All Dark, All the Time

by Brian Keene

  Then they got up again and prowled through the snow-filled streets.

  Soon, Alvar’s shrieks mingled with the rest of the villagers’ screams.

  • • •

  Tony Genova bolted upright in his bed, wondering if he’d screamed out loud. His heart hammered in his chest, and his ears rang. He glanced around the dimly lit room. His long-time associate, the severely overweight Vince Napoli, sat in a chair, eating junk food and watching television. Vince turned when Tony cleared his throat.

  “Sorry,” Vince said. “Did the TV wake you up?”

  Tony shook his head, waiting for his racing pulse to slow down. He slid out from under the covers, fully dressed, and put his feet on the floor. A log on the fireplace popped, sending a shower of sparks drifting up into the chimney. He smoothed his tie and noticed that his hand was trembling.

  “Jeez, Tony! You’re sweating like a pig. You okay?”

  Tony nodded. “I’m fine. Just had a bad dream is all.”

  “It’s that shit they fed us for dinner,” Vince mused, his eyes not leaving the television. “You should have brought some stuff from the States, like I did. Sleep like a baby.”

  “No thanks. We’re in fucking Finland—I want to eat like they do. You go to Italy, you eat Doritos?”

  Vince nodded.

  “Okay,” Tony rolled his eyes. “Maybe you do. But other people don’t. People go to Italy, they want to eat Italian food. Same thing here.”

  Vince didn’t reply. Secretly, Tony thought he might be right. The village only had one place to eat—a rustic tavern with a few elderly patrons. Tony and Vince didn’t speak the language, and their translator, a young man named Tjers, had met with an unfortunate accident after offering Tony a blow job, so they’d had to muddle through the menu. Tony ended up getting a boiled sheep’s head on a plate. It stared at him with big mournful eyes while he ate it. What kind of country was this where they left the eyes in your fucking dinner?

  And who the hell ate sheep heads, anyway?

  Tony sighed. What was supposed to be a simple job had turned into a cluster-fuck. It had seemed so straightforward. Travel from the United States to the Savukoski county of Lapland, Finland, which was right on the border with Russia. Meet up with Tjers. Wait for Otar, who was based in Murmansk Oblast, to cross the border, and then make the exchange—money and heroin for a dozen vials of black-market Soviet-era anthrax—a weaponized strain that their employer, Mr. Marano of the Marano crime family, was anxious to obtain. Once the exchange had been made, Otar would fuck off back to Russia, and Tony and Vince were supposed to cross the Korvatunturi mountains, meet up with their transport, and deliver the anthrax back to the States.

  Now they were holed up in a converted bedroom in the tavern’s attic. Tjers was dead and buried in the snow, and Otar hadn’t shown. They had no one to guide them over the mountain path, and it looked like they were going home empty-handed—if they made it home at all. Their employer was going to be pissed. He didn’t like mishaps or mistakes. Their asses were grass and Marano was the lawnmower, unless Tony figured out how to salvage this whole mess.

  Merry fucking Christmas.

  On the television, cartoon characters jabbered in Finnish.

  “All things considered,” Tony muttered, “I’d rather be in fucking Pittsburgh.”

  “What was the dream about?” Vince asked.

  Tony watched his obese partner shovel three double-stuffed Oreo cookies into his mouth at once, and sighed again.

  “We were sitting in this little cafe in Atlantic City, waiting for Frankie Spicolli to show up. Then a bunch of crab-things straight out of a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie showed up and started killing people. They looked like a cross between a crab, lobster and scorpion.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Tony got out of bed and stretched. Then he smoothed his suit.

  “Something about a fucking hurricane or some shit. I don’t remember. What the hell are you watching?”

  Vince shrugged. “I don’t know. It ain’t in English. Pretty good, though. Kind of reminds me of Thomas the Tank Engine, except it’s got chicks in it. Look at the tits on her!”

  “Very nice.”

  “I was hoping they’d show that Rudolph cartoon.”

  “The one with the Bumble?”

  Vince’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, that’s the one! I always liked Bumble when I was a kid.”

