The Darkening

by Paul Antony Jones

  There was a sound of rapid movement, feet scuttling over concrete. To Tyreese it sounded like many limbs working at once, not like a human, but more like a spider, huge and black scrambling up the concrete walls.

  "Birr-dyy!" the voice sang; it was much closer now, just a few feet away in the darkness. The voice was not much louder than a whisper, cajoling, "Birdy, I'm right here, baby. Come to me." Then, demanding, "Now!"

  Tyreese felt Birdy flinch at the sharpness of the last command.

  "Mom?" Birdy allowed the word to fall from her lips, all hope suddenly evaporating from her voice.

  Tyreese felt the girl stop struggling and he eased his grip on her shoulders a little.

  "Back up, now... slowly," Tyreese whispered into Birdy's ear, his hands now resting gently on each of her shoulders, the left awkwardly gripping the cane beside her. He eased himself up another step, the heel of his right prosthetic scuffing against the lip of the step above. The small hairs on the back of Tyreese's neck tingled, the cold air of the stairwell chilling the sweat that he felt covering his skin. Squinting, he tried to look deeper into the darkness just a few feet below, but there was nothing to see other than shades of black.

  They had almost made it back to the top landing when a shadow detached itself from the darkness and moved into the orange glow leaking from the open door behind Tyreese and Birdy. The shape eased into the long shadow the man and girl cast down the stairs, as though their darkness was preferable to even the meager amount of light illuminating the steps.

  Tyreese felt his mind grind to a halt right at that moment, his sense of reality suddenly as fragile as a thin sheet of ice across a pond. Birdy sagged beneath his hands as though she were a deflated balloon, her breath hissing from her with shock. Tyreese's own breath was held deep within his chest, and he wondered if his heart would ever start again.

  "Holy fuck!" Tyreese finally gasped.

  Birdy whimpered at the apparition just a few steps below them. She spun around and, unable to push by Tyreese, buried her head into his side. It was Lizzie Finch, Birdy's mom. Tyreese recognized her, albeit barely, from a photograph he'd seen in the girl's apartment.

  Lizzie Finch was shoeless, the uniform she wore soaked with rain, clinging to her body, the fabric torn in many places and missing a huge strip down the front that exposed the left cup of her bra and a long swath of pallid skin down to the waistband of her pants. Her wet hair clung to her face, her arms and legs were as pale as the skin of her exposed belly, save for the blotches of dirt and streaks of caked blood the rain had not washed away.

  But it was the woman's face that scared Tyreese. He had seen similar expressions during his time in Afghanistan on the faces of insurgents and suicide bombers, usually just kids or young men; cold, deliberate, hungry for death. And her eyes; what was wrong with her eyes? They seemed to glow with an otherworldly yellow light, like when you shine a flashlight in the eyes of a dog or a cat at night. Or a wolf, he thought. A hungry, rabid wolf.

  Lizzie Finch's face was as colorless as the rest of her body. But her lips, in contrast, were a bright ruby red, as though she had painted them with the gaudiest red lipstick she could find. She swayed constantly back and forth, like a reed in a light summer breeze. But those golden eyes; there was a greed behind them, Tyreese thought, a hunger. And they remained fixed squarely on her daughter. And, Tyreese thought, he was sure the woman hadn't blinked, not once in the entire time she stood there.

  When Lizzie Finch spoke, it was with a demanding, disdainful voice. "Daughter, why won't you look at me?"

  Tyreese felt his bladder almost give way because even in this minimal light he could see her teeth were black, completely black, like obsidian. And jutting from her top jaw were two fangs—like a snake's—that curved down to a serrated lower set of teeth.

  Birdy twisted her head to face her mother. "You're not my mother!" she spat, still holding tight to Tyreese, but refusing to turn her head away from the ghastly creature.

  Lizzie Finch climbed up onto the next step.

  "Get behind me," Tyreese ordered Birdy. With his free hand he pried the girl from around his waist, moving the walking cane aside long enough for the girl to duck under his arm. She had to stand two steps up to be able to see over the big man's shoulders.

  Lizzie Finch, or what had once been her, advanced up the stairs one deliberate step at a time. Her thin arms were outstretched, one hand pressing against the wall, the other running over the top of the guardrail, her shoulders hunched, head low, her golden eyes never leaving Birdy.

