Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (26 page)

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Sitting on wooden benches at Newport on the Levee, watching the river and the Cincinnati skyline. Cigarettes in their fingers. Talking about all kinds of things. Suddenly she leans forward, eyes wide. He asks what’s wrong. She exclaims, “I think I saw a shark!” He explains to her that there are no sharks in the Ohio River. She is adamant. “Maybe it swam in from the ocean!” He just laughs and holds her tight. They laugh together. “I’m such an idiot,” she says, and he kiddingly agrees.

Several inches of snow has fallen. They run outside, dressed tight and looking like Eskimo children. They throw snowballs at one another, and he tackles her, and they roll around in the snow, laughing hysterically, tears of enjoyment sliding down their cheeks. They hold one another, ignorant of the arctic cold, and peer into one another’s vibrant eyes and cold-blotched cheeks. Together they make snow angels in the soft powder, and they even build a snow couple holding hands. He adds a carrot as a penis and two Oreo cookies as balls. He jokingly says, “His penis and balls are in no way proportional.” She bites her lip, smiles at him, remarks, “No, they’re just built like you. Giant penis. Small balls.”

The rain falls in drenching torrents, and the basement is flooding, but they don’t care. They rush outside in the August rains, spinning around and dancing. Lightning arcs across the sky in a panorama of electricity. Thunder shakes the ground beneath their feet. They stand under the blossoms of an apple tree, and he runs a finger across her rain-slick cheek. And as the lightning dances and the thunder rolls, they kiss, their tongues entwining, forgetting everyone and everything. The only thing that is real, the only thing touchable and tangible, is their love—and that will never die.

∑Ω∑

Now the boy is standing out on the balcony of the apartment, overlooking an overgrown hedgerow. His third cigarette is smoldering. He tosses it to the ground and stomps it out. He grips the railing and looks up at the sky. A raindrop falls onto his pale knuckles, icy cold. He draws a deep and piercing breath. He and Cara. Pure romance. Lovers—almost. He knows what he must do. It has never been so clear. Their love will never die, and that is the only TRUTH in existence. He grits his teeth with bitter resignation and heads inside, confident that there is only one escape from this nightmare.

Ashlie has gone.

Cara has gone.

And soon, he will be with them.

V

It is an early dinner. The man doesn’t seem to mind that Mark ran off, at least now that he has returned. They eat quietly: baked beans. The man’s face is his usual placid scowl, but the man notices that the boy’s face seems more radiant, more peaceful, as if the angst and anxiety has gone. Mark fingers his fork. “Do you want to know my greatest regret?”

The man shakes his head. “No.”

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“I never told her I loved her. I wanted to, but she was afraid of falling in love. She was convinced that ‘love is a hoax’. People claiming to love her had hurt her in her past, and she didn’t want to be hurt again. I wanted so badly to tell her that I loved her—and I
still
love her, with everything within me—but I was frightened of scaring her away.” He swirls the baked beans in his ceramic bowl. “I should have told her that I loved her.”

The man says, “We should have done lots of things differently.”

“But we can’t change that now.”

“No. We can’t.”

“All we can do is hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes.”

The man excuses himself. He goes upstairs, leaving Mark alone. Mark fumbles around in his jeans pocket and withdraws an envelope. He sets it on the counter, takes one last look around, and leaves the confinement of the house, quietly disappearing into the street, heading south, towards the river.

The man comes back downstairs. He doesn’t notice that Mark is gone, and it takes him nearly half an hour to notice the envelope on the counter. A spark of fear erupts within him as he gingerly tears it open. He pulls out a sheet of yellowed notebook paper, upon which are several scribbled lines. He reads it in the dying light of the evening:

