The Dark

by Jason Brant

  Then the hammer dropped.

  The colonel’s career was forced to an end that would be coming soon. His unnamed superiors at the Department of Defense took exception to his questions.

  The flashing of lights ahead pulled McKenzie from his thoughts. Police cars straddled the road, blocking any further progress. He pulled to a stop behind them and got out, approaching a small group of officers.

  He handed them his military I.D. without a word.

  Sergeant Miles spotted him and jogged over, shaking his head as he came. “He’s with me,” he said to the officers.

  The enlisted man was tall, standing well over six feet, and of Puerto Rican descent. His slim build and always ‘tanned’ skin made him rather attractive to the ladies. McKenzie had witnessed the young man in action several times at the local bars. He rarely went home alone.

  Sergeant Miles served under McKenzie in Afghanistan. He was one hell of a soldier – he followed orders to a T. If the colonel wanted something done with efficiency and immediacy, he always went to Miles. They’d developed a solid rapport over the years that extended beyond their officer/soldier paradigm.

  Colonel McKenzie stared past him, his mind reeling. A sheet of blackness stood fifty yards ahead, cutting off everything behind it like the world ended at that very spot.

  “Insane, isn’t it, sir?” Miles stood beside him, taking in the insanity.

  Above them were stars, visible in the clear sky. Above the darkness – nothing. The stars stopped at the wall of nothing, disappearing like everything else.

  “What am I looking at, Miles?”

  A short, stocky, and very Italian police officer answered instead. “This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. We can’t get a hold of anyone beyond this point. No phones, no lights, nothing.”

  “Has anyone walked into it yet?”

  “No, sir,” Miles said. “A few people have tried, but we turned them away.”

  McKenzie noticed a growing group of bystanders off to the right, talking and pointing in an animated fashion. “Get them out of here.”

  Two of the officers gave him a brief nod and wandered over to the group, barking orders.

  “Does anyone know when this happened? What started it?”

  The Italian officer glanced at a notepad in his hand. “No idea. The first report of ‘something weird’ happening came about an hour ago. That was” −he looked at his watch− “two in the morning. That doesn’t mean it started then, but that’s when the first call came in.”

  “There’s a fire burning on the post, sir,” Miles said. “You can’t see it from here though. It’s big. Really big.”

  The colonel motioned for Miles to follow him as he stepped off to the side.

  “Sir?”

  “What do you think, Sergeant?”

  Miles scratched the back of his head. “If I had to guess... I’d say that Operation Doorway started tonight. Surprisingly, things went to shit.”

  Operation Doorway.

  The reason Miles and McKenzie were getting their walking papers.

  They hadn’t been able to find out the exact parameters of the mission, but they’d been able to make a few educated guesses.

  Together they’d pieced together enough information to come to an outlandish conclusion; Colonel McKenzie thought that the Pentagon was trying to open a portal to another dimension. Not the kind that a person could walk through, but a microscopic opening that they could study. It sounded ridiculous, like a bad science fiction story, but that was the conclusion that Miles and McKenzie had come to.

  What they planned on doing after creating the doorway was anyone’s guess. Having McKenzie, and his armed soldiers, on duty was clearly like some kind of precaution. But a precaution against what?

  “Assuming you’re correct, what is this?” McKenzie pointed at the darkness.

  “Well, sir, I think the power outage is fairly easy to explain. The power draw from the experiment must have overloaded the grid. The lights went out,” he said with a shrug. “What happened to everyone inside the radius, though, is beyond me.”

  “No cars have come out? This is a fairly busy road, even at this time of night.”

  “No, sir. Nothing. It’s as if they vanished.”

  A horn blared behind them. They turned, spotting a large white van with a dish on the roof pulling up.

  The local news stations had arrived.

  “Shit.” McKenzie turned back to Miles. “You better get on the horn with Washington.”

  Miles pointed to the sky behind them. “I think they already know. Sir.”

  The whoop of helicopters began filling the air.

  “Stay back, sir!”

  McKenzie spun around to see a civilian darting toward the shadow that was Aberdeen. The man sprinted past the police officers. He slid to a stop at the edge of the light, as far as he could go and still see.

  Everyone watched.

  The man reached out, running his hand through the air.

  “I think it’s OK,” he called over his shoulder.

  When he tried to pull his arm back he couldn’t. “What the−”

  His screams pierced the quiet that had fallen over the area.

  Tendrils of black wrapped around his forearm, slithering toward his shoulder. The man fought frantically, trying to jerk his arm from its grasp.

  He was pulled forward, still screaming, until the shadows eclipsed him.

  His shrieks died.

  And he was gone.

  “Fuck me,” Colonel McKenzie said.

  Chapter 8

  Frank never answered his door.

  None of their other neighbors did either.

  They wandered around the floor for a few minutes, shouting people’s names and pounding on doors. The entire building appeared to be empty.

  Molly stayed at Christy’s heel, her head low, always sniffing. She didn’t growl, but her mohawk stayed in place as they passed some of the doors.

