Dark Light Book Three (Dark Light Anthology)

by Larsen, Christian A.

  Opportunity is a strange creature, and as I approached my home, I happened upon a woman dressed in dull, dark clothing, with a white apron. A nurse. Calling out to her as I approached, my mind quickly went to work concocting a new story in order to have her follow me home.

  “Is everything well, sir?” she asked as I approached.

  “I’m afraid not. My wife has become ill, and I fear for her. Please, I need help.”

  She was so full of genuine concern that my poorly-acted lie was believed. She followed me back to the house and asked where my wife was. I told her she was in the guest room where I had the crude implements for her exsanguination at the ready. I led the way, but allowed her to walk ahead into the room. I will never forget her face as her expression turned to a mixture of confusion and alarmed comprehension as I buried the blade into the soft flesh between her shoulder and her slender neck. But I could feel no pity, only my burning purpose.

  Nor did I feel guilt as I pulled the knife from her, feeling a spray of her warm essence hitting my face and thrust it into her four more times until she fell to the floor, her cries nearly silent as life quickly bled from her.

  Seeing the crimson pour forth, I ran for beakers which I owned, a pail for washing floors and cloths so as to gather as much as I could. As I filled the bucket, I spoke to the dying woman, telling her what a gift it was she was providing, that she was being of noble service by reuniting me with my dearly departed.

  Looking back now, there is a regret that burns at the deepest crevices of my soul, one remains after all of this. To whoever may be reading these pages, this confession, there is little doubt as to whether there were more women that I introduced to death. I wish I could say that they numbered few, struck down and drained for blood to feed the hungry gears and my own growing obsession with hearing the ghostly voice of Miriam, but there were so many. I regret to admit further that… a child or two, perhaps more, were also fed to the machine and now lay down below, rotting with the others in the root cellar. I became more competent than my first blundered…murders. I know that’s what I am—a murderer. I tried not to be cruel. If you can, please forgive me if you can find it in your heart, reader. I am a weak man that was unable to stop my own longings, perhaps even unwilling to because of the impossible prayer that seemed to have been answered.

  I had prayed to God since she was taken from me, begging Him to bring her back to me, to return that which was stolen from me. So when she was, I believed it to be some sort of divine glory intervening, an angel perhaps, or even God himself bringing her back to the place that she so rightly needed to be. Despite the strangeness of methods needed to speak to her, I felt that my sins would be forgiven as it was the Lord’s will.

  Each person that gave their blood to me was taken to the basement, no more than an empty husk, lighter than would have been thought without blood in them. And the house was getting increasing malodorous as they piled up. I paid no real mind to it as I was consumed with the fire of conversing with Miriam. For hours, I would paint the gears with the blood of the fallen and we would speak to one another, reliving moments in our lives, of how we wished fate hadn’t been so cruel, and I could once again hold her in my waiting arms. I returned to the idea of holding her, kissing her and feeling her beneath me over and over again to where hearing her voice did not seem to fulfill me. Each conversation left me more hollow than before, an increasing feeling of not enough.

  And it was with that single thought that I believe true madness finally found me, and where I admit my greatest sin.

  One night, after a conversation with Miriam that had lasted a great many hours, edging towards a full day, I lay in bed, surrounded by the machines that housed her ghost and began drifting off to sleep. The scent of wet metal and the coppery undertones of blood were filling my nose when I came up with my master plan, an invention to make my wildest dreams come true.

  What came instead was a nightmare that screams now from the cellar below.

  The morning after the idea came to me, I went to work, knowing that my plans would take much time and a strong stomach. I fetched my tools and some extra equipment from my workshop and returned to the bedroom where the gears that housed Miriam’s ghost lay. I took each machine apart, careful not to damage any of the delicate pieces, hoping that undoing them would not undo the strange workings that made them a pathway from the realm of spirits. The work was slow, but it was not hard. The truly difficult part lay ahead.

