Dark King Rising

by Alledria Hurt

  Go, leave now, he's coming!

  The voice was high and insistent. As it finished speaking, penny whistle music played. Kevin's ears perked up. He recognized the tune it was playing. His theme from the stage set to a new instrument. It sounded sharper despite the almost childish air it had. Kevin rose from his squat and brushed his hands along his pajama pants. His chest stood out against the cold.

  "Who's coming?"

  A sudden thundering crash and plume of smoke directed his eyes to the stage. Two things were there, a shadowed figure and a towering box.

  "Kevin." His name floated through the space between them. When he didn't move, the shadowed figure called him again. "Kevin."

  The carpet brushed under his feet as he walked up the aisle to the orchestra pit. The difference in the floor shot up through his soles.

  "Who are you?"

  "My name is yours," the voice said. Kevin came stood at the edge of the stage and looked up. The box loomed at him from its place.

  "I only have my own name," Kevin said. "You must have your own." He dreamed. It was all a dream. There was no substance to it.

  "Yet I share yours. Come up to me." One hand beckoned.

  Kevin looked around for a set of stairs which would lead him up on the stage. A doorway along the edge of the stage up a few stairs became obvious a few moments later. Kevin hustled up those stairs and yanked the door open. Beyond it was darkness. He put his hands out to ward off the walls as he stepped through. The darkness dissipated beyond him a few feet as the light from the auditorium filtered in. Then he was on the stage.

  The figure looked at him. This close he could see some features though they were mere impressions as if the whole face was flat and the nose no more than a bump. It was a very white face with large shadowed eyes.

  For Kevin, the urge was to wake up. He clenched his fists, driving his short nails into his palms. Something would make him wake up and this would all fade with the morning light. What he couldn't account for was the certainty that if he didn't wake up, he was going to somehow regret it. He walked past a velvet curtain out onto the stage proper. From there, he could see the audience and chairs he had just passed which had been empty were now full. A packed house stared at him and every set of eyes were Sylvia's.

  Once upon a time, he had told her that her eyes were her best feature. Now they pierced him from a thousand faces and he closed his hands even harder.

  Wake up.

  As if he could command it. The stranger merely watched him the way a man would a spider in a jar, knowing it was no longer dangerous but fascinated just the same. Beyond him the box stood dark and foreboding. Kevin tore his gaze away from the audience and those entrancing eyes to look at the other man. They were the same height. Same build. Perhaps even the same weight from what he could see. It was as if one of his suits had taken on a life of its own and decided it wanted to walk out on stage unaided.

  "I'm here, what do you want?"

  Without a word, the shadow gestured to the box. It did not leap forward, but it did seem to lean. As if someone had tilted it forward so that the door swung open like a disengaged jaw. Kevin watched it, preparing for the first time to make a run for it. The child had warned him against waiting, but he thought he was strong enough. The awareness he might not be settled on him like a shroud.

  "No."

  "You cannot say no." When it spoke, its teeth glittered. They sparkled whiter than snow, as if he had eaten a mouthful of metal shavings. "Enter and be tested."

  Taking a step back, Kevin almost turned. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the audience lean forward like they did when there was a particularly juicy trick. Or perhaps it was because they all had teeth like the shadow, metallic and sharp. His heart trip hammered in his chest. He closed his eyes against it all, wished himself away from it all. He lay beside his wife in their bed. This dream could not hold him. It had all the strength of tissue paper.

  A chill hand closed around his wrist. His eyes flew open. The shadowed man loomed close in his face. So close he could count the points of his teeth.

  "Come."

  Kevin recognized the insistence. He used the same urgency when bringing a victim into one of his acts. Often they were willing until they found themselves on the stage with dozens of eyes stalking their every move. Then they were timid. It no longer amazed him how easily the human spirit turned from courage to cowardice or back again. So often he had seen the blustering bold reduced to shuddering before the reality that they might not return from the box alive, or at least so they thought. Now someone pulled him forward and he dragged his feet. Then they were standing before the box, its gaping maw full of waiting darkness.

  "No."

  "There is no 'no'." Somehow the creature had gotten behind him and pressed both cold hands to his shoulders urging him forward against his will. Kevin tried to slip away only to find his way blocked by one dark arm.

  "Go," it commanded. Then it chuckled and he knew it was pleased. That froze his blood all the more because he could imagine his own pleasure at doing this so many times. Behind him the shadow, before him the dark. Something squeaked. The chairs squealed under the weight of moving figures, figures crouching forward to consume him.

  Swallowing, he tried to slow the flutter of his faint heart, but it refused his attempts.

  "Marie."

  Her name served as his whispered prayer when he stepped forward into the cabinet.

  Nose to nose with the wood, he could smell the oil used to keep the hinges from crying out. He turned to face his audience and saw they were indeed now crouching in their seats like vultures awaiting the final death throes of their prey. Fear skittered up his spine and took up residence at the base of his brain where survival is king. He threw his arms out just as the door slammed shut closing him in.

