Lords Of Twilight

by Greg F. Gifune

  “In this storm?”

  “Aw hell,” Clyde chuckled, “this ain’t a storm. Not yet.”

  At this point in Boston the grocery stores would’ve been packed with frantic shoppers, schools would’ve closed and people would’ve been hurrying home. Up here, it evidently had to get far worse before people paid attention.

  “Won’t be a storm for a few hours yet,” he added. “Figured after that business over at Dwight’s it’d do us good to head out a while. You ought to come with us one of these days.”

  “Hunting’s not my thing.” Lane had purchased a shotgun not long after he moved to Edgar but had yet to fire it. In fact, he hadn’t fired a gun of any kind in years. “I couldn’t kill unless it was in self-defense.”

  “Only thing we ever kill is time. It’s mostly an excuse to get out and away from everything a spell, walk around out in the woods, have a little peace.”

  A while later, after they’d readied the generator, gotten it up to the house and Clyde had headed home, Lane took Vince for a lengthy walk around the property. The snow was slowly building, gradually getting worse, and he knew the opportunities to take the dog out to do his business would progressively become fewer and farther between. He couldn’t shake the story Clyde had told him, and kept trying to figure out how Dwight Maynard could’ve gotten to the summit of that hill without leaving tracks. He knew Clyde well enough to be certain he’d never lie about such things. Yet it simply wasn’t possible. Either Clyde was mistaken, or as he suggested, Dwight had been dropped there from above. Lane couldn’t help but wonder if any of this had to do with his recent feelings of paranoia and being watched. Maybe something truly unexplainable was happening in this town and he had somehow sensed or tapped into it.

  Christ, I sound like a lunatic.

  The snow whipped about, stinging his cheeks and scratching at his eyes. Lane gave Vince’s leash a gentle tug. The dog had finished relieving himself and had spent the last few minutes frolicking about and enjoying the snowfall. Lane looked up. The sky was mostly obscured with blowing snow, but he could make out the trees along the back of the property just beyond the outbuilding. Their branches, curled, twisted and dark, stripped bare as blackened bones, shifted in the wind, reaching for him through the whirlwind of flakes. He pictured something moving rapidly through the trees, closing on him like a violently charging animal disguised as a rush of wind and bringing with it darkness and feelings of dread and hatred Lane couldn’t even begin to fully comprehend.

  Something brushed his leg.

  Vince had moved closer and was sitting at Lane’s feet, his playful and carefree manner replaced with something more sullen and distracted. Watching the same trees, his little dark eyes squinted and blinked rapidly.

  “You feel it too,” Lane mumbled. “Don’t you?”

  The dog moved closer still, pushing his way between Lane’s feet until he was sitting between his legs.

  Almost like he’s trying to hide.

  Lane wiped snow from his eyes and continued staring at the trees, but they offered nothing more. A quiet filled the air, the kind one experiences only in winter. It is an eternal and final sound of silence one feels down to the deepest recesses of one’s being. But on this day, there was something within that silence Lane had never experienced before. He couldn’t hear them, but he knew what they were. He could feel them so strongly they might as well have been emanating from his own throat. Screams. Bloodcurdling screams of horror, pain and unimaginable terror.

  Yet they didn’t make a sound. There was only the wind.

  Clutching the leash tightly, Lane turned and led Vince back to the house.

  THREE

  There is something about this particular blackbird in the window that concerns him. There is something…wrong…something wrong with this blackbird.

  “Who are you?” he asks it.

  The barking gets louder…closer…and the familiar click of his dog’s nails on the floor distracts him, tears him from the eyes of the blackbird.

  There, in the doorway to his bedroom, is the dog, barking and wagging his tail with equal ferocity. Same as the dog, he isn’t sure if he should be happy or frightened. Strange. Why should he be frightened of his own puppy?

  It is then he realizes the dog is no longer the puppy he once was. Though not yet a full grown dog, he is considerably larger than he was previously. But how could that be?

