The Dragons of the Night Read online

  THE DRAGONS OF THE NIGHT

  POSTSCRIPTS NO. 36/37

  Edited by Nick Gevers

  DARKNESS, AND DARKNESS

  Robert Freeman Wexler

  ‘This story came out of reading The Best American Noir of the Century, edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler. Two stories, “ The Homecoming” by Dorothy B Hughes and “ The Hunger” by Charles Beaumont, struck me by the way the authors used the idea of things hiding in the dark or looking different in the dark to add tension to the story. Additionally, I admired the anthology’s earlier (chronologically) stories for their economic language and style. I wanted to write a story that used darkness and was tight like the best of the stories in the anthology. And I wanted to make the darkness a more literal threat.’

  Mr Wexler recently finished a new novel, The Silverberg Business, featuring a character styled after Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op and set around the Texas coast in the late 19th century. His most recent publication is the novel The Painting and The City (PS 2009). His website is www.robertfreemanwexler.com and his book design site is www.alligatortreegraphics.com. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

  Darkness surrounded Newsome. Unexpected dark—he hadn’t meant to work so late. In the library basement, time passed unnoticed. He had been preparing course packets for next semester’s classes, copying articles and applying for permissions, the steady, repetitive work that he preferred. Upstairs, the windows’ nighttime clothing startled him—where had the sun gone? He stood near the reference desk, alone in a room emptied of clerks and patrons. Bare branches clawed at glass. He hesitated, reluctant to enter the dark, the resinous, grasping dark. At night the streets change, their daylight veneer scraped off to reveal glutinous remnants.

  Half of the campus and four blocks separated him from home, blocks filled with green walls of hedge and tree to snag the unwary. Lacking its students, the college was silent. He didn’t like students, their mocking laughter and eternal youth, but their presence helped expel the dark.

  Newsome had grown up around them. His father, an electrician, had worked for the college until his death. That death—a highway accident that also took Newsome’s mother—was what brought him back to town. He had been living in a larger city, sharing an apartment, working in a pet store. Tired of cleaning the stank cages, he moved into his parents’ paid-off house.

  Tonight, the college was a blackened husk. Darkness penetrated his jacket with dismaying ease. The glow of the campus security building sneered at him, too distant for its light to help. He considered going there to complain—they were required to keep certain lights on, for safety. But he avoided the security people, many of whom he had known since childhood. Not friends then or now. Bookboy, they called him. As if that would hurt. His books held far more power than the ridiculous sports programs that mesmerized them.

  He stopped, remembering a title that he had meant to bring. Too late to return for it—the dark pushed him onward…home, now shared with his sister and her boy. Two months ago, they had appeared at the door. He couldn’t prevent them from moving in.

  ‘Our house too,’ she had said.

  The death of his parents had saddened him (and he had never been particularly joyful). His response had been retreat, into himself, into his childhood home. The memories there were better companions than the people he encountered. Ghosts now—his brother, his parents. They deserved sanctuary, with him as curator.

  Newsome’s brother—at fifteen, the dark stole him, the deep dark that filled the old quarry outside of town. Dark in daylight, overflowing with black after sundown. His brother had gone there late, meeting friends. Newsome’s parents thought he was in bed, in the room he and seven-year-old Newsome shared. Divers never found the body. Authorities speculated that he had become lodged under an overhang. The brother’s disappearance cracked Newsome’s youth, cracked his mother.

  The sister was two years younger than Newsome, younger but more worldly. If promiscuity and worldliness were the same thing. O’Neill—one of the security guards—visited her, as he had in their youth, insinuating his unwanted bulk into Newsome’s refuge. Despite all that Newsome disliked about his sister, he could have suffered the cohabitation, something he had been forced to do for her whole life, but the inclusion of O’Neill infuriated him. In high school, once O’Neill began ‘seeing’ Newsome’s sister, Newsome became the favored object of torment for O’Neill and his teammates. After graduation, O’Neill had played football for one of the small colleges in the area, expelled his junior year for never going to class. Now, football uniform exchanged for security guard, the tormenting continued.