  Disassembly took half the day, but I did not stop or slow down. I went to the cellar, shooing away the blowflies that were as thick as honey, ignoring the bitter stench of my rotting victims. By lamplight, I looked at the dead that scattered the dirt floor, some staring at me with wide, accusing eyes, others lying in pools of liquefying flesh. I scanned the dead and found one that was not too far into decomposition. The girl was perhaps nineteen years of age, with the same chestnut brown hair as Miriam’s had been. She was my last victim; having died less than thirty-six hours prior, I decided she would be the one.

  I took her upstairs to the dining room, and laid her out, going to work on my last invention. Using the gears that house Miriam’s voice, I made an apparatus to fit on the dead girl, attaching gears to her arms, legs, and almost any spot on her body that had a joint. Others were set to something that resembled a crown that was fitted onto her head. To this, I attached small, needle-thin pieces of metal, which connected to her eyes and mouth, prying each open and keeping them that way. A few extra gears, small ones that had been in a clock, were placed inside her mouth. I worked in a mechanical fashion, unwilling to think that the person my hands were touching was dead, a rotting corpse that had once been someone’s daughter, maybe a sister, a girl that had dreams and hopes like anyone else. Keeping my mind fixed on the final goal, I hooked tubing to each gear on one end and on the other were large glass containers that I had attached to her legs and back. By the time I was done, night was coming to an end, and the sun was beginning to rise, setting the horizon on fire. I tightened the last bolt and decided to sleep first, ready to wake and see my greatest success.

  And succeed, I did.

  First though, I needed blood. I ventured out less than an hour after rising and found three women that were looking for employment as kitchen help. I convinced each of them to return to my home, quickly dispatched them, and went about draining their blood. Every drop I collected went into the glass containers attached to the girl on the dining room table.

  The moment of truth had come.

  I set the blood to move through the rubber tubing so that it touched the gears. Excitement that it would work, and dread that it would not, coursed through me. My plan was to turn this dead girl into a machine that would be able to channel the ghost of Miriam living in the gears. I hoped that her ghost, if put together in such a way and fed with enough blood, would be able to move and speak so that I could once again hold her, and kiss her, dance to our favorite songs once again. In my mind, I saw how it should happen. But it was not to be.

  As the blood touched the gears, the body moved, her limbs rattling, seeming to quake convulsively. After a few moments, she rose from the table, her movements strange and jerky, like a flipbook whose pages are turned too slowly or a zoetrope with grit in the spindle. Her movements were stuttered as she stepped off the table, her head moving in strange and unnatural motions. She seemed to be scanning the room, looking for something, and when her pried-open eyes fell on me, she raised her arms, began a grotesque, shuffled walk towards me and let out an inhuman cry that sent my stomach rolling with cold waves of disgust.

  “Charles!”

  The monstrosity cried out my name, and I wish I could tell you that it were the voice of my Miriam and that I had managed to find a way to raise her from the grave in a way, giving her life through another woman’s body, but I am not here to lie. The sound that came out of the dead girl’s mouth was no earthly sound, nor did it any longer resemble Miriam’s voice.

  “Miriam? What has hap
pened to you?”

  Laughter echoed out of the open mouth as gears clicked away and she continued to make her bizarre, jerky walk towards me, unsteady, but driving onward.

  “There is no Miriam here. There never was.” She…it twisted it’s face in a horrible mocking attempt at a grin. “It was laughably easy to fool you, coax you into giving us this life.”

  “What are you?” I asked with a repugnant curiosity.

  “We are everything, and yet we are nothing. We have no name.”

  The mechanical monster laughed again and I felt hot tears burning my eyes. Guilt swarmed in on me. The faces of women and children I had killed filled my head, the nights and days spent talking to whatever these things were, all in vain. Grievously misled, and in so, dishonoring her very soul. Was she, too, condemned to Hell now, as I knew I was to be?

  I also knew I could not let this thing loose in the streets of Toronto.