  Time. It’s not right. It’s backward, it’s…wrong…blurred somehow…

  He remembers a bit more. How long ago was it that these horrible wounds were inflicted upon him?

  Days? Weeks? Months?

  The dog is virtually unharmed. He remembers wrapping him in the only blanket he had, keeping the puppy warm rather than himself.

  “It’s OK, boy,” he tells the dog, his voice unfamiliar and slurred.

  The dog backs away into the other room. The barking ceases.

  He wonders if he’s dreaming. Yes, I…I must be.

  After all, that horrible night was in the past. He survived it. Imprisoned by what he could never tell anyone, he’d fallen from the darkness just as the Lords of Twilight had fallen from the heavens, through the night to the blinding light of winter.

  The authorities found him in the snow, in the aftermath of an epic winter storm, collapsed and dying, his faithful pup at his side and refusing to leave him even when they transported him to the hospital via ambulance. “They’re here,” he managed to tell those working so furiously to save him. But they could not hear him.

  No one could.

  Still, this makes no sense. That was all in the past. It’s over with now and he’s safe, he has returned to Boston and lives with his friend Russell. He has plans to put his life back together and begin again. So how could—

  From the corner of his eye he sees movement and follows it to the window. The blackbird is still there, still staring at him with those horrible black eyes. What does it want? Those eyes, they…they’re so…it’s like they can see right through him and yet there is something undeniably mesmerizing about them. Fearful they’re hypnotizing him somehow, he tries to look away but can’t. So he studies them harder, staring into the inky pools and allowing them to take him deeper until he sees his own dark reflection in them.

  And behind him, something else…someone standing in the corner of the bedroom…

  * * * *

  The house filled with the smell of homemade beef stew. Lane had made and refrigerated a batch the day before and returned a portion of it to the top of the woodstove to heat it up. He dipped a wooden spoon into the mixture—chunks of beef, carrots, potatoes, onion and celery—and gave it a healthy stir. The thick gravy bubbled and popped, so he removed it from the heat and placed the pan on the counter. Vince’s tail slapped Lane’s leg, signaling he’d followed him from the den to the kitchen. “Smells pretty good, doesn’t it?” The tail wagged faster. “Sorry pal, you’re still too little for people food.” To illustrate his disagreement, Vince gave a grumbling moan somewhere between a low growl and a whine, so Lane grabbed a dog treat from a plastic bag on the counter he’d been using to aid in training and handed one over. Vince took it but was less than enthused with the payoff. As Lane tore a hearty piece of Italian bread from a fresh loaf and fixed himself a bowl of stew, Vince stayed close, hoping for a spill or renegade crumb. When Lane sat at the table and began to eat, the dog realized it wasn’t to be, and with a defeated sigh, curled up at his feet.

  Unfortunately, even the simple pleasure of a tasty meal was short-lived.

  As Lane chased some stew with a sip of beer his mind wandered and he found himself thinking about his ex-wife Claire. It was her recipe, after all, she’d taught him how to make it. It was impossible to move through even his mundane existence without thinking of her regularly. Everywhere he looked, she was there. With the exception of his childhood, she haunted each and every memory as either a main character or a peripheral extra. And why shouldn’t she? Claire had been the love of his life, and he
’d been hers. He wondered what she was doing at that exact moment. He hadn’t seen her in more than a year. Did she look the same? Did she ever think of him? Did she miss him? Did she miss them as much as he did? Had she moved on and started dating yet? Would he ever have a chance to just sit and talk with her again? How extraordinary the simple things he’d once taken for granted seemed now. He’d have given just about anything to sit and watch television with her the way they’d once done, or spend an afternoon curled up on the couch reading or going out to dinner together to one of their favorite restaurants. He’d lost his wife, best friend and confidant all in the single stroke of a pen, and a life where he didn’t have to consider Claire because she no longer played a part in it was still foreign to him. Worse, it not only made for a hopelessly lonely existence, but one he felt the need to question constantly. Was it necessary, this so-called life he was leading? Was he necessary? The two things that most defined him—being a husband and his career as a teacher—were no longer a part of his life, so what the hell was the point?