  Newsome had gone to college too, a small state school, graduating with a degree in biology. He had thought to become a veterinarian, but never pursued it further.

  He crossed North College, leaving campus, but the street wasn’t much brighter. Curtains drawn, people trapped the light in their homes. A street-light flickered, died, crushed by the encroaching gloom.

  Sensing motion ahead, he stopped. Writhing shadows blocked the side-walk—he had nearly walked into them. He groped for his keychain flashlight, switching it on before freeing it from his pocket. Creatures made wholly from blackness roamed the night streets, stalking and devouring. Houses, closed and lighted houses, held them back, but one night, their gathered strength would crush all barriers. Last week, a storm had knocked out power, and three days passed before light had been restored. During those powerless nights, the darkness gained territory. A section of the town still remained dark. Explanations for the outage abounded, but solved nothing. Newsome understood why, and he suspected that others did too.

  He stepped off the curb to bypass the shadows, and continued along the middle of the street. These shadow-creatures grew ever more bold, pushing their bounds, taunting. Their touch would demolish him. In the street, starlight shone down, casting him in a fluid shield. The stars—once he would have thought them unreachable, immune, but even they would fall, when darkness began its final onslaught. Their dying cries would rupture the world; petrified dark would pour out, strangling whatever life remained.

  Home wasn’t far now. Who would he find there? Perhaps his sister and the boy were out, giving him a few moments of blessed solitude. Each time he reached home after work, each time he saw her car in the driveway, his irritation grew. She didn’t have a job, though she claimed to be looking. And the boy—Newsome hated when she forced him to watch the boy on the nights she went out with her friends, presenting it as a fact without argument. Fortunately, the boy was accustomed to being ignored.

  The shadows…their interference, their threats, had increased after her arrival. She had called soon after Newsome moved in. ‘Hi, it’s sis…you visiting? I want to talk to Ma—it’s time to make up, don’t you think?’ The way she spoke—a torrent of self-involvement—left no openings for comment, and it wasn’t until after she had gone on about a daughter’s need for her mother that Newsome was able to explain what had happened. She expressed shock, and Newsome believed her, had no reason not to, but he didn’t trust her. And a few weeks later, she appeared at the door. Perhaps O’Neill had told her about their parents. The thought of living rent-free in their parents’ house was too appealing to ignore.

  The house was in his name. His parents hadn’t known how to find her, hadn’t talked to her for several years. They left everything to Newsome.

  They had been frugal people, and in addition to the insurance settlement, there had been a surprising amount of savings—from investments in several certificates of deposit bought when interest rates were high. His sister couldn’t have known how much, but she knew their frugality as well as he, had disliked it very much, actually, as it prevented her from having t
he things she thought she deserved. Not trusting her, not liking her intrusion, her presence in the house, Newsome hid all financial documents.

  Her behavior had been disappointing to their parents, but they cared about the boy regardless. They had even invited her to come back to live after he was born, after it became apparent that the father was absent. But she laughed at them—at Newsome, actually, the one who presented their invitation. ‘So they can control him the way they tried to control me?’ she had said.

  Yet here she was, pushing, claiming what she had long ago lost all rights to. What if he offered her something? Her fair share, he would call it. Then, if she wanted it (and she would), he would tell her that she had to drop O’Neill. Tonight, if he saw her, he would set it in motion. Surely he could engineer it. A proposition, some discussion…not mention O’Neill right off. Play her first. Like fishing. His father was a fisherman; when the accident happened, his parents had been on their way to a rented cabin for a week of fishing. But fishing reminded Newsome of the quarry. He avoided bodies of water. They hid their contents too well.

  Before his sister invaded his solitude, he had been content to spend days in the library, amongst the comforting strength of books, and evenings ensconced in familiar surroundings. Although dark had sometimes bled into his home, he was vigilant. He kept spare light bulbs in all rooms, plus powerful flashlights, even a propane camping lantern, which had shielded him during the power outage. His sister—perhaps the shadows had claimed her as a child, bent and shaped her but left her alive.

