The Nightmare Within

by Glen Krisch

  Maury crawled around to the side of the house, and once clear of the driveway, he hurried to the back corner of the house. The sleetfall thickened, and his face felt raw and numb. Melt water dripped down his skin under his clothes, and he couldn't feel his toes. None of this mattered, not as long as Juliet was inside. He heard the front door open, and then slam shut. Then all was silent, the stinging sleet had disappeared, the rush of his pulse in his own ears ebbed. He had to do something. He couldn't let them find Juliet.

  His mind raced, and all he could imagine was Juliet locked up by the government, locked up like all the other dreams that had found their immortality. Locked up in perpetuity, immortal yet trapped forever in a cell. Maury ran to the sliding glass door at the back of the house. If someone was going to be caught, it was going to be him. At least he could find release from imprisonment through death. Juliet did not have that luxury. Lights flicked on inside, one section of the house after another spurred to life. Maury picked up a metal patio chair, felt his wet hands freeze to the cold metal. When he had the weighty chair up over his shoulder and ready to swing, the sliding glass door opened. Juliet slipped outside, her eyes wide and luminous. Maury dropped the chair and could not help pulling her close in a nervous hug. She kissed him furiously, her warm lips like salvation. They ran away through the backyard before anyone became aware of their presence.

  By the time they reached the rented car at the Laundromat parking lot four blocks away, Maury was frozen through. He hurried to the passenger side door and somehow was able to get the key in the lock to open it. Juliet gave him a peck on the cheek and climbed in.

  Maury could feel every aching bone in his frozen feet, but pain was only a secondary thought now, pushed away by happiness. His life was starting fresh. Once inside, he turned the engine over, immediately blasting the heat on full.

  "I didn't think I could to it." Juliet's cheeks were rosy and her eyes watered from the cold and sleet.

  "I saw. I was afraid, too. I thought you were going to back out."

  "She opened her eyes. When she saw me and was afraid, as if I was some kind of monster, a nightmare to escape from, I knew I could do it. I had to do it."

  Maury leaned over, placed a hand on her stomach. Juliet wore layers of clothes under her coat, but Maury could still feel the beginnings of a swell to her belly. He might have also felt a kick from his unborn baby, but he knew it was too early for that. "You did what you had to do. Barbara could have…"

  "I know. I'm still not happy about it. But the baby… I couldn't let anything happen."

  Maury kissed her cheek, patted her belly with a gentle hand, and then put the car in reverse. He drove carefully, obeying all the rules of the road. He came to a full stop at all stop signs, and signaled when switching lanes. Maury Bennett was starting the life he didn't know he wanted until it fell into his lap, almost as if by accident. A life that seemed obvious now; a life of happiness and fulfillment. He wasn't going to do anything to ruin it.

  Shortly after Kevin told his mom about Reid, and how his father abused him because he couldn't help going mad every once in a while, she started making phone calls. Her calls led to an investigation by the Department of Children and Family Services. A state mandated physical exam revealed that Reid had suffered two broken ribs that had never healed properly. He also had a chipped eyetooth, most likely caused by his father's balled fists. His torso and back were rife with bruises in various states of healing. Black, purple, brown--a riot of colors like a quickly advancing storm.

  While Reid wasn't pleased one bit with the investigation, or the prodding of doctors or the questioning lawyers, his injuries healed. DCFS learned that his biological mom had moved to Europe the previous year, without letting her ex-husband or son know of her whereabouts. After weeks of chasing down dead end leads, they finally tracked her down. Her comment was short, and precise:

  "Go ahead, take the little shit."

  It took nearly a year of wrestling with the court system and DCFS, but by the time the leaves were falling the next year, Kevin had a brother. While not a blood brother, Reid seemed more of a big brother than he could ever imagine. Their brotherly connection was so strong, it seemed liked they had grown up their entire lives together. Once he got over wondering when the next punch would come, just because someone went a little mad, Reid accepted his new family, and eventually, he embraced them as his own. He left his juvenile delinquent trajectory and went to school regularly. Carin doted on him and treated him like her own flesh and blood.