  He picked at the stew, his appetite gone.

  In the couple hours since Clyde had left, the storm had picked up quite a bit. The wind was steadily becoming stronger, coming in increasingly violent bursts that shook and rattled the small house and blew the snow into mounting drifts. He imagined Clyde and the others stumbling through the forest with their hunting rifles, looking for deer and aliens, soundless helicopters, flying saucers and MIB hiding in the trees. Madness. Lane slid the bowl of stew away, stood up and strode into the bathroom just off the kitchen. In a small mirror over the sink, his reflection froze him in his tracks. He barely recognized himself. The younger, healthier and better-looking version he saw in his mind and memory had virtually no relation to the man staring back at him. The lines in his face had deepened considerably in the last year, his complexion had grown pale and haggard, and his thinning hair had turned almost entirely gray. His eyes were glassy, dim, saddled with black bags and locked in a perpetual state of sorrow. He looked exhausted. Ravaged. Ruined.

  Lane grabbed his beer and retreated to the den, Vince following dutifully on his heels. It was a cramped and dim little room, with its low ceilings and cheap yard sale furniture. The two windows facing the front of the property were caked with snow, making visibility beyond them difficult. He stood there a moment and watched the storm. Snow and rain dripped along the pane, trickled down the casing. One piece of ice in particular caught Lane’s eye, and he watched it slide along the glass until it fell from sight.

  Looking back on it later, he assured himself it had only been a trick of the light or the fault of his tired, bleary eyes. But in the moment, he saw something that defied the laws of physics. The window rippled, moving like a sheet of water might, in liquid motion from the bottom of the pane to the top, as if for just a second the solid piece of glass had transformed into a slowly coursing wave gently rolling across the surface of the window. And in that strange and disconcerting moment, the storm beyond the window ceased to exist, replaced instead with darkness the depths and totality of which Lane had never before seen or even imagined. An endless night void of life or warmth, barren and unforgiving…silent and still…

  Like space, he thought, a vast expanse of cold, empty space.

  Lane glanced down at the beer bottle in his grasp. His hand was shaking. The window, and everything beyond it, had returned to normal. This time the dog seemed unaffected.

  The window had apparently been Lane’s hallucination and Lane’s alone. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand.

  “Hell’s happening to me?”

  With a sigh he moved to a comfortable chair in the corner and sat down. On the small table next to it was a remote control and the book he’d been reading, a dog-eared edition of Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil. He’d first read it in college, and as many of his books were among the few material possessions he’d left the marriage with, he’d decided to spend much of his newfound free time rereading some of the works he’d enjoyed in his youth. This novel in particular, with its themes of betrayal and a damaged marriage, had been tough going due to the subject matter, which concerned a husband, who upon discovering his wife’s infidelities, insists she accompany him from their native England to Hong Kong, and into the midst of a cholera epidemic, costing her the life, standing and spoiled safety she had previously attained and taken for granted, but also eventually revealing to both she and her husband the true meaning of love, life, loss, personal sacrifice and the beauty of forgiveness, not only of others, but of oneself.

  Lane grabbed the remote control and activated a modest tabletop stereo system located on a low stand beneath the windows. Yo-Yo Ma’s melancholy and deeply moving CD Appassionato came to life, filling the room with a sad and quiet beauty. He reached down, lifted Vince onto his lap and gave him a kiss on his cold, wet nose. “Who’s my little man?” The puppy responded with a loving gaze then lay down, rested his chin on Lane’s knee and promptly fell asleep.

  Turning his attention to the novel, Lane flipped to his bookmark and did his best to lose himself in Maugham’s wonderful prose.

  Beyond the walls of his delicate cocoon, the storm raged on.

  * * * *

  Water. Dripping. He assumed at first that it must have been the snow melting and running from the drains outside, trickling from the trees and gushing along the dirt driveway. But no, it was…closer. Inside, they…these water sounds were coming from inside the house, from inside the…house? No…not the house…because he wasn’t in the house. Not anymore.