  I lured it toward the door to the cellar, and as it spastically moved towards me, I took the knife that I had used to kill the last three women and jammed it into the chest of the unholy thing. Cold fingers clawed at my face, but it did not react to the knife. Laughter continued to spew out of its pried open mouth as I used the embedded knife to force the creature down into the cellar, flies swarming on it as ghostly cries sprang forth from it. I slammed the door shut and locked it in with the rest of the dead. The creature screamed in incoherent rage, it’s voice interchangeably male and female at first, and then something that did not even resemble that of a human. I sat on the floor, my back to the door and wept.

  A few times since, the monster has called out to me, mimicking my Miriam’s voice, but I know it is false, a trick by the Devil himself, no doubt. I can never again open the door, for I know its intent. It wants me to join the army of death that resides in the cellar with my creation, to embrace me with cold arms and ill will.

  How long will the blood last, I wonder? Will it empty before someone investigates the noise or the stench that rises from my house? I cannot see what is fated for me now; by rights, I should lock myself in the basement with my own sins, letting them tear the soul out of me. I should simply run away or even turn myself over to the local constables, coward that I am. I can’t bear the taunting voice any longer. The only hope I hold now is that someone can forgive me, knowing the reasoning behind my loathsome conduct, for I am truly sorry for all I have done. I do not know or have the answers to any of these questions any more than I know the true nature of what cries to me from below. I only know that I loved Miriam, and pray I will see her soon.

  Charles Dunn

  1886

  Dante’s Circle

  By Ericka Kahler

  I can't stand this bar, Shelby thought as she stared at the murals painted on the walls of Dante's Circle. The one directly across from her rendered Purgatory, full of mottled brown and gray tones, contrasting sharply with the vivid reds and oranges of Hell to her right, and the blues and whites of Paradise on her left. The murals were the elderly building’s original decor, painted into the plaster where a hundred years of remodeling could not remove them. The polished brass and gaudy gilded trim insulted her sense of style, though they, too, were original fixtures. Even the overstuffed chairs were all vintage, which was very much in style at the moment.

  “I think it’s about time we got up and danced,” Mathias said, moving his shoulders to the beat of “Saints to Sinners,” the lead song from Peruvian Fighting Frog’s debut album. Angelique took the hand Mathias held out to her, and moved out to the dance floor. Jessica followed them, trailing out a hand to a good looking guy sitting alone at a table a few feet away, garnering herself a partner before she reached the glossy wood. Lila, tentatively, dodged around the intervening furniture and took up a spot midway-between the two couples.

  Shelby ordered another rum and coke instead of joining her friends on the dance floor. Her forehead drew tight into a migraine. Tonight, the band played on a stage built in the corner between Hell and Purgatory, rather symbolic, she thought, in light of her massive headache. Ordinarily, live music was one of her pleasures; her knack for discovering the best new bands in town helped secure her place in the New Janus jet set. Shelby found this little garage band through a DJ, who heard them playing a wedding reception. She dropped a few words in the right ears to get them a gig at Dante’s Circle. Yet, tonight their rendition of “Saints to Sinners” sounded terrible, an irritating racket hammering into her temples.

  Shelby came here because it was the “in” place to be this month, but quietly she couldn’t wait until the “in” crowd moved on to some other club. She kept up with these things; she always knew where to been seen, and with whom. It never seemed a burden until now. Anyway, it wasn’t really her fashion sensibilities that made her dislike this club so much, she admitted to herself. It was just—the feeling of the place. Dante's felt crowded, even though as she looked around the room only a few people hung out at the bar, the real crowds waiting until the main act came on at ten. The trendiest bar in New Janus just flat out gave her the screaming heebie-jeebies.

  She watched her friends try to impress each other with the latest dance moves as she accepted her drink from the waitress. She hoped the headache would subside with a little more alcohol. Mathias and Angelique ground their hips together in a slow and titillating style that left no question the two were going home together. Jessica wasn’t as cozy with her anonymous guy, but got points for style, leading his steps in a way that looked choreographed even though he was a total stranger. Alone, Lila jerked her arms just a fraction offbeat from the music.

