“Simple,” she says, glancing at me. Her pupils are dilated. I can smell a musty aroma, like cannabis, on her clothes. I wonder where she was before she came to meet me. I know that she has other friends—other guys she likes to see—and a few of them are into the drug scene. I’ve never met them; she won’t allow it, tends to keep our friendship exclusive for reasons of her own. Because I’m so caught up in her mystique, I go along with it. I don’t question her motives, and am just happy that I get to spend so much time with her.
She once told me that fucking on cocaine was brilliant, but all I could think about at the time was who she might have done it with.
“I’ll go first.” She manages to get her knee up onto the window sill. Gripping each side of the frame, she pulls her body inside. I watch her as she is swallowed up by the intense blackness inside the house, and consider running away. What the hell am I doing here, anyway? Why am I trying so hard to impress a girl who has little interest in me, and who will never consent to forming any kind of serious relationship?
“Get in . . . quickly.” Her voice comes from within. I can’t make out her face, no matter how hard I try. There’s just that disembodied voice. It could be anyone; it could even be someone impersonating Brenda to lure me inside.
I climb over the window sill, stumbling as I slip inside. I fall onto the floor, jarring my knees, but don’t call out.
“You okay?”
I nod. Then I realise that she can’t see me. “Yeah . . . I’m fine.”
There’s a quiet clicking sound and Brenda’s torch flickers on. The light is meagre; it barely penetrates the thick, oily darkness. This strikes me as strange, but then I tell myself that all the windows are boarded up and the lights outside are broken, so no external light is able to access the interior. Of course it’s dark; it has to be.
Brenda’s clunky boots make the floorboards creak as she walks across the room. Her silhouette looks bulky at the back because of the rucksack. I get to my feet and follow her. “Do you have another torch?”
She stops, turns. I can’t pick out her separate features in the dark; her face is just a floating black lump. “You mean you didn’t bring one?”
“I didn’t bring anything.”
“Jesus, Mark . . . do I have to do everything for you?”
“Sorry. I fell asleep. I didn’t have time to sort out any stuff.”
“Well, I only have the one torch, but if you stay close to me we’ll be okay. Just tread carefully . . . some of these old boards might be rotten. I don’t want one of us going through the floor and breaking an ankle.”
She starts moving again, towards an outline that looks like a doorway. I can’t see any sign of a door inside the frame, even when the torchlight manages to reach that far. We are in what seems to be some kind of reception or dining room. There’s no furniture. The walls are clean and unsullied by the kind of graffiti that usually appears in abandoned houses. The floor is bare.
“It’s weird in here.” I don’t like the way my voice sounds: all light and distant. “It’s too . . . clean.”
“They must have taken everything out years ago, just left the shell.”
I follow her voice, catching up with her at the empty doorframe.
“Through here,” she whispers.
We move out into a narrow hallway. My nostrils twitch, filled with the musty smell that always accompanies empty houses, buildings that haven’t been lived in for a long time: the stench of abandonment, of quiet despair. The same odour I picked up on Brenda’s clothes outside. I try to tread lightly, softly, in case I step on a shattered board. I reach out on either side of me and feel the walls. They are smooth and dry. There are no pictures hanging here.
“Which way?” I say, knowing exactly what the answer will be but asking the question anyway, just to hear the sound of my voice.
“Up. We’re going upstairs . . . to the room at the top of the house, the one where he did it.”
I’ve seen Brenda like this before. Once she catches the scent of adventure, she won’t give up. She enjoys the thrill of danger. She is always the first one to follow through on a dare. I admire her for her courage, but I also fear her. No, not her exactly: it’s more that I’m afraid of what she might do, or might make me do alongside her.
The stairs creak and groan as she starts to climb. Wood pops loudly, the sound like that of popcorn thrown on a fire or shots fired from a small calibre handgun. I climb behind her, watching her slim back, the curves of her thighs beneath the tight black leggings. I want to reach out and touch her, but don’t dare. She’s beyond me; she lives in a cold, dark place that I can only ever enter when she grants me permission.
At the top of the stairs she turns right, following the landing around a tight bend to a second set of stairs. We stop here, examining our surroundings. The landing is wide, with doors along it on each side. The doors are all closed. I imagine people behind them, sitting quietly on their beds or standing motionless before dirty mirrors, waiting to be let out into the greater darkness of the house . . .
“Just a minute.” Brenda reaches out a hand towards the wall. I hear the dry click of a light switch but nothing happens. “Well, it was worth a try,” she says. Then she continues around the bend and starts climbing the second set of stairs, the ones that lead up to the roof.
“I’m not sure about this,” I whisper. “What if someone’s up here?”
She stops. “Who the hell would be up here, Mark? Don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts.” I sense her smile; I can’t see it, the torch is pointed upwards, painting the walls and the few steps ahead of us yellow.
“No, of course not . . .” I swallow with difficulty. “But what if a tramp has made his bed here, or some junkies use it as a shooting gallery?”
“There’s nobody here.”
“How do you know that? How do you know for certain?”
