Echoes of Darkness

by Rob Smales

  And maybe a horse.

  a night at the show

  “My mom just has to check the calendar,” Valerie Redfern said in school on Monday. “Once she double-checks the calendar she’ll make up her mind. I know she’ll let me, though. So, can you come?”

  Checking the calendar seemed just silly to Hillary: what mom doesn’t know her own kid’s birthday? But Val came to her on Tuesday and told her it was on. The two of them, and Valerie’s mom, of course, were going to the movies on Friday night for Valerie’s ninth birthday.

  When Friday came they went to see Shrek 2—not Hillary’s first choice, but she wasn’t the birthday girl—at the Palladium, the oldest theater in Spreewald. Hillary had never been to the Palladium before, and was surprised when Mrs. Redfern parked on a street with no theater in sight.

  “The place is so old,” said Mrs. Redfern, “there’s no parking lot. You park where you can and walk the rest of the way. Come on.”

  Hillary was nervous for three of the four blocks they walked to the theater. The street was dirty, the sidewalk cracked, the buildings to either side old and grubby. Spray paint and boarded windows. Alleys swathed in shadow. She was pretty sure this was what her mother referred to as “the wrong part of town.” She remained nervous until they rounded a corner and the Palladium came into view: even from a block away, Hillary was enchanted.

  The Palladium was an ancient theater with bright lights and a brilliant marquee outside, and red carpeting and big, comfortable seats inside. The huge screen sat upon an old stage complete with an actual velvet curtain that opened to reveal the screen just before the movie, and closed after. The movie was even pretty good, both girls laughing and oohing along with each other as the story progressed. Valerie looked to be enjoying herself, while Hillary was having the time of her life.

  Eventually, though, the show was over and it was time to go home. They left the theater and strolled down the street, the girls smelling of buttered popcorn, heads together, still giggling about their favorite scenes. Hillary’d had such a good time, was still having such a good time, she forgot all about being nervous as they walked along in the night air.

  They were almost to the car when Mrs. Redfern stopped short, falling back a step to bump into the giggling girls. Peering around her, Hillary saw a big man leaning against the hood of Mrs. Redfern’s car, thick arms folded over his chest like he was waiting for a bus. Hillary didn’t think he was waiting for a bus, though. He was looking straight at them.

  That must be the stranger Mom always warned me about, Hillary thought. I’m glad Valerie’s mom is here, she’ll—

  “Uh, girls?” Mrs. Redfern turned, gripping their shoulders. “Why don’t we go back to the theater and—oh!”

  She stared over the girls’ heads, looking at something behind them. Hillary craned about to see, and saw another man, also big, a little more than a block away. He, too, stared at them, and her heart froze when his eyes shifted to meet hers.

  He smiled.

  “Oh, no,” whispered Valerie’s mom. “No. No-no.”

  Hillary looked up to see Mrs. Redfern’s head turning this way and that, eyes open wide, looking for help, but they were alone on the night-dark street. She saw the expression in those eyes and was shocked to realize that, grown-up or not, Mrs. Redfern was just as scared as she was. Valerie stiffened beside her.

  “Mom? He’s coming.”

  Mrs. Redfern turned back, and Hillary looked toward the car again. The man wasn’t leaning any more, but walking toward them. One hand reached into a pocket and came out holding something small, something Hillary couldn’t quite see, but it glittered in the light cast by the street lamps.

  “Hey, lady,” called the man behind them, voice rough and loud. “Where you going?”

  Mrs. Redfern’s fingers squeezed Hillary’s shoulder as the other man laughed. She suddenly dropped into a crouch, pointing. Hillary looked, followed the finger, and saw the mouth of an alley on the far side of the street. The grip on her shoulder became a sudden, hard shove. “Run!”

  They ran.

  Behind them, a pair of voices shouted:

  “Hey!”

  “I’ll go this way, you go that way! That way, that way!”

  Hillary didn’t look back, just put her head down, sprinting hard as they entered the alley, the girls leading.

