Darkness Whispers

by Richard Chizmar

  Jimmy smiled that tired smile of his and nodded. “Good old Uncle Manny.”

  “He promised to show me how to hot-wire a car one day, too. He said it’s a lot harder than in the movies.”

  Brian stood behind his friend at Mr. Pruitt’s back door, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. “Just hurry the hell up, will ya?”

  “The key is to not leave any marks on the door frame, in case you have to come back later.” Jimmy carefully wedged the screwdriver in a little further and jiggled it up and down.

  “We ain’t coming back later.”

  “I know that, just saying.” He held the screwdriver in place with his left hand and removed the card from his pocket with his other hand. He aligned the card between the wooden door-frame and the metal latch, then started swiping it up and down. After a moment, he stopped and wiped his hand on his jeans. “Sweaty. Guess I’m nervous.”

  “That makes two of us,” Brian said. “Hey, if we’re being so careful, why aren’t we wearing gloves or something?”

  “Don’t need ’em. It gets to the point where cops are over here lifting fingerprints, we’re screwed anyway.”

  The thought made Brian even more nervous. “We should just give it up, man. It’s not gonna work.”

  There was an audible click—and the door swung inward a few inches. They caught a glimpse of linoleum floor inside.

  Jimmy looked back at his friend. “You were saying?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Jimmy stuffed the screwdriver and membership card back into his pocket, carefully nudged the door open, and stepped inside. Brian followed right behind him and started to close the door.

  “Leave it open. In case we have to make a quick escape.”

  “Lemme guess…you saw it in a movie?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Jesus,” Brian said, looking around. “What’s that smell?”

  They were standing in Mr. Pruitt’s kitchen, and it was a mess. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink and on the surrounding countertop. Empty pizza and Chinese food delivery boxes littered the kitchen table and overflowed from the trashcan. There was a pile of old newspapers stacked in front of the dishwasher.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Jimmy whispered.

  Brian, eyes wide, nodded in agreement.

  “The smell is coming from down there,” Jimmy said, motioning to a door in the adjoining hallway.

  “Basement?”

  Jimmy nodded and headed that way.

  “I was afraid you were gonna say that,” Brian said, following.

  “I used to come down here every Christmas Eve when I was little to see Mr. Pruitt’s train-set.”

  Jimmy opened the door into complete darkness. He gathered his courage and slid his hand along the wall just inside the doorway until he found the light switch and flipped it on. The stairway was long and narrow and covered in the same ugly shade of gold carpeting Jimmy remembered from years past.

  “After you,” Brian said, his voice cracking.

  They slowly started down the stairs—and both boys heard and smelled the animals before they actually saw them.

  “What the hell is that?” Jimmy asked, and then they reached the bottom of the stairway and turned the corner.

  The room erupted in a cacophony of frantic barking and growling and whining as soon as the boys walked into view.

  The entire length of one wall was lined with small cages. There had to be twenty or more of them. Each secured with a heavy padlock. Inside the metal cages were mostly dogs and cats. But there were also squirrels and rabbits and even a raccoon. And positioned along the adjoining wall, underneath one of the blacked-out basement windows, were two large, clear-plastic hutches, each containing a monkey. The wiry monkeys skittered from one side of their enclosures to the other, eyes bugging, clawing madly to get out.

  Jimmy stood a few feet from the bottom of the stairway, his mind racing to register what his eyes were seeing. The smell was horrible here in the closed room; a toxic mixture of piss and crap and something chemical he could almost taste on his tongue. The basement walls were soundproofed.

  “Some serial killer!” Brian said from behind him in a booming voice. He walked deeper into the room, laughing with relief. “Old Man Pruitt is Doctor Doolittle!”

  “Sometimes they start by torturing animals,” Jimmy said, his words almost drowned out by the animal screeches. “Then they move on to people.”

  Brian pointed out a stainless steel table—with leather straps—in the far corner of the basement. Syringes and vials of what looked like medicine were lined up on a nearby shelf. “Looks like he’s trying to help them, not torture them.”

