I was screaming when I awoke.  I sat upright and wailed as though my life depended on it.  My screams sounded terrible to me.  They reminded me of George’s bellowing as he was ripped from the porch, and of Margaret’s bloodcurdling pleas before she was muffled by … by the unforgivable.  I was even reminded of Mosko’s horrific whimpers and painful howls as he disappeared into the darkness.  My voice sounding like those events was a terrible thing.

Tears streamed from my eyes and the wetness of them comforted me somehow by confirming I still felt something.  It was something the darkness hadn’t taken from me.  At least not yet.

Still, darkness was all around me.  It took me a moment to realize it was a lack of light and not some ethereal evil coming to visit endless death on me.

I shook my head as if trying to free myself from confusion.  There was only a small amount of light in the darkness, but it was enough for me to see I was in the office.  And then something stood over me and reached toward me.  I screamed again even as it spoke.

“Dave!  Stop it, son!  You had a nightmare.  It’s your father.  Calm down.”  He grabbed my shoulders and shook me several times to get my attention as he continued, “Stop it!  Right now!  Dave, it’s your father!  You’re okay!”

I started laughing.  My ears heard it as a sick demented laugh of the hopeless mixed with the cackle of the mentally ill.  I shook my head to clear my thoughts.

My father’s face was very near mine as he looked at me in bewilderment.  He wondered about my laughing.

I wasn’t sure it was enough of an explanation when I said, “No, Dad, we’re not okay.  We’re not going to be okay.”  Before he could say anything, I added, “Where’s Mom?  Where’s Mom!?”

“I’m right here, Vey.”  The voice came from across the room.

I looked around and located the source of the words.  She sat on the arm of the small recliner in the corner of the room.  Even through the darkness, I thought I could see Helene in the chair next to her.

“Is that Helene?”

“Yes.  She’s sleeping.  She was in shock but now I think she’s sleeping.”  The fear in my mother’s voice was discernible.

I looked around the room, around Carr Beholden’s office.  It was dark with a bit of light coming from the various computers and security equipment, and also the emergency light in the corner of the ceiling that gave some illumination, although it was in its final throws of death.  Losing power …

I looked at the computer that ran the security system.  Its screensaver always showed the time.  5:07 P.M.  It changed as I watched.  5:08 P.M.

It amazed me that it was only early evening.  Events had unfolded so quickly it seemed a lifetime of experiences had happened in a single 24-hour period.  Only six hours had passed since I first awoke in the sunroom after the first dream, the nightmare that scared me so completely.  It left me disoriented and confused.

Despite that, I had picked up and moved on with life.  If only I’d known then what I knew sitting there looking at the clock.

What a silly thought!  Did I really believe knowing what would happen over the next quarter day could have made a difference in the outcome?  Hardly.  I suspected nothing could have made a difference, at least if I was understanding a fraction of what had transpired in the latest dream.  I doubted anything could have made a difference.

“Are you okay, son?” my father asked.

I looked down and realized I lay on the old couch I’d thrown in the office.  I didn’t entertain in the room, but it wasn’t unusual for me to stretch out a bit while I worked.  Rather than discard it when I moved from Dallas and began purchasing new furniture, I’d thrown it somewhere it could be useful without being public.  It had nostalgic value I hadn’t wanted to part with … at least not yet.

As I looked at it in the dark, I assumed my father had laid me on it when he dragged me into the room.  Assuming that memory is even true, I thought.

“We’re in the office.  And out there …”  My voice trailed off with a nod toward the door.

“I assume it’s still out there.  We ain’t heard nothing.  Since we got no windows, we don’t really know anything other than what happened before we came in,” Dad explained.

Listening as he spoke, I continued looking down trying to gather myself.  With my head lolling, I became aware I didn’t have a shirt on.

How odd, I thought.  Wasn’t I wearing a tee shirt earlier?  I reached up and patted my chest and abs as I looked at myself.  It was if I thought the shirt was invisible and that I’d be able to feel it even if I couldn’t see it.

“We took it off you,” Dad offered.

My mom added, “It was covered in vomit.  We’re sorry.  You got pretty sick.  It’s over there.”  She pointed toward a corner of the room where I could just make out my shirt on the floor.

I thought I remembered vomiting as I watched Brogan’s violation and listened to Margaret’s body crackling and breaking as it was pulled up through the chimney.  I even thought I remembered having dry heaves.

I dropped my hands and let them rest on the couch next to my legs.  There was no use worrying about my state of undress.  Instead, I asked, “It got Margaret, right?  And it came in the door from the porch?  Am I remembering correctly?”

“That’s right.  We got the door shut as it was coming down the hall.  You said hit the panic button, so I did.  We’ve been in here ever since.  A couple hours.”

“I need to shut off some of these computers.  It might save us a little electricity.  If that emergency light is any indication, we don’t have much left.”  Again I was aware of the drain on power that was taking place.  I didn’t understand and, in the scheme of things, I realized it didn’t matter.

My father looked over his shoulder at the lights that dimly glowed near the ceiling.  There was a small red beacon flashing on the box that held the emergency bulbs.  He then turned back to me as I struggled to get off the couch.

I still didn’t feel sure I was in reality or that my body was working correctly.  I swung my legs off the sofa and turned to face the room.  A deep breath helped me collect myself.

Dad reached out and tried to hold my arm as I struggled to get up.  “You’ve been out for a couple hours.  Maybe you should take it easy for a minute.  You know, get your legs under you and all.”

“I’m okay.  Or I’ll be okay I guess.  How long as Helene been asleep?”

“A few hours.  Same as you,” my mother replied.

“Have you tried to wake her?”

“No.  We thought it best if she got some sleep.  She’s been through a lot.  Some rest should help her.”  But Mom had already picked up on the concern in my voice, so she asked, “Why?”

