Reaping the Dark

by Gary McMahon

  Why had they done that?

  Because he was different?

  All his life Clarke has felt alone, apart: the driver, rather than just another passenger. He always wanted to be like everyone else, to have a normal life. But he was not allowed, even then, in the orphanage. The other kids kept him at a distance, wary of him. The staff always treated him in a different way, and not like the other boys. He was special; he was meant for special things.

  Chosen.

  He always dismissed these feelings as the construct of an unhappy childhood, a fiction created to make himself feel better about being such a loner. But now he begins to doubt that philosophy. What if it’s true; what if he really is different?

  He has no time to pursue these thoughts further, because in front of him things have started to happen. The creature steps forward out of the shadows, dragging one arm behind it to scrape its claws across a fire-damaged caravan wall. The high-pitched screeching sound sets his teeth on edge and triggers tiny migraine-detonations of color behind his eyes.

  Clouds drift like veils across the moon, obscuring the details, and Clarke is glad that he has been spared a clear look at this beast. Its mere presence is terrifying enough. Full sight of it might just send him screaming and gibbering into the darkness.

  What happens next happens quickly. Minutes compress into seconds and everyone seems to move at double, or even triple their normal speed.

  Martha holds up the moneybag, raising it high above her head.

  “Get back!” McKenzie’s nerve breaks. He loses control and moves the shotgun barrel away from Martha, pointing it at the slowly advancing silhouette of the creature.

  Martha pulls back her arm and sends her elbow smashing into McKenzie’s throat. It’s a move Clarke taught her long ago, when he showed her how to fight; she was always a quick study, retaining her lessons well. She moves gracefully when she strikes, simultaneously sidestepping just out of McKenzie’s immediate reach.

  The creature strikes with ferocity and speed. It lunges forward, bending its legs at both joints and leaping onto McKenzie. He doesn’t stand a chance; he’s like a stranded wildebeest taken from the back of the herd by a hungry lion. As the creature wraps its tapered legs and its overlong arms around him, McKenzie somehow manages to stagger around one hundred and eighty degrees. The creature’s face splits wide open and those tendrils writhe out, knotting around McKenzie’s head, crushing his skull with a crunching sound as easily as a piece of fruit squashed in a massive fist. The shotgun is raised, wavering, and he squeezes the trigger as his legs give way and he folds beneath the weight of his attacker.

  Clarke hears the shot and sees his raised hand detonate before he feels any sensation. One second the hand is there, a clenched fist; the next it’s red mist and flying shards of bone. Where time was previously moving at double-time, now it slows down to a nightmarish pace. He watches in awe as his fingers come apart and separate from the hand, and is able to pick out the ropey tendons as they come apart like dark strands of wool from a cheap glove.

  The pain, when it arrives, is brief and shocking. Heat explodes at the end of his wrist and then travels along his arm. Shock numbs him to the worst of it, but still he goes down, his knees buckling and his thighs shaking…he goes down and he grabs the ruins of his hand, clutching the bleeding stump tightly against his chest.

  As he looks up and towards Martha, to check that she is still alive, the area is flooded with light. McKenzie and the creature are gone; the darkness just outside this ring of illumination has swallowed them.

  Confused, he looks around, and sees that the old floodlights he spotted earlier have burst into life, their old, dirty bulbs still capable of shedding light upon the scene. The blood on the ground at his feet looks brilliantly bright.

  Then Martha is at his side. She’s holding the handgun McKenzie took from him in the warehouse but doesn’t seem to realize it is in her possession. The gun hangs loosely from her fingers, as if she is about to drop it back onto the ground. Clarke can’t take his eyes off the weapon.

  “What’s going on?” Martha seems dazed, as if she is riding the back end of a heavy drugs session. Her eyelids flicker. She licks her lips.

  “Don’t worry, now,” says Clarke. “It’s over.”

  He struggles to his feet, cradling his arm like a damaged animal, and looks directly into the lights. There are people sitting on the rusted scaffold supports, dangling their feet like spectators at a packed football match. On the ground underneath the lights, other people stand. They are all looking at Clarke and Martha, watching silently. Expectantly.

  “Who are you?” He takes a tentative step forward. Pain flares once again along his forearm. “We need help. Could you help us?” He shields his eyes with his undamaged arm and squints so that he can make out who is there. Is it the police, or perhaps a group of residents from a nearby housing estate who’ve come to investigate the noise? A neighborhood watch committee, something like that?

  The people at the front of the group, the ones on the ground, move forward. Others drop silently from the lighting frames, landing softly on the ground.

  As they draw closer, Clarke registers that they are wearing hooded robes. There are strange signs and symbols drawn in red paint on the hoods.

  What was it Oakes said to him about the Order of the Darkened Veil?

  McKenzie is a psycho, but these people are something altogether more dangerous.

  Is that what these silent onlookers are—members of the Order? And if so, why are they here?