  Probably cause you’re about the same size, Tony thought. Then he said, “I liked Herbie, the elf that wanted to be a dentist. But then they did that stupid fucking sequel, with the Baby fucking New Year. Ruined the whole thing.”

  Vince turned back to the television. “Seems like there’d be some kind of special program on, what with it being Christmas Eve and all. Santa lives near here, you know?”

  “What?”

  “Santa Claus,” Vince explained. “Everybody knows his reindeer stay in Finland during the year. There aren’t any reindeer at the North Pole.”

  Tony paused before speaking. “Vince, there ain’t no fucking reindeer at the North Pole because there ain’t no Santa Claus.”

  “You sound like my folks, back when I was a teenager. They tried to say there weren’t no Santa, too.”

  “You still believe in Santa Claus?”

  “Well, sure, Tony. Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. And neither does anybody else over the age of nine. And probably not many of them anymore, either. Hard for a kid to believe in Santa when there’s people flying airplanes into buildings and shooting up schools. Jesus fucking Christ, Vince. You believe in the Easter Bunny, too?”

  “No.” Vince sulked. “Everybody knows the Easter Bunny is make believe. But Santa Claus ain’t. He’s—”

  A scream cut him off, followed by more. A gunshot echoed through the darkness.

  “The fuck?” Tony grabbed his Sig-Sauer off the pine nightstand.

  More screams and gunshots drifted up from the streets below. The gunfire didn’t surprise them. Gun ownership was fairly common in this part of the world, at least by European standards. What startled them was the sudden clattering sound on the roof.

  “Turn that shit off,” Tony whispered. “Let’s see what’s the matter.”

  The television screen went black. Vince pulled his Kimber 1911 and heaved his prodigious bulk out of the chair, staring at the ceiling. Meanwhile, Tony crept to the window and peered through the blinds.

  “Anything?” Vince asked.

  Tony shook his head. “Nothing. Sounds like a—wait a fucking second. What the hell?”

  Outside, a reindeer was goring an old man in the stomach. When the animal raised its head, entrails hung from its bloody antlers. Before Tony could react, the noise on the roof grew louder.

  “Cops?” Vince said, moving towards the chimney.

  “Why the fuck would they be coming through the roof, Vince? No. This is something else.”

  Something jingled in the night. Tony swore it was... sleigh bells.

  There was a rustling noise from the roof. Soot and dirt tumbled down the chimney, sprinkling the fire and filling the air with dust. Vince sneezed and Tony’s eyes watered. The fire flared, and then sputtered. More debris fell down the chimney. Then they heard a scraping sound and a huge mound of snow fell onto the fire, extinguishing it. Smoke curled from the fireplace. Vince sneezed again and glanced at Tony.

  Tony put his finger to his lips, and then motioned towards the fireplace. The two men tiptoed towards it, standing on either side with their handguns at the ready. A long shadow stretched down from the roof. The sleigh bells rang again. Vince started to speak, but Tony shushed him. More snow fell down the shaft, and then something scuffed against the sides of the chimney. The shadow lengthened. Whoever—whatever—was on the roof was coming down.

  Moving as one, Vince and Tony backed away from the fireplace. Standing side by side, they extended their arms and clutched their weapons with both hands, holding the barrels steady. Their fingers rested lightly on th
e triggers. Neither man flinched. They barely breathed. They stood statue-still, waiting.

  A figure crashed into the sodden remains of the fire, knocking burnt logs and ashes aside. Crouching, the intruder surveyed the two and cackled.

  Tony had seen some bizarre shit in his time. Back home, he’d seen weird lights at night in the woods of LeHorn’s Hollow, which was supposed to be haunted. They’d hovered above the ground, no bigger than softballs, before zooming up into the sky and disappearing. There was other oddness, too. He and Vince used the services of a cannibal who lived in York, Pennsylvania to dispose of bodies when the occasion called for it. They’d once had to steal a diamond that burned your skin like acid if you touched it. Then there were the dreams—dreams he’d never told anyone about, not even Vince. Dreams that he’d lived in other times and places. Other worlds. Fighting weird crab-monsters and all sorts of other creatures.

