Hello Darkness

by Sam Best

  She was a smart woman, Ben knew, but he also knew how rational thought shrank before raw emotion at times—especially when dealing with the loss of a long-term companion.

  John and Heidi had been married close to fifty years. Two people spending that much time together on a daily basis over so long a period experience a fused existence; the other’s presence became as natural and necessary as eating a meal or drinking a glass of water—it was woven into the fabric of life.

  When Marissa had been taken from Ben, her thread had just begun to stitch into his life to the point of permanence. She was ripped away and it left a ragged edge in his soul—one which he had been unable to repair or ignore.

  Tommy stirred in the passenger seat. “It looked like my mom,” he said.

  Ben glanced over at him. “What do you mean?”

  “The thing in the room. It looked like her.” His watery eyes reflected a street lamp as the Jeep passed Hank’s hardware store.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ben. “About your parents.”

  Tommy turned away and rested his head against the window.

  Ben looked into the rearview mirror and saw that Heidi was staring at him. There was no anger or resentment in her eyes; only sadness.

  Ben pulled the Cherokee into an empty parking space in front of the Sheriff’s Office.

  He popped open the box of shotgun shells he had taken from the station earlier and stuffed a handful into his jeans pocket, then reached behind him next to Heidi and grabbed his father’s old double-barreled shotgun.

  “Let me check it out first,” he said, looking at Heidi and then Tommy. Neither of them acknowledged him but they made no move to leave, so Ben slowly opened his door and stepped out of the Jeep.

  Besides the infrequent street lamps and the fluorescent light spilling out onto the sidewalk from the front window of the Sheriff’s Office, Main Street was dark. Even the lights down the road at Marcus’s perpetually-open gas station were out.

  Ben exhaled heavily and saw no fog drift from his mouth. It was probably eleven o’clock at night—at the start of winter—and the temperature hadn’t dropped below sixty. The hours had grown warmer ever since he returned to Falling Rock.

  He shivered regardless and tightened his grip on the shotgun.

  The street was silent and still. In the distance, the line of black smoke rose thickly from the forest down in the valley. Ben walked to the middle of the street and waited for a count of thirty. When nothing moved or made a noise in the woods next to the road, he went back to the Cherokee and helped Heidi out of the back seat.

  “It’s okay, Tommy,” he said.

  The boy moved slowly. He kept his hands pressed alongside the Jeep’s paneling as he walked around to the front of the Sheriff’s Office. Ben worried that the kid would fall over without support. Tommy walked to the front door of the station and waited as Ben guided Heidi to the building.

  “Tommy, help me out, yeah?” said Ben. He held out Heidi’s arm and Tommy slowly reached up and allowed the older woman to lean against his small frame. “Thank you.”

  Ben pulled open the front door and waited. The small foyer was empty, as was the main office room behind the small divider in front of Janet’s desk. Papers that Ben remembered seeing stacked in neat piles around the room were scattered in disarray—loose pages covered the floor all the way to the front door. Ben raised his shotgun and rested the butt of the handle in the crook of his shoulder.

  He stepped into the Sheriff’s Office.

  “Come inside,” he said over his shoulder.

  Tommy led Heidi into the station as Ben pushed open the waist-high swinging door built into the divider in front of Janet’s desk. A streak of blood on the seat of her swiveling chair dripped down to the floor and ran into the back room.

  Heidi cried softly, holding her hands over her face as her shoulders shook.

  “Help her sit down, Tommy,” said Ben. He pointed to a clean chair near the far wall. “Over there.”

  Tommy walked with her over to the chair and lowered her onto the seat. He then sat on the floor and folded his legs up to his body and hugged them tightly, resting his chin on his knees. Above his head on the far wall, another bright red streak of blood covered a pin-board tacked with the pictures of a dozen missing pets. Next to that hung a plaque that displayed the three pictures of the station’s operating force: Sheriff Mills and Deputies Raines and Foster.