  She's making sure we can't get past her, blocking our way, Tyreese thought. She wasn't scared of them; she was stalking them.

  Lizzie's nails scraped against the flaking paint of the wall with a dry scratching sound. She stopped abruptly. "Child, come to your mother." The creature was just four steps down from them now. Its eyes flicked from Tyreese to Birdy then back to Tyreese. "Give her to me," the woman demanded.

  "Not going to happen, lady," Tyreese said, aware of the tremor in his own voice. "Now back the hell away from us."

  Lizzie Finch waited, her head tilting first left then right as though she was trying to crack a knotted neck muscle. For a moment Tyreese thought maybe he had actually managed to scare her off. But then she threw her head back and laughed, a mirthless cackle that trailed off to a gurgling as her lower jaw suddenly distended, dropping down three inches. Tyreese could see the skin stretching like elastic, the black teeth glinting in the paltry light from the landing.

  "You have got to be shitting me!" Tyreese pulled the pistol from his waist and aimed it at the monster standing in front of him before he even realized he was going to do it. There was a tremendous bang as Tyreese pulled the trigger on the Glock.

  Birdy screamed as the gunshot exploded deafeningly in the confined space of the stairwell.

  Tyreese saw the bullet clip the top of the exposed cup of Lizzie Finch's bra. It was a perfect shot, right through her heart. He saw the material of her bra fray as the bullet tore into her, saw the skin pucker as the .45 caliber round hit, knocking her backwards, and then disappear as the wound almost instantly began to close up again. The bullet hit the wall behind Lizzie Finch with a twang and ricocheted away into the darkness.

  Tyreese pulled the trigger three more times in rapid succession, aiming for center of mass, with the same result; the bullets seemed to just pass right through the woman. And what should have been fatal wounds vanished seconds later, like she was made of some kind of jelly rather than flesh. He put a fifth round through the woman's right cheek. It knocked her down a step, but then she was up again and scrambling up the stairs toward them.

  "Run, Birdy!" Tyreese screamed, his mind still trying to deal with what was happening. This was impossible. Impossible!

  Tyreese started to turn, using his body to block the creature so it could not slip past him and make a grab for Birdy. She was standing on the landing a few steps above him, her eyes wide with horror, her hands clasping the railing as though it was her last fragile grip on reality.

  "Get to my apartment. Run! NOW!" Tyreese raised his left foot to take the next step but his leg refused to move. He looked down in time to see Lizzie Finch's dirty, blood-stained hands clasped around his prosthetic leg just as she ripped it away, tearing the fake limb from his pants.

  And then Tyreese was falling. Tumbling backward into the darkness, his arms flailing as he tried to find something to grab hold of, the cane he held in his left hand whirling like a bad Charlie Chaplin impersonation. Tyreese's body twisted as he fell, pivoting on his one prosthetic leg, his hands coming up instinctively to protect his head from the impact he knew was coming.

  Time slowed. Tyreese saw Birdy's mother clawing her way up the stairs toward her terrified child who stood rooted on the top landing. Saliva dripped from the monster's distended jaw. He heard the screeching wail that emanated from its mouth. Saw the teeth flashing in the dim light. And he felt a terrible certainty that he had failed the girl, failed h
imself, again. They were both doomed.

  Tyreese's body juddered for a second as the cane he held in his left hand slipped between two upright posts of the guardrail and jammed. He teetered against the handle for a moment, the wood bending, slowing him enough that he thought he had a chance to recover. But then Tyreese heard the wooden shaft snap with a retort almost as loud as the pistol's. One piece of the cane dropped into the narrow center shaft between the floors, the other part tumbled from his fingers to the steps. His momentum altered, Tyreese now fell sideways instead, hitting the steps hard, the edges digging into his already bruised forearms. He rolled to his right and hit the wall, saw the creature just inches away from him still focused on reaching the girl above.

  Tyreese threw a hand toward the creature, managed to snag its leg just above the ankle, his fingers grabbing hold of the wet material of the pants leg. His two-hundred-and-twenty pounds of muscle and momentum did the rest. He rolled down the steps toward the next landing, pulling the creature down with him.