  “Come on!” Mrs. Redfern moved ahead, catching each girl by a hand. She sped up, towing them along, pulling Hillary into a speed she never could have attained on her own. Tears streamed down the girl’s face, and she was already out of breath. Strangers back there—go faster, go faster echoed through her head as they approached the end of the alley and the relative brightness of the street beyond.

  Through the sounds of their feet slapping the pavement and her own heart pounding in her ears, she heard Mrs. Redfern’s voice.

  “Left! We’ll try to circle around to the car—go left!”

  Hillary nodded with a sob, lacking the breath to say anything more. She was being pulled along, taking huge, vaulting steps, her feet only touching the ground every six or eight feet. She was absurdly reminded of her visit to the bouncy house when the fair had been in town a few months ago. That had been fun.

  This was not.

  A shout in the alley behind them, deep and threatening, chased all thoughts of the fair from Hillary’s mind, replacing them with the wish that she could fly.

  They took the corner at a dead run. The towing hand banked Hillary into a full-speed curve out onto the sidewalk, inertia swinging her wide, missing a parked car by mere inches. She wanted to shout “Look out!” but she was crying far too hard to even try.

  She was no athlete, and her legs already burned with fatigue, though she dared not slow down; couldn’t slow down. She was being helped along, but her exhausted legs were having a hard time keeping up. She urged her feet to move faster, but they wouldn’t listen, feeling instead like she was wading through peanut butter. One of her sneaker-clad toes caught the sidewalk. She fell, her knees slamming to the pavement, shocking pain forcing a breathless scream. Her free hand also hit the cement, the rough surface taking skin off her palm. She fell, but did not slow. Mrs. Redfern gripped her hand hard, dragging Hillary a couple of steps before yanking her upward.

  “Come on, dear, please!”

  Hillary shuffled her feet under her once more and staggered on. Some dim part of her was aware of the terrible pain from her knees, but she was too terrified to pay attention right now.

  “Down here!”

  Mrs. Redfern jerked her sideways and then they were running down an alley Hillary hadn’t even noticed, too focused on staying on her feet to keep track of her surroundings. They were passing a pair of dumpsters, the security light above them beating back the shadows that ruled the alley, when Mrs. Redfern drew up short with two hissed words. “Too late.”

  Hillary looked up, panting, only to wish she hadn’t. A tall, dark shadow blocked the alley’s far mouth. A shadow that moved toward them with an easy, confident stride. Silhouetted as he was by the lights of the street beyond, she still made out the blade sprouting from one big fist.

  Hillary’s head whip-snapped as Mrs. Redfern spun them all about, taking a half step back the way they had come.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Not ten paces away was the man who had been chasing them. His chest heaved, and he glared at them as if angry he’d been forced to run. His knife didn’t glint or shine, the blade a flat black as it thrust out of his white-knuckled grip.

  “It’s too late,” repeated Mrs. Redfern, her head swiveling as she searched the alley. Hillary looked too, but saw nothing but steel security doors and barred windows: no escape. Though the men were in shadow, silhouetted against the streets at either end of this little space, the three of them were under the security lamp, as well-lit as the two dumpsters they stood next to. Mrs. Redfern grabbed their shoulders and thrust them between the dumpsters, into a six-foot-wide cave of moist stink. She knelt before the
m, whispering intensely, though Hillary barely heard her over the beating of her own heart.

  “Stay here, out of sight, all right? I’ll try to lead them away—when they follow me, you girls run, you understand? Run and get somewhere safe. Find the police.”

  Valerie was visibly trembling, shaking her head, murmuring “No, no, no, no.” Mrs. Redfern took her daughter’s face in her hands.

  “It’ll be all right. Just stay calm, okay? You can do this. Just try to stay calm and quiet. For Hillary. It’ll be fine, honey. We’ll keep Hillary safe.”

  A big hand fell on Mrs. Redfern’s shoulder, yanking her away from the girls. She didn’t fall, but spun to her feet, stepping away from the dumpsters, out of Hillary’s sight.

  “I asked you a question, bitch. You going somewhere?”

  “Just seeing a movie is all,” came Mrs. Redfern’s voice, frightened but in control. “I don’t want any trouble, okay? No trouble.”

