by Sean Platt
“What are you talking about?” Brent asked, now glancing at Luis, also stone-faced.
“We’re calling it The Collapse. And we’ve known it was going to happen for years.”
Brent stayed silent. He was certain his expression was louder than words, anyway.
“The four of us have been dreaming of this day and hour since we were children. We found one another five years ago on some message boards, and started researching this thing, trying to prepare. We even came up with a name for ourselves,” Stan said with a laugh, “We call ourselves the 215 Society.”
Okay, that’s it, I’m outta here. Brent began to think of a way to get the hell out of the room without offending Luis.
“We’re not crazy,” Melora said with a professorial smile. “We’ve been dreaming of this moment for most of our lives. Something in the dream told us that the world would be gone and we had to prepare.”
“Prepare? How?” Brent asked, his curiosity getting the better of him even if he was chasing delusion. It wouldn’t be the first time he entertained some loon with crazy, tin foil hat stories.
“Well, we never really knew, to be honest,” Stan said, “At first, we thought we were supposed to warn people. We tried that, but nobody listens to you when you say the world’s gonna end. And we didn’t want to lose our jobs or get thrown in the loony bin. So we kept mum, just trying to be ready in whatever ways we could.”
“Wait,” Brent said, looking around the room, and trying to see into the hall, which likely led to a single bedroom and bath. “You said there were four of you; where’s the fourth?”
“We haven’t seen her yet,” Melora said. “She was supposed to come here last night to wait with us. But she never showed.”
“So you all stayed here for the end of the world? What happened at 2:15 a.m.?” Brent asked. “Did you see people vanish? Was there some big light from a UFO? Was God here? What happened?”
Melora smiled one of those smiles that someone gives you when they’re looking down on you. “You think we’re crazy, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Brent said, “I’m just looking for my family and would like to know what the hell happened.”
“They’re gone,” Luis said from behind. “They’re all gone.”
Brent was getting pissed, but kept his attention on Melora as he spoke. “They’re not gone. I’m going to find them.”
“I’m afraid Luis is right,” Melora said. “Everyone is gone. Which is why I’m confused. You didn’t answer my question before. Have you not had the dreams, too?”
“No,” Brent said, standing. “I didn’t have any crazy dreams. I told you what happened and now I’m going to go out to find my family. Thank you for your time and your . . . stories.”
Brent pushed his way past Luis, who didn’t bother to stop him.
“Wait,” Stan called out, his voice hyper. “There’s something you’ve gotta see.”
Brent was going to ignore him, just head the hell out of there, get back out on the street and leave Crazy Town. But again, his reporter’s curiosity tugged at him. Even if these people didn’t know what the hell was happening, he wanted to understand what they thought was going down.
“What?” Brent asked, going to the kitchen where Stan and Melora were pulling something from a box. A small video recorder.
Stan handed it to Brent.
“Press play.”
He did.
The camera showed the time in the bottom right corner. 2:14 a.m. The scene was the room he was in now, except the chairs and couch were all moved aside, and the three 215ers were sitting on the floor talking.
“Should be any minute now,” Stan said in the video.
Melora started to say something and then the power went out.
The camera switched to night vision green and showed all three fall to the ground, unconscious. There was some static. Brent watched the screen, waiting for them to move, but they didn’t. They were out cold. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they dropped dead right there.
“That’s it until an hour later, when we woke up,” Stan said. “Then we went out and drove around the city to confirm what we thought.”
“I drove around the city,” Luis corrected him.
“Yes,” Stan agreed.
“Okay, so you recorded yourselves ‘passing out’ at the same time; what’s that supposed to prove?” Brent asked.
Melora reached into the box and pulled out another recorder. “This is the one we put in an apartment two doors down. One of several we placed in other apartments, I might add. Without anyone’s knowledge, of course.”
She handed it to Brent, and he pressed play.
2:14 a.m.