  Ben turned away from Foster’s smug grin and looked toward the back room. The blood streak on the floor thickened as it approached the doorway.

  “Stay here,” said Ben. “I’ll be right around the corner.”

  He walked slowly past Janet’s desk, his feet crinkling strewn pages that covered the floor like giant confetti. He straddled the blood streak as he approached the doorway and leveled the barrel of the shotgun at chest-height, then stepped into the back room.

  A small hallway led to a compact holding area: two floor-to-ceiling cages on the left and a long wooden bench on the right. The blood streak beneath Ben’s feet ran up and over the bench, up the wall, and out through a broken horizontal window near the ceiling. The window was three feet wide and a foot tall. Its frosted glass lay in shattered, bloody pieces on the bench and floor.

  “They’re all dead,” said a voice behind him.

  Ben spun quickly, shotgun raised. Pastor Moses St. Croix sat on a small bench at the back of the first holding cell, leaning against the corner and resting his head on the bars supporting his shoulder. One of the lenses of his thin glasses was missing and the bridge of his nose was broken. Dried blood caked the bottom of his nostrils. A large cut on the top of his head had dried and the crusted blood from the wound covered much of his cheeks and shoulders.

  “Where’s Janet?” said Ben.

  Moses raised a steady finger and pointed at the window. His eyes never left Ben’s. He gestured toward the cell to his left.

  Ben stepped over and looked into the cell farthest from the door. Stacks of cardboard boxes sat piled within, but someone had taken a few down to form a makeshift chair along the back wall. In front of the chair, on the ground, was a small mound of red flesh. Ben looked up. The roof of the cell had been slapped with a blood firework—strands of dried red shot outward from a dark circular center.

  Moses sniffed loudly and pulled off his glasses. He rubbed the one remaining lens on the bottom of his long-sleeved black shirt.

  “Mike Laubin,” he said. “That’s all that’s left of him.”

  Two of the bars at the front of Mike’s cage were streaked with blood.

  “It tried to squeeze him out, but he wouldn’t fit. It might have been me, if Foster hadn’t switched our cells. Or maybe not.”

  Ben stepped in front of Moses’s cage and aimed the shotgun at the preacher’s head. “My daughter was taken.”

  “By Foster.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It talked to him. I heard it out there in the office, whispering.”

  “What do you mean? It can talk?”

  “Of course it can.”

  “What the hell is it? What did it want with Foster?”

  “I assume it wanted him to take your daughter. There was probably an offer for his own survival if he succeeded. It prefers to sew discord amongst humanity by using other humans. It employs men like Foster to do its bidding. It makes us hate each other.”

  “Where did he take her?” said Ben.

  “I would have thought that was obvious.”

  Ben’s eyes darted down, then back up. “The valley. The fire.”

  “Which is not really a fire after all,” said Moses. “Do we really need to have this conversation here? The keys to this cage are on the wall in the other room. Your daughter is out there. I can help you get her back.”

  “Bullshit,” said Ben. He turned and walked toward the door.

  “You’ll die before you ever get close,” said Moses behind him.

  Ben stopped.

  “You can�
�t simply approach this thing head-on, Mr. Howard. It will swat you like a fly. You need my help.”

  Ben turned back in frustration, then took a deep breath. “Why does it want Annabelle?”

  Moses stood and walked to the front of the cage. He grabbed two bars and rested his face between them. “Its single greatest pleasure is the corruption of innocence. More than torture or murder it revels in the turning of purity into filth. It thrives on the blackness of our souls once we start down a dark path in life. From the moment we know right from wrong and choose the wrong, we are doomed. That is humanity’s curse.”

  Ben slowly lowered the barrel of the shotgun until the weapon hung loosely in his hand at his side. “What will it do to her?”

  “It is forbidden to harm her, but it will keep her. And when she is old enough, it will corrupt her.”

  “How?”

  “Mr. Howard, your darkest imaginings could not even begin to touch on the horrors that await your daughter. It has been whispering to her from the shadows since you first arrived in Falling Rock. The wolf prints in your backyard, remember?”

