by Jason Davis
"Get outta here!" Rob yelled as he pulled the witch back against his knee. When the boy didn't move, Rob looked back at her. "I don't know what you’re doing, but stop it!"
The look of horror he had briefly seen in her face faded as she turned her head to glare up at him. Her lips peeled back into a snarl as she spat out, "Ventus."
Rob found himself on the floor across the room, his back against the wall. As he pushed away the cobwebs he suddenly felt in his mind, he realized his body hurt…and he was upside down. He had no idea how he had gone from being on top of her to where he was now, entangled with himself on the floor.
He wrestled to right himself. His arm was tucked under his leg and he had to shift his weight to pull it free. She had somehow tossed him across the room like he was a rag doll. He knew he was lucky he felt no broken bones, although he didn't feel too lucky right now. Everything hurt.
He turned to look at the witch sauntering over to him, her smile smug. There was an air of confidence, the fear he had briefly seen before gone. Now she was a tigress stalking her prey.
He felt the earlier conversation with Father William trying to push in on him.
"Believe in good and the power of doing what is right. Believe, and He is a shield for all who take refuge in Him."
He couldn't remember when they had this particular conversation, but he could see the father sitting in the pew, Rob next to him. They were talking about beliefs and how much one could truly be devoted to God in today's world. Damn it, why couldn't he just understand what the priest wanted him to know? Why all these damn games?
Rob felt his body go limp, his muscles turning into jelly. His head flopped forward, not having strength to lift it. Then something else did. He looked up and watched as his body lifted and pushed back against the wall hard. It held him until he felt like he would be a permanent fixture on the wall, his feet dangling, hanging there like a piece of art.
"Pretty, pretty thing. I wanted you as my pet, but maybe I'll keep you as my art." She paused, reaching out to run her hand along his chest. "Although I may bloody you a little. I like my pets to be beau-t-ful." Her accent stretched the word as she worked to get it out. "I prefer my art to be a little macabre. Death is its own art, don't you think?"
She looked up at him so he could see her eyes. They had turned into feline slits—yellow, cat-like, and hungry. He tried to speak, but found he was frozen, not even able to scream. All he could do was gaze into those eyes.
"You shouldn't have interfered. I was fixing the darkness. Now I'll have to start over."
"You…are…the…darkness,” Rob whispered. He didn't know how he got it out.
"No." She seemed to pout as she said it, although Rob wasn't sure. "I just woke it up. The power… It attracted me." She looked at his chest, her fingers cutting his shirt and into his flesh beneath, leaving long marks. He wished he didn't feel as aroused as he did, but there was an electricity pouring out of her. "Too bad." She looked back up at him, the brief wistful look she had disappearing, the smirk returning. "Too bad."
Then the look was gone, replaced by confusion. Rob could feel the pressure around him suddenly releasing. He dropped to his feet, staggering.
He stood just a few inches taller than she did. He saw her stagger slightly toward him, then turn away. The knife handle protruded from her back, the blade sunk deep. The black mist spilled out from around the wound.
Her legs gave out as she collapsed. When she hit the floor, the mist swirled, a cloud of black forming over her.
Rob looked up to see the boy standing there. The black fog wasn't just forming over her. It moved toward the boy. Rob could now see the tendrils flowing into him. He was electrified by it, his skin nearly glowing white as it entered him. A tornado of black tendrils swirled as the boy smiled.
He looked up at Rob, the black orbs looking into his eyes. Rob didn’t know how long they stood there. Time disappeared as they tried to learn more about each other.
Then the boy was gone…
* * * *
Confused, Rob emerged from the little flower shop, not really sure what had just happened. He was alive. That was all that mattered. He could go home, be with his wife and see his son, and whatever that dark mist crap had been was gone. It had disappeared when the boy had, suddenly making everything in the room feel blindingly bright.
He had wasted no time getting out of there, nearly tripping over himself as he ran to the door. He felt like a little child running away from imaginary monsters, but the body on the floor proved this was all real.
He couldn't wait to feel the warm sun on his skin. The shop had been like an icebox. He hadn't realized just how cold he truly felt until he made it outside. The breeze, as brisk as it was, felt warm to his pale skin. He looked up. The sun was...
Dark, along with the sky. It was unnatural, not like an eclipse. He remembered part of the science behind what made the sky blue. Who could have a ten-year-old and not know? When Jake had learned about the sky, he came home, excited to share what he had learned. Of course, it was over Rob’s head, but he caught the gist. Dust scattered in the atmosphere, blue light being shorter than red light and the like. These blue particles got scattered among the dust and mixed with particles in the sky, giving it a blue appearance.
But when he looked up, he couldn’t see any blue sky or yellow sun. What he saw was the absence of color, the sky getting dark way too early in the day. It was faded, the sun pale, without a single cloud to explain it.
Rob looked around the street. He saw a few cars pass by and a couple going into a store the next block over. No one seemed to notice their world fading around them. Had he noticed before the priest said anything about it? The sky had just seemed cloudy. He hadn't thought it was anything out of the ordinary. It was October. The sky was overcast more often than not.
