Darkness (54 page)
Those were the Dark Man’s nights, the nights when the black-clad being was in the swamp, working his magic on the children who served him.
But tonight she hadn’t sensed his presence at all, even when she’d looked out her window and seen boats slip silently by her shack, boats rowed by the Dark Man’s children, making their way through the darkness toward some unknown place.
Then had come the howlings that had rent the night over and over again, rising up first from one place, and then from another.
The screams of demons were what they had sounded like to Amelie, but for some reason she didn’t understand, the sounds that should have chilled her blood had comforted her instead.
The Devil, that’s who Amelie had been taught the Dark Man was. Even now, in the silence that followed the unearthly howls that had finally died completely away, she could hear her mother’s voice: “He be out there, Amelie. He takes them when they’s babies, and he changes ’em. You stay inside, hear? You go out on his night, and he be takin’ you, too!”
But Amelie didn’t believe in the Dark Man anymore, for in her own mind she knew he wasn’t the Devil at all.
He was Dr. Phillips.
And the night she’d listened to old Clarey Lambert talking to Kelly Anderson and Michael Sheffield, she’d known what had happened to her baby.
Dr. Phillips had taken him, hiding him, to do to him what he’d done to the other children.
But tonight, as darkness gathered and the children
began to move, Amelie somehow knew what they were going to do.
And so she waited in the silence, until, in the distance, she heard the soft putting of an outboard motor.
Her body tensed and her eyes strained in the darkness as a boat emerged from a narrow channel.
Her heart began to pound as the boat bumped gently into the rotting pilings that supported her house and Michael Sheffield stood up.
From Lavinia Carter’s arms he took a tiny baby boy, wrapped in a blue blanket, and held it up to Amelie.
“We brought him home,” Michael said as Amelie took her son from him.
Amelie’s eyes flooded with tears. “An’ he be all right?” she asked, her voice choked.
From her place on the center bench of the boat, where she sat next to her sister Kelly, whose arm was wrapped protectively around her, Jenny Sheffield answered her. “He’s fine,” she said. “He’s a good baby. He never cried at all until tonight.”
Amelie’s breath caught, and then her eyes shifted to Lavinia Carter. “It’s you who’s been lookin’ after him?”
Lavinia nodded silently, her face reflecting all the misery she was feeling over what she had done for the Dark Man.
Amelie hesitated, then spoke again. “Then mebbe you better stay with me,” she said. “It be lonely out here, an’ I don’t hardly know what I’m s’posed to do with him.”
Lavinia’s face lit up in the moonlight, and she reached up to take Amelie’s extended hand. A moment later, as the boat started away from Amelie Coulton’s tiny cabin, her lips moved, forming words she would never be able to utter.
“Thank you …”
Michael and Kelly, whose arm still held her little sister close, waved wordlessly to her as they drifted away into the night.
Barbara Sheffield stood silently on the dock, Craig’s arm around her. A few feet away Mary and Ted Anderson clung together, too.
Both couples waited in the strange silence that had fallen over the swamp.
They were alone now, for Tim Kitteridge and all the others who had been at the tour headquarters had left half an hour ago, searching for the source of the unearthly screams that had struck terror into each of their souls.
They knew neither for what they were looking nor where they might find it. But they were certain that whatever it was, it was something none of them was going to want to face.
Some evil, they knew, had met its end in the swamp that night.
The Andersons and the Sheffields, though, had refused to go.
“They’ll come back,” Barbara had said, speaking for all of them. “I know our children will come back here, and we’re going to be here waiting for them.”
And so the others had left, and they had remained, and the waiting had begun.
Now, at last, they heard the sound of a boat approaching, and their breathing all but stopped as they waited for it to appear.
It was nothing more than a shadow at first, moving across the lagoon, a dark form all but invisible in the night.
It began to take shape, emerging finally from the darkness into the bright light of the moon, and they instantly recognized the three people in it.
Their children.
But changed, somehow, for as the boat drew near, all four parents could feel the difference.
Somehow, in a way they weren’t certain they would ever understand, Kelly and Michael were not the same as they had been this morning.
It was as if they, like the boat in which they rode, had just emerged from a lifetime of darkness.
As they gathered their children into their arms, Mary Anderson and Barbara Sheffield heard their children cry for the first time.
And their children’s tears filled their souls with joy.
O
n the island at the far edge of the swamp, the last candles on the altar flickered out, the last of the dolls began to weep.