  “Where in the shit is everyone?”

  Annie’s bravado slowly evaporated as they walked around the floor. She’d been convinced that John had slunk away as he often did. Now she kept pulling at the bottom of her t-shirt, fidgeting.

  Christy went back to their apartment, unsure of what to do next. She wanted to go down and check on the accidents outside, but the eeriness of what was going on gave her pause. Did she really want to wander around in the darkest night she had ever seen?

  She hesitated at the door, trying to make up her mind.

  “What are you doing?” Annie asked.

  “I’m trying to decide if I want to go outside or not.”

  “Are you nuts? Something seriously fucked up is going on around here, and you’re going outside?”

  Christy expected this kind of reaction from her. Annie thought of no one but herself at all times. The thought of someone out there, terribly injured behind the wheel of their car, made Christy’s stomach flip. The feeling convinced her that she had to follow her conscience.

  “I’m going down.”

  Annie put her free hand on her hip. Her lower lip stuck out and her eyes closed to little more than slits. “You aren’t leaving me alone up here.”

  “Then I guess you’re coming outside with me.”

  “Bullshit, we’re staying in the apartment and waiting for morning.”

  Christy wanted to punch her, hard. She’d wondered before if Annie was some kind of a sociopath. Now she felt fairly certain that was the case. Even if she didn’t have a mental disorder, she was definitely a spoiled pain in the ass. She’d gotten even worse since she’d purchased her boobs too.

  “You know what—”

  Christy meant to give her a piece of her mind but she stopped herself when she looked into Annie’s eyes. The little turd wanted to turn this into a fight so that they would stay up here arguing, rather than going outside. She’d be damned if she would be manipulated by Annie.

  She turned and headed for the stairs, not bothering to finish her se
ntence. Without any power, the elevator wouldn’t work. Molly took the lead, her nose plastered to the ground as she went.

  “Don’t walk away from me!”

  Christy pushed the door open and started down the first flight of stairs. She moved at a fast walk, mindful of the flame of her candle. The glass encasing kept the wind from blowing it out as long as she didn’t go too fast.

  Molly hobbled a bit as she went down the steps, favoring her hind legs. Hip dysplasia had set in a few years ago.

  The first floor looked and sounded as empty as hers. She paused before heading outside, glancing down the hall, not seeing anything. The front door, which had an automatic lock on it, stood ajar, a brick pushed in the frame to keep it from latching.

  People did that all of the time when they had to carry in groceries so they wouldn’t have to keep unlocking the door. Unfortunately, they often forgot to close the door when they were finished, completely negating the purpose of a security door.

  Christy pushed it open, cautiously stepping into what should have been a cool night. Instead, the air had a balmy, thick, warm quality to it. She had only taken a few steps when she started rethinking her plan of walking to the street. The light from her candle gave her only a few feet of visibility.

  In absolute darkness like that, any source of light should have seemed bright, yet the small flame didn’t do much. The dark felt too close, pressing in on her, threatening to swallow her.

  Molly whined by her feet.

  Christy bent down and patted the dog’s head, glad that her old friend had come along after all.

  The flames consuming the cars ahead had dwindled. She moved toward them, looking for anyone else that might be around. Her pace was slow, her steps short. The short light radius from the candle made her progress difficult. Curbs and bushes were suddenly obstacles that she continually tripped over.

  Something picked at her memory. As insane and illogical as her surroundings were, they felt oddly familiar. Had she suffered through a dream like this? Perhaps a scene from a movie had been similar.

  She went three more steps before stopping abruptly.

  The Specter Slayers.

  Several months ago, her favorite television show had been abruptly cancelled when the two stars and creators of the program were brutally murdered. She stared at the light, trying to remember the details. The two men that ran the show, Joey and Travis, had been complete tool bags. Christy had been more upset that she couldn’t see any more of their horrible acting than at their actual deaths.

  The authorities arrested two college students and, oddly enough, a bestselling author, for their murders. She remembered that the slaughter had occurred somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, but she couldn’t recall the name of the exact location. It was a church or a synagogue or something of that nature.

  The author remained silent, never giving details of the crimes or why they’d been committed. The two college students talked their asses off though. They’d concocted some elaborate, insane story about satanic rituals, discovering hell, and monsters. The gall it must have taken to blame murders on giant, eyeless monsters was enormous. Christy remembered the look on a detective’s face as he stood at a press conference, sharing details of the students’ stories. He almost laughed as he spoke.

  Darkness. The kids had described going to a place of pure darkness.

  As Christy looked around now, their explanation didn’t seem so farfetched. There weren’t any giant monsters attacking her, and she certainly didn’t see anything satanic, but she couldn’t deny the dark.

  A shiver ran up her spine as she recalled more details of their story. If she kept thinking about it, she would lose all of her nerve and turn around. She took a deep breath through her nose and started walking again, trying to block out any more memories of the Specter Slayers’ deaths from popping up.