The scene was inside someone’s bedroom, a king-sized bed. The camera was already on night vision. Next to the bed, Brent saw a clock’s face that read 2:10. He could see the shapes of a man and woman in bed, the guy hogging the blankets, the woman curled against him. He could hear one of them snoring.
The alarm clock went black.
“That’s the power outage,” Melora said.
Brent kept watching.
More static, this time accompanied by a five second burst of a high pitched whistle like a tea kettle if the tea kettle’s sound were filtered through a high velocity fan.
And then something came into view of the camera and Brent jumped. The camera fell from his hands.
“What the fuck was that?!”
Stan, surprisingly agile, grabbed the camera before it hit the ground. He rewound it to where Brent had left off and handed it back.
Something that looked like a dark cloud had formed all at once over the bed, a swirling mass of slow moving smoky tendrils. Except it moved more like smoke if it were in liquid form. Brent stared in horror as two long tentacles of darkness twisted and snaked down toward the sleeping bodies. Just as one of the tentacles creeped toward the woman’s head, the image flickered
More static and the high-pitched weird teakettle noise whistled for the longest five seconds of Brent’s entire life. The static cleared. When it did, the bed was empty.
The time in the corner read 2:15 a.m.
TO BE CONTINUED...IN EPISODE TWO ON AUGUST 22, 2011
* * * *
ALSO BY SEAN PLATT & DAVID WRIGHT
AVAILABLE DARKNESS
The Darkness has awoken.
FBI Special Agent Caleb Baldwin is on the hunt for a serial killer who has left a trail of burned bodies. One of those victims – his wife. As he gets closer to finding the killer, he falls deeper into an elaborate conspiracy.
A man wakes buried alive with no memory of who or what he is. In his pocket, a note: “Avoid the sunlight and don’t touch anybody.” Now he is being hunted by the FBI while trying to remember his monstrous past. He must control the darkness within before it consumes him and the child whose life he must protect.
11-year-old Abigail was dying slowly each day as the prisoner of a sick man. Until she is saved by the most unlikely of heroes – a vampire with a deadly touch. He is her only hope, and she may hold the key to unlocking the memories of his hidden past.
Past, present, fate, and future are on a collision course as the hours of AVAILABLE DARKNESS are ticking away and a force greater than anything the world has ever seen threatens humanity.
Available Darkness is the first book in an epic journey that reinvents vampire mythology with a fast paced, character-driven thriller that blends action, mystery, fantasy, and horror in an addictive, tragically romantic story.
AVAILABLE NOW
Visit https://AvailableDarknessBook.com for more information and to get sneak peeks at the next exciting book in the Available Darkness trilogy.
* * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sean Platt is author of the books Four Seasons, Penny to a Million, Writing Online, and co-wrote Available Darkness and the Yesterday’s Gone series.
In addition to being a regular contributor for Copyblogger.com, the
Web’s premier content marketing site, Sean has written copy for some of the largest writing and lifestyle blogs on the Web.
A new breed of publisher, Sean writes and publishes nonfiction and fiction in several genres ranging from children’s books to horror. Sean is a co-founder of the publishing imprint Collective Inkwell Media.
He is available for speaking events aimed at writers, publishers, and creative entrepreneurs, as well as for individual consultation.
Sean is living the writer's dream in Ohio with his wife and two children.
Connect with Sean at:
[email protected]
https://ghostwriterdad.com
https://twitter.com/seanplatt
https://facebook.com/ghostwriterdad
https://collectiveinkwell.com
David W. Wright is a former newspaper reporter and cartoonist. He is co-author of Available Darkness and the Yesterday’s Gone series. He is also working on an illustrated children’s book for preschoolers.
He writes about self-publishing at:
https://CollectiveInkwell.com
He blogs and rants about writing, pop culture, and other stuff at: https://DavidwWright.com
David lives on the East Coast with his wife, his four year old son, and the world’s most annoying cat.
Connect with David at:
https://twitter.com/thedavidwwright
https://collectiveinkwell.com
https://davidwwright.com