Clarey Lambert watched them for a moment, a soft smile lighting up the weathered planes of her face. And then, as the moon reached its zenith and the night began to wane, Clarey laid her body on the ground and let herself rest.
At last, after all the years of struggle, she closed her eyes for the last time and surrendered herself to the welcome darkness.
J
OHN
S
AUL
is the author of twenty-eight novels, each a million-copy-plus national bestseller:
Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners, Cry for the Strangers, Comes the Blind Fury, When the Wind Blows, The God Project, Nathaniel, Brainchild, Hellfire, The Unwanted, The Unloved, Creature, Sleepwalk, Second Child, Darkness, Shadows, Black Lightning, The Homing Guardian, The Presence, The Right Hand of Evil
, and The Blackstone Chronicles. John Saul lives in Seattle, Washington.
A scream shatters the peaceful night of a sleepy town, a mysterious stranger awakens to seek vengeance … and once again a nightmare journey into the unknown begins.
Since 1977, John Saul has enthralled millions of readers with his novels of terror and suspense. The following excerpts are but brief glimpses into some of the most chilling corners of his shadowy world.…
One hundred years ago in La Paloma a terrible deed was done, and a cry for vengeance pierced the night. Now, that evil still lives, and that vengeance waits … waits for Alex Lonsdale, one of the most popular boys in La Paloma. Because horrible things can happen—even to nice kids like Alex.…
Alex jockeyed the Mustang around Bob Carey’s Porsche, then put it in drive and gunned the engine. The rear wheels spun on the loose gravel for a moment, then caught, and the car shot forward, down the Evanses’ driveway and into Hacienda Drive.
Alex wasn’t sure how long Lisa had been walking—it seemed as though it had taken him forever to get dressed and search the house. She could be almost home by now.
He pressed the accelerator, and the car picked up speed. He hugged the wall of the ravine on the first curve, but the car fishtailed slightly, and he had to steer into the skid to regain control. Then he hit a straight stretch and pushed his speed up to seventy. Coming up fast was an S curve that was posted at thirty miles an hour, but he knew they always left a big margin for safety. He slowed to sixty as he started into the first turn.
And then he saw her.
She was standing on the side of the road, her green dress glowing brightly in his headlights, staring at him with terrified eyes.
Or did he just imagine that? Was he already that close to her?
Time suddenly slowed down, and he slammed his foot on the brake.
Too late. He was going to hit her.
It would have been all right if she’d been on the inside of the curve. He’d have swept around her, and she’d have been safe. But now he was skidding right toward her …
Turn into it. He had to turn into it!
Taking his foot off the brake, he steered to the right, and suddenly felt the tires grab the pavement.
Lisa was only a few yards away.
And beyond Lisa, almost lost in the darkness, something else.
A face, old and wrinkled, framed with white hair. And the eyes in the face were glaring at him with an intensity he could almost feel.
It was the face that finally made him lose all control of the car.
An ancient, weathered face, a face filled with an unspeakable loathing, looming in the darkness.
At the last possible moment, he wrenched the wheel to the left, and the Mustang responded, slewing around Lisa, charging across the pavement, heading for the ditch and the wall of the ravine beyond.
Straighten it out!
He spun the wheel the other way.
Too far.
The car burst through the guardrail and hurtled over the edge of the ravine.
“Lisaaaa …”
A terrible secret lurks beneath the wholesome surface of Silver dale, Colorado, where well-behaved students make their parents and teachers proud, and the football team never—ever—loses. But soon, some of the parents in Silverdale will begin to uncover the unimaginable secret that can turn a loving child murderous.…
“It’s two in the morning, Chuck. And Jeff isn’t home yet.”
Chuck groaned. “And for that you woke me up? Jeez, Char, when I was his age, I was out all night half the time.”
“Maybe you were,” Charlotte replied tightly. “And maybe your parents didn’t care. But I do, and I’m about to call the police.”
At that, Chuck came completely awake. “What the hell do you want to do a thing like that for?” he demanded, switching on the light and staring at Charlotte as if he thought she’d lost her mind.
“Because I’m worried about him,” Charlotte flared, concern for her son overcoming her fear of her husband’s tongue. “Because I don’t like what’s been happening with him and I don’t like the way he’s been acting. And I certainly don’t like not knowing where he is at night!”
