Dark Light Book Three (Dark Light Anthology)

by Larsen, Christian A.

  He got up and ran to his gear. “Where's the fucking crowbar?” he yelled. “We've gotta get out of here.”

  “What's the matter, mate?” Marcus slurred.

  “This house; something's wrong with it. It took Marta,” he said breathlessly.

  “Huh?”

  “Just find the crowbar,” Phil said.

  Marcus kicked the others. “Get up. We need to find the crowbar and get out of here.”

  The sense of unease passed through Joe and Johnno slowly; they grumbled, trying to come out of a stupor. They fumbled around and shone torches across the whole floor, but the crowbar had gone.

  “Shit,” Phil said, his voice an octave higher than normal. He went to the front door; that, too, had no handle. He got a half-empty bottle of vodka and swung it at the glass pane at the top of the door. It bounced back, nearly flying out of his hand.

  In all the commotion, no one noticed the shape move down the wall and across the floor, like a wave moving through water. Another slug grabbed Johnno's legs causing him to flop down. He screamed. Torch beams turned on him as he was sucked inside the thing; bizarre shadows jumped around behind the jerking torchlight. The thing rippled away and snuggled into the wall, leaving only a lump.

  “Please get us out of here,” Christa cried.

  The others, seeing Johnno taken, tried to smash the windows with their torches; they bounced back like the bottle. Marcus manically tried to wipe the window with his sleeve, but the grubbiness wasn't grime and didn't come off. Phil tried kicking the back door, again the same result as hitting the windows.

  Phil ran to one of the bags and felt inside to find one of the camping stoves. With shaking hands, he lit it while another slug crept up on Christa. Seeing this, he shouted at her to get out of the way. She ran to him; he sidestepped the oncoming thing then tried to burn it with the stove. The heat had no effect; it carried on, moving toward Christa who froze.

  Marcus and Johnno tried kicking the slug. They might have well as kicked a rubber ball; the thing ignored all attempts to stop it. Joe went berserk with fear and ran to the first floor, hoping to smash one of the windows and jump out.

  Soon, quietude reigned again inside the house. One by one, the fabric of the building had taken them, and each time, it manifested as a slug. They'd buzzed about futilely like flies in a Venus fly trap. All the banging on doors and windows and all their cries for help were heard only by themselves and whatever monstrous entity used the house as its lair. It ingested their bodies until not even a lump on the wall was visible. It waited shyly as it had for decades, discreetly attracting it to those who couldn't resist an abandoned house. There was rarely a shortage of flies.

  A few days later the property developer drove past the Potemkin house. He pulled over to get a better look. “Pity, that house isn't for sale,” he said to his wife. “It looks as if it's got a lot of potential.”

  “Yes, darling, but it's probably full of squatters,” she replied.

  I Come to Teach

  By A.A. Garrison

  The driver was a sheriff, but only three towns over. He parked along the downtown curb, not shifting the cruiser out of gear.

  "And so this is it?" he asked his passenger.

  "Yes," said the plain-clothed young man.

  The sheriff looked unconvinced. "You did what you come to do. The teachin'. You said it yourself."

  The passenger nodded placidly.

  "I need your word," the sheriff said. Terror shone from his eyes. "That you'll stay away. I need your word on it."

  "You have my word."

  The sheriff considered this. "Okay, then." His eyes shifted. "Okay."

  On his own, the passenger got out. "Thank you," he said, utterly sincere. The door shut gently.

  The sheriff stayed a moment, staring, like an animal unable to believe it has been freed. Then, the cruiser revved off with a slight squeal of tires.

  The man remained on the calm street corner, like unloaded cargo. He watched the sheriff's car grow small, seeing the eyes in its rearview mirror.

  * * *

  The man walked a mile before coming to another street corner.

  The voice said, Stop.

  So, he stopped.