  That girl isn’t going to last, Shelby thought. She glanced over Lila's outfit, last season's pastel skirt and an over-sized blouse, worn without flare. Lila’s new money parents got her an invitation to hang out, but her own lack of style would quickly downgrade her to second-stringer. Her uncoordinated shuffles came straight out of the high school prom. Shelby snorted. Lila treated club hopping as if it was for fun. She'd figure out soon enough that her place in the New Janus networks of power and influence depended on it. If she didn't get in the game, she'd be left out of more than a few party invitations.

  But the noise kept leaping to the forefront of her mind. Really, she would never have risked pulling a favor for this band if she had realized they would sound so screechy. Shelby contemplated the scene of the sinful laboring through Purgatory with a hand over one ear. The supplicants pushed carts and carried rocks, muscles straining against their heavy burdens, eyes peeping heavenward as they toiled in the hope of salvation. The artist managed to capture a multitude of feelings in those eyes, hope and remorse and the love of God rendered by a few dabs of paint. Her sudden sympathy for the weary souls brought her back to an awareness of her pulsing head. Shelby worked her stiff neck, debating taking a Valium to ease the pressure.

  She heard whispering somewhere behind her. Turning, she saw nothing but the vivid tones of Hell on the wall to her side. She settled into her seat again. It's just my imagination. Shaking her head, she signaled for the waitress to bring her a cup of coffee. She’d had too much to drink, she decided, and the coffee would take away some of the fuzziness. As she waited, the noise intensified. A hum underneath the music shrieked in her ears, causing physical pain. She thought it might be feedback in the band’s sound system, but Mathias, Angelique, Jessica, and Lila danced, oblivious to the noise. Shelby waved off the waitress when she came by with her coffee, unable to hear more than a murmur of the words. The sharp note toned down to something less harsh, and as Shelby relaxed she picked the sound of a conversation out of the general hum.

  “Wwwwhat do you seeee?” A voice asked, fading in and out with a strange Doppler-like effect.

  Shelby turned around. There was still nothing behind her but a wall and some chairs.

  “Iiit’s hard,” a second voice replied.

  “Cccome onnn,” the first voice urged. “There is something out there tonight. I can feel it.” The slurring faded somewhat,
stretching only the beginning and the end of the sentence this time.

  “Hey!” the second voice shouted. “Can you hear me?”

  Shelby’s eyes widened. Her head filled with the noise of random chatting in the background as if she stood in the middle of a cocktail party instead of a nightclub. The music evaporated; only the thump of the air in her chest as the drum beat hinted the band still played. None of the sounds she heard matched the sights in the club in front of her.

  “She can hear us!” The voice from before yelled. “She can hear us,” it repeated with obvious elation to someone. Shelby still couldn’t see anyone, and from the sound whoever it was should be standing right next to her. A cascade of voices crashed around her.

  “She came in from the house...”

  “Caught his brother with...”

  “Needed help going....”

  The cacophony of voices all spoke at once, breaking over her like a tidal wave. Each one had something to say, telling her stories and even singing songs, all the voices running together into white noise unlike any she had ever experienced before. There were no bodies to go with the voices that bypassed her ears, sounding straight into her brain. Shelby’s vision blackened as the babble continued to crescendo.

  Slowly, she took a deep breath and the blast began to recede. Once again, her eyes saw the dim confines of the club, picking up the pinpoint green flashes of discreet sequins on Angelique’s dress as she ground her breasts into Mathias’s chest. The song the band played came back, but it was faint in the background—not real. The voices quieted one by one, but when they finally faded away she knew they were not gone. The first voice spoke again.

  “Are you all right?” The male voice said in a pleasant tenor. His concern touched her, despite the strangeness of her hearing him at all.