Whispers From The Dark (6 page)

He hurried back to the living room.  The stereo was still turned off, no record on the turntable.  He traced the source of the sound across the table and froze.

The music was emanating from the album itself.

Alan stared at the cover, barely able to even take a breath.  It had changed.  The scene was the same, only now there was no small white cabin.  The house in the painting was now his own.

Slowly, fearing what he would see but needing to see it nonetheless, he walked to his window.

His small lawn and the suburb beyond were gone.  Alan gazed through the glass at a vast field with lush rolling hills.

In the distance two black, featureless figures were advancing towards him.

Behind him the child’s sobs grew louder, the haunting music receding into the background.  From somewhere in the house faint footsteps sounded out as the little refugee searched for a hiding place.

As he watched the faceless shadows cross the field the crying faded away and the music overtook Alan and he drifted into it.  It wrapped around him like a womb, embracing him with its beauty.  His headache melted away and his fear followed closely behind.

Somewhere in Alan’s mind he knew that he should be terrified.  But there was no way anyone could be afraid with these heavenly sounds filling the air.

He couldn’t move, which was fine.  He didn’t want to.  The song was far beyond the point at which he’d blacked out last time.  This part of the album he hadn’t yet heard, and it was so perfect that he knew he would never hear anything again to match it.

He had to hear as much of the song as he could.  Nothing else mattered. 

They would be here soon, those dark entities.  And even though he had no idea just what would happen when they made it to his home, he knew he only had a few more minutes to enjoy the music.

DESPERATE TIMES

Rick stood in the doorway staring into the house, the full moon piercing the windows and filling the home with a pale blue light, giving it an ominous and foreboding appearance.  Each piece of furniture stood like a shadowed, wooden sentry on guard.

Beside him James was silent, but Rick could feel his smile speaking through the dark.  Told you so, that smile said.  It had been James’ call, this house.  It was the fourth of the week for them and Rick had had his doubts about pressing their luck further.  But James’ description of the isolation of the place was reassurance enough for Rick.

James hadn‘t exaggerated; the subdivision was practically a forest.  A graveled road snaked its way through the old growth trees past numerous flattened house sites.  According to James this was one of only three homes built in the place so far and was lived in for only a couple of months each summer.

A year ago James had done a small plumbing job for the owners and learned where the key to the house was hidden, and that like many other homes in the area it lacked a security system.  It was one of the last jobs James had managed to get.  Like Rick’s remodeling business, James had seen his plumbing business dry up, wither, and die.

Rick stepped over the threshold and into the foyer.  It was small, a bench on either side of a short hallway that opened up into a massive living room with a hallway leading in out of it in either direction.  Rick didn’t need his flashlight to know that the furniture occupying the room was probably worth nearly as much as his own modest house.  He walked to the middle of the room and stopped when he reached a large, L shaped leather couch and glanced over his shoulder in time to see James click on his flashlight and disappear down the left hallway.

Rick flicked on his light, letting the beam slice through the room, never resting in one place for more than a breath.  Just as he’d suspected, antique furniture dotted the walls of the room.  A centuries-old china cabinet proudly displaying various glass treasures.  A coffee table made from dark wood with intricate carvings around its outer edge and ornate legs.  A grandfather clock, a grand piano.  Rick had seen them all in various houses throughout the county, homes that dotted the faces and ridge lines of the Appalachian mountains like pimples on the face of a beauty queen. 

To one side of the room was a large fireplace, its mantel holding a couple of small sculptures that may have been modern; Rick couldn’t tell.  Above the mantle, looking very out of place in the midst of such antiquities, hung a big screen plasma television.

Rick crept through the room, surveying it for anything of value that was light enough to carry without much effort and anything that would be easy for him to sell with little risk.  The television was too risky, the furniture too heavy and too difficult to get rid of.  He opened the china cabinet and fished out a few baubles that looked valuable and a couple that he was sure Clarissa would enjoy.  He placed them on the couch and continued his hunt, making his way down the hallway opposite the one James had gone down.