  But the figure that emerged from the fireplace was the strangest fucking thing Tony had ever seen.

  It looked like Santa Claus—fat (though not as fat as Vince), red suit and hat, rosy cheeks and a beard. But that was where the similarities ended. This garish figure was better suited for Halloween than Christmas. His skin was pale—almost blue. Blood and gore had matted in the beard, and the rosy glow on his cheeks was more dried blood. Most telling was the gunshot wound in his chest. Tony glanced at it, remembering the shot they’d heard earlier. He’d seen men shot there before—had shot men there before. That wasn’t a wound you walked around with, let alone crawl across rooftops and drop down chimneys.

  Tony tried to speak and couldn’t.

  Vince summed it up for him, his voice tinged with unexpected delight.

  “Santa Claus!”

  “Ho, ho fucking ho. Time to die, humans. My brothers need your bodies.”

  Vince paled. “Santa doesn’t curse.”

  “I am not Santa. I am Ob the Obot, Lord of the Siqqusim and greatest of the Thirteen! Your time is over. For each of you that we kill, one of my kind will take your place. There are so many of us. More than infinity.”

  Tony smirked. “Are all of them as fat as you?”

  The man in red charged towards them.

  Tony squeezed the trigger, aiming for the intruder’s belly. His mark was true, but Santa barely slowed. He grunted as the bullet slammed into him and ripped through his back, before hitting the brick wall behind him. Santa grinned and took another step forward.

  “Tony, you can’t shoot Santa Claus!”

  Tony barely heard his partner. The sound of the gunshot filled the room. Instead of responding, he fired again. Whoever this guy was, he was still standing despite two shots to the body. This time, he aimed for the face. Santa’s grin vanished in a wet explosion of red.

  “Shoot the fucker, Vince!”

  Santa tried to speak, but his lower jaw was missing. His tongue flopped uselessly, sliding across the shattered remnants of his upper teeth. He seized a fireplace poker and swung it at Tony. Tony dodged the blow, raised his pistol, and fired again. This time, he aimed for the fat man’s forehead.

  He didn’t miss.

  Santa uttered a short, garbled moan. Then he fell forward, face first onto the floor. His body twitched once and then he was still. Tony put a foot on his back and fired two more rounds into the back of his head at close range. Then he kicked him. Santa didn’t move.

  Silence returned. The air was thick with wood smoke and gunpowder. Outside, the screaming continued.

  “Jesus...” Vince leaned against the wall with one hand, panting. “I told you, Tony! See? There is so such a thing as Santa Claus.”

  “No, Vince. There ain’t no fucking Santa Claus.”

  He prodded the corpse with his shoe.

  “At least, not anymore.”

  Tony popped the magazine from his Sig-Sauer, slid a few more bullets into place, and then slammed it back home. He ran to the window and glanced outside. The slaughter continued in the streets as Santa’s dead helpers ran riot. Tony grabbed Vince by the arm.

  “Come on. Let’s go kill ourselves some zombie reindeer.”

  MUSINGS

  This happened to me last night, and I need to talk about it to someone, and since my publisher is after me to get a story turned in on time, that someone is you. Call it meta-fiction if you like, except that there’s not much fiction to it.

  It was just before six in the evening. My girlfriend had gone home at nine that morning, and I’d been writing non-stop all day. That doesn’t sound like hard work, typing words on a laptop for nine hours, and it’s not, in the grand scheme of things. I’ve had hard jobs—sweating in a foundry, moving boxes on the loading docks, driving a tractor trailer for fifteen-hour stretches. Writing is a breeze compared to those, and a lot more fun. Still, it was a lot easier to write for nine hours straight when I was in my twenties than it is in my early forties. My back hurt, my wrists ached, and my fingers were stiff with the onset of arthritis—a relatively new affliction that biology and genetics had given me for a forty-second birthday present last year.