  It took her entirely too long to reach the highway. The fires were almost dead by the time she reached the cars and the visibility they provided had nearly disappeared. She now found herself standing by the side of Route 22 with nothing but her dog, a candle, and a battery-depleted Kindle.

  “Hello?”

  She paused, listening, hearing the last crackles of the fires and nothing else.

  “Is anyone out there?” Her voice broke as she screamed, panic setting in.

  Where was everyone? How could they have just disappeared? What was she supposed to do now? She looked around, unable to believe how little she could see. Other than the burning cars, and the enormous fire at Aberdeen Proving Ground, everything was hidden.

  It felt as if the world had been swallowed whole. If not for the glow from the burning military facility, she would have thought that everything had vanished, that all she could see was all that existed.

  “This is some seriously creepy shit.”

  Christy spun around, letting out a small squeal.

  Annie stood behind her, holding two candles, one in each hand. She’d put on pants and shoes, thankfully, and didn’t look quite as slutty as before.

  “Jesus Christ! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Where is everyone? I still don’t hear any sirens.” Annie ignored the fact that she had almost scared her roommate to death.

  Christy put a hand over her heart, feeling it hammer away.

  “The fuck we gonna do now?” Annie asked.

  Molly barked, making both of them jump. Her ears flattened to her scalp. She looked past her master, snarling, saliva dripping from her exposed teeth.

  “Christy.”

  The voice came from behind her.

  Close.

  Annie’s face blanched.

  Christy turned around slowly, recognizing the voice, but not wanting it to actually be her mother standing in the street behind her. It was impossible for her mother to be there. After her vanishing act in the apartment, Christy didn’t want to face the idea that something horrible had happened to her mom.

  She stood less than ten feet away from Christy, just on the border of the dim light supplied by her candle. The same odd expression held on her face as before, her forehead tilted to her daughter.

  “Something terrible has happened. Blow out the candle.”

  Annie walked up to Christy and stood beside her, gaping at her mother.

  “What are you doing out here?” Annie asked. “It’s the middle of the night and you’re wandering around in the dark? I see where Christy gets her weird shit from.”

  “Blow out the candles.”

  “The hell would I do that for? I won’t be able to see.”

  Annie was either too stupid or too scared to see that something wasn’t right with Christy’s mother. She didn’t notice the odd mannerisms or hear the flat tone of her voice. Everything about her mother’s behavior set off sirens in Christy’s mind.

  Though she could see her standing right there, Christy couldn’t be certain that this was actually the woman who had raised her.

  “You’re freaking me out.” Annie took a quick step forward, reaching out with one of her candles. “Take this so you can actually see something.”

  Her mother reacted quickly and violently. She didn’t lash out or strike Annie though.

  She hissed.

  Her face contorted, her skin undulating under the soft light.

  Annie and Christy screamed.

  Her mother jumped backward, disappearing in the darkness.

  Molly snarled and barked, snapping at the air between them.

  Annie lost it. She dropped her candles, turned, and sprinted in the other direction. The candles landed in the street and extinguished, cutting the amount of light they had by more than half.

  Shock took control of Christy’s body, locking her muscles. She watched as Annie fled, unable to follow her.

  That wasn’t her mother.

  Annie reached the boundary of light from Christy’s candle and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  The darkness reached out for her.

  Tendrils of
nothing detached from the mass of black and wrapped around Annie, devouring her.

  Her body shrank, as if imploding in on itself, and then she was sucked away, disappearing into the night.

  Molly went ballistic, barking and growling at the darkness. She lunged forward, chomping at the emptiness before them.

  Christy screamed. She screamed until her throat bled. Her mind creaked, threatening to snap.

  The paralysis holding her in place broke. She stumbled away, running down the road, fleeing the thing that looked like her mother and the area where Annie was taken.

  Though her candle was encased in glass, the flame flickered as the wind rushed by.

  Her hip exploded in pain as she collided with the rear end of a car. She teetered sideways, almost falling over, and leaned against the side of a Ford F-150, regaining her balance. Her leg went numb from the impact on the car but she pushed on, limping away as fast as she could.

  Molly ran at her heels, barking at something unseen to their left.

  Christy could feel a presence, sensed that something watched them, followed them. She ran on, fear overtaking all rational thought. Her mother’s face, changing and writhing under the candle’s light, held front and center in her mind.

  What had she become?

  A small traffic jam surrounding a stoplight opened up, lowering the number of obstacles around her. Her breathing became ragged, coming in gasps. The pain in her hip flashed with every step, her foot dragging behind.

  Where she was going or what she would do when she arrived didn’t matter – she had to get as far from Annie and her mother as possible.

  The anguish in her leg finally forced her to stop. She bent over, trying to get oxygen into her lungs, doing her best not to think of what she’d just seen. Molly took a defensive position ahead of her, standing fully erect, ears up in alert.

  Out of the corner of her eye, mere feet away, stood a bus stop. A plastic, opaque roof and transparent walls surrounded a dirty bench. Loose newspaper pages were scattered across the seat. Christy had often seen a homeless man sleeping there in the mornings when she headed to work.