The Dark

by Jason Brant

  He shifted the fanny pack around his waist as he walked up the driveway. His boss forced all of them to wear one since the robbery, though Aaron had no idea how it would keep someone from stealing his money. If anyone knocked him out with a blackjack or something, they wouldn’t have any issues taking a stupid fanny pack. Sometimes Aaron thought his boss might be retarded.

  “I hate this job.”

  The front door opened as he approached and a familiar face appeared. Stephanie White – only one of the hottest girls in school. Other people might not think so, but Aaron loved her athletic build and girl-next-door looks. He often ran into people he knew while on the job and he always hated it. Delivering food to someone that he stared at during lunch was cruel and unusual punishment.

  “Fuck my life,” Aaron mumbled.

  He thought about jumping back in his car and hauling ass out of there, but she’d seen him. Fleeing now would only deepen his embarrassment.

  Aaron thought that Stephanie must have been the daughter of gods. Her flowing blonde hair mesmerized his friends, boys and girls alike, and she stood as tall as most of the dudes. She must have been just a couple of inches under six feet tall because Aaron was a little shorter than her.

  As far as he knew, she didn’t even know he existed. At least she didn’t until now, when he had the misfortune of delivering a pizza to her giant house. He knew that her family had money, but this was ridiculous. Driving his rusted car to her palace must have made him look like a pauper.

  “Hey Aaron!” Stephanie waved at him with a broad smile.

  She knows my name?

  “Uh, hey.” Aaron raised his hand and gave it a quick wave, shocked that she knew who he was.

  Their class had over six hundred kids in it, most of which were more popular than he was. As far as Aaron knew, all of five people even knew his name, and they just so happened to be his closest friends. He liked to tell his friends that girls didn’t pay attention to them because they were into computers, but he knew the opposite to be true. They liked computers because girls didn’t like them.

  Aaron stared up at her in complete shock. The hottest girl in school not only knew his name, but actually greeted him. The guys were never going to believe this. He thought about pulling out his cell phone and recording the two of them talking as proof, though he didn’t want to weird her out.

  “I didn’t know you delivered pizzas. That’s cool,” Stephanie said as Aaron approached the porch.

  Had Aaron somehow stepped into The Outer Limits? He couldn’t even fathom that Stephanie White thought delivering food was cool. Talk about a geek’s wet dream...

  “I guess it is if you’re into sadomasochism.”

  Stephanie laughed at that, putting a hand to her stomach.

  Did I just make Stephanie White laugh? And she knows what sadomasochism is?

  Aaron took the five steps leading to the porch quickly, smiling at Stephanie’s laugh, trying to figure out how he had made her happy. Revulsion he expected, laughing... that took him off guard.

  “But that hat makes you look so cute.” Stephanie kept smiling at him as she took in his uniform.

  This was more like it. He knew that she wouldn’t laugh at his joke. She thought his uniform looked ridiculous and that was what had her cracking up. He almost smacked his forehead at his own stupidity.

  Stephanie wore black leggings, all the rage at school, and a yellow tank top. Her toned body was on full display in her attire. Aaron tried his best not to salivate.

  “Uh, Aaron?” Stephanie wore a bemused expression.

  “Yeah?” Aaron felt his face flush when he realized that she caught him staring at her. He knew that he had no game with the ladies, but this performance was epically bad, even by his low standards.

  She laughed again.

  Aaron wondered if you could die from embarrassment.

  “Is the pizza here?” A woman’s voice came from somewhere in the house, mercifully taking some of the heat off Aaron.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Stephanie said over her shoulder. “I don’t have any money though.”

  Aaron glanced around the porch, doing his best to avoid her eyes. Though he could stare at her all night, he didn’t want to make himself seem like more of an ass than necessary. He just wanted to get out of there and lick his wounds.

  “It looks like your car has the cancer.”

  “The cancer?” Aaron had no idea how a car could have cancer.

  “It’s rusting pretty badly.”

  “Oh. Yeah, it’s a piece of shit.” His face felt so red that he thought the top of his head might blow off from all of the blood gathering there.

  “Don’t feel bad. Your piece of shit is better than my lack of shit.” Stephanie cocked her head to the side and a crooked grin spread across half of her mouth. “That sounded really stupid.”

  “It wasn’t so bad.” Aaron didn’t know what else to say. He felt like one of the unwashed masses standing before her. She could say all of the stupid shit she wanted to and he would listen to it all day long, congratulating her on having an outstanding vocabulary.

  “I’m really not an airhead.”

  “I didn’t—”

  Stephanie’s mother padded across the living room to the door, stopping beside her daughter. She was also stunningly beautiful with the same long, shiny blonde hair that her daughter had.

  Aaron wondered if their entire family had been engineered in a lab somewhere.

  “I’m sorry but I can’t remember how much the bill was?”

  “Uhhh—” Aaron’s mind went completely blank. Standing in the presence of such beauty, he could feel his IQ dropping by the minute. If they’d asked him for his name at that moment, he would have struggled to remember it. “It’s, uhh,” he looked at the receipt on the top of the pizza box, finding the number at the bottom of the slip of paper. “Eleven fourteen.”

