Darkness Falling

by Peter Crowther

  Melanie pushed herself onto the bus and squeezed under around Rick.

  "Get the glasses," Mel shouted.

  The old man turned in Mel's direction and she saw him smile at her, saw his mouth move and–

  The man standing in the aisle hauled off and drove his fist right into the old man's face. The sound of his nose breaking could be heard through the bus and, at the same time, the dark glasses flew from the man's face and clattered under one of the seats. The old man howled.

  "Bastard!" Melanie shouted. "I saw what you said."

  The old man bent forward and buried his face in his upheld arms. The other man clasped his hands together and brought them down onto the top of the old man's head, catching him between the base of his skull and his neck. The old man crashed to the ground without another sound.

  Melanie rushed forward even as the man – a good-looking guy of around thirty-five years old, maybe even touching the big four-oh – lifted his foot and, holding onto the tubular bars for support, drove his foot down repeatedly onto the prone old man, grunting with each new contact.

  Rick grabbed a hold of Melanie's jacket, his fingers slipping free almost immediately. Melanie pushed the man out of the way and reached down for the old guy, grabbing a hold of the corduroy jacket's collar and yanking it upwards. "What did you say?" she screamed at him. "What did you–"

  "Hey, Mel, take it easy," Rick said, pulling her back from the man.

  Melanie turned to Rick, her eyes wide and teary. "He said my name, Rick," she said. "These bastards killed my husband, and now, miles from home, one them mouths my fucking name at me. So how does that fucking work?" She lowered her voice. "Now get your hands off of me."

  Rick glanced over at the young girl but figured there were things far worse happening in front of her on this bus than hearing a few "fuck" words. He let go of Melanie's arm and stood to one side until she elbowed herself in front of the man, crouched down and turned the old guy over. As she did that, Rick stepped onto the old guy's arms, pinning his hands to the floor of the bus.

  They watched, the two of them, as the old guy lifted his head.

  With the dark glasses now consigned to the dusty floor beneath one of the seats, the old man's eyes were unprotected. But they weren't there.

  "His eyes…" somebody said from up near the front of the bus. Rick wasn't sure who it was – one of the men: there were three to choose from, not counting Johnny, though Paul Giamatti hadn't looked in a talking mood when they'd come onto the bus.

  "His eyes are gone," Sally Davis's voice whispered.

  That wasn't exactly true, but it was close. The bulbous crimson gelatinous blobs that now occupied the old guy's sockets were a far cry from what anyone would consider regular eyes.

  "They're all red," was all Ronnie could say, looking down over Rick's shoulder at the old man.

  "Not like real eyes at all," Sally Davis added, her voice little more than a whisper.

  The man seemed to affect a smile, though it was without warmth or humor, and, his voice strangled and guttural-sounding, he screeched a single word.

  Karl's scream answered him, puncturing the stillness even further, and then Angel Wurst began to sob.

  "Jesus Christ!" Virgil Banders offered.

  Sally bent down to the stricken map-reader and lifted him so that she could see his face. "Oh, my," she said.

  What is it, mommy? the voices seemed to ask in unison, a cadence and cascade of tones and ages, all of them reacting to the sight of the man's eyeball plopped right out onto his cheek without so much as a how-do-you-do?

  "He's not well," she said.

  Virgil Banders frowned. Jesus Christ, now some old broad had come in to broadcast the goddam obvious. You didn't need to be House MD to figure that one out. But he didn't say anything.

  "What did he say?" Ronnie asked, nodding at the old man who was still writhing on the floor, his arms still pinned down by the new man's boots.

  "Did he say anything at all?" Johnny asked. That sound – that screech – was that words? Was that any language at all? It had sounded familiar, though, that single exclamation: it had sounded for all the world, God help him, like–

  "It was my name," Melanie said. "He knows my name."

  As if on cue, the old man gave what could possibly have been construed as a laugh. Or maybe a wave of pain.

  "His eyes are getting fainter," Johnny said. "Like, less red, I mean."

  It was true. The bright and almost incandescent glow in the old man's sockets had diminished considerably. And the globs seemed to be settling back, like a rising cake freshly removed from the oven. Plus he wasn't squirming as much.

  Johnny knelt down between the seats to get a better look, grimacing when he twisted his knee.

  "Don't let him touch you," Rick said.

  Angel had stopped crying and was now sitting on one of the bench seats, Samantha the doll pressed close to her chest and chin.

  "This man…" Sally Davis said, turning away from Karl.

  Ronnie turned around. "What about him? He's going to be OK, isn't he?"

  "From what I can see, his entire system has gone into some kind of cardiac arrest."

