?”
“Only the second time I’ve done it.”
“What was it?”
“I just want to sit down now,” Sara said.
“Fine by me. I’m getting this rig the hell out of here.”
Sara moved down the aisle. She saw Melanie sitting on her mother’s lap, chattering away about Sara’s “wizard powers.” Ritchie and the old man gave her wary glances. She slumped into her seat and closed her eyes.
Sara awoke. It was still dark. She stretched, yawned. The only sounds on the bus were the roll of the big tires on blacktop and the soft snoring of one of the passengers. She felt tired and her neck was stiff. She wondered if the mist still followed her and if she was putting the other passengers in danger. They would have attacked by now, wouldn’t they?
Ritchie sat down across from her. He took his earbuds out and set them on his lap. The iPod cord snaked down into his pants pocket. “That was something, at the gas station.”
She didn’t know what to say to him.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Seemed like more than nothing to me.”
“Only the second time it’s ever happened.”
“What was that dark stuff? It was almost alive.”
Sara crossed her arms. “Look, I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Richie shrugged. “She’s not talking,” he said to someone in the back of the bus.
The driver, hearing the exchange, turned and said, “No more trouble from you, got that?”
She didn’t favor him with a response.
She wished now that she had waited for her father to come home, but when she had found the pictures of Dr. Pennington, she had nearly started shaking. How could he lie to her all these years? Part of her had wanted a little revenge, to put the dagger in him and twist. Leaving unannounced would make him worry, and she wanted to hurt him, just a little. She felt rotten about it. And she missed him. But the pull of meeting Laura Pennington was strong and drew her farther east. She hoped Dad would understand.
Milo pulled into the driveway of his house. It was modest, a beige Cape Cod with a row of arborvitae planted beneath the bay window in front. White trim, white front door. Ordinarily it wasn’t much to look at, but now, staring at the black expanse of the bay window, Milo wished he had left a light on. Normally, he wasn’t afraid to be alone in the house, but the solid darkness unnerved him.
He had considered stopping at Mulvaney’s for a beef on weck but realized that would only delay the inevitable. He was a grown man, so why was he afraid of his own house? The sight of the man in the alley had left him shaken, but the prospect of the stranger beating him home (and even knowing where he lived) was remote.
He killed the engine, got out, and grabbed the chop saw from the bed of the pickup. His gaze on the bay window, he approached the front door. Did the curtain move? His guts felt tingly. Stop it, he told himself.
After setting the saw down, he located the house key and opened the door. He hauled the saw inside and set it in the front hall. He then flipped on the lights and found no mysterious intruder waiting to jump him.
To be safe, he strode through the house and turned on all the lights. Then he locked the front door and checked the rear one. Satisfied he was alone in the house—and having no reason to think otherwise—he decided on a snack.
He whipped up some nachos with salsa and shredded cheese and popped them in the microwave. He complemented his snack with a cold root beer. As he plopped on the sofa, which faced the bay window, the tingle returned to his guts. The darkness seemed blacker to him, and wouldn’t that shadowy creep from the alley find it easy to skulk around out there?
Feeling uneasy, he rose and closed the drapes.
I don’t want to look out there, and I don’t even know why.
He flipped on the television and watched an old movie, but as he watched, his thoughts repeatedly returned to the unseen window and the darkness beyond.
CHAPTER 6
The day of the job, Mike found a manila envelope tucked in his door. Inside wa
s a note that read: Two gas cans by Dumpster. Car in lot on Fuhrman. Burn this note.
Before leaving the house that evening, he checked on Mom, who was still, head lolled to one side. Her mouth had been open and soft gurgles escaped her throat. At first he had panicked, thinking she had passed, but when he heard her breathing he relaxed a bit. The home health aide he had hired would be here shortly to take care of her.
He took the Metro to Fuhrman and Tift, and walked past a Gas N’Go. Beyond the gas station was a weed-lined road. No cars passed him, and for that he was glad.
He approached the old Donner Hanna site. The bases of old blast furnaces, rusted steel legs, and huge metal rings stood in a field. A low concrete wall ran in front of them. They were to be torn down after the condos were complete.
He slogged through the weeds, stepping over the occasional rusted beam. To his right, unseen, a frog croaked. Watching the road, he saw it remained dark—no sign of headlights. Nevertheless, he crouched, as if trying to shrink himself.
Up ahead, Schuler slipped out from behind the remnants of a blast furnace. Mike approached him, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Schuler had his hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a black T-shirt, black jeans, and over it a beat-up brown jacket. If it had been 1985 again, Mickey Schuler would have been right at home.
“Where are they?” Mike asked.
Schuler turned and pointed. “Over that ridge.”
Some genius had decided to turn an industrial wasteland into high-priced condos. He wondered if the yards came with optional slag heaps.
They climbed the ridge, and descending, came upon the condos, one building at each corner of the property. Two of them were furnished with gray-green siding and the others were wrapped in white Tyvek board. A dirt road wound between the condos, one that Mike imagined would eventually be paved. In Mike’s estimation this was another Love Canal waiting to happen. He didn’t want to linger down here.
