Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (136 page)
Read Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection Online
Authors: Anthony Barnhart
Tags: #Fiction, #Horror
“Have you ever heard of ‘cognitive dissonance’?” Davidson asks another day. They are flying between the mountains, heading to a small town to the west.
“No,” the man replies.
“People hold naïve views of reality. For you, you believe that you and Kira will meet up one day, fall in love again, be reunited. It’s foolish, but yet you hope for it. But then you experience reality: Kira is gone. She’s not coming back. You’ll never be with her again. Forgive my bluntness. And then you go through cognitive dissonance. The first stage is disillusionment, which results in resignation. You realize you’ll never be with Kira again, so you resign from life. Resignation takes on Anthony Barnhart
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many forms. Drinking. Lots of sex. Or even suicide. But then if you get past disillusionment, you get to rebuilding. You rebuild your perspective of reality and live differently, more in tune with reality.”
“Where do you think I’m at?”
“Somewhere between resignation and rebuilding.”
“You think I need to rebuild.”
“Yes. Everyone does. Reality is different. We need to acknowledge this and live in accordance with this new reality, not clinging to artificial hopes and dreams that are merely echoes of the old reality.”
They are sitting on a crate outside the airplane in the hangar. Rain falls outside. The supply crew has left, and they sit alone with the plane, smoking and throwing back bottles of beer they’d retrieved from another small town.
“You came here hoping to start over,” Davidson says.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a ridiculous thing to do. There’s no such thing as ‘starting over.’ The past forms with us, and we cannot escape it. It has molded us to the point of trying to start over. And when we
do
‘start over’, we’re doing nothing more than changing. And change exists only with the reference point of the past. The past forever haunts, forever poisons, and forever blesses.”
“I’ll agree with you on the first two assumptions,” the man says.
They are flying beyond the mountains, which dwindle behind them to the east. Beneath them are old agricultural fields, stained brown in the early autumn. Abandoned houses and empty towns.
“The people of Aspen aren’t ignorantly happy,” Davidson is saying. “People came here, thinking they could start over. But that’s not how it works. People are finding happiness in Aspen in the ways that they can, but they still have nightmares in their sleep. I still have nightmares. And
you
still have nightmares?”
The man nods. “Yeah.”
He continues, “But people are opening their hearts again, finding warmth in the coldness. And you can do this, too. But
not
by trying to forget about the past. It’s about acknowledging the past as true and acknowledging the future as true, as well. You can take small steps now to find some semblance of happiness. The first step is having a purpose. And you have a purpose here. This,” he says, patting down on the controls in front of him.
“Careful,” the man says. “You’ll hit something and make us crash.”
He ignores him. “Sometimes you can spend so much time obsessing over the past that you forget about your future. Ultimately you just have to put a tourniquet on the past to stop it from bleeding into the future.”
VI
It is early October. The man is sitting in the study, writing by candlelight. The candlelight soothes him; he can use electricity, but he prefers the organic nature of the candle. There comes a knock at the door. He curses, sets down the pen, flips the notebook shut, and stands. He leaves the study and enters the hall and goes to the door. He twists the doorknob and swings it open. Even in the darkness he recognizes the face. “Oh my God.” He looks down, the little girl standing beside her, her dark Anthony Barnhart
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auburn hair curling around her ears. She looks up at him with a hopeful glint in her eye. He looks back up to the taller figure, the skinny woman with shoulder-length blond hair and that ravenous hawk’s nose. “Oh my God.”
∑Ω∑
She pushed him into the bathroom stall, and forgetting the possibility of anyone else being present in the restroom, they began stripping off their clothes. His hands shook in anticipation, and he fumbled with the buttons on his shirt as if he were sluggishly caught in a fading dream that he didn’t want to depart from. She sat down on the toilet, and he lowered himself and slid into her. He thrust himself in and out, and she moaned even though they could hear people washing their hands along the walllength sink outside the stall. She gripped the handicap bars on either side of the stall and threw her head back and let out a cry towards the ceiling as he went inside her. His knees wobbled as he withdrew, and she pulled herself up and embraced him, the hairs on their bodies sticking up from the sharp cold. He held her, and she kissed his neck, and he had never felt so empty and sad and happy and despairing all at the same time.
∑Ω∑
Now the same woman stares at him, six years later. Lines have cut across her face, but her eyes remain the same, still piercing and radiant with depth. But the man isn’t looking at her eyes. He is looking down at the girl beside her. He now looks back up at the woman, and his mouth feels parched as he croaks, “Is she… Is she…”
“Yours?” Jessie asks.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Yes, she is.”
He looks down at the girl.
The light chocolate curls.
The depth of her wonderful eyes.
The hopeful glint in her dimples.
He looks back to Jessie. “What’s her… What’s her name?”
“Her name is Hope,” Jessie says.
“Hope,” the man repeats.
“Yes. Hope.”
He kneels down beside the girl. “Hello, Hope.”
She twists her arms behind her back. “Are you my daddy?” she asks, stern. Something inside his gut twists. “Yes.”
She leaps forward, wrapping her arms around him, squeezes tight.
His arms move slowly, but then he is holding her, and she is crying into his shoulder. The man begins to cry, too.
The man spends all his time between flights with Jessie and his daughter. It slowly begins sinking into him that he is a father, and it is a feeling quite unlike anything he has ever felt before. The girl is just over five years old, but he feels as if he has known her throughout his entire life, that there is an un-severable bond between them. The man invites them over for dinners, and he goes over to their place four streets down for dinner, and sometimes in the afternoon the man takes the little girl to one Anthony Barnhart
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of the parks with a slide and swings and little metal horses in the ground that rock back and forth on rusted springs.