  I’m retarded.

  “Shoot. I only have a ten, hang on a second.” She walked away from the door, disappearing into a room that Aaron couldn’t see.

  “So how long have you worked at—” Stephanie cut herself off. “Whoa.”

  Aaron had been analyzing his feet, counting the seconds until he could sprint from the porch. He looked up at Stephanie to see her staring over his shoulder, her brow wrinkled in confusion. His embarrassment temporarily forgotten, he turned around, following her gaze.

  The White’s house sat at the top of a hill, overlooking a large section of the outskirts of Aberdeen. Lights from the streets and porches of the suburban neighborhood began going out, a wave of blackness moving over them. Aaron realized that he had never actually seen a power outage as it happened. He had only been inside when the lights had gone out before – he didn’t know that they went out in patterns.

  “We’re going to lose power again? It’s probably something with that stupid Army base,” Stephanie said.

  Aaron didn’t respond. Something didn’t look right. Not only were the lights going out, but the starry sky above them was disappearing as well. The stars should have been more visible without the lights, not winking out. He completely forgot that he stood on Stephanie White’s porch and focused on the oddity before them.

  The lights in the house across the street went out then and Aaron got a clear look at what approached. It appeared to be a wall of darkness rushing through the air. It wasn’t just dark – it was void of all light. Nothing visible stood on the other side of the oncoming front.

  “That is really wei—”

  The porch light over his head went out along with the rest of the house. Aaron caught a faint whiff of something rotten, reminding him of a compost heap.

  “Do you smell that?” Stephanie asked from behind him.

  He turned back to her, her voice reminding him that he wasn’t alone. “Yeah, I do. That’s less than pleasant.”

  Screams came from somewhere inside and then abruptly died.

  Aaron looked past her, into the house, hoping Stephanie’s mother was com
ing back to the door. He didn’t see her anywhere. Then again, he couldn’t see much of anything.

  The only light in the area came from his headlights, which illuminated the porch and some of the living room through the open door. Beyond that, nothing else was visible. No sounds came from within the house.

  “Mom? What—”

  An explosion rocked the street behind Aaron, making him duck down, dropping the pizza to the porch floor.

  “Shit!” Aaron spun around, bewildered, trying to figure out what the hell happened.

  Flames engulfed a car at the end of the street. It had crashed into a telephone pole, which had fallen over, resting atop the hood and roof of the vehicle, crushing the metal exterior. Shards of glass from the windshield and headlights littered the street and sidewalk.

  “Mom, call 911!”

  They stood on the porch, gaping down at the flaming car, when another explosion shook the ground. Several blocks away they spotted the flickering light of a fire bouncing off the side of a home.

  Two more explosions came from deeper within the city. Aaron took a step backward, unaware that he had done so until he bumped into Stephanie. He looked around at her, seeing the fear on her face, and felt a resolve settle inside of him. As scared as he was, Stephanie looked even more frightened.

  She clutched at his arm, pulling herself against him. “Mom! Hurry up!”

  Her mother didn’t respond.

  Aaron turned his attention back to the flaming car. He couldn’t see anyone in the front seat, though they were at least seventy-five yards away so he couldn’t be sure. He tried to think through his options, unsure of what to do next. The only thing he knew for certain was that he wouldn’t leave Stephanie alone.

  His newfound desire to protect a pretty girl made him stick his chest out a bit, despite the incredible fear he felt. Was this how alpha males felt all the time? If so, he needed to hit the gym.

  “Mom?” Stephanie’s grip on his arm loosened a bit as she peered into her house.

  The home, enshrouded in darkness, didn’t have any sounds coming from it at all.

  “Mom!”

  Aaron stood beside her, his anxiety rising even higher. Why wasn’t her mother answering? Why had she screamed?

  Stephanie released him and stepped across the threshold of the door. Aaron reached out and grabbed her elbow, pulling her back. He didn’t know why, but he felt in his bones that going in there would be a horrible mistake.

  “Stay here.” He fished his phone from his pocket and flipped it open. His cell was a hand-me-down from his father. All of his friends had Androids or iPhones and they never missed a chance to make fun of him because he ‘lived in the dark ages.’ He punched in 9-1-1 and held the phone to his ear.

  “I have to go see what she’s doing,” Stephanie said, trying to wrench her arm free.

  Aaron knew that she was in good shape, she was the captain of the soccer team after all, but he refused to let her get away from him. “Just give me a second and I’ll go with you.”

  “Mom!” Stephanie’s voice cracked as she screamed, cords standing out on her neck.

  No sound came from Aaron’s phone. He pulled it away from his ear, staring down at the screen, making sure that he had pressed the send key. Everything looked fine, except that he didn’t even get a single ring. “No one is picking up.”

  Stephanie tried to tear her arm free again. She looked back at him, a mixture of fear and anger on her face. “Let go of me!”

  “I have a flashlight in my trunk – let me get it first and we’ll go inside.”

  Aaron couldn’t tell if she even heard him.

  “Dad!” Stephanie yelled into the open door again.

  “Who all is home?” Aaron asked.