The right side of the hallway held two doors; another stood at the end of the hall.  Opposite them was a sliding glass door leading out to a deck.  Rick turned the knob on the first door and opened it, letting his light enter the room first.

It was a bedroom - a large one, at that.  A four post bed sat in the center of the room, regal in the pauper glow of his flashlight.  There was a large oak vanity against the wall beside the bed and he immediately made his way to it and, clamping his light between his teeth, began opening the drawers and pilfering through them.

 He’d pocketed a few pieces of jewelry when he heard a loud, quick grunting sound followed by a dull thud that seemed to shake the floor in the silent house.

Rick froze.  He thought he heard a low muffled moan, but tried to convince himself it was imagined.  Unable to do so, he clicked off his light and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.  Finally he stood and crept back into the hallway. 

He kept his breaths light and shallow as he moved down the hallway, taking twice as long to return to the living room as it had for him to leave it.

Across the living room, at the end of the opposite hallway, a razor thin sliver of light stretched out from beneath a closed door.

He glanced around the living room, unsure of what to do.  Finally he set out down the hallway, his steps measured and punctuated by brief moments of concentration.  His eyes were trained on the light seeping out from beneath the door, his ears straining to hear something.

Rick stopped and cocked his head towards the door, holding his breath.  Finally, he hissed his companion’s name through clenched teeth.

“James?”

Silence. 

He took a final step and reached the door, placing his hand on the handle. “James?”

Clutching his flashlight like a club, Rick turned the handle and pushed open the door.  The room beyond was only a shade less dim than the rest of the house.  The source of the light that had escaped underneath the door was James’ flashlight, laying in thick beige carpet at Rick’s feet now, shining between his legs and down the hallway behind him.  A few inches from the flashlight was a hand.  A motionless heap of shadow, James lay silent on the floor.

His adrenaline barely had time to surge at the sight of his partner before a dark shape charged from one side of the room, swinging something down through the darkness as it came.  Rick felt a flash of pain before blackness swallowed him.

***

The pain woke him in waves so vivid they brought flashes of color behind his closed eyes.  He lingered in that half-awake state for a moment, mind trying to sort out dream and reality.

Out of reality came the metallic taste of blood, triggering a domino like surge of realizations.

The left side of his head was agony incarnate, a high pitched squeal slicing through his mind.

He was sitting upright, head hanging like a bobble head doll with a busted spring. 

He couldn’t move his arms or legs. 

That last thought stirred his body into action.  He jerked his head upward, forcing himself to open his eyes as he made the motion.

His left eye would barely obey and he felt the numb, alien sensation of massive swelling there.  The vision through it was blurred and dim, like peering through moving water.

There was light now - too much of it.  He was tied to a wooden chair, his arms lashed to the chair’s arms, in a room that seemed another dimension from the one he had left.  Plain cinder block walls, a pale and naked concrete floor, raw exposed rafters stretching from wall to wall.  A basement that seemed more like a tomb.

On the floor ten feet or so away lay James’ body, still an unmoving mound.  He was facing Rick, eyes closed.  There was dried blood caked around his nose and mouth and a fresh rivulet dripping from each.  Much of his face and head was swollen and discolored, black and blue and yellow.  His chest moved shallowly, irregularly.  As bad as Rick felt, he was sure that James was in far worse shape.

Behind him Rick could hear movement.  Shuffling footsteps, heavy breathing.

“You sure fucked up, friend.”  The voice came with a light chuckle for accompaniment.  “You guys saved me a lot of trouble, though.”

Rick sat silent, staring at James’ mangled face.

“I said you fucked up.”  The chuckle was gone.

Rick wasn’t sure of what to do.

Something blunt and hard poked into his shoulder forcefully.  “Tell me!”  The man said loudly.

“Yeah.”  Rick’s voice was weak, a whisper that still seemed to echo off the cold grey walls. 