  “Sorry lady,” came another voice; the man who’d blocked the other end of the alley. “That’s all we got is trouble.”

  Hillary listened, wide-eyed, trembling, heart still pounding in her ears. Through all that, even through the drama unfolding just out of sight around those dumpsters, she became aware of Valerie’s voice. Despite her mother’s admonishment to keep quiet, Valerie was standing with her head bowed and still shaking from side to side, repeating the same word with each jerk of the dark curtain of hair that hid her face from the world.

  “No-no-no-no—”

  Val was trembling so hard she looked like a marionette being worked by a palsied puppeteer, chest bouncing back and forth, shoulders jerking this way and that. Had Hillary ever even heard of a seizure, she would have thought of the word now. She hadn’t; all she knew was the way Valerie was moving looked wrong, and frightened her as much as everything else that was going on. She almost called out to Valerie’s mother for help, but the sound of male voices rising in anger was a forceful reminder that she needed to keep quiet. They needed to keep quiet.

  Wanting to reassure her, Hillary reached out to Valerie. She searched for something to say that might comfort her friend, might silence her, but could think of nothing but the here and now, and the fear. She laid a gentle hand upon Valerie’s twitching shoulder and the shaking and muttering stopped like a machine seizing up, the sudden stillness itself startling Hillary. She had one quick moment to think there, I helped her, everything’s gonna be okay.

  Valerie’s head snapped around so fast Hillary gasped—then reeled backward, shoulders and head striking the dumpster behind her with enough force to stun, though she barely noticed the impact.

  Valerie . . . wasn’t Valerie.

  What stared out at Hillary when the rippling barrier of hair was flung aside wasn’t the familiar smiling face of her dark-eyed schoolmate: it was a monster, a demon from Hell, like she’d seen in the stained glass the few times she’d been to church.

  The face—if she could call it a face—was elongated, stretched, the mouth and nose pushing forward, black lips pulled taut as the mouth widened. Expanded. The skin stretched and moved as things beneath it flexed and writhed. There was a series of cracks and snaps, like when the school bully had broken all her colored pencils one by one, but this was faster. Sharper.

  The mouth surged forward as she watched, straining the face still further, and there was a moment where she thought something’s in there, something’s in her head and it’s trying to get out before the black, flattened lips parted, spread wide, and Hillary could see what was trying to get out, what was filling that face to overflowing, forcing it to expand just to make room.

  Teeth.

  The lips skinned back to reveal a tangled forest of teeth, long and sharp and white against gums of red and black. So many teeth, even that great maw seemed crowded, packed with canines, incisors and molars. The mouth had to open, was forced to open by this terrible multitude of tooth and fang.

  And she could swear they were lengthening before her eyes.

  Hillary inhaled to scream, her gaze rising past the blackened, distended nose, so pushed and distorted the nostrils faced her rather than the ground. Coarse, tufted hair surrounded that mouth and nose—thickening and spreading even as she watched—to cover the cheeks, and the scream died in her throat when she found the thing’s eyes.

  Valerie’s eyes peered out at her from that hideous mask of growing horror. Valerie’s eyes: dark with anger, bright with rage, and filled with a terrible sorrow. It was that sadness, so strong it was nearly tangible, that closed Hillary’s throat against the scream that welled up within her like magma from a venting volcano. The scream rose, choked off, and died, the breath leaving Hillary in a whisper, raised brows turning the quiet sound into a question.

  “Valerie?”

  The terrible jaw cracked open, just a touch. Air hissed through that forest of fangs, an audible intake of breath as someone might make before speaking, preparing themselves for delivering bad news or telling a hard truth. The thing’s weight shifted, feet moving just a bit, as if beginning to take a step. One arm rose, half reaching toward her, and Hillary saw not a hand at the end of the arm but a claw, fingers far too long and with an extra knuckle each, tipped with talons curved like a fish hooks and just as sharp.

  She saw all this in a moment; then two things happened simultaneously.

  One was that Hillary took a half-step back, jerking away from that rising claw, fear slamming her against the dumpster once more, air rushing into her lungs in a mighty gasp.

