We stood in silence at the door leading to the screened-in porch.  None of us knew what to expect.  Part of me felt it would be nothing; part of me felt it would be Armageddon.  Neither of those parts seemed to be talking to each other.

Regardless of the disparity in my own person, I watched my father make certain his pistol was ready for use, watched Old George step up next to me so he would be ready to put his entire mass into closing the door if needed, and watched Margaret and my mother stand side by side in the doorway that led from the hall to the living room.  The thought of them as a cheering squad almost made me burst into uncontrolled laughter, the sick kind the brain spits out when declaring it’s in way over its head, but I was able to subdue it before it bubbled to the surface.  I didn’t like what we were doing.  That didn’t change my resolve in thinking we needed to do it.

My father nodded to me and I assumed he was indicating his readiness.  I turned and looked at George and he too nodded.  I wondered then in the back of my mind when we had decided to go with silent signals, but again I ignored the thought and turned back to the door.

I lightly touched the handle.  I wasn’t sure if I expected it to be hot, cold, or something altogether different.  It was none of those things.  I then reached up and unlocked the keyless security bolt.  Nothing happened, so I unlocked the dead bolt.  Again the world didn’t crash down on us, so I finally unlocked the handle.  I knew then nothing was holding the door shut except a quick turn of the knob.

I waited for a moment expecting something.  In that second of time, I questioned the logic of what we were doing.  As a writer, I prided myself in conquering the many aspects of a scenario in order to provide my audience with a realistic narrative.  Only with the door unsecured did I realize that that gift had failed me when agreeing to this plan.  There were concerns we had not discussed.

What if there was no oxygen outside?  What if there were toxic gasses?  What if it was a pure vacuum?  What if…

Stop it! I thought to myself.  This is ridiculous.  There are a great many reasons not to do what we’re about to do, but there equally are as many reasons to do it.  We can’t survive in here forever.  We have to know something more than what we know now.  The only thing that awaits us inside is eventual starvation, each other’s company, and the possibility of more terror-filled dreams… and possibly the same fate as Brogan.  We have to know what’s going on out there.  We have to know if it’s safe.  We have to know.

I wrapped my hand around the handle, gave one final glance to both George and my father, and opened the door.  I pulled it toward me by a tiny crack that allowed me to peer outside in the most limited of ways.  My foot was pinned against the bottom of the door so I could offer to George whatever help possible should some unspeakable thing try to force its way in.  My nervousness caused a twitch that ran right down to that foot and I promptly slammed the door shut in my own face.

That’s when I finally laughed out loud.  It was a nervous laugh though, one that didn’t help the situation.

“Sorry,” I cheaply offered, and then I pulled the door open again.

With only a hair’s width between the door and jamb, I couldn’t see much.  The porch was definitely clear in that tiny sliver of space.  I also felt a cold breeze blowing against my eye.

“It’s cold,” I mumbled, and then more clearly, “It’s really cold.”

I pulled the door open a bit more and the rush of cool air came in on all sides.  It was hitting my face hard and I felt as though it must be winter outside.  It had been in the mid-nineties before the storm moved in, yet what I felt was far colder than that.  And it was still a summer afternoon in Texas.  How odd…

With the door open about an inch, I had a relatively clear view of a swath of the porch.  It looked like it would on any dark night.  Only the absolute darkness pressed against the screens betrayed that vision.  It was a seething mass of blackness so rich and complete it consumed every detail.  Maybe peripherally and maybe only in my mind, I could see it moving.

I pressed my lips to the small open space and took a breath.  It tasted sterile and cold.  I’d have called it frigid if I were writing about it.  Like all icy air, it was sharp and clean.  I took another breath to be certain before pulling the door open.  There was about a foot of space between it and the frame.

I held my place and looked out.  The lights on the porch felt normal to me.  The rush of cold air did not, at least not for a summer afternoon.  Nevertheless, the screened-in space appeared to be all right so long as I ignored what was outside its meager boundaries.

Pulling the door open a bit more, I stepped into the doorway.  My father came up behind me and George stepped over to the door’s edge where he could see out.  Both looked over my shoulders.

I glanced around the porch and even leaned my head out beyond the wall to look in either direction.  Other than fuzziness along all outside edges, it was a perfectly normal screened-in porch on a very dark night.  So I stepped out the door.

It was indeed cold.  I was still wearing shorts and found myself tragically underdressed.  What I needed was winter clothing.  I ignored the discomfort from that and took one more step while I continued glancing around me.  There was really nothing to see.  It was unremarkable.  Again, that was true as long as one ignored what rested just outside the screens that surrounded the area.