  Jimmy glanced in the opposite corner of the room, noticed a computer, its monitor-screen glowing, sitting on a small desk next to a printer. He headed that way.

  Behind him, Brian bent down and reached his hand through one of the cages. A mangy cocker-spaniel gently licked his fingers. “Poor little guy. All cramped up in there.” He got to his feet and studied several of the other cages.

  “Helping or not, they shouldn’t be locked up like this. Most of them don’t even have water.”

  Jimmy stopped in front of the desk. Reached out and nudged the mouse, and the screen-saver image of a sunny beach disappeared and was replaced by a series of strange letters and numbers. He leaned closer, trying to remember where he had seen something similar.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” Brian said from behind him. “Wonder what the suit’s for?”

  He looked over and saw Brian struggling to hold up a full-body suit, the heavy-duty kind you see astronauts wearing on television. A helmet with a clear faceplate hung from a hook on the wall next to him.

  “Beats me. Just put it back, man.” Jimmy returned his attention to the computer screen, once again searching his memory for where he’d seen such writing.

  “I bet these keys are for the cages,” Brian said, but Jimmy, lost in deep thought, didn’t hear him. His eyes and nose stung from the horrible stench; his brain hurt from thinking. He was about to give up when the answer suddenly came to him like a ship sailing free of a fogbank. He snapped his fingers.

  “It’s Arabic! I remember it from school.” He scrolled down, then clicked on a blurry photo at the bottom of the computer screen—and almost screamed when something brushed against his pants leg.

  He looked down and saw a flash of black cat. He turned back to his friend and frowned. “What are you doing?”

  Loose dogs and cats scampered across the basement and up the stairs to freedom. As Jimmy watched, Brian flung open another cage door and lifted a fat rabbit onto the floor below. The rabbit hopped in a drunk circle, then raced away, joining the others. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” He laughed and moved on to the next cage.

  Jimmy opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, screaming erupted from the computer behind him. Startled, he spun around and realized that a video was playing on the monitor:

  A dark-skinned man wearing a filthy robe sat strapped to a chair in the middle of a small room. He screamed and wailed and fought against his restraints to no avail. Harsh voices could be heard off-screen speaking in a foreign language. After another thirty seconds of screaming, a scraggly mutt limped on-screen. The man stopped screaming and started crying. The dog wagged its tail and licked the man’s restrained hands. The man started screaming again and tried to jerk away, but before long the screams were drowned out by a deep guttural choking sound. The camera zoomed in on the man’s face, and Jimmy could see blood and bile spilling from the man’s mouth in a foamy mess. And then his eyes erupted in twin geysers of blood that dribbled down his cheeks, and after a few more seconds, the man went limp and quiet. The foreign voice spoke up again, and then someone shuffled on-screen wearing a heavy-duty suit eerily similar to the one hanging on the wall right there in the basement.

  The puzzle pieces suddenly snapped into place inside Jimmy’s brain and his entire body went rigid with terror. �
��Brian…” All of a sudden, he wished he had brought his cellphone. He wished it more than anything else in the world. “Brian…STOP!”

  Brian was kneeling in front of the second monkey enclosure. The first hutch was empty, the door wide open. “Why? I feel sorry for ’em, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy’s voice was thick with surging fear. “He might not be a serial killer, but I think Mr. Pruitt is working with some very bad people.”

  Brian pulled the open lock from the latch and tossed it to the floor beside him. “What kind of bad people?”

  “Like ISIS-terrorist-bad people.”

  Brian rolled his eyes. “Dude, you’ve seen too many movies. Mr. Pruitt’s an old man. He’s up to some weird shit down here, but he’s as American as you and me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jimmy said, his legs feeling like rubber. “Not anymore.”

  Brian yanked open the glass door and the brown monkey skittered into his arms.