  Thinking that he heard footsteps, he looked back. Darkness followed, darkness pushed him onward. More shadows waited ahead, grinding an impatient rhythm on the pavement. The temperature had dropped. Chilled, shivering…the icy shadows laughed—their laughter clogged the air, choking him. He fell to his knees. Nothing and nothing, nothing but helpless hopeless yearning. Maybe he would be the one to leave. Let her have the house. No-sell it. Let a realtor handle everything. He wouldn’t miss the chill of dark, but the house…his mother’s warm perfume…the mud on his father’s boots after a fishing trip…his brother’s baseball glove, bat, and scuffed balls…even his sister, before she lost her early joy—those bound him.

  The darkness had incorporated Newsome’s brother. On moonless nights his shadow walked the streets. One night, a few months after the…accident…he tried to return. A fragment of him surfaced, emerging from the black, seeking home. Newsome heard tapping at his second-floor window. A shape darker than the night sky clung to the glass, too weak to lift the pane. Newsome pulled a flashlight from under the bed, but in the light the shape dissolved, leaving oily residue in the form of his brother’s face.

  Newsome passed through an intersection to reach his block. Down the cross street, a figure stood, tall, wearing a long coat. Newsome ran. He reached his house. Once inside, he looked out a window. The figure passed, and Newsome recognized him. Henderson, the Spanish professor, who lived at the other end of the block. Jumpy, so jumpy that he mistrusted anyone walking the nighttime streets. Still gazing out, he realized that his sister’s car was gone. On his way in he had been too rattled to notice.

  Newsome closed the curtains and switched on lamps. The house had few overhead lights, but had a number of lamps scattered throughout. He wished there were more. Despite his father’s electrical skills, he had never bothered to install additional overhead light fixtures (the house dated from a time before those were common). Newsome could do it, having learned from his father. He had meant to do it. His sister’s arrival interrupted renovation plans.

  He slipped off his jacket and sat in his father’s armchair. Shadows seeped through the gaps around the front door and windows. They whispered, the shadows, they clicked and hissed. The lamps lacked the power to repel their advance.

  Fewer shadows plagued the city he had lived in, and they were timid, less likely to infiltrate. In darkness they fatten and grow. Brightness had shielded the pet store, but the cages, great piles of steel and feces…odor overpowered…cluttered future, stinking future…that lamp by the front door—hadn’t he turned it on? He stood and it sputtered to life. Its glow framed a splotch, an ink-like stain on the floral wallpaper. Had the stain been there that morning? The wallpaper was old, but his mother had kept everything perfect.

  Seeking more light, he went into the kitchen, where an overhead fluorescent blazed. He fixed dinner and ate with the plate on the counter, but nothing tasted right in the viscous dark. He tossed out the remains.

  Upstairs, he shut his door so he wouldn’t have to see his sister or the kid when they returned. He avoided her, he did, and she goaded him. She knew what made him react. She had laughed at him when he wanted help with Clarissa Hudgens…Young Newsome had been afraid to talk to the girls his age. His sister’s friends, younger, less intimidating, he thought they might be impressed by an older boy. He was sixteen; Clarissa Hudgens would be fifteen in a few months. But when he asked his sister…he learned not to do that a second time.

  His bedroom window rattled, as if from a branch, but no trees grew near these windows. Dark, tactile dark. If his sister left, the darkness might subside. Bricks of rage assembled themselves around him. Why should he give up his chair…the lamp…his place to sit and read? And his book, the book he had been reading lay on the table beside the lamp.

  He wanted to howl, sometimes to shriek. Walls, the house, its walls were to be his shield, but now they trapped him, held him while cracks and holes extruded shadows.

  From the top of the stairs, he could tell that all the downstairs lamps were off. The dark poured upward like the quarry’s black water. It splashed the stairs. The air stank of it, rotten rotten stink. He went back to his bedroom for a flashlight. The dark laughed at the light’s thin and pitiful beam. But from deep within, the laughter trickled his brother’s trapped sobs. Newsome rushed down to reach the nearest lamp. Darkness tripped him. Somehow, he kept hold of the flashlight. He crawled to the lamp and switched it on. Black thinned, but he knew its withdrawal was incomplete; it would remain as long as his sister did.