He didn't know quite how long he stood there, staring at the sky, before he felt the vibration in his pocket. He reached into it and grabbed his phone, feeling a momentary grogginess, like violently waking from a dream. It made him unsure if the darkness were real or not. If the witch had been real, was the boy?
“Hello?” He heard himself say into the phone, not really feeling attached to the voice. It sounded alien to his own ears, as if he talked from a long distance away.
“Officer Alletto?” He heard the panicked voice. His recognized it, but from where? Yesterday seemed like a lifetime ago. Everything before the flower shop affected another Rob Alletto, not this one.
“Yeah?” His voice was quiet, almost a whisper.
“This is David. Remember? I helped you walk the coal dump? You told me to call if, well… You just told me to, well… I…”
Rob took the last step down toward his car, the jarring sensation of moving down stairs helping shake some of the weirdness out of his head.
“What’s wrong?” Rob asked, knowing something had to be wrong.
“Ally... Allison... She’s gone.”
CHAPTER 28
It didn’t take long for the sinking feeling of dread to weigh down Rob’s stomach. He had just survived the impossible, only to get a phone call slamming him back to reality. This wasn’t over. The witch hadn’t been the cause of it. What was it she had said? She had been trying to stop it? She had been capturing it. He guessed it could have looked that way when he had gotten involved.
No, that still wasn’t right. If she had been doing a “Glenda, the good witch” impersonation, why had she gotten into his head? Why was she even there at all? No, he didn’t buy into any of that. She may have been capturing whatever that darkness was, but she wasn’t doing it altruistically. She was here for the power, trying to take it for herself, for her own ends. Rob had to trust his gut, and that was what it told him.
But there was still the darkness. He had no name for it. It was some force, something evil that had been here a while. She said it had only recently awakened, but that meant it had been here, dormant. For how long?
Rob wasn’t familiar with
the town’s history, so there was no way for him to say if something like this had ever happened before. If he had time, he might try to do research, find out what he was up against, but he didn’t. The sky made it apparent this was moving too fast. He had to do something, and he had to do it now.
No, he didn’t have to do anything. He wasn’t in charge now. The state was there, the trooper waiting for him. This was now his job, whether or not he was able to handle it.
When David had called, Rob told him about the state trooper. Rob knew this was all unfinished, but he wasn’t officially part of it anymore. There really wasn't much he could do. David hadn’t been happy. He wanted Rob to run off somewhere and save Ally. He was reminded of the boy missing from last year. The one who had never been found. Sure, last night they had gotten lucky and some of the kids had been found, but that wasn't always the case. The boy last year was proof of that. If they couldn’t find Michael, or Mikey, last year, Rob wasn’t sure how he was supposed to magically find him now just because David’s girlfriend was missing. It didn’t work that way.
Rob let out a long breath, feeling his shoulders slump as he opened the car door. He felt the wetness at the corner of his eye. He was getting so tired of not being able to help people. When was he going to win? When would he finally have that moment he could actually save someone, rather than inform loved ones they would never see their family member again?
In real life, there was no such thing as happy endings. He began to realize that as he eased his sore body into the small front seat of the squad car. He didn’t know where he could go to look for the girl, but right now, he had an appointment to keep. He had kept the state trooper waiting far too long.
Just what the hell was he going to tell him? What could he tell him that wouldn’t have the trooper calling for him to be put in for observation? He had to admit, if someone told him this story, he wouldn’t believe any of it. How would he ever get the trooper to listen?
* * * *
Something wasn’t right. That was evident the moment Rob pulled the squad car up behind one of the state troopers’ vehicles parked on the side of the road at the end of the side path. It was on the opposite side to where Rob had been last night when he found Jake and the rest of the missing children.
It was smart for the trooper and the rest of the CSI team to park their vehicles there, although they must have moved them sometime during the night because, yesterday, they were parked closer to where the chief’s car had been. Over here, there was less chance the vehicles would damage any potential evidence. That suggested they expanded their crime scene to look through more of the coal dump.
It was smart, but that didn’t explain why there was no one around. As Rob climbed out of the car, he didn’t hear anyone, either. He would have expected at least one person to be nearby, keeping an eye out for someone. Where was the state trooper he was there to meet? The place was quiet. Too quiet.
That was it, wasn’t it? Since he had pulled up, his back had stiffened and he had cautiously kept an eye on everything around him. His cop senses had gone into overdrive as he opened the door.
He realized there was more to the silence. It was quiet, but not just because he didn’t hear the sounds of people working a crime scene, even if they were up the hill. He didn’t hear people at all. He didn’t hear any cars, even in the distance, either. There were no lawn mowers, no kids laughing, no people yelling at one another or calling out a quick hello.
There was something else. It was a wooded area. Where were the sounds of squirrels scurrying through the underbrush? Why didn’t he hear any birds chirping or flying through the trees? He scanned the area around him. Nothing.