“Just curious.”  My wobbly legs finally lifted me from the couch and I stood.  Dad held his arms ready to catch me if I fell, but I was already feeling more stable.  “I’ll be alright,” I said as I touched his arm.  “Really, I’ll be okay.  Let me turn off some of this stuff.”

He watched as I turned off everything except the security computer.  It ran the emergency systems, including the lighting in the office.  I said as much to him as I worked but didn’t say anything about it also holding the door closed and keeping the vents sealed.

As a safe room designed to protect important equipment, the security system made the room as impenetrable as any human could design without building a bank vault.  It would by no means survive a nuclear attack or a direct hit from a bomb, but it would survive all but the most cataclysmic tornado strikes, floods, and even basic terrorist attacks like a biological or chemical strike.  The new world we’d been living in prior to the darkness had made those considerations essential.

I wasn’t sure what would happen if the controller failed.  The possibility of the door or vents opening was unimaginable even if I wasn’t certain either of those would happen.  But I did know a failure of the system would turn off the water in the small bathroom as well as all electricity.  Still, I was more concerned with the door and vents.

“It preserves,” dream-Beth had said.  More and more I thought I understood what that meant.  I also thought I was beginning to understand—already did understand what the darkness was about.  That’s why I’d asked about Helene.

“Do you still have your gun, Dad?”

“Uh, yes.  Why?”

“We might need it.  How many bullets are left?”

“Four.”

“Keep it close to you, huh?”

“Why, son?  What’s going on?”

“We’ll talk about it in a bit.  First, I need to get these systems shut off.”  I continued working and ignored his questioning stare that I could feel on the back of my head.  I didn’t want to voice my concerns, my assumptions.I didn’t want to share the horror I’d experienced or the truths I’d come back with, but I knew I would eventually.  I’d have to.

With all but the main security system powered down and my laptop still unplugged, I turned toward Mom and Helene and stepped over to the old recliner.  “So she’s doing okay?”

My mother peered at me through for a moment.  I suspected she was trying to read my face.  I was thankful for the dim lighting.  “I guess so,” she said, “but I’m not a doctor.  If she went into shock, I don’t know what that means for her.  She seems to be sleeping soundly now after a bit of a hiccup.”

“Hiccup?”  That remark chilled me.  “What do you mean?”

“After we the door closed and we got you two situated, I think she had a nightmare.  She squirmed and talked a little nonsense, even moaned and groaned a bit.  She quieted down though, and she’s been sleeping soundly ever since.  But who could blame her if she had a bad dream?  Look at what she’s been through.”

“You did the same thing shortly before you woke up,” my father added.

I looked at him closely through the twilight.  He was stating a matter of fact and not offering an explanation.  That was clear to me, yet I felt he knew I knew something more than I’d already said.  It worried him.

“You’re right.  The girl’s been through hell.  Who can blame her for a nightmare or two?”  I was intentionally flippant.  There was no reason to start blathering about my suspicions until I was ready to commit to what I thought—knew would be necessary afterward.

I glanced around the room in sudden confusion.  There was something necessary that had to be done when this room was in panic mode.  What was it …  “Oh shit,” I said as I walked to the bathroom.

“What?” Mom asked with newfound worry.

“Sorry.  Nothing critical, at least not yet,” I responded, “but this room seals when you hit the panic button.  It’s not supposed to get any air from the outside.  If we’ve been in here a couple of hours, I imagine we might need more breathing room so to speak.”

Carr Beholden was a work in progress.  There were a great many things I wanted to do with the place.  There were also a great many unrealized plans and incomplete additions I’d not had time to address.  I always thought I’d have more time …

One such item was the office.  If it was to be a safe room in case of a terrorist attack—as though Kingswell, Texas, would be a target, but you never knew where something might drift off to—the room needed its own air supply.  Luckily it had one.  Unfortunately, it hadn’t been installed and automated yet.

The tanks sat in the bathroom behind the door, disconnected and idle.  The idea was to have them controlled by the main system so they’d activate when the room sealed itself.  At least part of that process worked, but it was frightening to think it worked only in the worst way.  The room would certainly seal itself—in theory—yet it wouldn’t provide any refreshed air should someone be inside.  That was a later phase of work, a not yet complete phase.

I stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door away from the wall.  Three large green tanks sat silently in their place hidden away from most eyes.  They also sat unused.  There was nothing to release the air inside them.  There was nothing to keep the room breathable.

I turned one of the knobs and it squeaked as it rotated.  A rush of hissing gas began blowing out of the small nozzle.  I wasn’t certain how much it should release at any one time, so I opened it two turns and let it blow into the bathroom.  I didn’t want to pass out.  I suspected that was a very bad idea.  If we started feeling lightheaded, I’d know to open it further or open another one.  I also hoped it wasn’t too much, although I wasn’t at all sure why that would be a problem or how we’d know if it was.

With what I hoped was a reasonable amount of fresh breathing room for us, I turned and walked out of the bathroom into the office.  “I think that’ll do it.”

My father nodded in understanding as my mother turned her attention back to Helene.  The young girl’s breathing was normal and she sounded like a person in deep sleep.  For that reason alone, I was thankful for the dim light.  Mom knew enough to realize Brogan wasn’t normal when she’d looked at his eyes.  My suspicion was that Helene’s eyes would somehow be similar in a human way.  Mom would have noticed if she’d had enough light to look closely.

“Mom and Dad, listen to me.  I need to work on something for a bit.  I’m pretty sure we’re safe in here for now.”  Lying to my father for the second time in a day and to my mother for the first time during that same period was like an arrow to my own heart, but I knew an accounting of my sudden dishonesty was the least of our worries.  Instead of fretting about it, I added, “There are some snacks in the desk drawer.  I wish I had something more to offer than chips and candy bars and the like, but that’s all we have for right now.  If you’ll give me a bit, I’ll finish what I need to do.  After that, we need to talk.”