  This corner was busier. Bookended by a pawnshop and a popular bar, it saw constant traffic, governed by the stoplights. The man lingered at his appointed spot, expressionless in a shirt and jeans received on charity in the last town. Several passersby gave him looks that went unreturned. He stayed there all afternoon and into the night, kept company by a light pole.

  A gang of men washed out of the bar in a shout of laughter and country music. Three young cowboys were dressed in the local style; they stumbled along the sparsely lit sidewalk, stopping repeatedly to harass motorists or one another. A bottle passed between them before shattering wildly on a wall.

  The voice said, Wave.

  The man, still stationed by his light pole, waved at the cowboys.

  They stopped at a distance, all at once, seeing the prey before them. "Howdy," said the one in front.

  The man was already meeting their eyes. "Hello."

  The alpha came forward, smiling, the others by consequence. "Nice clothes, there." He circled his victim as the others watched.

  The man nodded humbly.

  "So what's happenin' here on the corner?" one of the cowboys teased.

  "I come to teach."

  "Teach." The cowboy made a face, his friends laughing. "A teacher, eh?"

  "I come to teach."

  The cowboy stepped closer, challenge in his eyes. "What you gonna teach me, eh?"

  "Love. I love you."

  The two others laughed, but not their leader. His eyes narrowed. "Love me? You a faggot?"

  The man neither answered, nor looked away. Pedestrians flowed around this scene, oblivious.

  "I ast you a question," the cowboy spat.

  The voice said, I love you.

  "I love you," the man said.

  Immediately, the cowboy shoved, his hands like snakebites. "Fag-got," he said several times. The man was driven from his post and eventually into an alley.

  So much darker here, like some other world entirely. The head cowboy shoved the man one more time, sending him against stubborn brick wall. The cowboy leaned forward as if in confidence, his face nefarious and wild. "I dare ye say it again, faggot. I dare ye."

  "I come to teach," the man repeated, his voice unchanged from before.

  He was answered with violence, the three on him with senseless speed. Curses accompanied savage blows, the men entangled in flame-like shapes. When the man went to the ground, the punches became kicks and did not stop. He offered not the slightest resistance, per the voice.

  After a full minute of this, the leader stared down at his murder, saying "Yeah! Yeah!" He spit copiously and kicked one final time. Then, the three were off, alight with joy and victory.

  In their wake, lay a bloody, motionless mess.

  * * *

  The next day, the man awoke in someplace cold and dark.

  Arise, said the voice.

  He obeyed, unquestioning as always.

  Sitting up was painful and hard, his parts not working right. With some effort, he stood onto frigid tile, his knees popping. The cold was incredible, like a freezer. He coughed, and it echoed.

  There was no light, not the slightest ray. He took two steps and bumped into something that squeaked. Instinct saw him to a wall, and he patted blindly until he found a switch. The light made him blink.

  The room had felt like a freezer because it was one. He stood naked, in a morgue locker, facing a wall of closed hatches, his breath coming in frosty gusts. A large steel door loomed at his back. To his left, a cooling-board supported a supine corpse. To his right, there was a second, empty board. His. He showed no surprise.

  The corpse, the voice said.

  The man went to his partner in this place. The corpse was a male of no determinable age, his mortised face describing displ
easure. Pretty ice crystals twinkled from his length.

  Hands on, the voice said, making the man place both palms on the deceased.

  There was an electrical snap and a sense of shift. The man pulled away, his palms tingling. Within seconds, white puffed from the corpse's mouth.

  * * *

  When the coroner answered the knocking on the freezer door, his face was already jagged with aghast.

  "Hello," the man said to the coroner, waiting candidly in the jamb. The resurrected gentleman, a local drunk, stood at wing. He was confused and naked, but quite alive.

  The coroner screamed, and the door closed, re-latched at once.

  * * *

  The town had an elected official they called a mayor, who acted as its Swiss Army knife. His name was Billings, a tall, well-liked character with a bad leg.

  His office, in the local courthouse, was modestly small. Hurried footsteps preceded its door opening and the coroner came in without knocking. "Tom," he said to Billings, whose first name was Tom. "Tom..."