  "Are you–"

  Sally smiled at Ronnie, thinking to herself how nice it felt to smile that way. She didn't do it very often these days. "Was," she said. "I was a nurse. Twenty-two years," she added. Implicit in that was yes, I do know what the fuck I'm talking about. "I've man aged to get his eye back into the socket but there's almost certain to be dirt in there and, as you can see, it's moving independently of its partner." She looked back at the map-reader – he looked familiar, like maybe a movie star, from some film she'd rented from the local Blockbusters, about two guys on a wine drinking trip around California – and shrugged.

  "Doesn't matter," she said, resignedly.

  Ronnie and Johnny and Virgil Banders crouched down and looked at Karl's face, alongside Sally Davis.

  "He gonna be OK?" Virgil asked.

  Sally shook her head.

  "Shit," Ronnie whispered.

  But it figured. Karl the cartographer looked a mess. His good eye was moving from one of them to another, and then to another, before returning to the first one and so on. The other eye was sliding around in the socket, sometimes moving up, sometimes down, sometimes seemingly going right over, showing white, plus a little flurry of colored wiring. Meanwhile, the man was shaking head to foot.

  From behind them, Rick said, "I think he's dead," to which Virgil Banders snorted, "Uh uh, he's still moving for Chrissakes," before realizing that this new guy was talking about the old dude on the aisle floor.

  "Give me a hand pulling this guy up," Rick said to Johnny. "You sure he's not going to reach out and–"

  Rick brought a clenched fist down into the old man's face and it folded in on itself. "He won't now," he said, with a tone of grim satisfaction.

  "What the hell…"

  "I think that once the lights go out, nobody's home," Rick said.

  They hefted the man onto one of the seats while, still on the floor a little way up the aisle, Ronnie asked Sally Davis if Karl was still aware of where he was.

  She looked at Karl and watched the single eye dart from side to side, the forehead furrowed. "I really have no idea."

  "He feels like–" Johnny paused and straightened up, looking down at the old man crumpled up on the seat like an inflatable grandfather who'd sprung a leak. "–like there's nothing in there."

  "Hey," Rick said, his voice lowered, his finger pointing. "You see that?"

  Johnny frowned and took a small step backwards, away from the seat.

  "What? He's not dead after all?"

  "I don't–" Rick crouched down next to the old man's head, now slumped over onto the seat. He patted his pockets and then turned to Johnny. "You got a pen?"

  "I think… I think he knows what's happening," Ronnie said.

  "Yeah? What is happening?" Virgil Banders said.

  "He's dying. That's what's
happening." He turned to Sally and watched the woman's face. There was something in that face, something over and above the fact that she was – was! – once a nurse, something he couldn't put his finger on. But why should it matter? It didn't matter, on the face of it, but Virgil felt there was more to this woman than what was on the face of it. "Isn't that right?" he said.

  "That's right," said Sally. "Yes, he won't last long."

  "Is he, you know, is he in pain?"

  She looked at the man, the movie star from whatever movie it was that she had watched, alone, the way she watched all movies these long lonely days, watched his hands flickering and twitching, saw his eye darting, watched his chest heaving, saw the thick line of drool from his mouth, the single tear stream from his good eye and then, in the silence, he let out a loud fart that seemed to carry on and on.

  "He foller through on that?" Virgil asked and then the smell provided an answer. "Hoo eee!"

  "He's closing down," Sally said. "And I'm betting it's not pleasant."

  "Can't you do anything?"

  "I could go back out–" She nodded to the windows. It was getting dark now. "–try find a pharmacy, get some morphine. Don't know how long it would take me…"

  "And those things'll be out there," Rick shouted from up the bus. "They come out at night." He nodded at Karl. "And you've seen what they can do."

  Virgil shuffled closer and then knelt upright, placing the thumb and forefinger of his left hand tightly on Karl's nose. "Cover his eyes," he said.

  Ronnie frowned, already fearing the worst even before he knew what was going to happen. "What?"

  "Oh my God," Sally said.

  "Cover his damn eyes!"

  Ronnie started to reach for Virgil's hand but stopped when the boy turned to look at him. "You know what they are?" When Ronnie didn't say anything, Virgil said, "They're windows to the soul, and he's watching me. Now cover the fucking eyes."

  Sally got to her feet and moved between the scene on the aisle and the girl on the seat. The girl's eyes were like saucers. She was holding a doll in her arms, cradling it tight against her chest, shaking her arms up and down. Sally sat next to her on the seat and gently eased an arm around the girl's shoulders.

  "What's your name?" she said. When the girl didn't say anything, Sally said, "My name's Sally. Won't you tell me yours?"

  Ronnie hung his head and placed his left hand over Karl's eyes. "Safe journey," he whispered.

  "Here," Johnny said. He handed a cheap ballpoint over to Rick and then watched as Rick slowly moved the pen towards the old man's face.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Johnny said.

  "I think… I think I saw something move in there."

