When Darkness Loves Us

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  Suddenly she was afraid. As she fought for control, fought to overpower the fear with love, with the knowledge of God’s protection, the beast lunged. It struck directly at her chest, sharp teeth biting deep into her heart.

  Time slowed. She felt the sharp teeth rip the flesh from her breast, felt the raw stones breaking bones in her back as she fell, the great weight atop her. She saw her outstretched hand claw for the door—short, inches, just inches short—she was not there yet, it was too far away, the beast was chewing on her, God, it was eating her alive, the pain, oh, Martha, the pain, its teeth ripping out her heart, oh, God, so close, so close, oh, God. She looked down, right into the eyes of her attacker, the pain so complete, not the physical pain but the desperation of failure clouding her vision, now it was a man, now it was a dog, now a giant rat, what was it, where oh where did you come from to live within my daughter and at last she knew where she’d seen the beast before.

  It was Harry.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Leon, what’s a five-letter word for solo? There’s an l in it.” Martha looked up from her crossword.

  “Alone.” Leon stood up and clicked off the television. “Like me. I’m going to bed.”

  “Good idea.” Martha wrote the other letters carefully in the squares with her pencil, then closed the book and took off her glasses. He passed behind her, stopping to put his hands on her shoulders as she rubbed her eyes, then he kissed the top of her head.

  “C’mon.”

  “You go ahead. I’ll just clean up a bit and be right in.”

  “Okay.”

  She heard him brushing his teeth in the bathroom, then the toilet flushed, then the bedsprings creaked as he got in. She picked up crushed beer cans from the new coffee table and wiped it with a towel. What will this house be like without him? She sat for a moment on the new sofa. It was comfortable, and very pretty, in muted colors of browns and golds. There was a new chair to match, and a new rocker, and new draperies. The house looked nice. And it felt nice, with Leon to share it.

  She turned off the light and went to bed.

  Outside, two pair of eyes watched the light go out. They continued to wait, quietly. Then Priscilla whispered.

  “Leslie, what do you think they have that we’d want?”

  “Won’t know till we get inside.”

  “Money, you think?”

  “That’s the only thing worth taking.” He paused. “Unless you want to take pictures. Bring a camera?”

  Priscilla giggled. He hushed her, then got to his feet. “C’mon.”

  Sleep was sliding in and around, making a comfort­able, cottony womb, as Martha and Leon lay together in the bed. They were soft together, silent, their thoughts running loose, getting ready to give up and sink safely into that timeless place where the cumbersome fetters of awareness were not needed. They were at peace, at rest.

  The crash of glass splintered that rest, split it into sharp shards of fear. They sat up as one, Leon reaching for his pants, Martha pulling the covers up to her chin. He flicked on the harsh light and went into the kitchen, and she heard the words, those words . . .

  “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

  Suddenly, she was very small as she moved sideways from the bed, her eyes big and bright, frightened but bold. She moved in her nightgown—it was late, her mommy should have been home by now—bare feet stepping on the cold ground as she made her way into the silent barn.

  “Go bring Martha in here, Priscilla,” Leslie said as he leveled the gun at Leon. Priscilla’s eyes were huge with fright as she did what he told her. He never said he was going to bring a gun.

  She slipped past Leon and into the bedroom, where Martha was sliding along the bedroom wall, her eyes wide open but not seeing. “Martha?”

  “It’s me, Daddy. Mommy’s not home yet and I’m afraid.”

  Oh, Jesus. What is going on in this house?

  “I thought I told you never to come into this barn, you little freak.” He took a step toward her, into the light, kicking an empty whiskey bottle that went rolling across the floor. He kept coming. He didn’t have any clothes on. A little thing dangled between his legs and he was covered in blood. He stopped and turned on the hose, washing himself down, the blood running across the floor toward her feet, running down his legs. He rubbed himself to get it off, and it kept coming toward her toes, her bare toes on the barn floor, and she backed up, and backed up. “Well, you’re here now, you want to see what goes on in here? Come here.” He pulled on a pair of overalls, then came and grabbed her wrist. “Come here!”