  “They—they were just wolves.”

  Moses shook his head. “No. They were one form the demon chose to take.”

  Ben looked up. “Demon?”

  “Of course, Mr. Howard. What did you think was out there? This thing crawled its way up out of Hell and has chosen the woods next to my church as its home. I tried to stop it before it grew, but I failed. All the books I read—ancient texts passed down from my mentor—none of them prepared me for this creature.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Am I?”

  Ben looked into the preacher’s calm eyes for a long moment, wanting to find a shred of insanity.

  “So what is it?”

  “Some call it the Smiling or Laughing Demon—”

  “Annabelle said the wolves smiled at her.”

  “Exactly. In truth, however, it is known by a much more sinister title. It is one of four Apocalypse Demons, each one forever chained to one of the four corners of Hell, only to be released during the last days of Armageddon. It is an ender of worlds—ours, in this case.”

  Ben stared at him blankly. “This thing broke out of Hell.”

  “Yes. And it will spread, Mr. Howard. Falling Rock is just the beginning. It will consume all of humanity. We must stop it now!”

  “I just want my daughter back.”

  “I told you it cannot harm her, at least not yet. Your daughter is perfectly safe—but you will never get her back unless we kill the demon.”

  Ben sat heavily on the bench, broken glass crunching loudly. “I don’t believe this.”

  “You’ve seen things, yes? Hallucinations, maybe? Ghosts of dead loved ones?”

  “My wife,” said Ben weakly. “In my house and then later, in the woods.”

  Moses nodded. “There is a psychological aspect to the demon that I did not anticipate. It can get inside a person’s mind and show them things that are not real.”

  “But why? Why not just kill everyone? Why leave some alive?”

  “Pleasure. Killing is too quick. Suffering is its food of choice. If it can, it will kill every member of a family except one just to watch the survivor wallow in pain.”

  Ben looked up suddenly. “Wait a minute. You said a wolf was one form this thing could take.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What are the others?”

  “I’m not sure. But it can obviously function as at least two separate beings, given the number of tracks outside your home. Then there’s most likely the combined form, which would be much larger—”

  “What about little ones?” said Ben, interrupting.

  Moses slowly leaned back from the bars and swallowed hard. “Little ones?”

  “Yes. A dozen, maybe more. Horrible things with four limbs and human faces. Tommy said that one of them—” He looked quickly at the doorway and lowered his voice. “Tommy said that one of them looked like his mother.”

  “My Lord,” said Moses. He stepped backward until his legs hit the bench in his cell and he plopped down onto it. “Offspring. Cambion. It’s breeding.”

  “Offspring?” said Ben. “But how—?” He stood up quickly. “It took Karen.”

  “She is probably still alive,” said Moses. “For now.”

  “Blake went after her. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Let me out of this cage, Benjamin, and we will find your daughter.” He stood and strode to the vertical bars at the front of the holding cell. His eyes burned with determination. “We will save Deputy Raines and we will kill the demon before it makes this world tear itself apart.”

  Ben looked him in the eyes. “You’re telling the truth?”

  “Yes! I swear.”

  Ben’s desire to save Annabelle overpowered his doubts about the preacher. He quickly left the room and grabbed the pair of keys dangling from a hook on the wall in the main office. Tommy and Heidi still sat quietly near the wall, each one wrapped up in their own tormented thoughts.

  The lock on Moses’s cell creaked loudly as it unlatched and the door swung inward on rusty hinges.

  “Thank you,” said Moses. He rested his hand on Ben’s shoulder before walking past him and into the office.

  Ben followed and knelt down next to Tommy. “Can I talk to you, Tommy? It’s important.”

  The boy lifted his head and nodded, then stood and followed Ben over to the corner away from Heidi. Ben stopped Tommy with a light touch on his shoulder and waited as the boy slowly turned to face him.