  They’re men with a mission.

  “Listen,” he says, lowering his arm. “We had nothing to do with this…that guy, McKenzie; he’s the one who stole your money.”

  Nothing but silence: a tense, eerie silence.

  “It’s all here. In the bag…” He turns around and starts looking for the bag on the ground. He catches sight of it at the edge of the lighted area, covered in blood. He hurries over and picks it up. Thick, gluey blood drips from the handle. “Here it is,” he says, turning again to face the advancing people. “All of it.” He raises the bag in the air and walks back to stand at Martha’s side. She’s staring at the lights, at the people who have walked out of the brightness, and a small, slanted half-smile hangs on her face.

  “It’s okay, baby. I’m on this. We’ll be fine.”

  He wishes that he could believe his own words.

  “Put down the bag, Mr. Clarke. Or do you prefer the title Driver Z?” A short, dumpy man in a white robe steps forward, out of the group. He holds out his hands at waist level, as if it is some kind of signal. “We’re not interested in the money. Not really.” He walks towards Clarke, a bland, unthreatening presence.

  “That thing?” Clarke drops the bag at his feet. “What was it? Where is it now?”

  “That?” says the man, through his thin white hood. It covers his entire face, and a red inverted cross is painted crudely across where his features should be. “It was a Reaper.” He keeps walking until he is standing five or six feet away from Clarke and then he stops. “The Reaper was sent to protect the girl.” A small tilt of the hand; he points towards Martha.

  “Protect her? From what?”

  “No, not what. But whom. We thought that Mr. McKenzie might hurt her—or, more specifically, what she is looking after for us. So we sent in the Reaper to make sure that she remained unharmed.”

  Clarke can’t see the man’s face because of the painted hood, but he has the impression that the little guy is smiling.

  “I don’t understand.” His arm is aching. He’s losing a lot of blood. When he looks down, blood is dripping from the ugly end of his stump. “I need some help…an ambulance.”

  “Don’t worry,” says the man. “There are doctors among us. We’ll see that your arm is taken care of.” He pauses. “But first…first, you have a choice to make. The rules of the ritual dictate that you choose freely, and without coercion.”

  Clarke feels the world shift beneath his feet.
He is so close to the truth that he can feel it vibrating through his bones. “I remember you…I remember you now.” He closes his eyes. The leaves, the sunlight, the boys playing football on the grass. A short, stocky man in what he thought were priest’s robes talking to several orphanage staff members. He knows this man; he has not met him before, but he knows who he is. This is the man who came into his room at night, carrying a black candle and chanting weird songs. The one who chose him…

  “Who are you?”

  The man lifts his head and looks up at the sky. “A long time ago you were plucked from the crowd to be the Vessel for darkness—a dark seed was implanted within you. I was there, at the inception. I organized it all. And now, thankfully, the seed has been sown.” He raises his left hand and points at Martha. “The seed has taken root, and something is growing.”

  Clarke tries to fight the memories the man’s words are summoning, but he can’t. He isn’t strong enough to stop them. It all comes flooding back: the repressed memories of nightly ceremonies, his drugged-up eyelids flickering closed over the sight of people cavorting naked in his room, their bare feet clattering on the floorboards, their eyes wide and wild, and their skin daubed with bloody writing.

  “Hello again,” says the man. “It’s been a long time.” He falls to his knees and raises his hands, clasping them together in prayer. “And may I say, from us all, that we thank you. We thank you so very much for what you have done—what you were chosen to do.”

  Clarke turns to face Martha. She’s still holding the gun, but this time she is pointing it at him. “Choose,” she says, with tears streaming down her face. “You have to chose, baby. Be a father to our child, or miss out on everything that’s been planned for such a long time.” The smile still clings to her face, but it’s wilting. She looks as if she is losing her mind.

  “What have you done?” He stands there in the too-bright light, clutching his arm and trying not to black out. Pain washes through him and over him, a red tide. He wants to scream, to run, but he just stands there instead, waiting for this whole thing to play out like the game it so surely is—the game it has always been, ever since he was chosen from the orphanage to carry the dark seed these people planted. The terrible seed that he sowed inside the womb of another chosen victim, one who will take over from him and carry it for the remaining nine months until it comes out into the world...

  “Your real parents would be so proud,” says the man, behind him.

  Clarke spins on his heels to face him. “My parents?”

  “Yes, they gave up so much so that you could have this honor.”

  So he wasn’t orphaned by accident. He was given to these people willingly.

  “I don’t accept this,” he says, flailing to keep a grip on the reality that is so quickly crumbling around him. “I don’t want any of it.”

  He turns again; turn, turn, turn… “Martha?”

  This time she’s pointing the gun at his face.

  “Choose,” she says. “Please…just choose. And remember, despite all this, that I did love you.”

  Did…not do, but did. Past tense.