  Priscilla grabbed her wrist. “Come here!”

  Martha screamed “No! No! I don’t want to! Don’t make me!” She watched the blood wash toward her, picking up little pieces of hay and bringing it to her, to her toes.

  A shot blasted in the living room, more crashing of glass. They were fighting and Priscilla didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go into the living room. And she didn’t know what to do with Martha. A heavy thud from the living room. The sounds of fighting stopped, there was heavy breathing, then Leslie’s face appeared at the door. He was bleeding from a cut over his eye and had a bruise swelling on one corner of his mouth.

  “I told you to come in here!”

  “No, Daddy!” Martha whimpered. “I don’t want to see.”

  “You’re so all-fired curious about the barn, I want you to see.” He pulled her across the floor, dragging her feet in the blood; she fell and it got all over her favorite white-lace nightie. He pulled her to the corner where a shallow grave was dug in the dirt, beyond where the cows ate, and there was a baby calf, covered with blood, all crumpled up in the hole. Rats were already dodging in and out taking rips of flesh. She covered her eyes.

  “Look at this monster, Martha.” He pulled her hands away from her eyes. “Look, damn you! It was born wrong. It was born with two heads. It was a horror, Martha, like you. A monster, like you! I had to kill it when it was born, like I should have killed you.” He grabbed her nose with hard, calloused fingers that pinched. “Look at this nose!”

  “Look at this nose,” Leslie said, and he pinched it.

  His hand hurt her wrist, she twisted to get away, she didn’t want to see the thing in the hole, she didn’t want the blood, she didn’t want any of it. He was hurting her wrist. Her knees collapsed and she sat down hard on the ground, her hand landed on something long and smooth, something that fit her tiny hand, and his face came close to hers, bright eyes and yellow teeth—“Horror! Horror!”—with a terrible stench, a smell of death, of blood, of whiskey, of awful, horrible, and she picked up the hammer and swung it at his head.

  Leslie dodged the stool, but it caught Priscilla on the side of the head. Her eyes rolled back and she made a gurgling sound as she landed, twitched for a moment, and then was still.

  “Jesus Christ! You killed her!” He stood there for a moment, flexing his hands nervously, then bounced up and down on his toes and ran out of the house.

  “You little bitch. Like to kill me, eh? I’ll show you what for.” He picked her up and threw her in the grave on top of the mutilated body of the calf, rats squeaking and running, then coming back for a smell of the new meat. “Bury the two horrors together,” he said, pelting her with clods of dirt. “Bury the two horrors.” Then he stopped. He listened for a moment to her frantic whimpering, as she batted at the rats to keep them away from her face, her hands sinking in the still warm ooze of the broken little calf body. Harry put his face in his hands with a moan and ran out.

  Martha scrambled out of the grave away from the rodents and that awful thing and whipped off her nightgown, throwing it back in the hole. There was sticky blood all over her, in her hair, on her hands, on her legs; it smelled sweet, tasted salty. She screamed breathlessly, the horses and cows making even more noise, as she ran to the hose and washed herself, frantically, dancing in the cleansing rain—it wouldn’t wash away fast enough—and when she was clean, she stood naked and cold in the
barn, sobbing, then lay down quietly shivering in the mound of fresh, new hay.

  Martha was shivering. She opened her eyes. She was lying naked on top of the bed, still damp from her shower. All the lights were on. She got up slowly to get a fresh nightie from the dresser and almost stepped on Priscilla’s lifeless form on the floor.

  “Pris! Why you here?” She stooped to help the girl up, but Priscilla’s face was a strange blue-gray, and she was cold. A little trickle of blood leaked out one ear and from the side of a small cut at her temple. Martha ran for a washcloth. “S’just blood, Pris. Normal. Happens every time. Here. Clean you up.” She sat down with Priscilla’s head in her lap and scrubbed at the dried trails until they came clean.