I remember when I was happy. I remember when I smiled and laughed, and when my dreams were coming true right before my eyes. I remember, and the remembrance aches, because I lost that which I loved, and the beauty of my life has become an unceasing nightmare. I am broken and hurting. Tragedy upon tragedy is thrust upon me. Tears have become my daily diet—they soil my pillow day and night. What incredible evil have I done that life has become so wretched? I dream of cutting my wrists, and the dream brings comfort. She made me smile; now it is the thought of suicide that brings me the same comfort. I dream of my greatest masterpiece, an epic painted in blood with the brush being none other than serrated knives and the canvas my own flesh. I dreamt last night that I cut my own wrists at the Overlook at Mt. Echo, where Cara and I held one another for the last time. I felt the blood flowing, and it felt so
right
. When I awoke, I realized that I shall never again feel alive. I have no way out, save for this single dark avenue. I cannot hold onto hope that things will get better, for what
is
hope? Hope is barbed wire: the tighter I squeeze, the more painful it becomes. Hope? Fuck it. FUCK IT. Hope is a fairytale we concoct to keep ourselves breathing when we should be dead. And I should be dead. My life is a nightmare, my existence a living hell. All I want to do is die: catch a bullet in the head or a cold blade against my wrists. I used to laugh, I used to smile, I used to love. And now I am bent over in agony, crying endlessly day-and-night. Life is a torture-chamber: broken dreams, shattered hopes, vacant destinies. Where is the Executioner to bring me out of this miserable existence? I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to see her face in my dreams, to remember her precious laughter in all those sweet-yet-poisonous memories. Death. Wonderful, beautiful, fantastic death. I am losing my fucking mind because I lost all that I fucking love. The words of Charles Sanders Pierce resonate within me: “If man were immortal, he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming Anthony Barnhart

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eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this, we have Death.”

The man stares at the letter, and he realizes his hands are shaking.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

It’s all he can say as his world begins to shred apart at the seams.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

A newfound energy floods his veins. He grips the letter in his hands and runs through the front door, into the dying day.

The sun is beginning to set.

They will soon own the night.

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

The man stands behind him at the Mt. Echo overlook. “You mentioned this place in your note. And I found you here a couple weeks ago.”

Mark’s voice is low and calm. “It’s the last place we were together.”

“Don’t do this, Mark,” the man says. “This isn’t going to make things right.”

“What are you talking about?” Mark demands. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

The man loses it: something snaps within, and he grabs Mark by the shoulder and throws him into the rusted iron railing. “I lost someone, too!” he snarls, glaring into Mark’s shell-shocked, widesoaking eyes. “Why the hell do you think I blocked off that damned room? And why the hell do you think blood covered everything—the bed, the sheets, the wall, the floor? She became one of them, Mark. She became a monster—just like Cara. I may have killed Cara, but I had to kill my fiancé, too!

She threw herself upon me, and I stabbed her over and over until she bled to death.” He takes several deep breaths: his voice is shaking, and his fingers are tingling. “I fucking loved her. She was fucking everything to me, and now she’s fucking gone! And it hurts like hell. I think about her all the fucking time. Don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like. I had to watch as those fuckers dragged my fiancé’s arm out of her grave, with our engagement ring still on her finger. Do you think I haven’t been tempted to kill myself? I’ve tried, but I failed. I tried several times, but I couldn’t do it. Why? Maybe because I’m a coward. Or maybe because I refuse to give up hope. Because, deep down, I refuse to believe that this is the end. I refuse to believe that this is it, that there’s nothing left. We’re here, Mark. You and me. And there are others. And everything will be okay. We just have to survive the night. So don’t give me any of this bullshit about me not understanding. I understand too fucking well.”

He releases him, draws a deep breath. Mark is stunned.

The man gathers himself, speaks collectively: “And that’s why I’m not going to drag you kicking-and-screaming back to the house. This is your decision. You make the call. Want to kill yourself? Fine. I understand. I understand perfectly. I won’t force you to come back. Want to cut your wrists? Do it. Want to jump off this railing? Then do it. I’m going to leave, and I’m not going to come back looking for you. I’ll give you that much respect. You’re a good kid, Mark. A good fucking kid. And you can make your own decisions. I’ll let you do that. But I’ll be back at the house. I want you to come back. I don’t want to do this alone, but I will if I have to. You probably have another hour before night falls. It only takes about twenty minutes to run back. So you’d better make up your mind damned fast.”