  Last to turn on, the light by his reading chair. He sat and took up his book. His book! He flipped pages—black, all of them black, charred by the dark into an unreadable slab. The black stained his fingers. Despair rose in a spiral that chewed through layers of dark, but the chewed dark assaulted him, plastering his stomach with tar, and in the tar, living in the tar, the one-celled creatures that gave the dark its shape; these creatures need no air, no food, and though they fear the sun, they had, over millennia, learned to shield themselves. Where was their counter, a sun-creature to devour the dark and shit it back into the world, tamed and subdued?

  Darkness pushed him awake. He gulped for breath, as if he had just surfaced from deep water. Lights snapped back to life., but a resilient shadow clung to the ceiling. He dozed. A dream appeared, sunlit plazas—useless dream!—because at night the plazas abound with black-toed creatures that slither and jump, creatures that dissolve the flesh from anyone unwise enough to enter their domain. He dreamed of his sister, her dyed-black hair filled his mouth, choked him. The black-toed creatures nested in her hair, lounging and waiting. Voices penetrated his dream, foggy voices, whisper-dark voices. Footsteps brought the voices closer. He opened his eyes. His sister yelped and jumped back.

  ‘Hey man, scared us,’ O’Neill said. ‘Sitting in the dark. Looked like maybe you’d passed out.’

  ‘Passed out,’ his sister said. ‘Biggy brudder passed out.’ She giggled. ‘Take me upstairs before I pass out, you.’ O’Neill put a hand on her arm and guided her up the stairs.

  Newsome’s father wouldn’t have permitted such behavior. Though not a large man, he had been a fighter. He had never let anyone oppress or insult him—any individual. Institutions oppressed him, the school administration, the union, the hunting and fishing regulators, banks.…But he never would have allowed someone into his house who he didn’t like, never would have allowed anyone to taunt him without retaliation.
As a child, Newsome’s lack of aggression mystified his father. ‘Don’t you understand that fighting is important?’ he would say. But he accepted it, accepted his son as a father must. Now, Newsome wished he had fought O’Neill, fought him as a teenager—but would that have changed anything, forced O’Neill to respect him? Only if Newsome had beaten him, and that had never been a possibility.

  Newsome returned to his room, his childhood room, and lay on the bed. The house had three bedrooms. When he moved back, he hadn’t wanted to take his parents’ room. He went through their things and sold or gave away whatever he didn’t treasure, but he hadn’t touched their bedroom furniture or decorations. His sister claimed their room. She trampled Newsome’s protest, and it irked him that she had a valid point—the boy needed his own room, and if the boy took her old one, the parental bedroom was the only remaining choice. Only choice while she lived there. The book on his nightstand was clean, but now he felt too drained to read. He turned off the main nightstand light. His lamp had two bulbs, one of normal wattage for reading, and one a faint blue, strong enough to keep the dark from reaching his bed. He always slept with the blue on and his door locked.

  But tonight, sleep was hard to reach. Dark fangs encircled him. Down the hall, shadows licked his sister’s drunken body; they slid in and out of orifices. His fists clenched. Every time he thought about his sister, his fists clenched. The impact with her face would be satisfying—like a ball of pizza dough smacked onto the rolling board. What drove this violence into his head? Not his way, not his way. Even his father, his cantankerous father, never struck Newsome or his sister or brother.

  His sister cracked eggs into a bowl and beat them. ‘I sure gotta have eggs for my headache,’ she said. ‘Eggs and coffee, coffee and eggs. Can you go to the store? Almost out of eggs. I got a cocktail waitress job. Ralph’s. Start tonight. You’ll have to watch the boy. I didn’t have time to set anything up. He’s at Darla’s but she has to work tonight too. Don’t think the job’ll take. Not with those drunken assholes pawing after me all night. But biggy brudder says everyone has to work. Isn’t that what you say?’