“I think it’s okay,” I tentatively said, “but it’s really cold.”

My father stepped through the door behind me.  If my judge of distance was correct, he was standing in the doorway.

I tried to focus on the blackness beyond the edges of the porch and, just as had been the case in the sunroom, I found it difficult to see anything.  The darkness that swirled beyond consumed everything, including vision.

“Let me see,” George demanded.  As always, he pushed his way through no matter what.  I heard the door swing open a bit farther as he made room for himself.  My father likewise stepped aside as his dear friend walked out and joined me.

“Seems relatively normal aside from the temperature.”  I wasn’t speaking to him directly but knew he’d have an opinion.

“Ain’t that the truth, Davey.  It’s like a dark night in winter is all, assumin’ you don’t look out there.”  He nodded toward the seething nothingness beyond the screen barrier.  “But take a gander at it, why don’t ya?”  He took a few steps past me and stood closer to the porch door.  He leaned his head forward as if inspecting the screens and what lay beyond.

I could see what captivated him.  It was the same reason I thought the screens looked fuzzy.  Tendrils of darkness came through the wall.  They were made of whatever had surrounded us, whatever had enveloped Carr Beholden—No, not enveloped so much as consumed.  They looked like tentacles if such things could be made of smoke.

I took a few steps forward to satisfy my own curiosity.  Although the darkness seemed held back by the screens, my first impression was that it was probing the barrier looking for weaknesses or a way in.  Tiny wisps of it felt their way through the small mesh spaces and wagged around on the inside of the porch.

Tentacles of black smoke…  They would enter, feel around in the air, sometimes touch the screen through which they’d passed, and then disappear back to the outside.  Their reach into the porch never surpassed six inches.  Each one was so small and fragile that it seemed it would we washed away by the slightest breeze.  I was even tempted to step up to the barrier and blow on them to test that hypothesis, but I quickly denied that idea and stored it in the not-a-good-idea-and-never-gonna-happen file.  Watching them was amazing, however, and they were everywhere.

“What’n the hell is that?”  George’s voice shattered my inspection but helped me realize I was not hallucinating.  “It’s like little smoky arms or somethin’, like a octopus made’a fog.”

I laughed aloud.  It was a great description and seemed to fit.  As soon as the laugh escaped my lips, all of the strands of darkness disappeared back through the screens.

“Holy shit!”  The words leaped from my mouth.

“Amen t’that!”  George had seen it as well.  Whatever it was, the lightless tempest heard me and responded.  It didn’t respond to our voices but did respond to the suddenness of my laugh.

I glanced around the porch and realized all the screens had cleared.  “That’s impossible…”

“It ain’t if we’re standin’ here a’looking at it, is it, Davey?”

“No, I suppose not, George.”

As we watched, vines of nothingness began to feel their way back through the screens.  I took one more step to get a closer look.

They were small.  They were made of smoke or fog or whatever was out there.  They were definitely alive, or at least under control of something that was alive.  They danced in and out of the porch via whatever means they could find.  Whether through the screen, the miniscule spaces around the door, or even cracks in the old wood flooring, they probed and searched and investigated every means of ingress.

Or was it searching?  I suddenly remembered the dream and how Beth had used itand they interchangeably.  Is it controlled by them, or them by it, or are they and it one in the same? I wondered.  And who are they and what is it?

My considerations aside, what I saw was like watching smoke rising from a fire, flailing about in the air above the flames, and eventually returning to the embers from which it was born, and all in a way that was alive.  It then occurred to me I was seeing more clearly the same kind of movement I thought I’d seen through the sunroom windows.  The darkness was in constant motion.  The proof was right in front of my eyes.

As I pondered this unimaginable puzzle, several of the intruding wisps joined together through the door and formed a single larger tentacle.  It whipped around from side to side before bending into a horseshoe shape and touching the door frame, door handle, and screen.  George and I were mesmerized.  The thick tendril remained translucent yet moved like a living appendage.

It was ethereal smoke and nothing more.  Those realizations didn’t negate the fact that it was moving and touching.  It was feeling around the inside of the porch and inspecting everything around it.

“What the hell is that?” George exclaimed.  Then he reached out to touch it.

“Don’t!”

I was too late.  His hand brushed against the larger projection and it responded.  It all responded.  They responded.

The screen door pushed inward with explosive force.  It struck George head-on and I felt certain he’d be thrown backward into Carr Beholden.  It was so quick I couldn’t understand how any other reaction was possible.  Yet he stood in place.  My eyes widened as I realized the darkness had reached in and wrapped around both him and the door.

“Son of a bitch!” I yelled.

