Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  Melanie looked up and wiped her eyes. "He's dead, isn't he?"

  "We don't know that, Mel."

  She nodded, her eyes blinking their confidence. "I know it, Johnny. I can feel it… can feel it here." She placed a hand on her left breast.

  Johnny didn't say anything.

  Melanie looked across at the door. "It's stopped. The noise."

  He nodded.

  "I think I preferred it to the silence." She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. "Who are they, Johnny? What do they want?"

  "I don't know. I'm pretty sure they're not who they appear to be – not the folks from town." He thought of Troy and Gram beating their heads to a pulp on the door and managing not to get a single mark on their sunglasses.

  Johnny waited a few seconds and then said, "We have to leave the station."

  "What if he comes back and we're not here?"

  Johnny ignored the fact that Melanie had referred only to Geoff and bit the bullet. "If he's… if they're dead, then they won't be coming back," he said. "That's… that's just a simple fact, Mel. But if they are not dead – and we don't know that they are – then we don't want for Geoff to have to come back to you being dead. Are you following me here, Melvin?"

  She sat back on the floor with her back against the wall and, just for a second, a tiny smile tugged at her mouth the way it always did whenever Johnny called her "Melvin". She nodded and wiped her cheeks and eyes with her hands. "Yes, I'm following you."

  He took hold of her hands in his own and pulled Melanie to her feet.

  "OK. We need to get the keys to the Dodge – you know where they are?"

  "Shit! Did Geoff take them?"

  "Why would Geoff take the keys?"

  "I don't know. I don't know that he did. I just–"

  She looked up the corridor towards the stairs.

  "Did you hear that? I thought I heard something."

  "Don't worry about that – I'm keeping an ear open for anyone coming down. I think they're busy checking the place out… the studio. And they don't seem to move too fast."

  Melanie considered asking what made him say that and thought better of it. "Who put the car away?"

  "You or Geoff. I didn't do it, and that leaves only you two."

  "Geoff did it. You know, I think they might be in the ignition?"

  Johnny shook his head at the questioning lilt of Melanie's statement. "Thinking isn't enough, Mel. We need to have the keys before we go into the garage. Once we're in there, the only way we're coming out–"

  Aside from maybe coming out in the Lizard Men's lunch boxes, he thought with an involuntary shudder.

  "–is in the Dodge. I don't want to get in there and find I have to sneak back into the station for the fucking car keys – pardon my French."

  Johnny raised his hand and shook his head as Melanie was about to speak.

  The shuffling sound upstairs had stopped and had been replaced by a constant but strangely gentle and hypnotic droning noise, which seemed to be getting louder. Then the noise turned into a plunk, plunkplunk–

  They both looked across at the stairs–

  –plunk, plunkplunk–

  –and watched as Geoff's lucky baseball came into view–

  –plunkplunkplunk, plunk–

  –tumbling carelessly down towards them, missing stairs occasionally, before–

  –plunk, plunk, plunkplunk–

  –reaching the corridor in front of them and rolling gently to a halt by the side of the bureau standing against the wall just a few yards away.

  "The decision's made for us," Johnny whispered, nodding to the garage door. "We'll chance to luck that the keys are in the ignition."

  "And if they're not?"

  Johnny shrugged. "Then we're up shit creek without a paddle."

  The shuffling had started again, moving along the corridor above, a cumbersome sound apparently without much coordination. Johnny tried not to think about who – or what–

  It's the Lizard Men!

  –might be making that awkward movement, and just why the movement should sound quite so difficult.

  "Hey, I've got an idea."

  "What?"

  Johnny trotted across to the big bureau standing against the wall next to Geoff's lucky baseball. He took hold of the bureau sides and was delighted when he discovered it was on casters: the thing not only moved easily but soundlessly as well. "The garage door opens inwards," Johnny said as he pulled the bureau along. "We'll stand this right in front of the door and hope it takes them a little time before they figure out where we are."

  Melanie frowned. "You're making them sound like first graders," she said.

  "Well," Johnny said, puffing as he maneuvered the bureau into place, "it took Geoff's baseball for them to hit on the concept of going down the stairs."

  As if on cue, a loud clump rattled on the stairs, followed by another. Then, at the same time, another clump and then another.

  "Three of them," Johnny said.

  Several more clumps sounded.

  Melanie shook her head. "More."

  Johnny nodded.

  Melanie turned the key in the door to the garage and pushed it open. Then she helped Johnny pull the bureau into place behind them, before gently closing the door again. Just as the door closed to and last vestiges of light faded, Melanie saw shadows coming down the staircase at the end of the corridor. She slipped the key into the lock on the garage side of the door and turned it quietly. The darkness felt good. Safe.

