For The Night Is Dark

by Mynhardt, Joe

  “Shut up!”

  “You just don’t fucking get it.”

  “Shut the fuck up, ‘kay? I get your point. I fuckin’ get it,” Andy said, eyes burning as coals in her direction, barely visible except for the glossy reflection of the high beams out front of the car as he started to roll it slowly out of the lot.

  “So, is she right, man? A minute man, eh?” Mitch said, unable to contain a giggle, like carbonation rising to the top of the glass. The pot had left him even more stupid than usual.

  “Shut up!” they said in unison.

  Silence hung as a muffling cloak over them. Susie’s anger did not dispel the weird vibe she’d sensed since they got to the mountain top. Never one to fear the dark, right now, all she wanted was lights and sounds and stupid teenagers in front of a liquor store. Anything to dilute the liquid flow of this darkness.

  Before Andy spoke, Susie sensed his anxiety bristling in the air. He sucked in deeply and the inside of the car seemed to contract ever so slightly.

  “Look. I’m sorry, Baby. I really . . .” But he fell silent, his thoughts clustered as one, and, as usual, he was speaking before he’d sorted them out.

  Susie remained silent, ignoring him.

  “I don’t mean no harm, y’know? I just . . . I don’t really know what to do with it all sometimes. Us and everything, y’know?”

  She turned her head to the window, gazing deep into the black nothing outside.

  “Hey, I’m tryin’ to say somethin’ here.”

  She just wanted it all to stop. Please, just stop.

  “Goddamnit!” Andy said, jamming his foot on the brakes, cutting off the lights, the engine, everything.

  “Hey,” Mitch said, that Chihuahua yelp again using his throat for expression.

  Susie kicked at the door, hand scrambling for the handle, saying “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck all of this!” as she did. Frustration poured over her like an angry waterfall. She finally got the door open, shoving with force as she did. The dome light splashed meager luminosity across the interior, which she was hastily exiting. As the metal joints stretched to the breaking point, the door creaked and popped with firecracker intensity. She stepped out and the door started its path back to being shut in a hurry. But just as suddenly, she regretted being outside of the car and in this darkness, though she also did not want to lose any more brain cells by being within hooting distance of Heckle and Jeckle; her exasperation only magnified the situation. As she twirled back toward the door, everything shifted down a notch, slowing as seconds stretched. She heard Andy say, “What the hell is that?” while the light weaved ugly, perplexing patterns into the crinkled folds of Mitch’s face, forming a landscape for an undiscovered planet in the process, both of them staring out the windshield, not even caring about her annoyance. The look in their eyes caused her to shift her gaze from them to whatever might be in front of the car, a seemingly impossible quest because of this darkness—when she felt its presence . . .

  Reaching for the swiftly closing door, she was too late. It clicked shut and the feeble dome light was eaten by the voracious darkness and a scream climbed the broken rungs of her throat, yet as if sound was in cahoots with this darkness, she heard nothing.

  A vacuum of terror pressed against her as she ached for the aural confirmation she knew she had expressed, yet where was it? More so, she sensed the silence was so very internal, though distinguishing blood currents and heart beats was beyond her capabilities. She felt adrift, yet she also felt compressed, as if this darkness wasn’t only pressing into her, it was invading pores, seeking organs, essence.

  She reached for the door handle, anxious to fling herself back into the car and just deal with them, to yell at Andy to get them the hell out of there, not caring about being made fun of or anything but being away. Real decisions would happen soon enough, but right now she just needed the safety of noise and lights and being so far from this darkness.

  Her efforts fell flat: there was no door handle.

  She let out a brittle, “Fuck,” that landed on black cotton stuffed ears. She couldn’t see the handle, only knew the approximate direction, yet her fingers remained unfilled. Both hands now, her lithe body stepping forward, her hip should be banging into metal, but nothing impeded her movement.

  There was nothing there. No car. No Andy and Mitch joking away. No light, no sound, only this darkness.