Clutching the robe protectively to her throat, she turned and hurried out of the bedroom. She was already downstairs when Chuck, shoving his own arms into the sleeves of an ancient woolen robe he’d insisted on keeping despite its frayed edges and honeycomb of moth holes, caught up with her.
“Now just hold on,” he said, taking the phone from her hands and putting it back on the small desk in the den. “I’m not going to have you getting Jeff into trouble with the police just because you want to mother-hen him.”
“Mother-hen him!” Charlotte repeated. “For God’s sake, Chuck! He’s only seventeen years old! And it’s the middle of the night, and there’s nowhere in Silverdale he could be! Everything’s closed. So unless he’s already in trouble, where is he?”
“Maybe he stayed overnight with a friend,” Chuck began, but Charlotte shook her head.
“He hasn’t done that since he was a little boy. And if he had, he would have called.” Even as she uttered the words, she knew she didn’t believe them. A year ago—a few months ago; even a few weeks ago—she would have trusted Jeff to keep her informed of where he was and what he was doing. But now? She didn’t know.
Nor could she explain her worries to Chuck, since he insisted on believing there was nothing wrong; that Jeff was simply growing up and testing his wings.
As she was searching for the right words, the words to
express her fears without further rousing her husband’s anger, the front door opened and Jeff came in.
He’d already closed the door behind him and started up the stairs when he caught sight of his parents standing in the den in their bathrobes, their eyes fixed on him. He gazed at them stupidly for a second, almost as if he didn’t recognize them, and for a split-second Charlotte thought he looked stoned.
“Jeff?” she said. Then, when he seemed to pay no attention to her, she called out again, louder this time. “Jeff?”
His eyes hooded, her son turned turned to gaze at her. “What?” he asked, his voice taking on the same sullen tone that had become so familiar to her lately.
“I want an explanation,” Charlotte went on. “It’s after two
A.M
., and I want to know where you’ve been.”
“Out,” Jeff said, and started to turn away.
“Stop right there, young man!” Charlotte commanded. She marched into the foyer and stood at the bottom of the stairs, then reached out and switched on the chandelier that hung in the stairwell. A bright flood of light bathed Jeff’s face, and Charlotte gasped. His face was streaked with dirt, and on his cheeks there were smears of blood. There were black circles under Jeff’s eyes—as if he hadn’t slept in days—and he was breathing hard, his chest heaving as he panted.
Then he lifted his right hand to his mouth, and before he began sucking on his wounds, Charlotte could see that the skin was torn away from his knuckles.
“My God,” she breathed, her anger suddenly draining away. “Jeff, what’s happened to you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Nothing,” he mumbled, and once more started to mount the stairs.
“Nothing?” Charlotte repeated. She turned to Chuck, now standing in the door to the den, his eyes, too, fixed on their son. “Chuck, look at him. Just look at him!”
“You’d better tell us what happened, son,” Chuck said. “If you’re in some kind of trouble—”
Jeff whirled to face them, his eyes now blazing with the same anger that had frightened Linda Harris earlier that evening. “I don’t know what’s wrong!” he shouted. “Linda broke up with me tonight, okay? And it pissed
me off? Okay? So I tried to smash up a tree and I went for a walk.
Okay?
Is that okay with you, Mom?”
“Jeff—” Charlotte began, shrinking away from her son’s sudden fury. “I didn’t mean … we only wanted to—”
But it was too late.
“Can’t you just leave me alone?” Jeff shouted.
He came off the bottom of the stairs, towering over the much smaller form of his mother. Then, with an abrupt movement, he reached out and roughly shoved Charlotte aside, as if swatting a fly. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder as her body stuck the wall, and then she collapsed to the floor. For a split-second Jeff stared blankly at his mother, as if he was puzzled about what had happened to her, and then, an anguished wail boiling up from somewhere deep within him, he turned and slammed out the front door.
Secret Cove. An isolated enclave on the coast of Maine. Here, one hundred years ago, a shy and lovely servant girl committed a single, unspeakable act of violence. An act so shocking its legacy lives still. Now, one family is about to feel the icy hand of supernatural fear … for an unholy terror is about to be reborn.…
Jeff slowed the car down, steering into the last curve before the short straightaway leading to the coast road. Suddenly, in the glow of the headlights, a figure clad in white appeared along the side of the road. For a split second the memory of the story of D’Arcy leaped into his mind, but then he realized it had to be Melissa, on her way to the club.