He took a step on the gravel shoulder, the crunch beneath his shoe like a shotgun blast in the silence. He slammed his car door behind him, just to feel the comfort of the sound.
“Hello?”
He heard the soft, tentative voice. It was followed a moment later by the sound of crunching footsteps, a young man appearing around the front of the CSI van. David. Rob had told him to meet him there, figuring the trooper would want to hear what he had to say. Rob still wasn’t sure what he had meant on the phone. The kid had been a mess, talking over himself as he tried to tell Rob something about a missing girl and a little boy.
“Have you talked to the state trooper yet?” Rob thought he already knew the answer as the kid could have only just gotten there himself, the place seeming pretty deserted. He still figured he had to ask. The kid shook his head, not meeting Rob’s eyes.
“Not yet. No one’s here.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Little over five minutes.”
“Did you think about calling out or checking up the hill?”
Rob read the kid’s mind as David looked into the woods. He was scared. Had it really been just yesterday the kid had been eager to take him up there and show him some hiding spots he knew? He barely resembled the person he had met then. His shoulders slumped and, as they talked, he never once looked up from a spot on the ground.
“Okay, well, I gotta go up there and find the state trooper. You are welcome to join me.”
“Do you think he’ll find her?”
“He might. The state guys are who they call in when we local guys can’t solve the big mysteries. He’s got more experience with it than I do.”
David looked at him. “Really? Because I heard you used to work up in Chicago.”
“True, but I was just a patrol officer. Just took the reports and let the detectives do all the big stuff.”
“Okay.”
Rob could hear defeat in his voice.
“Look. I’ll walk you up there.” He felt like he was talking to a five-year-old, but he had to keep in mind the kid had been through a lot. “If the trooper doesn’t have any issues with it, I’ll stick around after you make the report to see if I can help.”
David nodded, and they started walking toward the entrance to the path.
David stopped at the edge of the woods, looking at them. “I know who took her.”
Rob narrowed his eyes. “Who’s that?”
“Mikey.”
Mikey… Why did that name ring a bell? Rob could swear he recognized it.
The image of a boy in tattered clothing surrounded by wisps of dark tendrils billowing out from a black cloud came to mind. Those demonic appendages tearing apart the woman from the flower shop. A boy he had recognized, but wasn’t sure from where. There had been a familiarity to him that he couldn’t place. Something about it…
And then it clicked. He should have realized it before. It had been staring him in the face. The picture of the older brother he had used to search. He should have seen it. He should have placed it. He had looked for that boy last year.
That couldn’t be. He had been missing for a year. There was no way Rob or David had seen him.
“Are you sure it was him?”
David nodded. They stood there, not wanting to enter the woods, stepping among the trees where it was obviously darker than around them. Not that it was bright out. The day was getting darker, the shadows in the trees deeper than they should be.
Rob wanted to dismiss what the kid had said because it sounded crazy, but how crazy would he sound?
When they found the trooper and David told him about his missing girlfriend, would Rob back up the story? No matter how crazy it sounded, would he add his own input?
He was afraid of the answer.
“Is it just me or is it too quiet around here?” David asked.
Rob looked around the woods, not liking that the kid said what he felt. He didn’t answer, not wanting to acknowledge the silence.
He took a step onto the path. He was a couple paces in when he heard David following.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m thinking the trooper is probably by where the body was found, checking in with the medical examiners. I figure we should check with them.”
“Okay.” Rob heard th
e tremble in the kid’s voice, knowing he was frightened. Rob couldn't blame him. He was, too.
* * * *
Rob took a long, deep breath and looked at the crime scene tape floating on the breeze. Someone had ripped it from around one of the trees, leaving the other part attached to one. Rob saw a CSI kit sitting there, various baggies next to it. He noticed some were labeled and closed; others were partially open.
What had happened? There was no question now that something was wrong. The team would not walk away from a crime scene and leave remnants of their work. Even though Rob had very little experience with them, he knew they would have more professionalism than that. If it was ever found out that they left a scene unattended, their careers would be over.
It was just more evidence that there was something wrong. Maybe they had found the heart of it all. Did that mean something had to be down there? Was it waiting for them, or was it off taking more kids from the town? The thing seemed to have a taste for them. As far as Rob could tell, it mostly took children.
“Are you going down first?” the kid asked. Rob was pretty sure the kid’s name was David, and he’d been thinking that was his name. He really needed to get better with names. He was becoming that old man who would call everyone “kid”.
Yeah, well, he knew he wasn’t going to change his habits now. He was just stalling anyway. They had to go down there. He just didn’t want to, and he could tell the kid didn’t want to, either.
“Nah, kid, you go down and I’ll keep an eye out for you from up here,” he wanted to say. Yeah, that would sit well with his conscience. If something happened to him, Rob knew that would just be one more face he’d see at night. He had enough demons when he closed his eyes. He didn’t need another one.
Who was he kidding? He wouldn’t have let the kid go down before him. He just wasn’t wired that way.
“Give me the flashlight,” Rob said, taking it from him.
“You sure you don’t want me to hold it while you climb down?”