  "Yes?"

  "A man to see you."

  "A man. What man?"

  "Tom.” He stared. "You need to see this man."

  The mayor read the coroner's face, and it made him stand up. They drove to the local hospital. Billings was briefed on the way, making him say, "He what?” several times.

  * * *

  "No," the coroner argued. "I'm telling you, Tom, the guy was dead, as a doornail."

  The coroner was a bald, agitated-looking man who never stood straight. He and the mayor were alone in a drafty hospital corridor.

  Tom Billings tapped his good foot, looking between the coroner and the door beside them. "Who else saw him?" he said with a conciliatory tone.

  The coroner was a bomb. "Peters, Walter, Davis—the whole damn morgue. I got pictures, testimony." His hands gestured. "And that's just him. Red Watts, the guy in the freezer with him, the drunk—?"

  Billings waved him off. "Yeah, yeah. He's 'alive' too." His skepticism was visible.

  The coroner squared his shoulders. "We've been working together twenty-five years, Tom. You ever known me to misdiagnose dead?"

  The men exchanged a long, speaking look. Then, Billings went to the door. Through the glass, he saw a frail, youngish man sitting wisely on a bed, amidst machines and tubes. Warm afternoon light spilled through a window, laying a bar over his legs.

  Billings spoke without looking away. "What else he said?"

  "Other than asking for you? Not a thing." The coroner wiped at his forehead as if it was wet.

  "And he knew my name?"

  "First and last."

  "Still no ID?"

  "No ID."

  He paused. "Why's he wanna talk to me?"

  "How the hell should I know?"

  Billings stood, watching for a minute. Then, he opened the door and went through, his uncooperative left leg squeaking the linoleum. The coroner stayed outside, observing through the window.

  Billings entered cautiously. The man on the bed turned his head and said, "Hello."

  "Hi, there," Billings said, taking the smallest steps. "Howdy."

  "You are Tom Billings," the man said. His voice was careful and polite. "You are the authority here."

  "That's what they tell me," Billings said with a simple smile. He stood in a weird, crooked manner, due to his gimp leg. "I hear you had, eh..." He fumbled for words. "Hear you had quite a night."

  "I died," the man explained. "Now, I'm alive." His voice never altered.

  Billings searched him for duplicity. When he could find not the slightest bit, he said, "What's your name, sir? We ain't never got your name."

  "I come to teach," the man said.

  Billings nodded as if he understood. "To teach. A teacher..." He looked at the man for a long time, awaiting a confession that didn't come. Finally, he lit at bedside. "Listen, what's the game, here? We all know you pulled some stunt in the morgue, in cahoots with that drunk Red Watts, so why don't you just—?"

  Billings was interrupted with a hand on his bad leg. He had time to reach out indignantly—when energy invaded him, both pleasant and stunning. It kicked his leg horizontal, and filled it so entirely that he cried out.

  "The hell—!" he started, but was quieted by the innocence in the man's face.

  "Don't be afraid," the man said, reflecting the sentiment pouring from him.

  Billings groaned from his chest, trembling. The wonderful river continued through his leg, bringing feelings he had no name for. The leg twisted and reconfigured, making the subtle noises of a cracked spine. Then, it all stopped. The leg fell as if dropped.

  After a moment of quivering shock, Billings sprung from the bed. Only in backing away, did he realize his leg was straight.

  The coroner saw and burst into the room. Billings stopped him, extending a palm. "S'okay. S'okay," Billings said, looking between his new leg and the man on the bed.

  "What happened, Tom?"

  "My leg. It's, he..." Billings trailed off, his mouth going on. He shook out his leg as if having stepped in something.

  The man on the bed sat mutely, unchanged from before. He looked as if he could stay there forever.

  Slowly, Billings came forward. His steps were sure, but the rest of him moved awkwardly, unaccustomed to such support. He returned to his bedside, too slow to make noise.