  "The bulb is gone in here," Melanie whispered.

  She sensed Johnny nodding, sensed his head pressed against the door listening for sounds from the corridor beyond.

  "We won't need light to get into the car and we'll get all we need once we're outside."

  Melanie felt a thick column of iced water begin around her shoulder blades and travel quickly down the full length of her spine. "Johnny…"

  "Mmm?"

  "We don't have the remote for the door."

  Something in the station, on the other side of the door, had come across Geoff's lucky baseball. His ear pressed against the wood, Johnny listened to it rolling and rolling, rolling and rolling until, at last, it clunked loudly against the door.

  Which meant it had rolled under the bureau.

  Which might also mean that whoever or whatever had kicked or knocked the ball had seen it. And had possibly seen where it went. And had possibly noticed, above the bureau, the unmistakable outline of a door in the wall.

  Johnny hoped that wasn't significant.

  (23)

  Rick had made slow progress along the gully before branching off to the right up a wide avenue between the trees, as though someone – a long time ago, because the avenue was grassed and heavily cambered – had been considering creating a spur to the road down into Jesman's Bend.

  That might have made sense: it would have meant a direct route straight into Dawson, creating a dogleg with the Bend right on the knee-joint. But then maybe it was something else entirely, such as a simple track once used by natives of the area or loggers perhaps.

  The track kept narrow for a long time and Rick was nervous about how close the trees were as he passed them. Close enough to touch in some places… or for something to reach out a hand – an ungloved hand – to touch him. Or maybe one of the rag dolls he'd left on the road through the mountains all that time ago – seemed like another lifetime – stepping out from behind the tree and–

  Hey, asshole, whyn't you come back and finish the job… think there's a couple of bones here seem to be still in one piece…

  –giving him a piece of their mind.

  Once or twice he thought he saw shapes moving behind the trees, but they were squat shapes and not even remotely human-like – unless the townsfolk had taken to moving around on all fours, which Rick didn't think was necessarily as unlikely as it sounded.

  And there were constant engine noises passing overhead, though after a while, particularly as he start
ed to move up towards the road again, the noises seemed to be further back. He presumed the townsfolk – or whatever they were now – were still busy patrolling the lower woods for signs of him. After all, they must surely think that anyone in his or her right mind would not head back to civilization, particularly after the events overlooking the town. And maybe that was his ace in the hole.

  Rick wiped his nose and squinted into the gloom.

  The trees seemed to be thinning out up ahead, sufficiently so for him to make out a space in the distance which gave onto more trees. That space could simply be a clearing, of course. But it could also be the road.

  The big question here, audience, is a two-parter: first part, for ten points – what part of the road, or even which road, is it? And for tonight's star prize, who or what else is watching it?

  Rick walked slowly and stealthily, picking his steps carefully amidst the twigs and bracken. Eventually, he saw that it was indeed a road. He sat down and settled into a cross-legged position, pulling his wet and torn trousers so that they were not touching his leg, and waited.

  A dark shape passed overhead, purring softly in a hovering position before banking off to its right across the trees at the other side of the road. Rick couldn't tell what the vehicle was nor could he understand how the occupants could see anything – the car (if it was a car) was displaying no lights nor any search beams. A thought struggled to express itself, as though this discovery were in some way significant, but another engine noise caused Rick to flop back prone amidst the trees and the thought – something to do with the absence of light – faded away for a few moments.

  When he was satisfied that the engine had moved off, Rick dismissed the thought completely and stood up. He stepped carefully down the slight bank and onto the road.

  The pavement felt good under his feet – felt right.

  He looked to the right and saw the road bend around, sloping downhill. To Rick's left it went pretty straight and always gently uphill. He'd come back onto the Jesman's Bend road and he had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand it made things a lot easier; on the other, it made him feel more vulnerable. Rick didn't think there would be much if any traffic from the Bend on the road that went straight out from the station and over the bridge. But this one could be different.

  He turned around, checking the treetops for the amount of cover they provided and considered moving back into the woods and making his way through the trees. Each way had its advantages and disadvantages. The bottom line was weighing up speed against safety, bearing in mind that being safe wasn't much help if it delayed him to such an extent that everyone in the station was dead by the time he got there.

  Clearly a balance between the two was called for.

  He would move along the road, keeping a close eye on the woods so that he could duck into the trees at the first sign – visible or audible – of anyone coming along.

  "Well, what is it they say about every great journey starting with but a single step?" Rick whispered to the night.

  He was answered with a distant hum coming up from the right. Head down, he ran across the road, dived into the bushes – narrowly missing a thick trunk that had been sawn off at around waist height – and rolled beneath swaying fern fronds and bush branches. Holding his breath and not daring to move, he looked between the leaves.