  Tyreese hit the concrete hard, knocking the air from his lungs. A snarling, screeching Elizabeth Finch landed next to him, her legs trapped beneath his torso.

  Through the semi-darkness, he saw a mouth full of fangs heading for his throat. He rolled away just as the jaws snapped shut, but in doing so he lost his grip on Elizabeth Finch.

  The creature exploded into the air and landed on the thin metal guardrail, perching there for a second like some monstrous bird. Her eyes blazed down at him, her head tilted to the left in such a way that, if it hadn't been for the terrible sight she presented, it would have completed the avian image.

  Then Birdy was standing just one step up behind her mother, easily within reach of the creature.

  Tyreese recognized the same bloodlust in Birdy's eyes as he had seen in the creature just moments earlier. Tyreese tried to call out to Birdy, yell at her to run before the thing grabbed her, but he was still gasping for air and the pain in his ribs was so intense all that came out was a weak huff.

  "Mom!" Birdy cried.

  The creature snapped around to face her child. "Birdy," it hissed, drool trickling from the corner of her lips.

  "My name is Annabelle!" the girl said calmly as she raised a piece of the broken cane above her head and plunged the pointed end deep into her mother's heart.

  The thing that had been Elizabeth Finch did not explode like a burst balloon full of blood, she did not catch fire. What happened was nothing like in the movies. She simply gasped. Her left hand grabbed the shaft of the wooden pole embedded in her chest and tried to pull it free.

  Birdy gritted her teeth, shifted her hands to get a better grip on the makeshift stake, and leaned all her weight against it. There was a tearing sound as the pointed end suddenly appeared out the back of the woman, pieces of her skin hanging from it.

  Elizabeth Finch began to scream then—a terrible, high-pitched animal wail made all the more terrifying by the confines of the stairwell.

  Birdy, all hatred gone from her eyes, gasped, her hands flying away from the shaft of the stake as though it was on fire. She staggered back two steps as her mother collapsed onto the landing next to Tyreese. The woman writhed and thrashed in agony, her hands beating the ground as a black fluid, too thin for blood and too viscous for water, flowed from the puncture marks on either side of her chest. Her hands were clasped around the shaft of the wooden pole embedded in her chest, but her strength seemed to be draining away as quickly as the black liquid leaking from her.

  "Mom!" Birdy cried out and took a step forward, her hands reaching toward the handle of the walking stick.

  "No!" Tyreese yelled, kicking at the child with his one good leg to keep her away from the thrashing creature. "Let her die, Birdy. For Christ's sake, let her die."

  Elizabeth Finch's writhing grew slower, and slower until finally an exhalation, like wind through a tunnel, escaped from the woman's mouth. Then she moved no more.

  •••

  The rhythmic beat of rain against exterior walls was broken only by an occasional gust of wind that roughly shook the apartment block, squeezing creaks and groans from the building's joists and beams.

  Birdy sat silently on the steps just above where her mother's body lay. The girl's face was a blank mask, and though her cheeks were still wet with the tears she had already shed, no more came.

  Tyreese eyed the body of Elizabeth Finch sprawled next to him, a hand still wrapped around the broken cane jutting from her chest. The woman's face was turned toward him, her eyes sightless, their ethereal glow gone, her distended jaw agape, teeth like a bear trap just waiting for him to get close enough to snap closed. He hadn't noticed it before, between the way Lizzie Finch had avoided the light and the smears of dirt and blood that covered her skin, but this close the two puncture marks on her throat were unmissable.

  This cannot be real, Tyreese thought. A pool of the black liquid that had bled from her body when Birdy impaled her mother still trickled from beneath her torso. It oozed slowly toward Tyreese as though it were alive.

  "Shit! Shit! Shit!" Tyreese sat up and pushed himself away from the expanding pool of black blood, not sure if whatever had turned Birdy's mom into this... this... nightmare, might be infectious. He'd watched The Thing when he was a kid, and he sure as hell wasn't going to take a chance on ending up like the late Mrs. Finch, thank you very much. He looked around for his other prosthetic leg, saw it on the step just below where Birdy sat.