  "Mister," he said to the man. "What in God's name'd you do to me?"

  With his patient speech, the man said, "Teach."

  * * *

  The man conversed with the mayor for some time, relaying the voice's messages and answers. Every so often, another person joined this impromptu conference, town officials or senior police or simple hospital staff, all equal under the community of the man's audience. Word was spreading already.

  After careful conversation, the voice wanted to know, What was needed in this place? When no one answered, the man repeated himself several times.

  It was one of the laymen, a janitor, who comprehended the question. "He wants to know what we need," he said to the room at large. "Just, like..." He gestured expansively. "Whatever."

  "Yes," the man confirmed. The janitor grew a whole foot.

  The little crowd talked amongst themselves and, experimentally, produced a short list. At the top was the town's tobacco crop, which had been ruined by torrential rains.

  Billings spoke up. "We need help with the crop," he said delicately, in belated answer. "Can you help with the crop?"

  The voice said, Take me to it.

  "Take me to it,” the man said.

  Billings volunteered his own car. The two left then and there.

  Afterward, the people looked to one another with expressions of wonder.

  * * *

  The farmer was the first Billings could recall, an uncomplicated man by the name of Marks. After a brief negotiation in which Mr. Marks smiled and nodded throughout, Billings came away with permission to show his charge through the property.

  They parked just inside one of the endless fields comprising Mr. Marks's farm, a torrid afternoon sun overseeing them. Hallways of blighted tobacco plants went row on row before them. Billings got out of his car, and the soil was still pocked and fragile from the rainfall, crumbling underfoot like sand. The man stayed inside until Billings opened the door, perhaps an obedient animal.

  Still in his androgynous hospital clothes, the man visited with the crops, looking them up and down as he petted the pumpkin-colored leaves. He showed them the same docile respect he did with everything.

  "They are diseased," he said after a long silence.

  Billings stopped working his leg in and out to say, "Yes, sir. Blight."

  "They should not be diseased."

  "Don't reckon."

  The man let go of the leaf he'd been holding. "Okay, then."

  "Okay?"

  "I will correct them."

  By instinct, Billings nearly scoffed. "All right," he said instead, remembering the miracle of just an hour a
go.

  As if given permission, the man then lay down where he stood, his hands under his head. He closed his eyes and his breath deepened, suggesting sleep.

  Billings could only look on. Nothing in his fifty-two years had prepared him for the mystery lying in the crops.

  * * *

  In the morning, the tobacco was green anew.

  The man had slept through the afternoon and into the evening. Billings stood by always, refusing to leave and refusing to wake the slumbering magician. After some hours, Mr. Marks had appeared in investigation, his broad smile intact. He received the situation with admirable acceptance, afterward fetching the mayor a hot dinner and some coffee. When it got dark and Billings called his wife, all he could say was, "I'll explain later."

  The two spent the night under the stars; the man in his rest, Billings reclined awkwardly in his back seat. Then it was light, and Billings' bladder had him up and out of the car, his leg still straight as an arrow. Only after relieving himself, did he notice the man standing at the field's margin, and the plants' new health.

  Billings looked around. "You..." He couldn't find the words. "You corrected them?"

  The man turned to him, looking precisely as he had yesterday. "Yes."

  Billings zipped himself. Again, he was filled with questions and ridicule, but they silenced on their own. After another sweep of the head, he laughed aloud as he hadn't in years.

  * * *

  More farms followed that of Mr. Marks, all refurbished by way of the man's miraculous sleep. Questions were asked, heads shaken. Some of the farmers resented the man's intrusion, only to stop overnight. There were questions after, but of a wholly different kind.

  The decision was made to limit the farms to those in town and just outside, as to contain the infection of attention, but this was only so effective. Billings was swamped with people and phone calls. These inquisitions turned increasingly bizarre as the rumors flourished and matured, in time encompassing all of Hollywood's fears and fantasies. Some of the attention pertained to his leg, and this he evaded as best he could.