  Clarke drops his hands to his sides. Blood spatters the leg of his jeans. Pain burns from wrist to elbow, crawling slowly towards his shoulder.

  “No,” he says. “This isn’t right. I don’t want this…all I am, all I’ve ever been, is the driver.”

  Martha shakes her head. She opens her mouth, as if she is about to try and change his mind. But then she presses her lips together and smiles, sadly, before once more relaxing her features.

  “It’s a pity,” she says, softly, lovingly. “You would’ve been a great dad.”

  Then she pulls the trigger.

  He tries to concentrate but his mind is coming apart at the seams.

  In the instant before death, he thinks once more of a distinct childhood memory: sun-dappled leaves in a well-kept garden, a group of boys playing football on the short grass, a sense of lightness in his chest… It is an image he often uses to calm himself, summoning it in times of stress or high emotion. The memory is his sanctuary; it takes him back to a happy place.

  The image begins to shatter.

  Then the blackness floods in through the cracks, erasing the leaves, the garden, the grass, and the boys. And for the first time he can remember, Clarke is truly and utterly alone.

  Epilogue

  Hoodoo dropped down swiftly from the lighting frame and walked across the open ground to the body. He fell to his knees and checked for a pulse, but there was no need. The body had no face; the front of the skull was a mass of ravaged tissue caused by gunshot trauma.

  This Vessel was gone.

  He stood and walked over to the Carrier—the real reason they were all here, the one who would enable the next phase of the elaborate ritual to take place. He reached out and took the gun from her shaking hand. She was chosen so long ago that she’d almost forgotten her reasons for being here. Her cheeks were glistening with tears. Her mouth was open but she could not speak.

  “Come on, child. It’s your turn now.” He guided her away from the mess and towards a waiting black car. The engine was running. The driver behind the wheel was not dressed in robes or a hood; he was wearing a tracksuit and a baseball cap.

  Hoodoo helped the girl into the back of the car. She was hot. Sweating. Soon the shock would kick in and she would begin to shake, go cold. He needed to get her to safety before she freaked out and realized what she had done. What she had lost.

  He thought of the money he was being paid and the power he had been promised. It helped; it made things easier. He just wished that the ritual could be simpler, and it didn’t require so much suffering.

  He climbed onto the backseat alongside the girl and looked through the window, out into the darkness. Behind him, a handful of robed figures were cleaning up the mess in the glow of the floodlights. By the time they were done, no evidence would remain. The site would be clean.

  He peered into the beautiful dark, looking for the Reaper. He hoped that it fed well before the spell wore off and it returned to a small pile of blood-and-semen-tainted ashes. The least it deserved in return for its services was a decent meal.

  The car moved off slowly, heading for the main gates.

  Out there in the darkness, something stirred. He reached across and placed his hand on the girl’s stomach, pushing aside her clothing so that he could touch naked flesh. Beneath the palm of his hand, he detected a firm motion as the baby kicked against the inside of her abdomen. No normal baby would be kicking so strongly this early in its gestation period. He wondered how big the child would eventually become, how monstrous until they were forced to remove it from her body—or perhaps it would simply eat its way out and crawl into the world, where it would be worshipped first as a prince, and then as a king. And finally it would be feared as a Dragon.

  Lord of the air…

  Father of lies...

  Prince of all darkness…

  King of the shadow frontier and the darkened veil…

  He would go by many names. Each one would honor his inheritance and hint at the chaos to follow his emergence, the Great War that he would rage against humanity.

  Nobody knew for certain what might happen; they were breaking new ground, creating the rules as they went along. The Order had managed to do a thing that should not have been possible. They had raised the stakes. They had succeeded in reaping a seed from pure darkness.

  The Vessel, the Carrier, the Dragon…each of these was an element in an endgame whose outcome could not be predicted, no matter what grim, dusty volumes were read or which ageless seers were consulted.

  Hoodoo smiled, and then took his hand away. The fingers felt dirty. No, that wasn’t the right word—not quite. They felt tarnished.

  He shut his eyes and stared into his own personal darkness, looking for something—perhaps a kind of peace—which he knew he would never be allowed to find. But he had faith that one day it would find him.

 
Because if Hoodoo knew anything for certain, it was this: magic, especially dark magic, will always find a way to those who need it.

  About the Author

  Gary McMahon is the acclaimed author of nine novels and several short story collections. His latest novel releases are Beyond Here Lies Nothing (the third in the Concrete Grove series, published by Solaris) The End (an apocalyptic drama published by NewCon Press) and The Bones of You (a supernatural mystery published by Earthling Publications), his novella Nightsiders was published by DarkFuse in 2013, and his short fiction has been reprinted in various “Year’s Best” volumes.

  Gary lives with his family in Yorkshire, where he trains in Shotokan karate and likes running in the rain.

  Visit his website at: www.garymcmahon.com.

  About the Publisher

  DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.

  To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.