“Are you going to tell us why we’re not going to be okay?  That’s what you said when you woke up.”  His matter-of-fact approach hit me clearly.

“Yes.  We don’t need to talk about it now, but we will.  I need to do this first.  Please, it’s important.  Then we’ll talk.”

Neither of them responded aside from nodding.  They were very perceptive and I knew even then both of them were beginning to realize we were living our final hours.  There was no escape the way we came in.  There was no hope around the globe as far as we knew.  There was no promise of another tomorrow even if it were lived in the tiny space of my office.  Looking at them in the barely visible light that blanketed us, I didn’t need to see their faces clearly to know they were already facing the horrific truth.

I grabbed my laptop from the desk and sat back down on the couch.  I powered it up and began typing furiously.

[Introduction | Part 15 | Part 17]

I tried to calm down before speaking again.  I took a deep breath, mental though it might have been, and said, “Okay, Beth, I’m sorry, but I could use some of those truths now.”

“Our time is short but I’ll tell you what I can.  You must listen then you must leave.”  She sounded like someone near their end.  Her voice grew weaker and more distant as each moment passed, more labored and frail.  My dream-wife was dying.  The thought upset me.

“No one knows where the darkness came from,” she began.  “They simply have always been.  It’s more ancient than time itself.”

I stared at the unblinking eyes that hung motionless outside the window.  They stared back.  An occasional scratch against the glass kept reminding me of their presence.

While I felt the eyes watch me as in the first dream, this particular set looking at me—into me had a far more devastating impact.  They didn’t float around out there looking into the house but perhaps not at me specifically.  No, these eyes were locked on my position, locked on my eyes, and their visual grip on me never wavered.  And the scratching as though intentionally trying to frighten me…  Well, it was working.

We are temptation’s hatred
Feed our lust

Something in the voices of those children I could feel in a way I didn’t understand.  The pat-a-cake song was somehow becoming physical and reaching out.  I thought briefly my head was beginning to hurt, but Beth’s voice diverted my attention.

She had paused for a second as though collecting herself—or itself—as though taking a deep breath in the hopes of finding strength.  Then she said, “It’s eternal in ways we don’t understand.  Calling them eternal limits them somehow.  They’re infinitely infinite.  But they’ve always been weak, and perhaps that’s how we hurt them for so long.  It couldn’t protect itself.  So we went on hurting them.  They began to grow angry after infinities of hurting.  The rage fed on itself as we went on wounding them.  As its fury grew, so too grew their strength.”

I thought I heard Helene screaming but disregarded it as a hallucination wrapped in a dream, and ignoring it I asked, “How did we hurt them?”

“We’ve invaded their world countless times over countless lifetimes through countless universes in countless existences.  We didn’t know we were doing it.  But since the first being of thought dreamed its first dream, we’ve hurt them over and over again&mdadsh;”

We are come for you, David Lloyd

It was a whisper piercing my flesh.  It cut me.  I could feel the gash even if I couldn’t see one.  Children from the Village of the Damned spoke my name, and it hurt me, yet their voices had already returned to a dull, indecipherable background noise.

I tried to focus on the eyes that stared back at me from the darkness and found it increasingly difficult to look at them.  The once-burning embers were now white-hot flames boring into my soul.  It was invading me somehow.  It was violating me.

I looked at it and mustered all the strength I thought I could find, and then I screamed, “Leave me the fuck alone!”

The glass cracked, a small split in an otherwise solid pane.  Still, it cracked right in front of those eyes.  I stumbled backward in terror.

What if the windows break?  What do I do if there’s nothing between me and them?  Oh shit…

We are bringers of night
And dark despair

Another window cracked to my left.  It was on the far wall, what in the real world would be the north wall of the sunroom.  It faced the lake if there was even a lake left.  The crack was another small one in the middle of the glass, yet it was there and I could see it from across the room.  More eyes hovered outside that window like all the others.

I worried the darkness in this place was finally going to come, and I worried it was coming specifically for me.  The thought of what I’d already seen sent shock through my bones as I wondered what it might be capable of us in this unreal dream world.  Their world?

Helene’s voice called out from somewhere in the house.  It was an anguished cry begging for mercy.  Or is she begging for death?  I think she’s begging for death.  But I knew Helene wasn’t in this dream.  This was my nightmare.  I was certain I was losing my mind.

Grasping at whatever this dream-Beth could share, I tried to understand her warnings in addition to what was happening in my own real world.  She’d said it wasn’t the darkness.  I didn’t want to argue semantics with her—or it—but I needed answers.  If there was any hope for us, she seemed to be the only way to find it.

“There’s little time left, Vey.  You must listen.  You’re in danger and we can’t stop them.  It’ll be here soon and your suffering will never end if you’re here.”

“Then tell me what you know, Beth.  Please tell me.”

Unwept tears misted my eyes, deep emotional distress welling within me.  It was the purest form of dread I’d ever known in my life.  It was building inside me like steam in a teapot on high heat.  It threatened to overwhelm me, but even that seemed tempered by the increasing pain I felt in my head.  Or was it my chest?  Or it could have been my whole body.

The hurt might even have been in some part of me for which there was no name.  Maybe it was in my soul.  Maybe they were reaching in there and twisting and turning and tearing at me.  Maybe they’d soon rip my essence right out of me like they’d ripped poor George and Mosko off the porch, or Margaret from the living room and right up the chimney, her old bones cracking and breaking the whole way.

Beth’s voice had diminished to a near whisper as she continued, “We didn’t hurt it intentionally.  We simply didn’t know what we were doing.  We didn’t realize they were here.  All we knew was their world offered us something none of our worlds could.  It let us experience the impossible.  Like them, it’s a timeless place where there is no death.  We came here and did what we couldn’t do elsewhere, we came here and visited with those who were no longer alive in our own existences, we came here and experienced what couldn’t be experienced anywhere else, and we came here and hurt the darkness.  Each time we invaded, we brought more pain and suffering to them.  We endlessly raped and pillaged its world.”