  The addition of Reid to their family came at a transitional time for all of them. It was a time of self-doubt and self-blame, of healing the wounds that would heal and learning to live with the ones that they would take to the grave.

  Every once in a while Kevin would dream of Mr. Freakshow. Such an integral shaper of his life, it was not surprising for Kevin to wake every month or so knowing the Freak had been there, inside his head, a subject of his dreams. But since the night at their old house in Warren Cove, dreaming of Mr. Freakshow wasn't a nightmare. These dreams were of triumph, of overcoming loss and desperate odds. When Kevin would wake from these dreams, knowing he had encountered his one-time tormentor, he woke with a sense of calm.

  The End

  ###

  Coming Soon!

  WHERE DARKNESS DWELLS

  Prologue

  Knowing he wouldn't comprehend the weight of her words, Greta spoke to her son. "People I love are going to suffer."

  Kneeling near the kitchen table, Arlen worked a mound of clay against the wooden floor. Face taut with concentration, he rolled the gray slab into thin bands. He pulled off smaller pieces and worked these as well, setting aside finished pieces to a larger whole.

  She wanted him to more than hear her voice; she wanted him to understand. She was desperate to share her burden. But it was her burden and hers alone to bear. Involving others would ruin any prospect of ending decades of pain and the degradation of human life. If people had to die to reach this end, it had to play out through its natural course. Otherwise, nothing would change.

  So she voiced her worries to the only person she could.

  "Mama, we still gonna be together?" Arlen asked. He looked up from the floor where his claywork took shape. Her son was no longer a boy. He hadn't been a boy in so long, yet he still had a child's mind. His tangled beard was graying, his scraggly pate thinning. While he lived with childlike exuberance, time weighed on her heavily, slowing her movements and shrinking her bones. She was an old woman, near her end.

  Innocence shined in Arlen's eyes. He minded adults and would never purposely cause anyone grief. He had such a kind soul. Given the choice, she wouldn't want him to change. She wouldn't risk losing who he was for anything.

  "We'll always be together," she answered him. "I will always be in your heart."

  Soothed by her words, his mind flitted to other matters. He picked up a small gray blob and rolled it in his palm. "I miss picking with the others. I don't mind my gopher hole, but it ain't the same as the old mine."

  Arlen had worked for years as a pile sorter for the Grendal Coal Company. Picking coal was a job fit for a child, sitting atop a tipple pile all day, sorting valuable ore from the waste rock. When the company left Coal Hollow seven years ago, Arlen was twenty years older than the other pile sorters. They'd given him the job, aware he could never advance beyond it.

  "You're doing a good thing for your mom, digging that gopher hole."

  Arlen grinned. The best part of his smile was an aged, yellow ivory. The rest, empty gaps and decay.

  It had been Arlen's idea to open the gopher hole at their property's edge overlooking Tipple Road. Townsfolk stopped off the main north-south road through Coal Hollow, buying coal Arlen had dug from the shallow mine. High-grade ore ran in thin, twisting veins just below the topsoil--all he had to do was scratch the surface. People would procure enough fuel to warm their homes, allowing Arlen to help support his mom. There were other places to buy fue
l--stores and other gopher holes aplenty--but people went out of their way to buy from Arlen.

  He pieced together the finished pieces of clay, realizing the image from his muse.

  She could tell his thoughts were skittering off to the starry skyscape of his mind. She continued: "I could point to certain people on the streets of Coal Hollow, say, 'You will be dead by the first frost.'"

  Arlen looked up from his claywork, staring out the window as the moon rose above the trees, a beacon cutting softly through the nighttime sky.

  "But it has to be. Has to be, or nothing will change."

  Arlen smiled. Her voice had always soothed him.

  "Sometimes death leads to life. Sometimes there's a greater good." She thought back to the visit from the two boys earlier today. They'd come to her, as all the town's children did at one point or another, to hear her stories. Looking those boys in the eye, she told her tales, setting them on the path to their end. "Until the day I die, I will damn my ancestors for cursing me with this supposed gift."