  The other was that a sound came from out in the alley proper, penetrating the silent bubble that had enveloped their horrid little cave, cutting through the shock fogging Hillary’s mind and bringing back the drama unfolding in the alley where Mrs. Redfern was trying to save them all: the slap of flesh striking flesh and a woman’s voice crying out in pain.

  The thing that had been Valerie whirled to face the sound, moving so fast spittle flew from its half-open mouth, spraying the air in an arc before it. Hillary could see now just how far the thing’s muzzle protruded—an inhuman profile. Dropping into a crouch, it flexed shoulders that strained the seams of Valerie’s sweatshirt, thick and humped with so much muscle the head was thrust forward on its powerful neck. Those black lips, already skinned back, now peeled all the way to the dark flaring nostrils, baring fangs as long as Hillary’s fingers: a full nightmare’s-worth of teeth.

  The thing loosed a growl, the sound reaching out to tickle the base of Hillary’s spine with fingers of ice. She might have whimpered in fear, but there wasn’t time. The rumble deep within its chest exploded into a roar as the thing launched itself into motion, so fluid and fast that one instant it was there, the next it was gone. Hillary caught a glimpse of its sock-clad feet, the cotton shockingly white under the bright security lamp, disappearing from view as the thing leapt out into the alley.

  Distracted as she was by the black spots flicking in front of her eyes, she noticed the thing’s toes had burst through the socks, just as long and taloned as those crooked fingers. She stared at the scratches the hooked claws had left in the cement; just stared and listened to the sounds of the beast roaring and men screaming, one of them fading into the distance while the other remained somewhere close by, shrieking again and again until the sound cut off with the finality of a slamming door. The scratch marks grew closer as the dumpster slid up her back, those flicking black spots multiplying until they finally blocked out the world, and she let herself fall into their embrace.

  Hillary woke to a sound; a noise she knew she should recognize, but her head was filled with fog, and she couldn’t quite connect the dots.

  She also felt cement against her face. She pushed herself up from the ground, looking around bleary-eyed, finding nothing but dumpsters.

  Dumpsters?

  It all came back, a splash of cold water to the face—the movie, the men, the running . . . and then Valerie. Valerie going away and that terrible thing taking her place, that thing that had
worn Valerie’s clothes, had stood in Valerie’s place like it was . . . like it was . . .

  . . . like it was Valerie?

  The last thing she remembered was the Valerie-thing leaping, the men screaming—and she suddenly recognized the sound. Somewhere nearby, a young girl was crying. Weeping like her heart was breaking in two and she wasn’t sure yet whether she’d survive. Someone was murmuring quiet words of comfort. Hillary could make out nothing of the words, but recognized the voice of the girl doing the sobbing—and was surprised. It was a voice she’d heard laughing, being tough, being funny, but never crying. Not even once, no matter how mean the other kids were at school. It sounded like—

  “Valerie?”

  The word was a croak, her mouth too dry. She worked her tongue, trying to dredge up some moisture. The rough cement bit her palms, then her bruised and painful knees as she slowly got to her feet, her voice coming as saliva found her mouth.

  “Valerie?”

  Louder, but there was still no response. She looked out into the open and her eye was caught by something she hadn’t noticed before: boots, large and black, lying on the tarmac. Jeans-clad legs sprouted from the boots, sprawling across the ground past the edge of one of the dumpsters sheltering her and out of sight. Her voice came a third time, a mere whisper pulled from her through reflex, unconsciously responding to her best friend’s voice. Hillary stepped out into the alley. The jeans-clad legs led up to a man. She was unsteady, felt . . . disconnected. There was a soft buzzing in her ears, and the world around her was foggy. If she concentrated, though, she could make just a little bit of the world clear again.

  Hillary focused, her eyes following the man’s form. Knees, bent this way and that, as if he were a doll cast aside by a careless child. The jacket thrown open, shirt pulled up to expose a bulge of hairy white belly. Beside the man, one of his hands clutched the ground. She noticed the way his fingernails had shattered against the blacktop, ragged chunks of nail and skin mixing with the blood that trailed along the ground for about a half a foot before pooling beneath his ruined fingers.