  “I need your help now, Tommy. I can’t do it on my own.” He got down onto one knee and squeezed the boy’s shoulders. “You’re strong. I know you are, or else you wouldn’t be here. I need you to look after Heidi while Moses and I go and find someone. It’s very important that you keep her safe because you’re the only one that can do it.”

  “I can’t do anything,” said Tommy quietly.

  “Yes, you can,” said Ben firmly. He placed the butt of his shotgun on the floor and showed the weapon to Tommy. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

  Tommy looked the weapon up and down, then nodded.

  “Good.” Ben leaned the barrel forward and Tommy grabbed it hesitantly. “You only use it if you have to, understand? If something comes after you, shoot it. The gun has a big kick, so keep the stock against your shoulder when you fire and be careful. I want you and Heidi to take the Jeep and wait for us at the bend in Highway 70 just outside town.” He pulled his keys from his jeans pocket and handed them to Tommy.

  “But I can’t drive.”

  “Those are for Heidi, but you hold on to them for now. You know the bend I’m talking about, Tommy?”

  He nodded. “The low one next to the valley.”

  “That’s right. Pastor Moses and I will meet you there as soon as we can. But if you see anything—if something comes to get you—you drive away and don’t come back, okay? That’s the important part, Tommy. You stay away.”

  “But what about you?”

  Ben winked at him. “I’m gonna be just fine.” He stood and guided Tommy over to Heidi. She got to her feet and Ben hugged her tightly.

  “I heard everything,” she said. “You be careful.”

  “You, too,” he said.

  “Kill that thing, Benjamin. For John.”

  She let go and kissed him on the cheek, then walked away without looking into his eyes.

  Moses picked a tattered leather-bound book from the floor and set it inside a small green satchel he had pulled off a hook on the wall. He walked over and stood by the front door, then looked over at Ben. “You ready?” He pushed open the door and disappeared outside.

  Ben went to the weapons rack on the wall at the back of the room. A set of keys dangled from the open door and several of the rifle racks were empty. A single-barrel, pump-action Remington shotgun rested apart from two small-caliber rifles. Ben grabbed the shotgun and fed the shells he had stuffed in his poc
ket into the loading port, then slid back the forestock with a quick pull to load a round into the chamber. The loud chik-CHIK cracked through the air of the quiet office.

  Ben smiled at Tommy and walked outside to meet the preacher.

  22

  Moses waited until Heidi and Tommy got into the Jeep and drove away. After the vehicle’s red tail lights vanished around a bend at the end of Main Street, he turned around and walked briskly away from the station.

  Ben jogged up next to him.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “We can’t kill it with normal weapons,” said Moses. He gestured at Ben’s shotgun. “That will be useless, except maybe as a distraction.”

  “Then I’ll use it as a distraction. It worked on the little ones. What did you call them? Cambion?”

  “It worked because they were part human. Before I was dragged to the Sheriff’s Office—”

  “Sorry about that, by the way” interrupted Ben. “Even you have to admit you looked guilty as hell.”

  Moses ignored him. “Before I was dragged to the station, I hid a weapon in Hank’s store.”

  “What kind of a weapon?”

  “One capable of piercing the flesh of the demon.”

  Moses began to sweat in the warm night air. The heat was unusual for that time of year—a side effect of the demon’s presence. His broken nose wheezed every time he breathed through his nostrils; a broad stripe of pain extended from the top of his mouth up to the bottom of his widow’s peak. It felt as if a heavy weight were constantly pressing against his face.

  “Listen,” said Ben. “How do you know the thing won’t hurt Annabelle?”

  Moses reached behind his back and patted a rectangular lump in the green satchel slung over his shoulder.

  “It’s in your book? I thought you said the book couldn’t help you with this demon.”

  “Each one is different.”

  “Each what? Each demon?”

  Moses nodded. “They behave differently—they have different goals, desires, hatreds. But some things remain the same. They are all bound by the same laws in this world. As soon as they cross over, they cannot violate those laws no matter how hard they try.”