  She screamed again, her diaphragm opening wide to release the vocalization of her fear, to no avail. She knelt to one knee, palm pressed hard against her abdomen. The pain of such a wail bent on rupturing the night, splitting her in two.

  The scream was trapped within. The silent scream.

  “So you’re not afraid of me, Susie Chambers?” It was a leering, vile utterance that caused her fingers to stiffen, her back to arch. Her breath caught in her throat with the scream.

  After a few precious, strangled moments, she was able to expel a wordless sound. Something culled from the primal within, from the eons woven into her DNA. From a past beyond the memories she’d amassed and tapping into the origin of fear on an intrinsic level, before fear was defined.

  “I suppose you are,” said the voice that resonated from within her bones, slick with marrow and destruction

  She brushed her arms as if they were covered in ants, only stopping when she realized it was useless expenditure of her rapidly disintegrating energy, and perhaps her sanity, too. Whatever she felt was already within her, even as she felt wrapped tight out here by the dark. “Who . . . Who are you?” Still, she did not hear her voice, yet the other answered.

  “You already know who I am. Let’s not mess around. We must get to the point.” Each line spat with the force of a hammer pounding a nail. Her body buckled as if kicked in the stomach, the head.

  Perplexed and shaking, she understood nothing, yet whatever this thing was—the dark? Was it this darkness? How could that be?—it had intent beyond simply scaring the shit out of her. “What point would that be?” She realized she was sobbing as she spoke, not by aural recognition, but by the physical responses to the unknown circumstances, her shoulders hitching, tears blurring her vision, sniffles causing her head to jerk, yet as with external sound, she only sensed the visceral insistence these reactions triggered within.

  “I have needs, Susie. I need the acknowledgement of my existence as a force of dread.”

  Despite her present incomprehensible state, she laughed, a delirious shard that cut deep. “If that’s all you need, isn’t my reaction evidence enough. I am afraid. I am fucking afraid.”

  Synapses and capillaries screeched a dissonant chorus, rubbed raw by that which filled her.

  “I need something more, as well. In a place like this, out here in true nature, I’m allowed a little leeway in the laws of the world you know. I’m allowed gifts.”

  “What? What more do you want from me? What gifts?” She spun in circles, aware of how much she felt trapped, cut off from everything she knew, as if the world consisted of only her body, as invaded by the dark, and nothing more. An ink stain cancer, spreading . . .

  “I want you to understand the rules of true nature. Where killing is a measure of living. Of being alive. Sometimes out of necessity, survival, but for me, it’s simply out of sadistic pleasure.”

  “I don’t want to die!” The distress that this event might be prelude to her death flushed her system in its numbing embrace. “Please . . .”

  “But some must die. I need perhaps two humans to fulfill my taste for fear and flesh, for blood and . . . satisfaction.” An insidious snickering sound rattled her rib cage.

  “I don’t want to die.” She thought, yes, her life has been derailed for so long, but to die like this—no! “I don’t want to die.”

  “Then you’ll know when to make a stand for yourself.”

  Banging against the car door, fingers scratching at the handle suddenly within grasp, pulling hard and leaping inside, body quaking but not even the center of Andy’s and Mitch’s foc
us. When she closed the door, the dome light blinked out, but the headlights were on, and something loomed large in front of the Mustang.

  “Drive, Andy. Drive!” Mitch pounded on the back of Susie’s seat. Andy fumbled with the key, only needing to turn it to start the engine, but clumsily unable to grip it in his sweaty fingers. Still shaken, Susie homed in on Andy’s fingers, willing him to turn the key and the car would kick into gear and they could somehow avoid what filled the road before them: a large animal, perhaps a bear, but of such humungous proportions, somehow wrong, somehow too large—she wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Fuck! Fuck! I can’t get the key to —”

  The beast lunged toward the hood, paws the size of large garbage can lids pressing down, down. The front tires exploded with the immense impact. Paw prints dented the metal.