On one such day he and Jessie are watching Hope play.
“Why did you name her what you named her?” the man asks.
“Why did I name her ‘Hope’?”
“Yes. Why that name? Why not… Amanda. Or Ashlie. Or Sarah. Or Katie?”
“Because one day I hoped she would meet her father,” Jessie says. She squeezes his arm. “And it came true.”
They stand at the swings one day in the dying evening light. Hope is waiting in line at the slide with other children.
“We should get married,” Jessie says.
“What?” the man asks, suddenly facing her.
“We should get married,” she says again.
He doesn’t know how to respond. “Why?”
Her face flushes red. “Maybe we can rekindle… What we had.”
“We didn’t have anything,” the man says.
“Then what was it that we had that night back in Kentucky?”
“It was stupidity. That’s all we had.”
Jessie goes quiet, doesn’t bring it back up that evening.
The next day Jessie says, “Hope needs a man like you in her life.”
“A man like me?”
“A father figure.”
“I
am
her father.”
“I know. But… You’re more like an uncle right now.”
“Why? Because we’re not married?”
She shrugs. “I wasn’t going to put it like that…”
“Let me tell you something,” the man says, facing her. “I’m not the person you think I am. How long have you been in Aspen? Since this began? Then you don’t know what it’s like to be out there, day after day, night after night. You don’t know the things I’ve seen. You don’t know the things I’ve had to do. So don’t act like I’m your knight in shining armor, because I’m not. Not a day goes by that I’m not haunted by what I’ve done. You want a guy like me in Hope’s life? Then you don’t know what you’re asking.” He raises his hands. “Look at these hands. They’re covered in blood, the blood from three little girls that were Hope’s age. I shot them. Each one of them. Right through the
fucking
forehead.” He taps on his forehead for effect. “So don’t act like you know me. Don’t act like you know what I’ve been through, because you don’t. I’ve seen things that I’ll never forget, done things I’ll never forgive myself for. This plague did more than take me from Kira. It absolutely
ruined
me. The man you think I am, he’s gone. He was left in Kentucky over a year ago. I have his hair color. I have his eyes. I have his face. But I’m someone else. You don’t know me, so stop acting like I’m a fucking godsend.”
They are eating dinner the next evening at Jessie’s place. They are sitting in the dining room, eating vegetables and chicken. Hope hums a song to herself as she eats. The man picks at his food. Jessie watches him. Hope gets up to go outside to play with her friend Danielle, and the man and Jessie are left alone.
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The man sets down his fork. “I should go now.”
“No,” Jessie says.
“We’re flying out to Kansas City tomorrow. It’ll be a long flight.”
“Why did you kill those little girls?”
“What?”
“You tell me I don’t understand who you are. But I want to.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Why did you kill them?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think you killed them for some evil pleasure. I’ve seen how to interact with Hope. She’s brought life and vigor and vitality to your life. You tell me you’re not a godsend. Fine. Maybe
she’s
the godsend to
you
.”
The man picks up his fork again, stirs remnants of what had been peas and carrots. Jessie leans forward, reaches across the table, grabs his hand, squeezes. The man recoils, setting down his fork, and he folds his hands in his lap.
“Tell me,” Jessie says. “Please.”
The man glares at her. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
He has told her how it happened: the flight from the airport, holing up in the barn, the dark-walkers coming through, how he shot the girls out of mercy, not desiring them to be torn limb-from-limb; and then how the dark-walkers fled, and how he had been left entirely alone. How had he not killed the girls, they would still be alive. They would be with him. Hope would have three more friends.
“You did what you had to do,” Jessie says.
“They would have survived.”
“You acted on the only knowledge you had, and you made the right decision.”
“The ‘right decision’ was shooting them one-by-one, execution style?”
“The ‘right decision’ was sparing them from what you were going to experience.”
The man looks down at his plate, and tears begin to crawl down his cheeks.
“You think about it often?” Jessie asks.
He sniffles. “Every day. Every
fucking
day. I still see their… faces… in my dreams.”
Jessie stands and moves around the table.
She kneels down next to him, wraps her arm around him.
He leans his head into her shoulder, and his eyes blur with tears, and he weeps.
The next week has come. They are at the park again.
“We can get married,” the man says.
Jessie faces him, shocked. “What?”
“For Hope,” he says. “We can get married.”
“Okay. And what about… What about ‘us’?”
“What about us?”
“Do you think… Do you think we’ll… rekindle?”
“There’s nothing to rekindle, Jessie. I’m doing this for Hope. You understand?”
Jessie nods, biting her lip. “Yes. I understand.”
“Okay,” he says. “Good.”
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VII
He is at a motel in his dream. There comes a knock at the door. “Room Service.” The voice is highpitched and raspy. He stands and wraps a towel around his waist. He approaches the door and swings it open. He leaps back, his heart surging into his throat. A little boy is standing there, his skin rotting, and he wears baggy clothes, and his eyes are beady red jewels set into sunken sockets. He reaches out for the man, his rotted hands protruding from the long sleeves.
The man awakes. He is in the quiet of the bedroom. Jessie sleeps next to him. He draws several deep breaths and rolls onto his side, facing away from her. He stares at the wall, and he feels a great emptiness within him.
He has Jessie.
But he wants Kira.
He has married Jessie.
But he was supposed to marry Kira.
He wakes up next to Jessie.
But he wants to wake up next to Kira.
But this is life:
What you want,
you
can’t
have.
What you have,
you
can’t
keep.
And that which you love
will be taken from you.
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Anthony Barnhart
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Anthony Barnhart
Dwellers of the Night
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Anthony Barnhart