  I decided to take a break, and while I was brewing a fresh pot of coffee, it occurred to me how quiet the house seemed, and how lonely I was. I’ve got my youngest son Mondays through Thursdays, and my girlfriend visits me when she can, but when the two of them aren’t here, I spend my time alone and spend my alone time writing. Writing is a solitary act, and it makes for a solitary existence. Hell, I should know. Writing is the reason I’m alone. I’m good at it—writing, I mean. I’m not so good at being alone, despite the fact that it’s how I spend my life. But I’m good at writing, or at least, that’s what my editors and publishers tell me. I sometimes suspect they only tell me that because I make them lots of money. People will tell you whatever they think you want to hear when you’re making them a lot of money. I’ve often wanted to purposely write a bad book, just so I can see their false praise for what it is, but I wouldn’t do that to my fans and readers. And I wouldn’t do it to myself. Because other than being a father, writing is the only thing I’m good at. It’s the only constant in my life. The only thing I can always count on.

  And all it cost me was everything else.

  For starters, writing has cost me two failed marriages. One in my twenties, when I was living in a trailer with a young wife and infant son, working all day in a factory and coming home at night to try my hand at becoming the next Joe Lansdale or David Schow or Skipp and Spector. Another in my thirties, when I’d succeeded in my career as a writer, and was living in a nice house with a wonderful second wife and another infant son, writing all day and then writing all night, as well, just to stay on top of the heap of bills and keep a roof over our heads.

  Writing has also cost me friends—both from before I became a writer and after. Childhood chums, pissed off that I mined so much of our lives for fiction. Friends from High School and old Navy buddies who I no longer had anything in common with, who assumed that just because they saw my books in stores or my movies on television that I must somehow be wealthy and hey, could I lend them a few dollars or help them get published or be the dancing monkey and star attraction to impress all their friends and family members with at their next Christmas party. Fellow writers and peers, people I’d come up with, promised to do it together with, only to have them lose touch with me when I got successful.

  Or maybe it was me who lost touch with them. Maybe it was my own insecurities—my own guilt at achieving everything we’d all hoped for, while they still hadn’t. And maybe that applied to those old High School friends, as well. Maybe they were just proud of me, and I mistook that pride for something else. And maybe those childhood chums were right to be angry. Perhaps not all of our personal demons needed to end up as grist for my fiction mill. And maybe—just maybe—my two ex-wives had been right to expect me to choose a healthy relationship with them instead of fifteen hours at a keyboard living inside my own head seven days a week instead of talking to them or living with them.

  Those were th
e thoughts that kept me awake some nights, and on those nights, I drank more whiskey and continued to write. It was a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. Lose everything because of writing until the only thing you have left is the writing itself. Rinse and repeat.

  But it’s too late to do anything about it now. And like I said, I’m good at it. So I have that going for me. And not everything has been lost. I have great relationships with both of my sons. My youngest is four, and even though his mother couldn’t be married to a writer any longer, we remain best friends and work well together as co-parents. My oldest is twenty-one, and although he’s a young man now, when I look at him I still see the little boy who read through his Daddy’s comic book collection and played superheroes on my living room floor for hours and talked about how he was going to be a writer just like me when he grew up. Thank God and Cthulhu he didn’t. That desire lasted exactly one season when he was ten. Now he’s a senior at Penn State and studying to be a social worker. The pride and love I feel for him is as tangible as the lump I get in my throat when I think about how much he’s grown. He doesn’t talk about writing anymore, and for that I am grateful. I only hope that his younger brother does the same. My oldest son doesn’t read my books and his only association with them is when he goes to science fiction, fantasy, and horror conventions wearing a t-shirt with one of my book covers on it. When a cute girl approaches him and compliments the shirt and tells him they are a fan of my work, he smiles and says, “Yeah, he’s my Dad.” I’m okay with this. I will probably never leave either of my sons a lofty inheritance, so the very least I can do is get them laid.

  My relationship with my girlfriend is good, too. Maybe that’s because we’re both writers. We know exactly what goes into this life of ours, and what the demands are. But I suspect that same knowledge is what keeps us from permanently cementing this relationship and making it official. Because we know that no matter how close we are, we’ll always have a laptop between us—or two laptops, in our case. Because we know that sooner or later, the good things will go away, leaving only fodder for the muse.