  Fingers quested along the edge of the door seeking the hidden panel which would cause the back to open and release him. Outside he could hear laughter and something less human. He found nothing. Trapped. His heart leapt into his throat choking him with its fervor. In his mind, he saw Marie in a hundred different ways. Past moments. Future imaginings. Their children paraded before him. He banged on the door and screamed.

  Fear drained every movement of its vigor even as he battered the door trying to escape. He imagined that outside the audience had drawn close enough to touch. If the door opened, he would be spilled out into their waiting arms and devoured.

  It was just a dream. Knowledge did nothing against the awful certainty. He was not leaving alive. The box would be his coffin.

  As if in response to his thoughts, he was suddenly slammed backward and there he lay with the door above him. His head swum with sparks and stars.

  "Marie, I love you."

  He awoke suddenly to a light beside him. Marie's bedside lamp cast a thin light on the partially empty bed. Kevin lay back, covering his eyes with his hands. The darkness did not comfort him. He found himself staring at the light as if it would give him answers to what he had just experienced.

  "When you perform, you face yourself in the light. Beware always the you in the dark for it has the power to destroy you." His mentor's words came back to him. In those yesteryears, he had assumed they were just gibberish the old magician thought of as wisdom. But what had he just faced but himself in the dark? How close had it come to terrifying him to death? He rolled over on his side and curled up. In the dream, he was wearing his same striped pajama pants.

  "It's nothing," he told himself. "Just a dream. Nothing but the subconscious processing stress. It'll start to fade as soon as I get started." Then he crawled out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  At five o'clock on Friday afternoon, Marie Ellis rubbed the back of her neck and shook her head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs out of her thinking. Her office hours closed two hours prior, but she stayed in her office staring at a revision request for 'Nights in Chockan,' a short story she submitted to the New England Seminar J
ournal three months previous. The changes weren't heavy, but they were far-reaching. The journal wanted her to change the sex of one of her characters in order to create a female-male-female love triangle as opposed to an all female one. While the basic actions of the story would not change, the tone certainly would. Granted, the Journal was a stolid classical (read: stodgy) publication, so she found no surprise at the request. However, what she did find surprising was her reaction to it. It should have been a simple thing. Truthfully, she no longer needed publications like the Journal to build her reputation. She had three well-respected books out in genre fiction. Her name already held some, small, weight. There was nothing to it. She would turn down their request and sell the piece to someone else.

  Yet she sat there with the email open before her without doing anything.

  Maybe she could make the changes without sacrificing everything about the story.

  Why even think about it? Don't need it. Don't do it. Moll closed the email. She could still respond within the grace period. It didn't have to be figured out immediately.

  A knock on her door offered a reprieve from the thinking starting to circle in her mind. When she looked up, Rebecca was standing in the doorway. She had her hair hanging to hide the small scar on her forehead from impact with the steering wheel before the airbag deployed. Marie thought it looked rather pleasant that way.

  "Thought I'd drop by for a friendly reminder."

  "Yes," Marie said automatically. "We have a session coming up on Tuesday at 9 a.m. I remember."

  Their professional relationship occasionally blurred their friendship into odd patterns, but so far they had been able to keep the whole thing straight. Rebecca was her therapist when they were in her office. Outside of it, they were just friends. A time or two, Marie wondered if Rebecca was breaking some kind of medical rule by drinking with her patient, but so far, nothing had come of it so she didn't dwell on it.

  Marie's gaze drifted to the framed Guvernai on the wall with its splash of Art Deco colors. Despite how chaotic the whole thing looked, she found it comforting. One of the first pieces to be hung, she had always found space for it since her first apartment.

  "Was there something else?"

  "Well," the pause made Marie feel caught as if she shouldn't have asked. "I wanted to talk to you about how things were going with you and Kevin, but I guess it can wait until the formal session."

  With that out between them, Marie relaxed. She didn't have to answer that question immediately either. She had until Tuesday to come up with a diplomatic answer for why she had allowed her husband back into bed with her. There had been something that might have been construed as an apology and the truth was she missed him. They had been at odds for too long and Marie refused to allow her marriage to fall apart over one incident, no matter how big.

  The cold part of her reminded her Sylvia was dead. He couldn't go there again because there was nothing to go back to. That didn't stop him from finding someone new. Marie shoved that thought away. He wouldn't. They were making progress. Kevin was a good man.

  Rebecca waved a hand in her face.

  "Earth to Marie," she said. "You there?"

  "Sorry. I'm wool gathering."

  "I can tell." Rebecca straightened up from where she had been leaning over the desk. "Are you sure you don't want to talk now while we have a minute?"

  "Yes, I'm fine. Just a little distracted. Work stress, that's all."

  "And Kevin?"

  "Things are fine. I'll talk to you about it later." Reaching down, she shuffled a few papers across her desk from the keyboard to her out basket and pointedly looked at her friend. "Really, Rebecca. It's fine."