“Why didn’t they tell us?  Why didn’t they ask us to stop?”

“They were weak at first.  They were always weak and didn’t have the strength to reach us.  It never had to be strong before we came.  But all of that has changed.  Its anger made them stronger.  When it learned how to speak to us and gained the strength it needed to reach us, they tried to make us listen.  No one can deny hearing its warning from time to time.  They spoke to us with the same animosity we brought to their world.  And still we went right on invading.  The temptations they offered were too powerful.  We called their warnings anomalies and went right on hurting it.  We went right on destroying their world.”

We are manifest and dark alas
Into hellfire your gods are cast

I could feel the children’s singing.  It was no longer a question of whether or not it was hurting me; it became a fact of how much it was hurting me.  They weren’t children.  I knew that beyond any doubt.  They were it; they were the darkness.  I still didn’t understand how or why, but I knew that much with absolute certainty.

My own voice sounded pleading and desperate.  “Then we’ll stop.  Tell them we’ll stop.  Or I’ll tell them…”

I focused on the eyes outside.  I could see more of them in the distance approaching the house.  There had to be hundreds of pairs now staring at the windows surrounding me.  For just a moment, I wondered how it was possible to see them in the distance when nothing was visible in the black emptiness.

Because they’re one in the same, I thought, and I found that realization disturbing.  It is it and they as one, Davey ol’ boy, and boy howdy it/they are really pissed off.

I spoke to the eyes as I stared into the pair closest to me and boring its vision into me.  “Listen.  We know we’ve hurt you.  We know we’ve ruined your world somehow.  We’ll stop.  We didn’t know but now we do.  We’ll stop.  This isn’t necessary.”

“You can’t stop, Vey.  None of us can.  Their world has tempted life for so long that assaulting it has become part of the nature of living.  They know this truth.  They learned it from us like they learned so many other things.  They’re simple, innocent even, and we brought them all the evil and selfishness and anguish we contain, and we left it with them.  So they learned.  One of the things they learned is this: to stop the incursions, they must stop the living.  Literally.  Stop all living everywhere.”

That sent a shudder through me.  Stop all living everywhere?  “Do you mean they’re going to kill everything?”

“They’ve suffered infinite eternities of anguish at our hands.  Their wrath is so overwhelming they’d never kill us.  They plan to give back what we’ve given.  Forever suffering…”

I could make no claims to fully understanding what “forever suffering” might entail, nor could I make claims to a comprehension of what it really meant in the scheme of things.  The world I thought I knew had been thrown away and replaced with one wrought with perils so insidious and beyond human experience that my mind struggled to keep up with the deluge of new truths.  Nevertheless, I thought I was beginning to understand in the smallest of ways what all of this might mean.  It scared the hell out of me and I hoped I was wrong.  And forever suffering was indeed a darkness I could never live with.

“Then tell me this, Beth.  If the darkness hasn’t arrived yet, what the hell is killing everything on Earth?  What grotesque unstoppable thing is murdering everything in its path?”

“It’s a tool.  A mechanism, if you will.  Just as we couldn’t physically enter their world, it can’t physically enter ours.  But in the same way we’ve hurt them, they learned to hurt us by sending its essence into our worlds.”

“If it’s a tool, what’s it designed to do?  Kill?  Is that all it’s for?  It came to kill us?”

“It doesn’t kill.  It preserves.”

Preserves?  Preserves what?  Even as the question crossed my mind, I knew the answer and found it abhorrent.

I watched as more eyes filled the windows.  They burned so brightly and were so numerous that the light from them filled the sunroom more fully than the overhead lighting, casting my bloody shadow upon the wall.  Furious light is how I would have described it.  It burned everywhere it touched me.  It burned inside me.

And as I watched more approach and those already at the windows turn their focus entirely on me, I understood more clearly that time was running out.  I understood the darkness was knocking at the door and would soon let itself in the same way it had on the porch and in the house.  It wouldn’t wait for an invitation.  It was coming and I felt nothing could stop them.

For only an instant, Beth cried out.  It was a hurtful cry, one that told endless stories of pain.  Before I could respond, she said, “They’re bringing us suffering, Dave, and they see death as an end to suffering.  They want nothing to do with it.”

“Is it just us?  Is it just us, Beth?  Are we the only ones?”  I was frantic and desperately groping for answers to questions that I wasn’t sure I wanted answers for, yet I asked anyway.

“No.  It’s all life everywhere.  They’re not only taking back their world—they’re taking all worlds.”  Her voice was barely a strained whisper.

“Then tell me how we can survive?  Can it be stopped?  Can they be stopped?”

“Not anymore.  Their anger is too powerful, their rage too all consuming.  It’s made the darkness strong.  We could contain them before, but not now.  They watched us and learned how to follow us home.  Now it brings the undying forever to all of us.”

I again thought of Brogan’s condition and how he was treated by the demonic nothingness as it flooded into the living room.  I thought for a moment I understood why.  The concept rapidly spiraled into a horrifying realization that my mind was only barely able to see.  Preserves.  Endless death.  We invaded.  They followed us back.  It preserves…

“Infinities growing angrier made it more powerful.  Nothing can stand against it now.  The time of the living is over…”  Her voice seemed to fade into nothingness.  It sounded like the final gasp of a dying person trying to convey last thoughts.  There was more I needed to know.  More truths, as she put it.

Darkness falls
Darkness comes for you, David Lloyd
We are darkness

“Beth!” I screamed.  “Help me, Beth!  Please!”

The sound of the children was suddenly overwhelming.  The eyes in the windows…  And I could hear them scraping as they tried to get at me.  All the windows were cracking, spiderwebs of breaks cutting through the glass.