  Arlen scooped up his artwork, offering it to her.

  She held the gift in shaking hands. A gray flower more delicate than the clay of its origin. Finely articulated petals, a thin, twisting stem. Beauty rendered from a slab of shapeless gray earth.

  She smiled. It was all the thanks Arlen needed, all the approval he so desperately sought. He looked away, staring again at the rising moon.

  No, she would never wish her son to be different, to be normal. To be whole. He was more than the sum of his parts, more than whole. And he was a better person than her. Better than those who came before her.

  Part I:

  1.

  July 8, 1934

  George Banyon climbed into bed, shucking his blanket to the floor. He was exhausted from rising at dawn and hastily working through his chores around the farm, from meeting up with his friends later on, and as the sun set, attempting to impress Betty Harris by swinging from a tattered rope into the Illinois River's murky water. Just one day in what seemed like an endless string, but regrettably, it would soon end. Soon he would have to behave like a man. After all, a month shy of seventeen, he would be graduating the following spring.

  On the cusp of sleep moments after hitting the pillow, a tapping at the window nudged him fully awake.

  Sitting up, sluggish sweat dripped from his sunburned skin. He looked across the darkened one-room farmhouse to Ellie's bed. His younger sister hadn't stirred. It amazed George that she could sleep so soundly with a blanket tucked over her shoulder. Their father, sitting in his handmade rocker, had passed out hours ago.

  George swung his legs to the floor and stood, hoping the floorboards wouldn't reveal his late night creeping. He knew who was tapping and so he took his time. Jimmy Fowler, his best friend since either boy could walk. Whenever anything caught Jimmy's interest long enough that he couldn't keep it to himself until morning, he would come tapping on George's window. But right now, all George wanted was to stop sweating, and to fall into a deep and welcomed sleep. He went to the open window, not a hint of breeze to bring a moment's relief, and saw Jimmy's scruffy blond head. His blue eyes caught the moonlight, revealing his excitement. He gave it off like a pig's stinking breath.

  "Get your fishing tackle," Jimmy whispered.

  "Are you nuts? I got to get up at five a.m."

  "Forget your chores. Won't matter after tonight."

  "You're still thinking about old Greta's story?"

  "I say we find out if it's true or not. If it's all made up, all that's lost is some sleep, but if we do track down the beast…"

  "Come on, Jimmy. I'm tired."

  "Just think what Betty Harris will think when we catch 'em."

  George's heart fluttered. He tried not to show it. He'd had trouble speaking to Betty ever since the sixth grade when he suddenly realized she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. But something had changed since school let out this summer. Her friends became friendly with his, mostly because Jimmy's girl, Louise Bradshaw, was friends with Betty.

  "You really think Betty would be impressed?"

  "Sure she would. Maybe she'd even let you take her to a movie."

  George immediately started planning a first date with Betty. Borrowing a car, getting gas to drive to Peoria, ticking off a list of stuff to talk about during the drive. George pushed it all aside, not wanting the dizzying possibility of being alone with Betty to muddle his thoughts.

  He would sneak out with Jimmy; he knew it as soon as Jimmy mentioned her name. George sighed in defeat. "Let me get my things." He looked at Ellie to make sure she was still asleep.

  Then, as quietly as possible, George gathered a lantern, his fishing pole and tackle, and a stale hunk of bread for bait. He lowered everything down through the window to Jimmy.

  "You won't regret this."

  "Even if we do catch it, I bet we'll wish we hadn't." He looked in on his meager house. His little sister, who was for the most part more joy than trouble, and then his dad. He would be out for a good while yet and wouldn't notice a thing. George's stomach soured as he headed out the window.

  Jimmy stopped him with a raised hand. "I got an idea."

  "I hate when you say that."

  "How about we bring along your dad's gun?"

  "You really want me to get a whooping, don't you?"

  "I see him over there in his rocker. He won't miss it a second."

  George was about to ask why he thought it necessary to haul around such a weapon on a late night fishing trip. But he already knew the answer.