  “Brian, don’t…”

  Brian, still down on a knee in front of the hutch, grinned and cradled the monkey in his arms like a baby. “Look how cute he is!” He pressed his face close to the monkey’s tiny head. “You’re so cute. Yes, you are. You’re so darn…”

  The words suddenly stopped—and Brian’s voice faded to a wet gargle. The monkey slipped from his arms and scampered happily away. Brian didn’t move, just kept staring down at his lap, his long hair obscuring his face.

  Jimmy backed up a step. “You okay, man?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Jimmy backed up another step. “Brian…?”

  Brian slowly lifted his head, looked up at his friend. His eyes were bleeding. Dark foam bubbled from his open mouth. He rose up and reached out for Jimmy, took a zombie-like step forward, and then he collapsed to the ground face-first, convulsing.

  Jimmy stood there, frozen, watching his friend die. Everything made sense now—the animals, the vials, the chemical smell, the Hazmat suit—and nothing made sense at all. He thought about his mother and father and his Uncle Manny, and he turned and sprinted for the stairs.

  He was almost to the top of the staircase when he felt something small and heavy latch onto his back with an ear-piercing screech. Sharp claws dug into his back, and he felt the brush of bristly fur against his neck.

  He staggered into the kitchen, flailing, trying to wrestle the beast off of him. Even in his panic, he noticed the dogs and cats fleeing outside through the open kitchen door, scattering in the yard and running off in all directions. Free again.

  His frantic mind chose that moment to flash another scene from a movie and even amidst the chaos, it bothered him that he couldn’t remember the title: Common house-pets carrying a dangerous new strain of rabies. Infected people going violently insane before dying agonizing deaths. Then, finally…the end of the world.

  Jimmy slammed his back against the kitchen wall, trying to shake the beast loose. He knocked piles of dishes to the floor where they shattered into pieces. He kicked over the pile of newspapers. The beast only screeched its awful banshee cry and dug its claws deeper into Jimmy’s scalp.

  He stumbled out the door into the back yard and felt the sun hit his tear-stained face. Its comforting warmth and blinding brightness filled his final moment of consciousness before the monkey lunged and buried its razor-sharp teeth deep in the flesh of Jimmy’s neck.

  And then his throat was closing up like a caved-in mineshaft and he couldn’t breathe; and his skin felt like it had been set ablaze; and hot blood poured from his eyes in twin rivulets—and then he felt and saw nothing at all.

  WHAT THEY LEFT BEHIND

  by Brian James Freeman

  Scott Soderman stood in the open dock door as rain pounded the parking lot and the forest beyond. Trailers full of pallets waited their turn at the other doors. Below the loading docks were two enormous storm drains, both of them clogged with leaves, brush, and debris that had collected during the years the Timlico complex sat abandoned. Dirty water pooled like a lake.

  By the entrance to the parking lot, next to what remained of the chain-link fence, was the ancient For Sale sign, tattered and faded with age. A hopeful and bright Sold! banner was nailed across the front.

  Scott’s father had bought this dump as his last ditch effort to keep the family’s logistics business afloat in the new economy, but the odds were not looking good in Scott’s opinion. Timlico was the name of the company that had originally built this warehouse, along with the attached office building and the enormous factory around back. The property had been deteriorating for years, sitting unoccupied since the sudden closure of the entire corporation. The remnants of the complex were rotting and rusting within the vine-covered walls, but the warehouse was still solid. It was made of steel and concrete and sheet metal, which could endure the ravages of time better than drywall and carpet—although nothing man-made could last forever. Given enough time, Mother Nature would reclaim all of this land.

  “What a way to spend a Saturday,” Scott whispered.

  A voice behind him replied: “Yeah, the storm’s getting worse.”

  Scott jumped and spun around as George stepped onto the loading dock.

  “Jesus H. Christ, don’t sneak up on me!” Scott said, clutching at his heart like an old man. “If you kill me, I’m pretty sure my sister will have to dump you, dude. And my dad will probably fire your ass.”