There were so many eyes that the brightness from them was like sunshine, although there was nothing warm or peaceful about it.  And the voices.  The children’s voices kept coming.  They kept getting louder and louder.  Suddenly I could hear their pat-a-cake song tempered only by Beth’s agonized screams.

We are pleasure’s anguish
And pain’s desire
We bring undying forever
To feed our ire
Hourglass sands are had in vain
Feel our dark heart bleed your pain

We are temptation’s hatred
Feed our lust
We make all your worlds
Burn to dust
Hope is just a fleeting promise
Darkness comes and is upon us

We are bringers of night
And dark despair
We are legions of hate
And cruel uncare
We are manifest and dark alas
Into hellfire your gods are cast

We bring death to hope
And end of days
We consume your spirits
On souls we graze
Cataclysm is what we give
Darkness now is all there is

The exploding pain in my head was equaled in impact only by the screams from Beth’s voice.  It was a horrible declaration of suffering.  I tried to respond but my body felt like it was burning from the inside, and that on top of explosive tearing of my flesh from top to bottom.

I fell to my knees and began crying.  I placed my hands over my ears in an empty attempt to shut out the singing.  But it was fruitless.  It wasn’t so much heard as it was felt.  It was ripping me apart.

As Beth’s wails of distress continued, I could hear more windows cracking.  It sounded like all of them.  They were breaking.  The eyes were finally coming.  They were coming and I couldn’t stop them.

We are darkness
We are for you, David Lloyd

The windows finally broke.  All of them shattered and exploded at once.  The nothingness flooded into the room and around me and over me.

There were no eyes.  There was only darkness filled with the face of hell of itself.  It was a ghastly sight I knew would blind me.  Not even God’s imagination could produce such a chilling countenance.

And its eyes…  Its eyes were so full of hate and destruction, so full of ire that it would undoubtedly push me into madness.  Horror swept over me as I finally saw the darkness.

“No!” I screamed, and I repeated it over and over.

The children’s singing was everywhere.  It was a song that would scare the devil, so dark and capable of inflicting so much pain.  The essence of it was death itself, but an endless death over a thousand infinities.

The sounds of windows breaking added to the abomination.  I was in the middle of it.  Perhaps I was even a part of it.  And in the end, there was only Beth’s final cry.

“Go, Vey!  Go and never return.  This is finally their world again…”

I could feel her pain in my ears.  It was equaled only by my own as the terror of terrors wrapped me in its darkness.

[Introduction | Part 14 | Part 16]

“Why’d you come back, Vey?”

Tunnel vision began to clear as my mind did the same.  I opened my eyes and was immediately blinded by overhead lights.  Lifting my hand to block them, I blinked and squinted trying to see clearly.

I thought I was hearing Beth’s voice.  She sounded different than I’d ever heard her before.  I couldn’t explain what made it different; I just knew it was.  And behind that voice, or below it, or around it, were the voices of children.  Many of them.

Beth’s voice continued, “I don’t understand why you didn’t listen to me.  Why did you come back?  Didn’t you believe me when I said you should go?”

My eyes adjusted to the brightness.  As my vision returned, I realized I was in the sunroom.  The lights in the ceiling shone brightly in my face.  I blinked repeatedly to get accustomed to the room.

If I was really hearing Beth’s voice, she sounded irritated—and something else.  And why could I hear children singing?  Or were they reciting a pat-a-cake rhyme?  That thought horrified me.

“Didn’t you believe me when I said you needed to go?  I thought you’d listened to me when you left, but now you’re back.  I don’t understand why.  Why did you come back after I told you to leave?”

I became certain it was Beth’s voice.  It surrounded me.  Although she was clearer and louder than the sounds coming from the children, I finally understood why she sounded different.  There was a weakness in her tone, a strain of some kind.  Her voice even seemed hollow in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

Am I dreaming again? I wondered.

I sat up and looked around.  I was indeed in the sunroom.  I knew I had to be in a dream.  In the real world that room surely was filled with the darkness that had come to call on us.  That glass-riddled room at the east end of Carr Beholden must already belong to the devil that poured in through the fireplace and porch door.

I glanced around me.  Just as they were before, the windows showed nothing but blackness filled with unblinking eyes.  They floated around me and stared with growing hunger that I could feel on my body and in my soul.

I was weak and afraid.  I felt vulnerable.  My previous experience in this place felt safer by comparison.  Those ravenous eyes stayed away from me then, or at least away from the windows.  They had floated out in the distance somewhere.

But not this time.  This time they were right outside.  This time they hovered around the glass as though the bodies that owned them leaned against the house.

Shouldn’t they be further away from me?  Please make them get away from me…

Hope is just a fleeting promise
Darkness comes and is upon us

The children’s voices made a constant undertone.  They provided the ambient sound around me and faded in and out of hearing.  Similar to how Beth’s voice seemed different, the children’s voices also seemed different when compared to the previous dream.  The dark song they sang was much closer, more powerful even, more real in the most dangerous of ways.  The last time I was in this place, the children stayed away until the very end.  Why is this different?

“Vey!”  My dead wife’s demanding pitch grabbed my attention.  “Listen to me.  You can’t be here.  You’re in danger and we can’t protect you anymore.”

I was still trying to come out of whatever fog I’d been in.  “Beth?  Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“Babe, you have to help me.  What’s going on?”

“Darkness comes.”

“I know about the darkness.  I’ve seen it.  I’ve seen what it can do.”

“You’ve seen nothing.”

It was so matter-of-fact that I was shocked by it as I would be a slap across the face.  It denied everything I’d been through.  That offended me.  I felt like a child being scolded by a parent who needed to point out the terribly obvious when I already knew the terribly obvious.

“I’ve seen it,” I argued, “and it’s killed two of my friends already and who knows how many others.  Don’t tell me I haven’t seen it.”