Mark only watches as the man gets back into the truck and drives away. The sun sinks lower behind the western hills.

The deep forests of naked trees are becoming enshrouded in shadow. Anthony Barnhart

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Chapter Eight

The Screams of the Damned

“Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?”

- Plato (427-347 BC)

I

It is the longest night the man has experienced in quite some time, for the boy does not return. He waits till the last moment to shut, lock, and barricade the front door, and defeatedly scales the ladder to the upper floor and draws it up. He sits with his legs dangling above the hewn stairs for about an hour, staring at the front door, masked in gloomy shadows, hoping. But his hopes are dashed, for the silhouettes of dark-walkers can be seen through the veiled window in the moonlit haze outside. The man’s body feels weighted down as he enters the den and sits upon the bed with the sheets awash. He fondles the Russian rifle and stares at the blank, whitewashed wall, hearing the howls of the darkwalkers, before he falls into a fitful sleep. He dreams that he is opening the front door, and the boy is entering; but it is no longer the boy, for his eyes are blood-red, and his fingernails shine a ghastly pale yellow. He lunges at the man, teeth gnashing, and the man awakes with a scream. But it is not his scream that wakes him.

It is the scream of another.

And it comes from within the house.

The man’s heart turns to stone in his chest, and it recedes only a little when he realizes rays of sunshine are coming between the cracks in the heavy thermal blanket covering the window. He snatches the Russian rifle that sits upon the floor, and he creeps into the hallway. The screams are louder now. The ladder lies to his side along the wall. He crouches and peers down into the cavern of the ground floor below; he sees a single figure standing in the doorway, with a screaming creature in its arms. The man’s eyes adjust, and he recognizes the standing figure is Mark. The one in his hands is a mystery. A curse escapes the man’s mouth as he leaps down, ankles burning upon impact. He swings the rifle around, aims it at the figure in Mark’s arms. Mark, looking disheveled and wearing a worn face with tattered and mud-stained clothes, goes wide-eyed as he protests with a virulent “No!”

The man’s heart hammers in his chest. He closes his eyes, draws several deep breaths. He lets the rifle slide from his fingers. It clatters on the hardwood floor. He opens his eyes again. Mark looks relieved.

“She has a fever,” Mark says. “She’s shaking, and she won’t stop.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. I found her at the park. Right after you left.”

“Okay.” He stands motionless, mind clicking. “Let’s put her in the living room.”

The man carries her legs and Mark carries her arms, and she squirms and fights in their grasp. Her eyes are wide as saucers, filled with immaculate terror. They lie her down on the beer-stained and odor-ridden sofa. They back away. She curls into a fetal position upon the sofa, shivering under her ragged clothes, breaths coming in sharp and painful gasps. She watches them, like a caged animal, eyes darting between the two figures. The man figures she is eight or nine years old. Any Anthony Barnhart

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other day and she would be a bespectacled, nerdy kid running around, kicking clumsily at a kickball in the park. Now she has been degraded into something barely above a monster.

“What’s your name?” the man asks slowly.

She doesn’t answer.

Mark says, “We’re not going to hurt you.”

She opens her mouth as if to say something, and then she bends over and vomits onto the floor. Thick, putrid vomit, brilliant green speckled with saliva-strands of blood.

She cries and falls asleep. The man walks over to the kitchen table and lights a cigarette. He stands smoking. The boy joins him, takes one for himself. He lights the cigarette, then sets it down, grabs a towel out of a kitchen drawer, and then dips it in a bucket filled with distilled water. He goes over to the sofa and places the wet towel over the little girl’s forehead. She mumbles incoherently in her sleep. She clutches one of the leather cushions as if it were a buoy and she were sinking in the ocean. Mark rejoins the man, and they stand smoking in the kitchen.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” the man says. “If it means anything.”

“Not really,” Mark says. “But thanks.”

The man finishes his cigarette and snuffs it out on the table. “How’d you find her?”