  Andy groaned and said “Oh my god. We’re screwed.” Then, looking up at Susie: “We’re so fuckin’ screwed.”

  Eyes pinned open by shock, Susie followed the beast as it lumbered to the left, toward Andy’s side of the car. Even on all fours it towered above them. Andy struggled to roll up the window, an illusion of safety. She did the same, though she rolled hers up out of dull instinct and nothing more.

  Mitch, normally more emotional than Andy, said, “Freeze. Don’t move. Some animals won’t bother people if they stay still, like statues.”

  The beast stopped by Andy’s door. It was barely distinguishable from the night, though fist-sized eyes glared red and ferocious into the car. Andy’s head was turned toward Susie, trying to ignore the beast—perhaps with the hope of waking from this nightmare in their bed, in that tiny apartment, TV droning on as usual. His face was a rictus of panic. She could peripherally see Mitch scrunching into the corner of the back seat, attempting to blend into the fabric. She thought now, here, unlike a few minutes ago, she could hear her own blood pumping furiously in her veins, loud and clear.

  Susie wanted to look away, but that was impossible as she might draw unwanted attention. She stared into the beast’s eyes and saw instinct and mayhem spark as shooting stars across an ancient night, crackling with primeval fury. Deeper still, she recalled what the dark voice had said to her: Then you’ll know when to make a stand for yourself.

  She remembered a sweet moment, something out of the blue to bring a smile . . . but the blue bruised to black in her memory as tears welled and she shook her head—no!—but what her brain kept telling her was, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die . . .

  A massive paw crashed through the window and grabbed the back of Andy’s head like a basketball, yanking him out of the car. Clothing and flesh shredded on broken glass, Andy’s voice trailing it all, a sound like nothing Susie had ever imagined. The leaky balloon hiss of surrender, defeat; of knowing, yes, he was going to die. Now.

  Mitch bounced off her seat, pushing it forward. “Let me out. Let me the hell out of here.”

  Susie knew it would not matter, and then thought, I need perhaps two humans to fulfil my taste for fear and flesh, for blood and . . . satisfaction. If Mitch runs free, if Mitch is successful in fleeing this midnight massacre, where does that leave her? She hated herself for thinking this, but dying here, like this . . .

  “What about me? What about me, Mitch. You can’t just leave —”

  “It’s occupied,” he said, as they both peered into the dark, barely able to see anything, yet the sounds of bones being crunched and the grumble of animal contentment filled their ears.

  Mitch stretched himself and caught the handle, pushing the door open and stumbling out. His eyes locked with hers, a moment to wordlessly say, I’m sorry, but I’m out of here.

  It was too late.

  The moment he wasted cost him any chance he might have had, though under these perilous circumstances, she understood his chance was nil anyway. The beast was quick to lope toward him and just as he made it past the front of the car, Susie watched as it snatched him by the leg and swung him around. His body crashed into the front left corner of the car; the headlight went out, his body went limp. He tried meekly to fend off the beast as the beast opened its mouth wide and took his head inside. Biting down, the hideous rat-tat-tat cracking of bones caused her heart to batter her breastbone, wanting its own escape as she stared in awe and fear. The beast flung the decapitated body in the same direction as it had flung Andy’s.

  Then it stared at her.

  “Time for you to leave, Susie.” The voice, this time not from within. It hung over her shoulder, hollow and avaricious as a ravenous vulture.

  “Leave? How? That . . . thing,” she said, as the beast in front of the lone functioning headlight rose up on its hind legs, its head lost in the black heavens. Her hands shook violently on her lap. She noticed a wet stain at her crotch, realized she’d pissed herself, yet did not know when.

  “Just open your door and walk on by,” the voice said. She could feel the menacing smile it wore brush across her neck, felt its invisible lips kiss her throat. She immediately rubbed her Adam’s apple with unsteady fingers.

  “Haven’t time to waste, Susie. Go now or I may rescind my generosity.”