We make all your worlds
Burn to dust

The children seemed much closer still.  The chorus formed from their joined voices made me think of hate and destruction.  It wasn’t a happy song they sang even if they sounded happy about singing it.

“The darkness is yet to come.  You haven’t seen it, Dave.  We’ve been holding it back.  Only now we can’t hold it back any longer.  We couldn’t protect all, but we’ve protected many.  Now we can protect no one.”

That thought disturbed me on so many levels.  It pissed me off and confused me.  “What the hell are you talking about?  Haven’t you seen what’s going on?  Nobody’s been protected.”

The eyes outside continued to shift around me.  They were like tiny flames of hate dancing in the darkest of night.  I felt more threatened by them than I had the first time I’d dreamed this place.  Their closeness unnerved me.  I felt their lust trying to consume me as it scraped all over my body with gross roughness.

My wife’s voice was firm yet not firm.  “The darkness is upon us, but it’s not here yet.  Some have fallen.  Many more soon will.  All will in the end.”

I loved my wife dearly.  She meant the world to me before her death.  Even in a dream state of consciousness, I would gladly die for her.  But I was growing frustrated with the ambiguities.

I knew what I’d seen.  I’d witnessed deaths.  I’d endured horrors both gross and subtle.

“You’re not listening.  The darkness is already here.  It’s killed two of my friends and two practically sacred family pets.”

I assumed Brogan was dead although I barely wanted to acknowledge the violation I’d seen him subjected to by the darkness, being coddled and petted, being neatly folded together and carefully moved out of the house.  For his sake, I hoped he was dead.

“Who knows how many others it’s killed around the world.  Don’t presume to tell me—”

“You’re so blind,” she interrupted.  “We’ve all been so blind.  That’s why this is happening.”

I pondered that for a moment.  Answers seemed in short supply, our world thrown for a loop with nary an explanation.

“Then tell me what’s happening,” I offered in hopes of gaining something from the conversation.

Her voice faded in and out in a way I didn’t understand.  Mine seemed nervous and uncertain even to me.  But hers…  Yes, her tone sounded like the last flicker of a dying candle.

We are bringers of night
And dark despair

I glanced around the sunroom again.  The children seemed right outside the windows.  Eyes continued floating out there, glowing embers of emptiness staring back at me from mere inches away, hovering in the nothingness and moving about in disturbing ways.  The darkness that encompassed them was complete and devoid of form.  I recognized it all too well.

“You must go, Dave.  I’m too weak.  We can’t protect you anymore.  You shouldn’t have come back.”

I was growing angry.  Hell had come to planet Earth and some dream-form of my dead wife was trying to tell me I was in more danger while passed out than I was in the real world that had already proved quite deadly on its own.  I couldn’t stand much more of it, so I demanded, “You tell me, Beth!  You tell me what the hell is going on!  People are dying.  The world is bathed in black evil that seems capable of anything.  The world’s dying and you want to play word games?  Give me a fucking break!”

“So naïve.  We’ve all been so naïve.”

“Ah, Jesus Christ, Beth.  Come on already!  What the hell is going on?  I need you.  Please help me.  Please…”

We bring death to hope
And end of days

Angry red eyes viewed me through the glass.  I could feel their rage and contempt.  I could feel their hunger.  I was on display, held up for inspection like a piece of meat.  The predators were out there; I felt like feeble prey waiting for the deadly pounce.

“The darkness has come, Dave, and they can’t be stopped.  It’ll be here soon.  I don’t want you to be hurt and we can’t stop it anymore.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re dying.  We’re already being hurt.  It’s all around us and killing us off like stew fodder.  If you have answers, I’d appreciate hearing them.”

I tried to focus on the underlying voices of children that grew louder in such tiny increments that it was almost negligible.  And yet it wasn’t.  Despite coming from what would otherwise be considered the innocent, those voices speared me time and again with overwhelming fear.  I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but almost…

Beth’s voice faded in like music from a tape player running on low batteries.  “There are no answers.  There are only truths.”

“Then give me the truth, goddamnit!” I shouted.  I’d had enough.  “Either tell me what the hell is going on or leave me alone.”

We are pleasure’s anguish
And pain’s desire

Her voice came feebler still when she said, “I’ll tell you what I know, but you must promise to leave as soon as I do.  Promise me, Vey!”

I would have described her tone as petulant if it hadn’t been so weak, so pitifully small.  I was frightened for that voice.  I knew my wife was dead and whoever or whatever this was was just playing Beth, but I still felt sorrow for the growing anguish I could hear in her words.

“Then tell me, Beth.  Tell me what you know and I promise to leave and never come back.”

I wasn’t sure precisely how I could keep that promise.  Since I was dreaming, I assumed I had passed out from shock but was tucked safely into the office.  It was a safe room because of the computer and security equipment housed inside.

I remembered telling my father to hit the panic button.  If he did, the room would have sealed.  The point had been twofold: provide a place to house my files and electronics and the systems that ran the house’s alarm and backup services, and also to be a place to keep me safe in case of a significant emergency (although I’d assumed that would mean a severe weather event, a thought that was not entirely lost on me under the circumstances).

If we were in that room, it had its own very limited power and water supplies, a small bathroom, and some semblance of isolation from the outside world.  Having seen what the darkness could do, I didn’t feel confident that would be enough.

Hourglass sands are had in vain

“Oh, for fuck’s sake already.”

I was so mad and frustrated trying to listen to the children and Beth at the same time.  Unfortunately, the children were beginning to override her voice.

I still couldn’t make out everything they were saying.  Bits and pieces still filtered in however, and I tried to collect those items as they floated to the surface of my mind.  I needed to know what message they were conveying.  More importantly, I needed Beth to tell me something.  I needed those truths.  I needed them desperately.

My attention was abruptly diverted by scratching on the window next to me.  I jumped from my seat and turned.

