This Present Darkness (11 page)

IT WAS A
dark, rainy night, and the raindrops pelting against the old single-pane windows made sleep difficult for Hank and Mary. She dropped off eventually, but Hank, already troubled in spirit, found it much harder to relax. It had been a lousy day anyway; he had worked on painting that slogan off the front of the house and tried to figure out who in the world would write such a thing against him. His ears were still ringing with the conversation he’d had with Alf Brummel, and his mind was still playing over and over the bitter comments from the board meeting. Now he could add to his apprehensions the congregational meeting on Friday, and he prayed to the Lord in desperate, hushed whispers as he lay there in the dark.

Funny how every lump in the mattress seems so much more lumpy when you’re upset. Hank began to worry that he would keep Mary awake with all his tossing and turning. He lay on his back, his side, his other side, put his arms under his pillow, over his pillow; he grabbed a Kleenex and blew his nose. He looked over at the clock: 12:20. They had turned in at 10.

But sleep finally does come, usually in such an unannounced way that you don’t even know you’re out until you wake up. Sometime that night Hank dozed off.

But after a few hours his dreams began to go sour. They were the usual silly thing at first, like driving a car through his living room and
then flying in the car as it turned into an airplane. But then the images began to rush and riot through his head, growing frantic and chaotic. He started running from dangers. He could hear screams; there was the sensation of falling and the sight and taste of blood. Images went from bright and colorful to monochromatic and dismal. He was constantly fighting, struggling for his life; innumerable dangers and enemies surrounded him, closing in. None of it made any sense, but one thing was very definite throughout: stark terror. He wanted desperately to scream but didn’t have time between fighting off enemies, monsters, unseen forces.

His pulse began to pound in his ears. The whole world was reeling and throbbing. The horrible conflict rushing in his head began to push its way to the surface of the conscious, everyday Hank. He stirred in the bed, rolled over on his back, drew a deep waking-up breath. His eyes half opened, not focused on anything. He was in that strange state of stupor halfway between sleep and consciousness.

Did he really see it? It was an eerie projection in midair, a glowing painting on black velvet. Right above the bed, so close he could smell sulfurous breath, a hideous mask of a face hovered, contorting in grotesque movements as it spit out vicious words he couldn’t understand.

Hank’s eyes opened like a sprung trap. He thought he could still see the face, just fading away, but instantly he felt like he’d been struck by a very heavy blow to his chest; his heart began to race and pound like it would burst through his ribs. He could feel his pajamas and the bedsheets sticking to him, drenched in sweat. He lay there panting for breath, waiting for his heart to calm down, for the stark terror to go away, but nothing changed and he couldn’t make it change.

You’re just having a nightmare, he kept telling himself, but he couldn’t seem to wake up. He purposely opened his eyes wide and looked around the darkened room, even though part of him wanted to regress back to childhood and just hide under the covers until the ghosts and monsters and burglars went away.

He saw nothing in the room out of the ordinary. A goblin in the corner was nothing but his shirt hanging on a chair, and the strange halo of light on the wall was only the streetlight reflecting off the crystal of his watch.

But he had been severely frightened, and he was still scared. He
could feel himself shaking as he desperately tried to sort hallucination from reality. He watched, listened. Even the silence seemed sinister. He found no comfort in it, only the dread that something evil hid behind it, an intruder or a demon, waiting, watching for the right moment.

What was that? A creak in the house? Footsteps? No, he told himself, just the wind against the windows. The rain had stopped.

Another noise, this time a rustling in the living room. He had never heard that noise at night before. I gotta wake up, I gotta wake up. Come on, heart, quiet down so I can hear.

He forced himself to sit up in bed, even though it made him feel more vulnerable, and he remained there for several minutes, trying to stifle his heart’s pounding with his hand over his chest. The pounding finally settled back a little, but the rate remained rapid. Hank could feel the sweat turning cold against his skin. To get up or go back to sleep? Sleep was definitely out. He decided to get up, look around, walk it off.

A clatter this time, in the kitchen. Now Hank started praying.

MARSHALL HAD HAD
the same kind of dreams and felt the same heart-pounding fear. Voices. It sure sounded like voices somewhere. Sandy? Maybe a radio.

But who knows? he thought to himself. This town is going crazy anyway, and now the sickies are in my house. He slid stealthily out of bed, put on his slippers, and moved over to the closet to procure a baseball bat. Just like back home, he thought. Now somebody’s gonna have mush for brains.

He looked out his bedroom door, up and down the hallway. No lights were on anywhere, no flashlight beams played about. But his guts were doing a square dance under his ribs, and there had to be some reason for it. He reached for the hallway light and flipped the switch. Nuts! The bulb was burnt out. Since when he didn’t know, but he stood in the dark and felt his courage deflated just that much more. He gripped the bat more tightly and moved down the hall, staying close to the wall, looking ahead, looking behind, listening. He thought he could hear a quiet rustling somewhere, something moving.

At the archway that led into the living room his eyes caught something, and he pressed himself against the wall for concealment. The
front door was open. Now his heart really started pounding, thudding rudely in his ears. In a strange, jungle way he felt better; at least there was indication of a real enemy. It was this lousy fear without any reason that was spooking him. He had already been through that sort of thing once today.