  He stood behind her, still clutching her elbow, and looked around, trying to decide what to do. Nothing made any sense.

  “Just my parents and I.” She paused for a second, thinking. “And Claudia, our cleaning lady. She’s upstairs somewhere.”

  Aaron had no idea how to proceed. Cars were crashing all over the place, he couldn’t call for an ambulance, and Stephanie’s parents were suddenly AWOL. The only thing he knew right then was that he didn’t like being stuck in the dark like this. If he hadn’t left his headlights on, they would be completely swallowed in nothingness.

  “Stephanie.”

  She didn’t turn around.

  “We need to get my flashlight. Now.”

  “I know my way around my own house!”

  He jerked on her arm, hating himself for doing it, but knowing he had to get her attention. She spun around, furious.

  “Your parents aren’t responding for a reason. Someone might be in there.” Aaron kept his voice just above a whisper. “We can’t help them if we can’t see.”

  Stephanie’s face softened a bit as she considered what he said. “OK, fine. But we need to hurry up.”

  Without waiting for her to say anything else, Aaron went down the porch stairs, pulling her along beside him. He was careful to stay in the headlight beams without even knowing why. There was something about the darkness surrounding them that scared him even more than the burning cars and disappearing parents.

  He snapped his head to the left, sure that he’d seen something move.

  Nothing.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “See what?”

  Aaron peered around, his unease growing with every passing second. He’d never had such an intense feeling of being watched before.

  “Stay here.”

  Aaron left her at the front of the car, keeping a careful eye on her as he walked around to the driver’s side door. He reached inside and turned on the dome light, feeling a small relief wash over him when the inside of the vehicle lit up. Every single piece of light he could find and use felt incredibly important.

  He pulled the lever under the dash that popped the trunk open and walked to the back end of the car. The sparse contents of the trunk made it easy for him to spot the large flashlight that his mother had purchased for him when his parents gave him the Sable. Its lens was almost four inches across and it had a dense handle, easily making it the thickest flashlight Aaron had ever seen.

  When his mother handed it to him he’d almost laughed, wondering why he needed something damn near the size of a spotlight. Now he felt thankful to have it. Mothers do know best apparently.

  As he lifted the torch from the back of his car, he thought of his parents. They lived on the other side of the town – had they lost power too? If so, were they OK? He cursed his cell phone again, hating that he couldn’t call them.

  Aaron took a long, deep breath, focusing on the task at hand. He slammed the door to his trunk and went to the front of the car where Stephanie waited.

  “Let’s go find your parents.”

  Chapter 4

  Christy froze, staring down the hallway at the door to Annie’s room.

  The scream had been so unexpected, so bone chilling, that Christy didn’t know what to do.

  “John? The fuck?” Annie put her free hand on her hip, turning back to face her room. “What’re you doing down there?”

  John didn’t answer.

  “Sometimes I hate that asshole.”

  “Then why are you dating him?”

  “He’s hung like a horse.”

  Christy couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. It wouldn’t surprise her if that was the actual reason she continued dating such a tool bag.

  “John, I’m going to put this candle out on your chest.” Annie’s voice rose in pitch, as it always did when she got angry.

  Dead silence.

  “Something really weird is going on around here,” Christy said, not taking her eyes from her roommate’s door.

  “He’s just being an idiot.”

  Annie stomped down the hall, holding a hand in front of the candle so it wouldn’t blow out. “If you jump out and try to scare me, I’m going to kick you in the balls.”

  Chri
sty followed her, pointing the screen of her Kindle in front of them. They stopped at the door, looking inside. John wasn’t in the bed.

  Molly stopped in the doorway, head low, nose sniffing the air.

  “Goddamn it, John!” Annie put the candle on her dresser, which sat against the leftmost wall of her room. Two spread out globs of melted wax covered the wood top of the furniture.

  Christy knew that Annie and her boyfriend burned candles all the time, but she didn’t realize they were using them on a wood surface. It was a miracle they hadn’t all burned to death.

  Annie stormed over to her bed and knelt beside it, flipping a silk sheet that hung over the side of the mattress. She peered under the bed, found nothing.

  Christy looked behind the door, careful to keep the Kindle in front of her. John wasn’t there either. The small bedroom didn’t have many other places to hide. The closet looked like the only other space big enough for John to fit in.

  Her roommate’s anger grew by the second and she flew to the door of the closet, throwing it open. Annie mumbled to herself as she searched inside, pushing shirts and pants aside as she dug around.

  “Where is he?”

  Christy felt a knot forming in her stomach. “He didn’t come out of the room. I would have seen him if he did.”

  “Well, he sure as shit isn’t in here.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Does it look like I know?” Annie fumed, nearly screaming. “But if he doesn’t come out right now, I’m going to kick his ass!”

  Christy walked over to the lone window in the room. It was closed and all of the locks were fastened in place. John couldn’t have climbed out of the window and then locked it behind him. They lived on the second floor anyway, making it a decent drop to the ground below.

  “Annie, I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t like what? He’s just being a douche hole.”

  “I won’t argue with you on that, but where did he go?”

  “He probably left.”

  “I was facing your room when he screamed – he didn’t come out.”