  She had no choice. Stay and die. Or leave and put her trust in this cruel, sentient darkness.

  She pushed the door open, having already been left ajar by Mitch’s failed attempt at freedom. Vertigo swam through her head, her legs shaking, each step an exercise in concentration. As she approached the front of the car, palm of her hand caressing the cool metal for balance, the beast did not move.

  She knew she was going to have to “walk on by.” She knew there was no other way around it. Her courage, a tiny thing nestled next to her will to survive, prodded her on. When she was within touching distance she thought she would break. Without the car to prop her up, she felt herself drifting, as she had done with this life for years; she regained the frayed edges of composure and continued.

  Susie expected animal musk, the gamey scent of the wild, the stink of nature’s bloody victory. What she got was beyond comprehension. What she saw was a silhouette, a misplaced shadow—something undefined—perhaps just a black shape from which freezing waves from the wasteland of its being emanated. With a slight twitch of her head she glanced closer at the beast, into an immeasurable cosmic gulf littered with shards of bone and constellations cognizant of her trespass as the beast, this thing, an emissary from this darkness, wailed into the starless sky. It was the roar of planets being birthed; it was the keen of suns going supernova; it was the alpha and omega of eternity; it was infinite, yet steeped in the here and now.

  “Time to run, Susie Chambers. Run and never look back. Remember me, though. Remember me and fear me with your every thought.”

  Wobbly legs or not, she didn’t need to be told twice. She was alive and that was better than the alternative, no matter the circumstances that got her here. No matter the lies she’d have to convince herself were true over the years that would follow; the years of purpose, she thought—no longer adrift.

  Was this her gift?

  She hated herself again, thinking so selfishly, but perhaps that might be the only way she could even make sense of it all, as if sense was to be made—no. But for now, she was alive and that would have to do.

  She ran many miles out of the mountain, from night till dawn, until her thighs burned under the golden sunrise that signaled a new day like no other. No day, no night, could be like what she had just experienced. Not that she would ever be able to forget any of it.

  This much was certain.

  LOST AND FOUND

  —TONIA BROWN—

  “Bout time you got here,” Kate said.

  “Sorry,” Renee said and dropped her bag on the desk. “Where’s your help?”

  Kate flipped her book closed and stretched. “Becky is already gone. She clocked out on time. Again.”

  “Yeah, well Tim left me without any gas. Again.”

  “When are you gonna learn? Men are all the same.”

  Renee shrugged. �
�Tim is a hell of a guy most of the time. He is just forgetful. That’s all.”

  “One day he is going to forget you’re married and end up in the bed of a twenty-something floozy. Then where will you be?”

  “In the bed with a twenty-something floozy, puttin’ on a show for my hubby.” Renee added a little tongue waggle to the claim.

  Kate got to her feet with a laugh and began gathering her things.

  “Any business?” Renee asked, eyeing the empty exam rooms.

  “Nope,” Kate said. “Things are dead in the ED, in a good way. The floor has a few portables in the morning, but other than that, you are good to go.”

  As a third shift x-ray tech, Renee always did the morning portables, so nothing new there. A quiet Emergency Department was a good sign, especially at the beginning of her shift. Usually it started busy then tapered off into the early morning hours. “Thank god. These last couple of days have been so crappy and I have a book I have been . . . dying to . . .” Renee paused to narrow her eyes at the sight of Kate chewing her bottom lip. “Why are you biting your lip like that?”

  Kate winced as she half said, half asked, “Because I forgot to file?”

  Renee let out a disappointed groan and slumped onto the desk. “You bitch. And here I thought I had the whole night to myself.”

  “Sorry. It just slipped my mind.”

  “Sure.” Renee snorted and crossed her arms. “And I bet how much you hate filing slipped your mind too.”

  “I see how it is.” Kate snapped up her stuff and stomped toward the door. “Your fantastic man can be forgetful, but your best friend does things on purpose.”