A pair of eyes nestled right against the window on level with my own.  It stared into me.  If eyes are windows to the soul, this demon peered into the depths of my being.  It was the darkness’ own Peeping Tom.

I didn’t want to look into those eyes yet couldn’t look away for fear it would be a sign of weakness or an opportunity for it to act while I wasn’t looking.  Despite its nearness, I could see no body that owned those horrible and death-filled flames that glared back at me from the empty nothingness beyond the glass.

Cataclysm is what we give
Darkness now is all there is

The children’s voices continued growing louder.  Even as I struggled to listen to them, Beth’s voice continued to weaken.

[Introduction | Part 13 | Part 15]

As we approached the end of the hall, Mom and Helene backed out of the large open space and glanced in our direction.  The looks on their faces were of sheer terror.  Even as protective rage welled up within me, tears blurred my vision in response to the look on my mother’s face.  It was almost unbearable.  No, it was unbearable in ways that defy description.  One should never witness such horror reflected back in the expression of a parent.  It’s as unforgivable as it is unimaginable.  It distorted her in some way that could not be accepted.  It struck me repeatedly as I ran toward them.

“Richard!” she screamed again.  Her voice had gone up an octave despite my thinking such a thing impossible.  The sound of it was like a blade cutting through flesh.  It was my flesh, and it cut me again and again and again.

Helene was beyond words and simply cried out in sharp tones of emotional agony.  She rested her back and head against my mother as though she were drained of energy, and then she fell silent.  I could see her body wracked by seizures of grief before she fell limp.  Whatever they faced, it was so dreadful that it pushed her mind over the edge and made her unable to cope.  I suspected she’d passed out.  My mother held her close and continued backing into the hallway.  Her gaze bounced repeatedly between us and whatever hell was taking place in the living room.  She was dragging the teenager.

We reached their position in the hallway and gave our best effort not to run them down in our reckless abandon.  My father slid on the floor and stopped near the two, promptly wrapped his arms around them and spun them toward the kitchen.  That put his body between them and the living room.  With one quick glance over his shoulder, he immediately started sidestepping down the hall in the direction we’d come from, his charges in tow.

I turned the corner through the doorway and froze.  While the others passed behind me, I stood motionless.  My eyes couldn’t have been ripped away from what I saw.  I looked first toward the fireplace and then toward the corner of the room where Brogan had been lying.

“Jesus Christ…”  The words slipped from my mouth without a thought.

“Dave!” my dad yelled as he and my mother dragged Helene down the hall.  “Where do we go?  Where do we go?”

I shot a quick glance over my shoulder at them and said as loudly as I could, “The office.  Last door before the sunroom.”

I turned back toward the living room and watched in awe.  What I looked at assaulted my mind.  How could such a thing be?

Living darkness poured down through the fireplace like a waterfall and splashed in all directions when it reached the floor.  Margaret hung suspended, her feet dangling little more than a foot above the couch.  Innumerable arms of smoke entangled her.

They’re restraining her, I thought, just like they did with George.

One of her arms was held back in an unnatural position and I assumed—I knew it had been broken.  Her head flopped to one side, tendrils of darkness wrapped around it so that it was almost completely shrouded, and one wispy tentacle seemed to be stuck in her mouth.  I suspected much later that that was the reason she’d been so suddenly muffled and silenced.  Despite that, her eyes were wide open.  They suddenly looked directly at me.

“Fuck…” I mumbled.  Her gaze was full of pleading, full of despair and begging for help, but I could offer no such thing.

More of the ethereal mass filled the room as it rushed out from the gaping mouth of the fireplace.  More appendages formed and bound her hands and feet, her arms and legs, her neck, and more and more of her torso.  Her body was distorted into positions I knew no human could endure, and yet her eyes remained fixed on me.  It was such a horrific sight.

I turned away.  I couldn’t watch—couldn’t be looked at like that.

My attention fell on Brogan.  He was covered with so much darkness that it looked like a blanket laid carefully over him.  He had not moved from where he lay the last time I saw him.  I found that terribly confusing.

Upon closer inspection, I could see small tendrils of blackness protruding from the whole that lay atop him.  They caressed him in some way, petting him even, caringly touching his coat as though taking care of a sick child.  The scene so wholly offended my sensibilities that I threw up where I stood.

I looked away and toward the fireplace, but not at Margaret.  I looked at the horror dropping down through the chimney and into my living room, and I screamed.  I screamed like a child would scream after a nightmare.  I screamed like a person ripped asunder by unholy angels.  I screamed, “Get out!”  I repeated it over and over again.

A sickening sound filled the room.  It was almost recognizable yet offensive to my ears.  Despite my mind trying to shut down, I became aware of the darkness pulling Margaret into the fireplace.  Her body distorted and folded over on itself as she was pulled into a space not meant for that purpose.

And then she was gone.  She was pulled up and out of sight as quickly as George had been yanked from the porch.  The sound followed her and I was again sick with the sudden knowledge of what that cracking noise represented: bones breaking.

Yet again I was reminded of a line from Storm of the Century that seemed so applicable.  In my confusion and growing blankness, it took center stage in my thoughts.  It was Andre Linoge’s dictum: “If you give me what I want, I’ll go away.”  I thought about that when all else seemed unthinkable.

“What do you want, damn it!?  What the fuck do you want!?”  I wanted to scream it and willed my mouth to do so.  My ears reported nothing but slurring nonsense in response.  I couldn’t be certain which of them was responding clearly if either.  Whether I had said it or not, no answer was forthcoming.

I was rapidly losing awareness of my surroundings.  A quick glance at Brogan showed he was being tenderly cared for by some horror that had no right to do such a thing.  It seemed to protect him and stroke him lovingly, if such a thing were capable of love, and it hadn’t moved him from where he’d spent the afternoon.