She leans against the wall. The torchlight dances across the walls, the stairs, the crooked wooden handrail. “Because I’ve been watching. I told you I’ve wanted to come here for a long time, didn’t I? So I’ve been staking the place out, making sure nobody’s here.” She turns and looks down at me. Torchlight glints in her dark eyes, making her look like a stranger. “Feel better now?”
I nod. It’s a lie. I feel even worse.
She continues to climb.
As I often am, in that moment I’m struck by her grace, the way she moves so sensually through the dark. I’m sure she once told me that she used to dance, perhaps when she was a child. I can see the music in her movements; she skims through the air rather than plodding heavily along on the surface of the earth like the rest of us.
“I think it’s this way,” she says, drawing me out of my thoughts. “Right at the end.” There’s another landing, this one much shorter and narrower. To the left, there are two rooms, again with closed doors. To the right, at the very end of the landing, there is a much smaller door. “It’s that one . . .”
I know she is right. I can feel it; a strange pressure. I remember the fragment of childhood rhyme: In the darkest room, in the darkest house, on the darkest part of the street . . .
It doesn’t make me feel any better. Somehow I think that if I could remember the rest of it, I might be able to banish my fears. It’s unclear to me exactly what I am afraid of, but I’m certainly afraid of something. Is it Brenda? Perhaps; she’s intimidating and near-psychotic in the way that she pursues whatever she wants. Or maybe it’s just the darkness, the darkness that moves and twitches and envelopes us like a physical thing.
I follow Brenda along the narrow landing. Her boots thud on the boards; the timber groans. I reach out and steady myself against the wall. The ceiling is low; after a height of about a foot the walls taper steeply upwards, formed from the rafters There’s a single window at the end, not far from the small door, but this one, too, is boarded over.
“It happened here,” says Brenda. “It all happened here. He took the three of them, dragged them up tho
se stairs, and locked them inside this tiny room. They cried, they screamed, they banged on the door and on the walls, but nobody came to save them.”
“Is that why you’re here? To save them?” This stunning psychological insight sounds so damned trite when I say it out loud.
She laughs, but it isn’t a pleasant sound. “Don’t be silly. It’s far too late for that. They’re dead. He killed them. He throttled the life out of them and defiled their beautiful bodies.”
She stops when she reaches the door. It’s roughly three feet high and a foot wide; what lies behind it must be more of a storage space than a room. I watch as Brenda runs her hands along the edge of the frame, presses the tips of her fingers against the top of the door.
“They were in here for days, starving and thirsty. Not much air. Holding onto each other for comfort . . . in the dark, in the absolute dark.” Slowly she lowers herself to her knees and presses the side of her head against the door, listening.
“I can hear the echoes.” She reaches behind her and grabs me by the arm, pulling me towards the door. “Listen.”
I let her push my ear against the hard, rough wood, and I strain to hear. There’s a soft click and the torchlight goes out. I close my eyes. She grips me tightly. I hear a faint scuffling sound, like feet moving tiredly against the floor, and then something that might be a whimper. Brenda lets go of my arm. The light doesn’t come back on. I want to open my eyes but I’m too afraid. I’m not sure what I might glimpse, on the landing, in the darkest room, in the darkest house, on the darkest part of the street, if I do.
Then I hear another whimper, softer than before, as if someone is forcing out their final breath. This is followed by a gentle buzzing sound.
I open my eyes and draw back from the door. I’m alone on the landing; she has left me here, helpless in the dark. I push against the small door, just to enable me to move away from it quicker, and it snickers open. I stare in horror as the door moves slowly inward and a wide band of black develops at one edge of the frame. From inside, I hear the frantic buzzing of flies.
I hear the sound of footsteps behind me. Someone large and heavy is climbing the second set of stairs, coming towards me. He knows I’m here. The killer has returned. Despite all the stories, the Chinese Whispers passed between children during school playtime, the man who killed those women is still alive, still on the loose . . . and he’s come back to kill me, too.
A small white shape writhes out of the darkness of the small room. It’s a woman’s hand, beckoning to me. The fingers open, make a come-hither motion, and without thinking I step inside, pulling shut the door behind me.
It’s cramped in here; not much room to manoeuvre. The flies bat against my face but I’m too nervous to raise my hand and flick them away. Somehow I manage to get myself turned around, and I back up against a wall. My flailing hand brushes against something that feels like an arm or a leg, only looser, with hardly any definition. “Brenda?” My voice is faint, a ghost of itself.
“I’m here,” she says, but her voice seems to be coming to me from a great distance and it’s rendered vague by the droning buzz of the flies. “I’m finally back where I belong, with my sisters.”
On the other side of the door, I hear footsteps. The door rattles in its frame. Somebody chuckles softly. Then the footsteps move away, before stopping altogether. I don’t hear them descend the stairs. Whoever is out there, he is waiting on the landing.
I think about Brenda and how she’s never let me meet her other friends; how she spends most of her time with me; how I’ve never seen where she lives. I’ve known her for a couple of years now, but not once has she asked to meet my mother, or shown any interest in the other people I know outside the confines of our relationship.
She’s always kept me close while at the same time maintaining a distance. I realise now that it was all leading up to this night, when she could return here, with me for protection—or perhaps as a diversion to distract whoever is on the other side of the door.