  George laughed. He was a few years older than Scott and he had grown up in some town in New Jersey that no one in the Soderman family had ever heard of before he started dating Scott’s sister.

  George said, “Sorry about that. Thought you heard me coming.”

  “Now I need a smoke. Got a light?” Scott asked, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. His lighter was in the car and he felt no desire to brave the storm to retrieve it.

  “Nada. Those things will kill you before you’re fifty,” George said.

  “If I live that long.” Scott laughed at his own joke and put the pack of cigarettes back in his pocket for later. “They calm my nerves.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do. And there’s not much I can actually do here. I may as well get busy getting cancer.”

  “So why’d you volunteer then?”

  “I would have been dragged along one way or another so I volunteered before my father could draft me.”

  George laughed. “Like the Army.”

  “Yeah, like the Army.”

  “I just wish we had two more weeks to get everything ready for this move. We’re trying to get too much done this weekend, mistakes are bound to happen.”

  “I guess there wasn’t much choice,” Scott said. “We’re getting evicted from the old building on Monday, right?”

  “Correctamundo. Good thing we got this place for dirt cheap.”

  “You guys are planning to demolish the office building and the factory, right?”

  “That’s the plan. We only need the warehouse and we agreed to tear the other sections down since they’ll never be up to code again. That’s how we got such a great deal. Why?”

  “Don’t tell anyone, but I want to check everything out before it’s gone. You know, try to find something neat that was left behind by the previous owners. A souvenir of sorts. It’ll be cool.”

  George laughed again. “If you say so, Scott.”

  Mary Soderman was operating the forklift and she sped by her boyfriend and her brother, sounding the horn as she passed, although they had heard her coming a mile away. She was busy unloading pallets and crates from the trailers lined up at the dock doors. Scott and George had one shared responsibility: tracking the inventory to make sure each delivery was recorded properly.

  Every hour a truck driver brought another full trailer from the old warehouse where Scott’s father and the rest of the full-time employees were busy closing down operations. The driver then returned one of the empty trailers to the other side of town and the process repeated itself again and again. It would have been a tough day e
ven without the storm.

  Mary stopped the forklift a few feet from where Scott and George stood watching the rain. The yellow machine’s weary engine growled like some kind of hungry beast. The battered forklift had seen better days and the heavy scent of oil and grease emanated from under the hood.

  Mary shouted: “Dad called and said the power went out at the old warehouse. There’s a good chance it’ll happen here, too, so someone needs to check the generator.”

  “Okay, I’ll go,” Scott said.

  “Take this.” Mary tossed a flashlight to her brother. “And watch yourself in there. You don’t want to fall through any holes in the floor. Why don’t you go with him, George? Make sure he gets back in one piece.”

  Mary gunned the forklift’s engine and rolled into a trailer to grab the next pallet, leaving a cloud of black smoke hanging in her wake. There was no time for chitchat. A lot of work needed to get done this weekend.

  George and Scott made their way across the warehouse to the double doors that served as a gateway to the offices. Tacked onto the wall was a map of the complex, and at first glance the lines on the oversized paper resembled a giant maze, but the color code system helped bring some order to the chaos.

  “The generator should be in the basement under the offices,” George said.

  “Looks like the stairs are on the other side of the building,” Scott replied, pointing at a tiny square labeled MECHANICAL ROOM #7/BASEMENT ACCESS. “It’s a straight shot.”

  “Okay, let’s go. I don’t want to spend too long in there.”

  “Scared of the dark?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Too late.”

  They opened the double doors and stared into the pitch-black void while Scott swatted around the wall, finding mold and wetness and eventually a series of switches. He flipped them. Some of the lights flickered to life, but not many.

  “Holy crap,” Scott whispered.

  The hallway was eerily cloaked in shadows, but he could see the mess well enough: piles of discarded paperwork, water stained ceiling tiles that were crumbling and falling onto the damp carpet, and colorful graffiti on the walls.