I grabbed his arm as more writhing nothingness encircled him.  He was pinned to the door by expanding tentacles of black smoke.

At first it was just his torso, but then more and more tendrils reached in through the open space and grasped at him.  They grabbed his arms, his legs, his head, and even his neck, all while more of the darkness looped around his midsection.

As I pulled on his left arm and my father began pulling on his right arm, George’s entire mass lifted into the air.  He hovered about two feet off the ground with the door still pinned to the front of his body.

“Help!” I shouted.

My mother and Margaret were already making their way out the door as they’d seen what was happening.  Margaret’s screams pierced my ears once she was outside and could fully appreciate the situation.

Whatever was holding George reacted, but it was not the same unexpected way they’d pulled out of the porch when I laughed.  This time a few of the cloudy arms disappeared back through the door to the outside.  Most of them, however, did not release their grip.  And slowly yet deliberately, more came back.

“No!” Margaret screamed.  “Let him go!”

Darkness continued reaching into the porch and grabbing George, more and more, all too much.  They wrapped around every part of his body.  All the while, their grip tightened on him and pinned him to the floating door that once held them back.

My father let go of his friend’s arm long enough to aim and fire the gun into the darkness.  To the bullets and the loud noise, this time there was no retraction.  More of it continued to pour through the open doorway and enwrap Old George as he hung in midair and struggled.

“Get inside!” I shouted.  “Get inside now!”  It’s a game of numbers, I thought, and there are more to protect than there is to save.

Mosko’s fierce barking and growling interrupted my train of thought.  Helene’s screams followed.  “No!  Come back!  Mosko!”

“Get inside!” I yelled again as Mosko’s ferocity flew through the door and reached our position.

Whimpers and whines separated his growls and barks.  He fought two opposite ends of the fear spectrum.  He would act to protect the members of his pack.  He was also scared to death.

The dog leaped up and tried to grab one of the dark tentacles.  He passed right through it only to be snatched out of the air by another.  I couldn’t help but notice how his motion was halted like watching an egg hit the floor.  He just stopped.

That’s what happened to Mosko, except he stopped in the air.  His yelps stabbed my being as they joined the horrific cries from George.

More of the uncoiling terror came into the porch and restrained the dog.  It grabbed his legs, then his paws, then his entire body, and finally his throat.  A small wisp of it then clamped his mouth shut.

The canine disappeared into the darkness while being held at least four feet off the ground.  He was gone in an instant.  It enveloped him as soon as he passed beyond the screen wall.

Much later, I would appreciate to no small degree the fact that his painful yelps started and stopped almost immediately with one final cry of agony.  A brief bout of angry growling and snapping lasted only a second after he’d been pulled from the porch.  I hoped desperately he hadn’t suffered beyond that final cry.

George was almost completely shrouded by the darkness and held so tightly against the screen door that it cut into his face.  Both floated above the ground as one.

The situation had grown beyond our control.  George was to be no more.  I let go of his hand and grabbed Margaret.

“Dad, get Mom and get inside!”  My yell was sharp and commanding.

My father released his grip on his friend, turned, wrapped his arms around my mother and began pushing her back to whatever refuge we could find in Carr Beholden.

Helene’s screams from just inside the door continued to pierce the air.  I pulled Margaret’s hand free from George’s arm even as his cries bellowed around us.  She struggled against me and I picked her up and carried her to the doorway where her screams mixed with those of her daughter.  I pushed her into the house and let Dad restrain her.  My mom had already stepped back to hold Helene.

I turned one last time to look at George.  He was suspended in the air by wispy tendrils of smoke that cloaked his body.

It was the impossible happening right in front of us.  The darkness had come and was now baring its teeth.  I could barely get my mind around it.  In the split-second I stood in the open doorway looking at a father and husband and friend be consumed by nothingness, I assumed I finally understood what the dream had warned us about.

And then George was gone.  He was pulled into the darkness just as Mosko had been.  He vanished in a heartbeat.  His screams ended just as quickly as the dog’s before him, and I stared at the suddenly empty porch.  My eyes were drawn to where the screen door had been.  The darkness formed a perfect barrier in its place.  Swirling and writhing in and on itself, it was an unnaturally flat surface running parallel to the screen wall.

The porch existed for an instant just as it had been when we first stepped outside: completely encapsulated by whatever was out there.  My amazement was short-lived.  Similar to watching the fog from dry ice pour from a container, the darkness began pouring into the porch and toward the open door where I stood.  It came from all directions.

Dad grabbed me and pulled me inside while my mother slammed the door shut and locked it.

[Introduction | Part 10 | Part 12]