  Morning sunlight was coming through the shattered windows when Leon opened his eyes. His head boomed with the light, with his pulse. Shaky fingers sought out the lump like a golf ball on his forehead. Slowly his vision cleared and he remembered Leslie and Priscilla the night before. He raised his pounding head and looked around. The gun was under the coffee table; glass was everywhere. Where was Martha?

  Slowly, carefully, he got to his feet, dizzy, every muscle aching, his head feeling like it would either explode or roll right off his shoulders. He stumbled to the bedroom.

  He leaned at the doorjamb. Martha was sitting at the dressing table, her back to him. Priscilla’s legs stuck out from under the end of the bed.

  “Martha?”

  She seemed to be humming, putting on makeup. He walked around the edge of the bed.

  “Martha?” God, was she all right? “Martha?”

  Martha turned to face him, her slack mouth reddened with lipstick and fashioned into a warped smile.

  “Leon!”

  He took one look and ran for the bathroom, falling to his knees and throwing up everything, his life, his love, his faith, in great heaving gobs of bile. When there was nothing left to come up, he looked toward the door and saw her feet standing in the doorway. He couldn’t look at the face. He couldn’t look at the face, but in spite of himself, his disbelieving eyes betrayed him and they went directly to her face, to her nose, that huge atrocity that dominated her face, and that thing that hung on it.

  He stared, revulsion sweeping him again.

  “Leon? Whose sofa?” she asked as she turned to look into the living room.

  He retched again, sobbing, crying, not understanding, feeling he’d been cheated in life, cheated out of everything worthwhile, he’d never be the same, never look at things through fresh eyes, he’d been changed, he’d been tainted, he’d been . . .

  She kneeled next to him and handed him a tissue to wipe his mouth.

  Was it really? He couldn’t look. It couldn’t be, but his damned eyes again moved directly to her face, and there it was.

  Priscilla’s nose, once cute and pert, with freckles dancing across it, was now a meaningless, scraped square of gray flesh, tacked somehow to Martha’s own impossible nose. Lines of heavy caked makeup surrounded it, even stuck it down in places, but it was beginning to curl and warp from her body heat.

  “Oh, Martha,” he wailed.

  She looked at him, trying to understand, cocking her head back and forth as he stared in disbelief. Then she looked at the sunlight on the floor and guilt crossed her face.

  “Oh no,” she said, standing up. “Never fed the chickens.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elizabeth Engstrom grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois (a Chicago suburb where she lived with her father) and Kaysville, Utah (north of Salt Lake City, where she lived with her mother). After graduating from high school in Illinois, she ventured west in a serious search for acceptable weather, eventually settling in Honolulu. She attended college and worked as an advertising copywriter.

  After eight years on Oahu, she moved to Maui, found a business partner, and opened an advertising agency. One husband, two children, and five years later, she sold the agency to her partner and had enough seed money to try her hand at full-time fiction writing, her lifelong dream. With the help of her mentor, science fiction great Theodore Sturgeon, When Darkness Loves Us was published. Since then, she has written fifteen additional books and taught the art of fiction in Oregon colleges and at writers’ conferences and conventions around the world.

  Engstrom moved to Oregon in 1986, where she lives with her husband Al Cratty, the legendary muskie fisherman. An introvert at heart, she still emerges into public occasionally to teach a class in novel or short story writing, or to speak at a writers’ convention or conference. Learn more at www.elizabethengstrom.com

  ABOUT THE COVER

  Cover: The cover painting by Jill Bauman originally appeared on the cover of the 1986 Tor paperback edition. Bauman got her start as a paperback horror cover artist with a cover for Charles L. Grant’s A Quiet Night of Fear, then with Kit Reed’s The Attack of the Giant Baby. Since then, she has painted covers for everyone from Harlan Ellison to Ramsey Campbell, as well as dozens of magazine covers and illustrations. She’s also the original scary doll painter, a trope that would soon transform paperback racks into a veritable toy store of terror. Refusing to paint the dead bodies and severed limbs her art directors demanded, Bauman used dolls instead, and as the genre got more bloodthirsty, her covers became littered with them. Her first dead doll cover was for Alan Ryan’s The Kill (1982).