  "I hear you saying that, but I'm also listening to what you're not saying. However, if you don't want to talk about it now, it can wait. Just take care of yourself. Always make sure you take care of yourself."

  Looking down, Marie waited for her to leave. A moment later, Rebecca's footsteps were receding down the hallway. Marie looked up at the empty doorway and let out a sigh.

  "Everything really is fine," she said as she reopened her email to deal with some emails from students. It wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes, and then she could head home.

  Looking at it from the outside, one might think she was avoiding going home by the way she found one thing after another to do instead of making the journey home. It was dark when she looked up and truly realized she needed to get out of the building. Perhaps it was the whirring of the vacuum cleaner she could hear on another floor. Whatever it was, she packed her bag quickly and made her way down the stairs.

  Marie stopped at the door of the building when she observed a thin man standing outside. He was under a street lamp maybe fifty feet away. With a slow breath, she steeled her nerves and pushed the door open. It creaked as if intentionally giving her away. The man turned. Marie gasped. His face was so much her face, but where she was tall, he was taller. His limbs seemed impossibly long. They stood face to face despite the distance and his lips moved. His voice came to her ears like smoke.

  "Remember the abandoned."

  The words conjured up images of a forgotten palace standing open to rushing wind. Tearing tapestries fluttering in that tormented wind. Then he was gone.

  As if the images had momentarily blinded her eyes, she had not seen him leave. Now she looked around, searching for him, but there wasn't even a shadow to give away where he had gone. A chill crept up Marie's back and arms under her coat. She tried to rub it away, but it persisted.

  "Remember the abandoned," she said. "What, who?" Marie passed under the light and onto the street. Flagging down a passing cab, she found herself in a warm seat. Whoever it had been they were gone. She was safe. Regardless of how much the sense of safety seemed far away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "Kevin?" Marie called her husband from the front door and got no answer. Walking further in the house, she looked for any sign of him. There was no book thrown on the couch where he might have abandoned it. The kitchen was clean, which was exactly as she had last seen it before heading in to work. In truth, everything sat where she'd left it. So perfect it looked like window dressing. She dumped her bag in her desk chair and headed back into the kitchen.

  Remember the abandoned. The words played through her head on loop. They made no sense. If someone wanted her to remember something, shouldn't they have given her something more than just the fact that they were abandoned. If she was responsible for abandoning them, then perhaps she didn't want to remember. Marie selected a bottle of white wine from the leftover party wine on the floor. It was a twist top. Just as well since her hands shook as she held it. Getting the glass from the shelf seemed harder than it appeared. She almost dropped it twice. Once it sat safe on the counter, she poured the wine. Maybe this would settle her nerves. She wasn't like Kevin who would do shots of whiskey to get his jangling nerves to calm. She preferred something softer. The amber color was warm in the florescent lights.

  She finished the first glass in two quick gulps and poured herself another. Carrying the glass with her, she moved into the bathroom and started the bath.

  Remember the abandoned.

  The palace was back. She could set it set on the edge of a cliff, untouchable by those without flight on one side and well defended on the other. Forgotten gardens crept along terraces on the mountain side, beautiful and wild. Minarets swept the clouds. It was gorgeous and it came to her as the words whispered through her veins. Turning, she found herself in the mirror. Her eyes were shadowed, but she could see the set of her cheekbones and remembered the man. Had he been her? Impossible. Like so many things lately. Marie sipped her wine and pressed the glass against her cheek. It would be fine. This whatever would pass. She tested the water with her fingertips. It was a warm caress against her hand. With that wet hand, she dug into a container of salts and spread a generous portion in the water. The air began to smell of lavender and oil. Giving it a hardy swirl, she distributed the crystals through the
water. Sitting on the edge of the tub, she took another sip of her wine.

  In her mind, they drank from bowls and the wine was weaker, watered down. The walls glittered golden. The air wore colors. Yet it was not a current place but a forgotten one. Hollow and broken.

  "Remember the abandoned. Was the palace I see abandoned?"

  The thought came easily. However, it didn't stay. It flitted away like a bird on the wing changing direction. Disappearing in the steam from the bath water. Marie set the glass on the edge of the bath and shucked out of her clothes. She left them in a pile on the floor. The water continued to run as she stepped in with a hiss. Heat enveloped her and urged tense muscles to relax. With her still dry hand, she coiled her hair on top of her head and then sank down to her neck. Missing with her first attempt, she caught her wine glass on the second. Water surrounded her and she breathed in the scents perfuming the damp air. Then she turned the water off and just luxuriated in it.

  When she got out, the water was turning cold. First she toweled off then wrapped herself in the bathrobe on the back of the door. It was a fluffy white cotton thing they had gotten at some resort and it felt fabulous against her sensitive skin. Marie padded across the hall and into her office. The lights on the computer said it slumbered. She woke it with a few taps. Perching on the edge of the seat, she typed.

  Where is the castle the Dark King resides in? Is it a cliffside palace with overgrown gardens which has forgotten the hands of man?