  He was somewhere else now…

  It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he realized he’d been plunged into darkness. Total. Encompassing. Hopeless.

  There was an odd taste in his mouth, a metallic flavor that coated his gums and tongue and made him sick to his stomach. Each time he swallowed it got worse, and when he tried to reach up and put his fingers to his lips, he was just barely able to move. Trapped, he…

  Where the hell am I?

  He attempted to kick his feet, and although he could move his legs, his range of motion was so limited he couldn’t even fully bend his knees. He tried to sit up but something held him in place, something malleable but strong that stretched like a hideous skin encasing his entire body.

  Realizing he’d been wrapped in some sort of foreign material, he panicked and began to struggle and cry out for help. The membrane stretched and moved with him but refused to break no matter how hard he struggled, and his cries were muffled and weak, as if someone had placed a hand over his mouth.

  As his body surrendered to its pliable prison, Lane sensed motion. Similar to the sinking feeling in one’s gut one experiences as an elevator comes to a stop, it rippled up through his bowels and into his chest in a single wave of nausea then receded as quickly as it arrived.

  Whispers…odd clicking noises in recurring patterns reminiscent of language…the sound of motion, a whooshing sound of fabric dragging across a floor perhaps, but…but those whispers, they—they wouldn’t stop, soft and echoing as if spoken from the far end of a long and desolate tunnel. Although he could not recognize them as words, he was certain they were not gibberish either. There was purpose, urgency, but they were wrong. All wrong.

  They weren’t human.

  And then, Emma, standing so close—too close—and smelling like candy, bathed in some icky-sweet scent designed, packaged and marketed to appeal to young teens. Who else would want to smell like a cherry bubblegum lozenge? What was she doing here? Why…

  “Hey Mr. B.,” she said with a coy smile, widening her eyes and resting the tip of her thumb on her bottom lip. “What’s up?” Had someone taught her this? Did she see it in a movie or on television? These kids today, they weren’t like Lane was at that age. They weren’t even children anymore, not really, and not for long. Nor were they adults, but instead a sad and disturbing hybrid of myths and false, media-driven depictions and expectations. They were fabrications dictated by Madison Avenu
e, characters based on people who never truly existed. Emma was fourteen-years-old and already dressed, behaved and spoke like she believed a much older woman might. But her portrayal was skewed, silly, misguided and horribly uninformed. Two or three years ago she was playing with toys. Now she had a crush on a teacher old enough to be her father and tried to seduce him by sending suggestive indications she might begin sucking her thumb at any moment. “Mr. B.? I said, what’s up?”

  He tried to speak but it came out garbled. Somehow he could see her through the skin-like wrap but remained blind to everything else. As if seeing her as reflection…but where—or what—was the mirror? That outfit, who—who would let their teenage daughter out of the house looking like that? What was wrong with her parents?

  I’ve been doing this a long time, kid, and I’ve seen it all before, trust me. Schoolgirl crushes happen all the time, no big deal, they’re easy to disarm and control. They have to be nipped in the bud and dealt with kindly but firmly, that’s the key. You’re the student and I’m the teacher. You’re a kid and I’m an adult. The lines between appropriate and inappropriate behavior are very clear if one chooses to see them. I am a happily married man with neither the desire nor the inclination to become involved with a teenage girl. And you’re confusing infatuation, transference and maybe even some genuine lust for love and true affection. I’m sorry your father didn’t give you enough of his time and attention, but I’m not him and I can’t be a substitute. Stop trying to make me your boyfriend. It’s your father you’re looking for, Emma, not me, not some other man, not even the boys in school who so eagerly follow you around hoping for a chance to get under your shirt and into your pants. Stop trying to give people what you think they want. It won’t make them love you, Emma. It won’t heal those wounds, that void your father hasn’t filled. Stop trying to be what you think a grownup is because you’re failing miserably and only embarrassing yourself. Be a kid. Enjoy that while you still can because before you know it—