  "Shit." His dad's cherished over/under was a true killing machine, twin shotgun barrels mounted over a still-deadly .30 chamber. "Fine. But he'll notice it's gone before he sees my bed's empty."

  Hearing multiple meanings to his own words, he grabbed the gun from the rack on the nearby wall.

  Of all their possessions, only the gun seemed to shine. Everything else was worn and tired. The years since The Crash had been rough on everyone, but around the Banyon place, it'd been a sorry sight long before '29. Ever since their mom died giving birth to Ellie, and their father's heavy drinking became commonplace. Yeah, things had been rough, much worse than he let on, even to his best friend, Jimmy Fowler. George held the gun protectively as he climbed out the window.

  Despite the lantern, George couldn't see his feet, let alone anything up ahead. Greta Hildaberg said they'd find the cavern's hidden entryway after passing the untended acreage a mile outside Coal Hollow. Just over the last ripple of the last hillock, George could remember her saying. Before the land turned rocky and no longer tillable, through dense brambles and tangled cockleburs. While all of Coal Hollow's children listened to Greta's stories, most everyone thought that's all they were. Stories. But Jimmy, crazy Jimmy Fowler--if they weren't best friends and he didn't look up to him so much, George'd still be in bed.

  Jimmy gained some ground on him, snapping twigs and cussing at the tearing undergrowth. As George's mind drifted to his morning chores--making Ellie's breakfast, making sure she brushed her teeth, and the cord of wood needing splitting--the sounds ahead disappeared. George suddenly felt alone, as if a rift in the earth had opened up and swallowed Jimmy, leaving him in the middle of God knows, not knowing the way home from his own elbow. He quickened his pace, still mindful of the grasping branches, the twisting roots.

  When he broke through an opening in the undergrowth, he found Jimmy's legs kicking out behind him, his top half buried in the ground. If George weren't so scared, he would've found the discovery quite comical, but right now humor was the last thing on his mind. He ran to Jimmy, grabbed his thrashing feet, and pulled hard.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Jimmy cried out.

  George let go, embarrassed. "Your legs were shaking. I thought you were in some kind of trouble." Thought something dragged you off, George wanted to say, but held his tongue.

  Field grass filled the entryway as Jimmy stood. If George hadn't watched Jimmy pull free from the hole, he would
n't have given the grassy berm a second look.

  "I think this is it." Even in the dark, George could see his beaming smile.

  "That hole there?"

  "It opens up after a few feet. I tossed a rock down a ways, and it just kept going. Sounds pretty deep."

  "Are we going in?" George asked, his confidence fleeting with the passing seconds. He hoped Jimmy would change his mind. Not even thinking about impressing Betty Harris lent him much courage.

  "Of course we are. We've got a legend to slay. We'll be heroes."

  "Right. Heroes. The two of us."

  White Bane. The words prickled George's spine. A two hundred pound albino catfish trolling a vast underground lake. The lake was real enough. It had given the local miners constant fits before the Grendal Coal Company pulled stakes. Decades ago, George's distant cousin died in a flooded shaft. A handful of miners drowned when an ill-placed TNT bundle breached the wall of the underground lake. The men died a half mile down, no one near enough to hear their all-too-brief screams.

  Greta would speak about White Bane in her quiet, raspy voice, warning about a beast that ate children who went wandering where they shouldn't. As old as the hills, the catfish had long white whiskers and pink, unwavering eyes. White Bane could smell fear, would be brought to frenzy by it, leaping ashore to snatch at children with its jaws, or whipping them with its powerful tail. Either way, the result was the same. You weren't going home.

  George was about to put his foot down by suggesting they wait until it was light out to take on this particular adventure. But crazy Jimmy Fowler had already thrown his tackle inside and was shimmying into the mouth of the hole. His torso disappeared, then his legs. With a grunt, Jimmy kicked off with his heel against a jutting rock, then was gone.

  "Hand me your tackle." Jimmy's filthy hand snaked from the hole, his fingers grasping for George's tackle box.