He slowed the car, expecting her to turn around any second, but when she didn’t, an idea came into his head.
If he killed the lights and crept up on her, then blasted the horn …
He reached down and turned off the headlight, then slowed the car even further, until the idling engine was almost silent. Finally, when he was no more than ten feet behind the pale figure by the side of the road, he blasted the horn, and as the figure jumped and spun around to face him, switched the lights back on.
And gaped.
It wasn’t Melissa at all.
Instead, he saw a ghostly face staring at him, a face framed with straight blond hair hanging almost to her waist.
The memory of the ghost story flooded back to him once again, and without thinking, Jeff jammed his foot to the floorboard and the powerful engine roared back to life. The car leaped forward, its wheels screaming against the pavement. Jeff’s eyes left the road ahead to stare into the rearview mirror.
The grotesque figure in white still stood by the side of the road, staring at him.
His eyes flicked away from the image in the mirror and then widened in horror as he saw the safety rail of the coast road looming ahead of him, no more than twenty yards away.
A scream of terror building in his throat, his foot left the accelerator and smashed down on the brake pedal. The tires screamed once more as the wheels locked under the force of the brakes, and the car sloughed around, all its traction gone.
A moment later the Porsche slammed into the metal guardrail.
The force of the blow ripped the rail loose from the concrete pilings to which it was attached.
The car shot out over the edge of the cliff, seemed to Jeff to hover there for a single agonizing second, then dropped downward.
It turned as it fell, and for a moment Jeff stared straight down at the rocks that seemed to be rushing up at him. And then the car struck the rocks, and Jeff felt the windshield explode into his face.…
Borrego, New Mexico. A peaceful little desert town. Except for one thing. Somebody here hates teenagers. Hates them. And now he’s discovered an insidious way to strike back at them. In their sleep, in their waking hours. Anytime.…
The teacher glanced surreptitiously at the clock once more. Just two more minutes. She could go home and sit in her back yard, ignoring the shade of the cottonwood trees to bask in the sun, letting the full heat of the afternoon penetrate the pain as she worked on her lesson plans and graded the examinations she’d given the class that morning.
She began straightening up the clutter on her desk.
She frowned slightly as a strange odor killed her nostrils. For a moment she couldn’t quite identify it, but then realized what it was.
It was a malodorous scent, like a garbage dump on a hot day.
She sniffed at the air uncertainly, her frown deepening. The dump had been closed years ago, replaced by a treatment plant.
She looked up to see if anyone else had noticed the odor.
A flash of pain shot through her head.
She winced, but as quickly as the pain had come, it faded.
She shook her head, as if to shake off the last of the pain, then looked out at the class.
A red glow seemed to hang over the room.
She could see faces—faces she knew belonged to her students—but tinged with the red aura, seen dimly through a wall of pain, they all looked strange to her.
Nor could she put names to the faces.
The knife inside her head began to twist again.
Just a twinge at first, but building quickly until her skull seemed to throb with the pain.
The reddish glow in the room deepened, and the odor in her nostrils turned rank.
A loud humming began in her ears.
The aching in her head increased, and turned now into a sharp stabbing. She took a step backward, as if to escape the pain, but it seemed to pursue her.
The hum in her ears built to a screech, and the redness in the room began to flash with bolts of green and blue.
And then, as panic built within her, she saw a great hand spread out above her, its fingers reaching toward her, grasping at her.
She screamed.
The boy looked up as the piercing scream shattered the quiet of the room. For a split second he wasn’t certain where it had come from, but then he saw the teacher.
Her eyes were wide with either pain or terror—he wasn’t certain which—and her mouth twisted into an anguished grimace as the last of the scream died on her lips.
Her arms rose up as if to ward off some unseen thing that was attacking her, and then she staggered backward, struck the wall and seemed to freeze for a moment.
As he watched, she screamed once more and sank to the floor.
Her arms flailed at the air for a few seconds, then she wrapped them around her body, drawing her knees up to her chest as she rolled helplessly on the worn wooden planks.
The boy rose from his seat and dashed to the front of the room, kneeling down beside her. But as he reached out to touch her, she screamed yet again and scrabbled away, only to collapse a second later, sobbing uncontrollably.
When the ambulance took her away, she was still sobbing, still screaming.
The boy watched the ambulance leave, but even after it had disappeared into the distance, the sobs and screams lingered on, echoing in his memory.