My breathing is ragged. My chest hitches uncontrollably, as if I’m on the verge of an asthma attack. I try to calm down. I close my eyes and start slowly counting to ten. When I reach the number eight I hear the soft click of the torch next to my ear as it’s turned back on.
I hold my breath and continue to count. But when I reach ten, I don’t open my eyes. I keep on going. I do not want to see the other three occupants of the room, and what has become of them.
I don’t want to know whose soft, spongy hand has just slipped into mine, or gaze into the stitched-shut, maggot filled eyes of my beloved.
Softly, and to offer us some sort of comfort in that tiny room, I begin to whisper the old rhyme.
I only wish I could remember how it ends.
TILL DEATH
—JOE MYNHARDT—
Darkness—its impenetrable black veil had reigned over the last six months of Derek’s curbed existence. His prison, a rectangular living room with one closet and one bathroom for all five of its captives, experienced more than sixteen hours of darkness each day, and there were thousands just like it.
Derek lay on a thin layer of carpet beneath the dining table, shrouded in darkness, doubting whether he was asleep or awake and for how long. Perhaps he was dreaming right now. Was it possible he was still in his house, before the living nightmare started? Before they came.
***
Derek had been watching late—night television that night, his teenage daughter Meghan moments away from falling asleep on an adjacent couch. He’d reached for the stack of plates and cutlery on the small table between them and the television.
“Leave the dishes, Daddy,” Meghan mumbled. “I’ll do them tomorrow morning.”
A smile inched along Derek’s face. A few months earlier he’d hardly known how to boil an egg, yet now he could prepare a meal worthy of praise. Who better to share it with than his daughter? “You sure, Honey? I’ll just let them soak.”
“No. You already make me feel bad for not helping out enough.”
“My steak sauce really does a number on these -”
“Leave it,” her voice muffled, yet stern.
Derek smiled once more. He knew she’d say that, and he loved it every time she did. It was their little game. His ex wife hated him for it. She hated it almost as much as Meghan wanting to stay with her dad after the divorce. He found it strange how quickly some relationships deteriorated; how people went from passionate, promise-to-love-you-forever assurances, to screaming, swearing and death threats. Unfortunately, Derek’s lack of a job and home—making skills at the time had forced the court to side against him.
“Thanks, Honey,” he finally replied. “You’re the greatest.”
She didn’t answer. A soft snore and a shudder of her body let him know she was asleep.
A floorboard creaked upstairs. Derek reached for the television remote and brought down the volume, hardly emitting a breath of his own.
He waited, unsure if one creak warranted further investigation or a shrug.
Another creak, this one closer to the stairwell, forced Derek to his feet. In his mind he pictured the intruder creeping down the steps to spy on them, but he didn’t dare think what would be going through such a person’s twisted mind.
Derek checked if Meghan was still asleep. He tested the lock on the front door, scowling at himself for making the softest of noises as he released the handle. Once he was certain Meghan was safe, Derek grasped a steak knife from the table and tiptoed barefoot towards the staircase, moving slower and slower the closer he got the first step.
He peered up the staircase as it veered off to the right. His heartbeat threatened to reveal his position.
The source of the sound could’ve been the old house settling for the night, or something as harmless as the wind knocking things over, but he had to make sure. He was always extra careful when Meghan visited. If only he hadn’t left his handgun in the safe in his room, at the far end of the hallway.
His
grip tightened around the knife. He traversed the staircase, thinking, believing someone watched him. He peeked over the edge of the top step. The dim light of his bedroom lamp illuminated the hallway just enough to cast a few insidious shadows across the walls.
Derek felt like a child forced to run through the darkness.
Just as he decided to make a run for it, a distant scream ripped through the neighbourhood, increasing in intensity and death-encroaching panic before it abruptly stopped.
Derek gasped, then stood in silence. Should he run to his daughter’s side? Should he make a dash for the gun? He waited for sound to trigger his next move.
***
The reality of what had happened, too cruel to recall, hauled Derek back to his dark and silent prison. His thoughts muttered themselves out loud and he forced himself not to think about the events of that night . . . like he had so many times before.
The room lay in silence, waiting for the day to start.
Derek reached into the darkness. His fingers cradled the leg of the dining table—gripping on to his sanity or whatever sense of reality he could grasp.
He wondered how many people also lay awake, staring into the black abyss for any sign they were still there. Not just in this room, but in all the others he knew existed. Thousands of people, just like him, unable to rest. They’d also think about the attack. About their absent loved ones. About an absolution they prayed would come.
Could Meghan be one of them?
Most nights fear kept Derek awake, fear and the possibility of catching one of the bastards that had forced him to share a room with four strangers. He wondered if any of the creatures were in the room at that moment. He’d never seen them before, but he had always assumed their presence. What good would capturing them do, anyway? A feast for his imagination was all it could ever be.
Something shifted across the carpet towards him.
Derek froze while his body overdosed on adrenaline. One of those things was in the room and had, by some bizarre fortune, given away its position. Sound was the only proof he had.
For The Night Is Dark Page 9