  It seemed like only seconds later – so quickly, in fact, that Rick was sure he must have been spotted – that Daryl Engstrom's 1970 tomato-red Plymouth 'Cuda came up the road. Rick knew it was the 'Cuda even though he couldn't make out the color – Daryl's cheesy swinging furry dice hanging from the rear view kind of gave it away. But it wasn't Daryl driving. In fact, Rick couldn't make out who was but the car was full – three men and one woman it looked like, the woman's hair long and tied back in a ponytail.

  The three men – one of whom was driving – seemed to be looking straight ahead. The woman, sitting in the front passenger seat, was staring out of the window in what appeared to be a contradictory mixture of intent and disinterest but, just for a second as the car drifted by, her dark glasses faced directly towards Rick's position and he felt the eyes behind those black frames boring into him. He ducked down further, setting a branch to swaying right above where he was laid.

  It was Jennifer Bacquirez, one of the Bend's most eligible spinsters: as he crouched, heart beating, Rick idly wondered whether spinsters could be said to eligible in the same that bachelors could. For the briefest instant, it seemed an important consideration and he yearned for the times, so recently ended, when such thoughts were worthwhile. And then the instant was gone.

  Rick waited for the car to stop or turn around and head back to his hiding place, but it didn't. The sound of the engine grew fainter until it was gone and the silence flooded in again.

  He waited, then raised his head.

  The road was deserted again. They hadn't seemed to be looking for him.

  Rick got onto his knees and then stood up, shaking from head to foot.

  Suddenly, it made sense.

  It was the road down into town, which also meant that it was the road heading out to the station. And Daryl Engstrom and his friends weren't looking for him – they were heading specifically for the station.

  Heading for Melanie and Johnny.

  Without another thought, he trotted down onto the pavement, glanced back once and then set off. He would be there in five or maybe ten minutes. And in another few yards, when he rounded the next bend in the road, he could cut across over the old fence, drop down through the trees and come up on the station from a position of cover.

  Ten minutes maximum.

  He hoped that would be fast enough – and tried hard not to think about exactly what he was supposed to do when he got there.

  (24)

  Outside of Sally Davis's hotel room, the man she had been watching bent down and thrust his head into the spyhole. The door shook and Sally turned around.

  OK, what were the options?

  She went to the window and looked out onto the street. Then glanced at her watch. After two o'clock in the morning: there should be cars out there – movement, sound (muted sound, distant sound, but sound certainly) the auditory proof of life. There was none.

  Whoa, horse! Strike that last one. A yellow cab just turned the corner of the building, a mere two floors down from where she was, its headlights washing the street independently of each other. Not much in or of itself but, of course, with Sally snugly settled on the eighth floor, two floors down meant six floors up.

  It didn't take too much effort to reach the conclusion that whoever was out there in the corridor wasn't normal. They didn't speak – that was the first thing. And when Sally thought back to the slack-faced boy with his head on one side, she wasn't even sure he could speak. And those dark glasses? There was no sunshine. OK, they could be musicians or celebrities – that would make the kid some kind of dwarf, of course – but dark glasses in a darkened hotel corridor? Nope. It didn't compute. And she decided that they were not trying to get into the room to offer her extra nights free of charge.

  Are we going to hide, mommy?

  She looked around the suite and assessed what was available to her. She could hide behind the shower curtain – not ideal. In the closet – even more not ideal. She remembered Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween

  Is he the bogeyman, mommy? The man smashing his head against our door?

  –and checked the beds: no room to slide a newspaper under those.

  The door rattled some more. And now she heard the sound of a motor. She decided that she didn't want to go back to the spyhole. While she couldn't see them, they were far away and she wanted to keep them like that. Just like that.

  A thought was forming at the back of her mind and she didn't like it. Didn't like it one bit.

  She considered shouting through the door to them, telling them to go away, or maybe making a growling sound like a dog. It wouldn't hurt – they knew she was here. Well, maybe so, but they hadn
't had any proof. Perhaps if she just stonewalled it then they'd go away and beat on somebody else's door.

  The door rattled again, three times in succession. Either they'd got reinforcements or something bigger was attacking the door. No, they weren't going to go away.

  Sally checked the windows, half-imagining Gerry sitting on the bed behind her, hands still smelling of gunpowder, top and left back of his head blown away, shaking what was left and about to ask her if she wanted him to help. Things were looking slightly up – there was a ledge around the hotel right outside her window. Her luck was staying in. Then she looked up and saw exactly the same ledge running around the building on the next floor. Well, so what.