  Virgil Banders waited until the map-reader seemed to have relaxed a little, and then he leaned forward and, still holding the man's nose, he pushed his right hand over Karl's mouth and pressed the man's head onto the floor, moving so that he now sat astride him.

  Angel turned her eyes to the woman. There was something about her – something very sad about her. "Angel," Angel Wurst said. "My mommy and daddy have sneaked off someplace."

  Angel, said the voices, Angel Wurst, they chorused.

  "What a beautiful name," Sally Davis said.

  Yes, whispered the voices. Beautiful.

  "My mommy and daddy have sneaked off someplace," Angel said softly, as though she were betraying a trust and exposing a secret.

  Perhaps she is, thought Sally.

  There was a thick clopping sound, like someone dancing, from behind the Sally woman. Angel moved her head to the side to see what was happening, but the Sally woman moved at the same time.

  "Sneaked off?"

  "We were on an airplane," Angel Wurst said, "and that man– " She pointed through Sally to the aisle. "–he flew us down."

  "Oh God," Ronnie said. "Oh God. Oh God."

  Can she be ours, mommy? the voices asked. Can she be our sister?

  Virgil grunted and pressed harder.

  Rick slid the pen into the old man's empty right eye socket.

  Johnny shuddered. "Jesus H. Chri–"

  The thing was a dull orange color, as far as they could make out in the dim light – the interior of the bus was now very dark.

  It flashed out of the old man's eye socket, seemingly attacking the pen – which Rick dropped as he fell backwards and struck his head on the vertical tubular bar. "What the hell…"

  Angel turned just in time to see it, to see what looked like a large light-colored fish flash against the pen held by one of the new men and leap from the old man's face and eye socket and onto the floor. The fish was all bulbous, its back a single eyeball that swiveled around, and along the sides it had a fringe of tiny trailing tendrils flying behind it like a tasseled jacket. Worst of all, she would recall much later, when a bad dream awoke her screaming in the deserted city of New York, it looked right at her and, just for a second or maybe three, it considered her. That was the only way she would ever be able to explain the thing: it considered me.

  The thing flashed once onto Johnny's arm – as Johnny bounced backwards – and scuttled further under the seats at the right of the bus. Johnny twisted around, jarring his damaged knee again, and yelped in pain. "What the fuck was that?"

  "Where did it go?" Ronnie said.

  Ronnie and Sally turned away, grateful for the distraction – though they didn't have any idea of what they were looking for – while Virgil pressed harder on Karl's face, riding him like a cowboy on a bucking bronco, the gyrations and grunts growing steadily weaker until, at last, they stopped completely.

  "It was like… it was like some kind of… of…"

  "Slug," Melanie offered. She scanned the seats leading down to the open door and saw the boy lift himself up from the guy on the floor.

  "You OK up there?" she said.

  Virgil nodded.

  Ronnie looked first at Karl and then at Virgil Banders, and finally at Karl again. The map-reader looked calm now and, though he had never been what you might call a God-fearing man, he sensed a release from pain for the man. He looked back to Virgil again and fought a mixture of feelings: admiration and revulsion. The boy seemed entirely unperturbed by what he had just done: he had smothered another man to death without so much as a by your leave.

  Sally moved back to the aisle, keeping herself between the body on the floor and the young girl, and felt the movie star's wrist. "He's dead," she said.

  Somewhere outside the sound of a motor engine started up, distant but slowly increasing in volume.

  "I don't think that's good news," Melanie said.

  Outside, the world had gone dark, darker than it had any right to be at this time, Ronnie thought.

  "They know we're here," Angel Wurst whispered. "And they're coming looking for us."

  Nobody said anything to that one. They just let it sit a while, fading away like soap bubbles. And then Rick took charge.

  "You want to get your people together?" he said to Ronnie.

  Ronnie nodded, squinting in the direction of the other man's voice. "You know who they are? These people?"

  "They're not people," Melanie said.

  "What are they, then?"

  Melanie looked over at the boy. He made her feel unclean but she put that down to the fact that he had just suffocated another man. She put it down to that but there was a gnawing feeling that there was more.

  "'Alien beings from a dying planet'," Ronnie said softly.

  "What?"

  Ronnie shook his head in Sally Davis's direction. "An old TV show. The Invaders. That was one of the opening lines."

  And nobody said anything to that, either.

  Sally and Melanie moved across to the little girl and Melanie put her arm around her. The girl shrugged her shoulders a couple of times, like a dog preparing its sleeping arrangements, and then she leaned her head against Melanie's chest and watched Sally Davis.

  "There are others," she said after a few seconds.

  Melanie looked do
wn at the top of the girl's head. "Others? You mean other people? People like us?" she added. She didn't feel they really wanted to find other people with big red slugs inside their eye sockets.

  Angel pointed at Sally. "Others with you," she said.

  Sally stared at the girl, feeling a quickening in her heart.