With that thought came a strange idea: That professor lady must be in the house.

He moved down the hall to check Sandy’s room and make sure she was all right. He wanted to stay between Kate and Sandy and whatever was out there in the rest of the house. Sandy’s bedroom door was open, and that was unusual; it made him all the more cautious. He inched along the wall toward the doorway and then, bat ready in his hands, he peered into the room.

Something was up. Sandy was, at least—her bed was empty and she was gone. He flicked on her bedroom light. The bed had been slept in, but now the covers were thrown back hastily and the room was in disarray.

As Marshall moved cautiously down the darkened hallway, it did occur to him that Sandy might just be up getting a drink, using the bathroom, reading. But such simple logic weakened against the horrible feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. He took deep breaths, trying with his greatest effort to hold himself steady while all the time he felt an insidious, unearthly terror as if he were inches from the crushing teeth of some monster he couldn’t see.

The bathroom was cold and dark. He turned on the light, dreading what he thought he might see. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. He left that light on and headed back toward the living room.

He peered like some kind of stalking fugitive through the archway. There was that rustling sound again. He flipped on the lights. Ah. The cold night air was coming in through the front door, rustling the drapes. No, Sandy was nowhere to be seen, not in the living room, not anywhere in or near the kitchen. Perhaps she was right outside.

But he had undeniable qualms about crossing the living room to the front door, walking past all the furniture that could hide an assailant. He gripped the bat tightly, keeping it up and ready. He kept his back to the wall as he made his way around the perimeter of the room, stepping around the sofa after checking behind it, hurriedly maneuvering
around the stereo, and finally reaching the door.

He went out onto the porch, into the cool night air, and for some reason suddenly felt safer. The town was still quiet this time of night. Everyone else was certainly asleep right now, not sneaking around their houses with baseball bats. He took a moment to regather himself and then went back inside.

Locking the door behind him was just like shutting himself in a dark closet with a couple of hundred vipers. The fear returned and he tightened his grip on the bat. With his back against the door, he looked around the room again. Why was it so dark? The lights were on, but every bulb seemed so dim, as if there were some kind of brown-out. Hogan, he thought to himself, either you’ve really lost a screw or you’re in big, big trouble. He remained frozen there by the door, motionless, looking and listening. There had to be somebody or something in the house. He couldn’t hear them or see them, but he could certainly feel them.

Outside the house, lying low in the evergreens and hedges, Tal and his company watched as demons—at least forty according to Tal’s count—played havoc with Marshall’s mind and spirit. They swooped like deadly black swallows in and out of the house, through the rooms, around and around Marshall, screaming taunts and blasphemies, and playing with and ever increasing his fears. Tal kept careful watch for the dreaded Rafar, but the Ba-al wasn’t among this wild group. There could be no doubt, however, that Rafar had sent them.

Tal and the others agonized, feeling Marshall’s pain. One demon, an ugly little imp with bristling, needle-sharp quills all over his body, leaped upon Marshall’s shoulders and beat upon his head, screaming, “You’re going to die, Hogan! You’re going to die! Your daughter is dead and you are going to die!”

Guilo could hardly control himself. His big sword slipped with a metallic ring from its sheath, but Tal’s strong arm held him back.

“Please, captain!” Guilo pleaded. “Never before have I only watched this happen!”

“Bridle yourself, dear warrior,” Tal cautioned.

“I will strike them only once!”

Guilo could see that even Tal was severely pained by his own order: “Forbear. Forbear. He must go through it.”

HANK HAD THE
lights on in the house, but he thought his eyes must have been playing tricks on him because the rooms still looked very dark, the shadows deep. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if it was himself moving or the shadows in the room; a strange, undulating motion in the light and shadows made the depths in the house shift back and forth like the slow, steady motion of breathing.

Hank stood in the doorway between kitchen and living room, watching and listening. He thought he could feel a wind moving through the house, but not a cold one from outside. It was like hot, sticky breath laden with repulsive odors, close and oppressive.

He had discovered that the clatter in the kitchen was due to a spatula sliding off the drainboard and onto the floor. That should have calmed his nerves right down, but he still felt terrified.

He knew he would sooner or later have to move into the living room to have a look. He took his first step out of the doorway and into the room.

It was like falling into a bottomless well of blackness and terror. The hairs on his neck bristled as if with static electricity. His lips started spilling out a frantic prayer.

He went down. Before he even knew what was happening, his body pitched forward and slammed into the floor. He became a trapped animal, instinctively struggling, trying to get loose from the unseen crushing weight that held him. His arms and legs were smacking into furniture and knocking things over, but in his terror and shock he felt no pain. He squirmed, twisted, gasped for breath, and lashed out at whatever it was, feeling resistance against the motion of his arms like stroking through water. The room seemed filled with smoke.

Blackness like blindness, a loss of hearing, a loss of contact with the real world, time standing still. He could feel himself dying. An image, a hallucination, a vision or a real sight broke through for an instant: two ghastly yellow eyes full of hate. His throat began to compress, squeezing shut.