 The man walked from behind Rick and squatted down before him, clutching a wooden baseball bat in one hand.  He was middle-aged and balding with a thick five ‘o clock shadow covering his face. The scent of alcohol hung heavy on his breath.  He studied Rick’s face as if searching for the answer to some centuries-old riddle.  “When I was a kid, one of the first things my Dad told me was that there was nothing lower on earth than a thief.  Except a liar.”

Rick stared at him, heart pounding in his head with so much intensity that he had to focus just to hear the man as he talked.

“But…desperate times, you know?”  The man smiled faintly and cocked his head to one side.

A silence passed between the men.

The man’s smile turned to a frown.  “Desperate times, goddamn it. What do they call for?”

Rick hesitated a moment.  He knew what the man wanted him to say, but should he play this game?  No choice, he told himself as he said: “Desperate measures.”  The words were barely a whisper.

The balding man smiled and nodded his head, pleased. “Desperate measures.  That’s right.”  He stood up and began circling James’ motionless body as he talked. “Times are tough.  I know you’ve got your reasons. Believe me, I know.  Every sin is forgivable. That’s what Jesus said, you know.  Every sin.  Even thievery.  Hell, even murder.”

The breath stalled in Rick’s lungs as the man spoke the word.  Was that it, then?  Was that his fate, to be killed while strapped to this chair in this basement at the hand of this man?

“He’s not wearing a ring.  But you…you’re married.”  He spoke the words flatly, emotionless.

Rick stared in silence.

The man rolled his eyes.  “Desperate fucking times, man.  Desperate times.  I know what it’s like!  To have a wife and kids and have to provide for them and get in a spot where you aren’t sure if you can or not.”  He pointed the baseball bat at Rick.  “That’s why you’ve stooped to breaking into houses, right?  Pay a mortgage?  Feed your family?”

It was the truth.  He had spent thirty three years without ever even shoplifting a piece of gum.  But the building industry in Ashton had collapsed upon itself, and thousands were unemployed at the moment with no hope of change in sight.  After three months without paying the mortgage and two weeks of Clarissa and their daughter Maggie subsisting on little more than ramen noodles and beanie weenies, Rick had taken the only course of action he felt he had left.

“This sack of shit, though.”  The man’s gaze fell on James and turned to ice.  His voice grew in intensity, in disgust, as he spoke.  “I remember being a single man, living alone.  You can live on scraps when you need to.  But instead of struggling and fighting like a man he comes here to steal from me.  This isn’t to keep his wife from leaving him or feed his kids.  This is for his own comfort.  His own selfish fucking desires.  He can be first.  Hell, I may only need one of you, anyway.  And he deserves it.  Goddamn right he does.”

Suddenly the man swung the bat down and connected with James’ right knee, a sickening crack echoing off the walls of the basement.  James moaned and twitched slightly as the bat slammed into his knee for a second time.  Once more and the man seemed to be sated for the moment, turning his back and walking away from James and Rick.

He stood staring at the cinder block wall in front of him, his voice altered slightly as it bounced off the wall and echoed back to Rick.  “I’ve struggled and fought for everything I have.  Hell…I’ve fought for the shit I’ve lost.”

The man whirled back around, leaning against the wall and sliding down it to a sitting position, cradling his head in one hand and using the other to fidget with the bat.

Even with his vision still blurry and his ears still ringing Rick could see that the man was crying, or at least on the verge of it.

“Fucking bitch.  Fucking economy.  I’m not losing anything else.  I don’t have any other choices, goddamn it.”

When the man looked up, his face didn’t show any sign of tears.  It was cold and determined.  He was biting his lower lip and nodding his head as if he had finally made an important decision.

The man dropped the bat to the ground and walked over to James, grabbing him by his legs.  James didn’t make a sound as the man started to drag him across the floor, the two of them disappearing behind Rick leaving a thin trail of blood on the concrete.

Rick heard James’ legs hit the concrete as the man dropped them, followed by near silence.  He turned his head as far as he could, but couldn’t see James or the homeowner.