Uncle Henry’s voice: Sometimes you find the path…
Too late. Too late to turn back.
My foot punched the accelerator. Eighty. Ninety. Past ninety.
“Come and get me, you cold-hearted son of a bitch,” I growled to the Dark Man. “I’m heading to your home. Come and get me.”
I drove, alone.
24
Daniel Drake’s house rose out of the blackness like a theater proscenium, blasted bright by the Saturn’s headlights. The thing reminded me of a rotten tooth, mottled with decay, covered in filth and splinters. The one-story building felt taller than it had yesterday morning. Impossible, I knew; a trick of the light. But it loomed and leered at me, its darkened windows now eye sockets.
Watching, like tot-lot ghouls.
I killed the engine and the headlights. I slung my satchel onto my shoulder and stepped out into the chilly midnight air. I clicked on the Maglite. My eyes adjusted to the stark contrast of bright and darkness. Above me, the moon was fat, nearly full.
I was grateful for the flashlight: it wasn’t enough. I felt my nyctophobia pumping fear into my brains, my veins—but for this moment, the emotion was far away, glimmering like a lighthouse beacon. There were other emotions throbbing in my mind—anger, determination, concern. What overpowered them all was the flat sensation of sleepwalking… of arrival without travel… of inevitability.
Daniel’s blue pickup was gone. I peered at the building, listening. Music rose and fell from the living room, muffled by the walls. I walked through the muddy front yard to the porch. The house remained lightless, lifeless.
The music was clearer now. “Night On Bald Mountain.”
My knuckles rapped against the cracked front door. No answer. I knocked louder, calling Daniel’s name. I pounded. I yelled. My voice echoed in the night. I thought of Bethany Walch, the woman who’d befriended Richard Drake and his son ten years ago. The one who’d been threshed right along with the hay.
We heard her screams three miles away.
No answer.
I stepped from the porch, skulking to the side of the house, comforted by the heft of the Maglite in my hand.
Its bulb did not flicker, didn’t strobe as I’d seen a dozen times in the past few days. The Dark Man didn’t want to warn me this time. The bulb inside blasted ultra-bright for a moment—far too short a time for me to realize what was happening until after it’d happened—and then it shattered, the tiny shrapnel shards tinkling against the lens glass.
I stopped, glancing first at the dead weight in my hand and then to the sky, looking for the spotlight above. My fear of the dark surged like a wave, cold oil on my clammy skin, as a cloud swept over the moon.
Black. The whole world had gone black.
I doubled over, dropping the flashlight, clutching my arms, my stomach, gasps hissing from between my teeth. The fear… was a swarm.
My mind flickered, on-off-on-off, just like the Brinkvale hallways, Room 507, the hellshow, a horror strobe light. Bile, sweet and sickening, gushed against my tongue, filling my mouth.
Nonsense filled my head. I seethed, breath screeching as I hyperventilated, thick spit oozing from my lips, and this is how it ends Zach, alone in the dark, gobbled by black flies, shoo fly shoo, shoes, pinned me down to my six-month-old-Vans, pinned like a lepidopterist pins a-mazing Grace how sweetthesoundthatsavedawretchlikeme
My knees buckled. I fell. The phobia was my blood, my air, the pillow pressed to my face. And my God, the faces came now, all painted black, eyes and teeth frightfully white: Emilio (Vuhvammpire, he said) and Drake (Be sure to breathe, Mr. Taylor) and Henry (mercenary, a thing summoned from the) and oh God, there was Mom, pupil-less, blood bubbling from her mouth, singing me a nightmare lullaby. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?
My cheek pressed into the cold mud. Black vacuum. Airless. Soundless.
A century passed. An eon. And then, finally, the cloud’s tendrils swept past the moon. The world around me brightened slightly. Air rushed into my lungs.
I stood, body quaking, eyes blinking. I remained still, waited for the lights in my brain to come back on. I didn’t move until I was certain I wouldn’t piss myself.
The sound came from ahead, from behind the wood-frame house.
Tktktk. Tktktk.
“Back,” I said, slinging a palmful of spit from my mouth. My voice sounded alien, unused. I was drowning in the fear now. I coughed a manic laugh, recalling an AC/DC song.
“Back In Black,” I said.
Tktktk.
I stepped forward, nodding at the noise, heading to the rear of Drake’s home. I passed a waist-high pile of chopped wood. Yellow eyes glittered from the gaps between the blocks. Raccoons. Or darkling friends, perhaps.
The grass field behind the house rustled, whispered. I came to the back door and tried its knob. Locked. I brought my nose to the cracked window, gazed into the kitchen. The world inside was soaked in black velvet.
“DANIEL!” I shouted.
The wind swept in, carrying away my voice. The field whispered. And now my mind whispered… whispered slippery, boozy confidence. Oh, I knew this voice. It purred, the voice of a slut, the voice of sin, the voice of the doppelganger—the side we deny ourselves because it always brings misery and madness.
Hi there, Zach, it said. Long time.
“Anti-Zach,” I replied.
I’d lost my mind. I was certain of it now.
We’re back on the wild ride, ain’t we? Finally? Repeat performance.
“One night only,” I agreed, staring at the doorknob’s cheap lock.
Oh, gooood. Giddy-giddy.
Yes. Giddy-giddy. I opened my satchel and let my fingers slide inside, groping for the folder containing Drake’s Brinkvale admittance papers. I plucked a paperclip from the stack and pulled it from the bag. It glimmered in the moonlight.
I tugged at the wire, fingernails bending and denting it, using my teeth when I needed to, just like the old days, the A-Z days.
See, Z? You oughta keep me around. You need me. I ain’t as bad as you think.
“No,” I said, jigging the pick into the knob. “You’re worse.”
Ouch, partner. And can you live with that? Can you live with me being in your head?
The lock clicked. The door swung open.
“Let’s first see if I can live through tonight,” I said.
I stepped inside, on a mission to find the “X” on Drake’s mural map—the thing he’d brought me here to find. The darkness enveloped me, and I could feel the beast here, could nearly hear the saliva dripping from its black fangs.
Anti-Zach had enough sense not to follow.
The kitchen reeked of bacon grease, rotten food, cigarettes ashes and beer. My hand found a light switch by the door and toggled it up, then down, then up again. No dice. Daniel Drake’s electric bill was still unpaid.
The room felt like a walk-in freezer. I shivered now, marveling at the vapor puffing from my lips. The walls were alive, crawling with shadows, creaking, tktktking. I wondered which ones were the Dark Man, and which were my fright-trip imagination.
“Night On Bald Mountain” played on and on from the living room ahead, presumably from a CD.
The fear-needles poked at my skin, a thousand cold fingernails nicking and scratching. I told myself to breathe, to stay calm, that there was light in here, there really was, look, see, light.