Although in the most despicable of ways, I had my confirmation.  The darkness out there was not all there was to this.  He was proof, and it was proof in the way it treated him, the way they treated him.  The darkness was coming, yes indeed, and perhaps some of it had already arrived, but I suspected at that point we’d not seen it all yet.

We’ve seen darkness, but there’s more to come, isn’t there?  My thought also went unanswered.

The world began to go black.  Tunnel vision formed and I lost view of everything around me.  Dry heaves wracked my body.  Darkness began to fill my vision just as it continued filling the living room.  Darkness touched the heart of me with violence antithetical to the abhorrently offensive way it loving touched a family pet.  Darkness invaded my mind just as it invaded my home.  Darkness violated me like it violated every law of nature I thought I knew.

I was about to pass out.  I was only vaguely aware of that fact.  My mind seemed incapable of dealing with the new reality of our world.

The large room was half-full of writhing blackness when my legs began to crumble beneath me.  My own brain and flesh betrayed me.  Neither seemed capable enough to protect me.

Smoky apparitions akin to animal limbs continued filling the room.  They touched here and there testing everything they could find, inspecting windows, overturning furniture, subjecting walls to invasive examinations.

Is it learning?  Is it trying to figure out its new world?  What the hell is it doing?  And what is it doing to Brogan?  With Brogan?  What monstrosity would kill so unthinkingly yet respond so affectionately to a sick animal?  Is he now one of its own?  Is there something different about him that demands respect?  What the hell is going on?  My thoughts were chaotic.

The body I’d always commanded crumbled beneath the weight of an overloaded mind.  What had happened already and what continued to happen overwhelmed me.  The legs that held me up for nearly 45 years suddenly seemed incapable of supporting my own weight.  My eyes that had provided better-than-perfect vision for more than four decades were giving out and shutting down as though they’d suffered some tragic accident.  My mind that had produced award-winning novels and sustained me as a career for so long was no longer able to wrap itself around the unfolding events that continued to assault my senses.

And yet the darkness kept coming.  It flailed around the room in a sickly dance meant for the dead.  It played life while remaining unreal to everything I knew.  It was untouchable yet touched everything.

As I stared in disbelief, Brogan’s body floated through my declining field of vision.  I was startled by it.  He was still shrouded by darkness and still being petted as though by a loving owner.  It sickened me to see it, yet the offense continued.

He still breathed and his tongue still lolled out of his mouth, yet he remained asleep, comatose, subdued.  As his form approached the fireplace, more black smoke encircled him as it formed the unreal arms of something never seen.  The appendages gently folded his legs.  They pushed his tongue into his mouth and closed it with the utmost care.  Tentacles of nonexistent flesh held his head up and tucked his tail around his hindquarters.  I could only see a small portion of what was directly in front of me and he was all that field of vision showed.

As my body began to slump in the doorway, the only thought that crossed my mind was that he was being packaged for shipment, folded neatly into a pile that could be moved without much fuss.

I thought of Margaret being pulled into the fireplace and up through the flue.  I thought of her bones cracking the whole way as one of those damnable wisps of smoke filled her mouth.  I thought of the tortured sounds of her voice being gagged before I even reached the room and how awful it had sounded.  I thought of George and Mosko being ripped from the porch as though they were yo-yos bouncing back and forth uncontrollably and finally yanked back by the puppeteer that controlled them.

I watched Brogan’s body float to the fireplace as it was neatly gathered together for transport.  And then he was carefully pulled into the fireplace, turned on his side, and whisked rapidly up through the chimney.

I was falling.  Darkness was all I could see.  It whipped around the room and filled it rapidly.

But why does it care so much about Brogan?  Why did it so carefully prepare him for movement?  Why didn’t it rip him up through the fireplace as it had Margaret only a few seconds before?  What’s so special about him?

I leaned against the doorframe and knew I would die.

My father’s hands grasping my arms as I started to fall seemed alien to me.  They were disconnected from reality in some way.  Either that or I was.

I could no longer be certain of what was real and what wasn’t.  Still, I heard his voice.  “I’ve got you,” it said.

His arms wrapped around me and pulled me the hall.  I could no longer see the living room but instead stared up at the ceiling.

I willed my feet and legs to respect my wishes and pick up my body, but they didn’t listen.

Are my feet shuffling?  Are they even responding to me anymore?  I couldn’t tell.  They seemed to drag along the hardwood floor of the hall toward the sunroom.  Or is it the office?  I could not be certain.

“It’s okay, Dave.  I’ve got you.”  That voice…  It sounded like my father.

As the lights overhead dashed by uncontrollably, I tried to look toward the other end of the house.  Something was wrong with the picture I saw.  A large mass of something dark and ominous flooded out of the living room.  It spilled into the kitchen across the hall.  More of it splashed in our direction.

Or is it just my direction?  Is someone with me?  How am I moving?

I looked on in my new dream world and thought I saw the door to the screened-in porch blow inward right off the frame.  It wasn’t possible, I knew, because it exploded toward us and was immediately suspended in midair.  It hung for a moment inside the entryway as more darkness flooded in around it.

The door…  How does it float like that?

My eyes rolled back into my head and I again saw the ceiling and overhead lights passing by.  And then it all turned.  The view was different.  It looked like the ceiling in my office.

How did I get here?  If I’m in fact here?

“Dave, listen to me.  We’re in the office.  What do we do now?”

I thought that was my father’s voice.  My head sagged backward and his face seemed to fill the tiny spot of vision I had left.  Shadow distorted everything.

“Dave, you have to tell me what to do.  We’re in your office.  The door is closed.  What do we do?”

That was definitely his voice.

I must surely be dreaming.  Must one respond in a dream?  It only seems polite.

“Panic button,” I hoped I said in response.

Then the world disappeared.  It disappeared into the darkness.

[Introduction | Part 12 | Part 14]