  "Birdy, throw me my leg," he said, aware of how utterly ridiculous that sentence sounded given the circumstances.

  The girl did not move. She sat, knees together, leaning forward, her elbows resting on her lap, her eyes fixed on her mother's body.

  "Birdy?" he said again. He snapped his fingers at her in the gloom. Nothing. The kid was completely out of it. Tyreese scooted his butt over to the corner of the landing, pushed his back into where the two walls met, then used the flats of his hands against the wall to lever himself up to a point where he could use his one good leg to get him the rest of the way up.

  Oh, Christ, did he hurt. His elbows felt like they'd been hit by a baseball bat, and he thought he might have thrown something out in either his shoulder or his neck. He took a second to wait for the pain to pass, then, leaning heavily against the wall, he hopped along it until he was at the base of the steps, his eyes continually moving back and forth between Birdy and the dead woman lying not five feet from where he stood.

  "Birdy? Hey, can you hear me?" he asked, catching his breath as he leaned against the wall at the base of the stairs. "My leg? Can you kick it to me?"

  The girl continued to stare blankly ahead.

  Tyreese let out a long sigh. He turned around until his back was to the stairs then lowered himself down as gently as he could until his butt was on the third step. He used his hands to push himself up a step at a time until he was sitting on the step just below Birdy.

  "Hey!" he whispered, "are you in there?" he reached out a hand and gently laid it against her forearm. No reaction. From here he could see how wide her eyes were, the pupils completely dilated, hear her ragged breathing. The kid was in shock. He'd seen this before in soldiers not that much older than the girl sitting on the step above him, witnesses to Hell on Earth. He leaned across and grabbed his prosthetic leg, repositioned it and tied it off, then stood unsteadily and faced Birdy.

  "Birdy, we're going to get up now, okay?" He stepped up next to her, reached his hands under her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. She didn't resist him, but she also didn't move when he tried to ease her up the remaining steps.

  Whatever had happened to Elizabeth Finch, the probability that she was the only victim of whatever had turned her into that murderous creature was almost impossible, Tyreese reasoned. The entire street and maybe even farther had gone dark over the last couple of days, and he was willing to bet his last dollar that one of the reasons was lying dead on the landing just a few steps beneath him. There had to be more, maybe hundreds of othe
rs like Birdy's mom in the apartments all around them, he was convinced of that now. If another one of them showed up, he didn't know if he had the strength to deal with it, and if there was more than one... He allowed the thought to trail away.

  It! He found he could only refer to the creature in that indefinite way, but a part of Tyreese's mind knew what Elizabeth Finch was, knew exactly the name for what she had become, but his rational mind could not say the word. It was just beyond reason.

  Tyreese slipped one arm around the kid's waist, the other under her knees and lifted her up. She didn't resist him but her body was rigid, every muscle tensed. Birdy weighed about as much as her namesake, he thought, as he began to carry her up the remaining stairs. By the time he reached his apartment door, Birdy had at least relaxed a little, her body limp, her head lying lightly against his chest.

  "I've got to set you down," Tyreese said, gently. Still no reply from the girl, but when he lowered her to the ground outside his apartment door, she stood on her own, her head bowed.

  Tyreese fished his door keys from his pocket and opened the apartment. "Go on in," he said.

  Birdy stepped across the apartment's threshold and stopped.

  Only when he had locked the door and thrown the deadbolt into place did Tyreese allow himself to start breathing again.

  "Come on, sit down. Over here." Tyreese led Birdy into his living room and ushered her over to the sofa. After she silently complied, he hurried to the kitchen counter and quickly found the business card Detective Collins had given him. He dialed the detective's cell number, his mind racing over what had just happened in the stairwell as he waited for the cop to pick up.

  Vampire! That thing out there had, until just a day earlier, been a woman, a mother. She was a goddamn vampire. His mind continued to resist allowing him to say the name aloud, as though the word was electrically charged and would shock him if he spoke it. But that was what she was, he had little doubt; the way she had avoided the light when she could, the teeth—Dear God, those teeth—the puncture wounds on her neck, the makeshift stake through the heart that ended her life. He realized suddenly that unless it had been a lucky shot, then Birdy had already figured out what her mother had become too, that's why she had aimed for the heart.