The Dragons of the Night Read online

  Darla was their cousin, a hapless woman married to another of Newsome’s boyhood tormentors. But however hapless, she had no infection of shadow controlling her. Mornings transformed night-shadow into an imaginary beast. How could shadows, or even the memory of shadows, survive the daylight? They hid, somewhere dank and deep. His sister and the boy had arrived in the evening, having driven all day from wherever. Encroaching dark flung them to his door. Perhaps, had it been daylight, he could have kept her out.

  ‘Our parents left some savings,’ he said, speaking over the sizzle of her eggs. ‘I want you to take some and go find your own place to live. This is my house now.’ He looked out the kitchen window. Daylight suffers in winter, shrinks and hides; its return is never assured. Today he would be sure to leave the library well before sundown.

  She flipped her eggs. ‘How much money you think I need, biggy brudder? Rent ain’t cheap, even in this ass-crack town. How much then?’

  He gave an amount but knew that even if she accepted it, even if she moved out, once she had spent everything she would return for more. How to make it so that she couldn’t? The combination—his sister and O’Neill—the combination was what he found intolerable. He thought he had passed beyond the era of childhood torment. He had left this town, traded it for the anonymity of the city. But once back, elements returned to their former configurations.

  Piles awaited him when he reached his basement workplace, great stacks of books needing their bindings repaired—more preparations for the upcoming semester. How did so many books get so mangled? Newsome worked part-time, arriving most days after eleven; today, having made his offer, he had left home early. Her lack of answer ground at him. He hadn’t even stated the conditions required. He wished he could grab her shoulders. Shake her. Force her to accept. But if he touched her—fury would explode, and the shadows would erupt, never to be stoppered again.

  He didn’t mind the piles. Some might call what he did drudgery, but the steady work calmed him. He glanced at books as he taped and glued. The usual ragged academic tomes: Roman history, economics, literary criticism. He flipped through an architectural history of the state. Next was a bound typescript by a sociology professor named Harold Borkins…dated 1952. An account of Borkins’ years at the college. Newsome read a random page: ‘Blumenthal was named department chair. To be expected. Their kind always sticks together. It should have been Evans.’ Then bits about classes, a list of books he planned to read for a scholarly article.

  Newsome skipped ahead. A page, blank save for a sentence in the middle: ‘Walking home tonight, later than I had meant to stay out…the darkness…darkness stung my arm as I passed along a street without light.’

  The darkness—even then, the darkness attacked. And a few pages into the next chapter…

  Cold air propelled me. My elbows brushed the walls! The passage had contracted, a gradual diminishing of space that escaped my notice until the fact of it became incontrovertible. The dark and cold air made breathing difficult. This basement, this basement corridor that I have traversed many times, now transformed to a funnel herding me, herding me where? Behind me, the library; ahead, Landon Hall and my office.

  Newsome had never known of a tunnel between the library and Landon Hall, or any buildings.

  Shall I press onward? In my office, Lenore awaits. I crave the opposite of delay; I crave to be with her already, to bury my teeth in the flesh of her youth.

  Ahead, the ceiling lights flickered and dimmed, as if strangled by dark, a dark I had no desire to meet. I turned back the way I had come, preferring to journey aboveground, despite the mounds of snow and ice-clothed sidewalks.

  The chapter ended, and the next covered more mundane items, school administration politics, local politics. But later, darkness returned.

  Evans knocked on my front door last night. I hadn’t seen him in over a week, had, in fact, taught his class on Thursday due to his absence. He stood before me, blinking. The streetlights flickered.

  ‘Evans!’ I said. ‘Where have you been? Blumenthal wants your head! The Jew bastard actually had to teach a class.’

  Blackness seeped from his pupils; cloud-like tentacles coursed through iris and into the whites. The brightness of my living room appeared to disturb him. My lights—I had hired Newsome, a young electrician from the college, to install (at great expense) fluorescent lighting in all my rooms. This type of fixture appears to be less susceptible to whatever is interfering with standard bulbs.

  I didn’t want to invite Evans in. In the protective glare of my living room, I waited for a response. He reached as if to shake hands. I started to reciprocate, but recoiled. His palm was blackened, charred-looking. I slammed the door in his face and turned the lock.

  Fluorescent lights! And installed by Newsome’s father. At home, only the kitchen had them. He would add more.

  I returned to the underground passage—why would I, after my recent experiences? I had not intended to, but as I walked toward the library’s exit, I spied Blumenthal and quickly turned around. Had he seen me, he would have buried me in the minutiae of departmental matters. And, Lenore again waited in my office.

  This time, the passage has changed! Brightness, so much brightness that no shadow dares appear…

  The writing became more erratic, full of repetitions of grocery lists, names of students, and one graphic account of sex with the student named Lenore. He made her paint her breasts and stomach black. That was the last chapter. It ended with: ‘darkness and darkness and darkness—will these shadows never fade? I go to them. I grow weary of hiding.’

  Newsome got up. Where would the entrance be to a tunnel, and…would he find the brightness, the anti-shadow that Borkins described? He checked every door in the basement, to closets, offices, not caring what the few people working down there might think of his activities. In the boiler room, he found a door blocked by cardboard boxes. He moved them and turned the knob.

  Damp steps led down. At the bottom a small room ended at a wall, brick and mortar splotched with oily-dark residue. Passage sealed, an attempt to trap the shadows? A dank breeze pushed at him. The wall had gaps! He looked around the boiler room for tools, finding a long screwdriver and a hammer.

  Fearing that he would attract attention, his hammering was tentative at first. Even so, the mortar flaked off with little effort. A brick thumped to the floor on the far side, and he hammered with more force. Dust and chips flew. A shard gashed his cheek. He dropped the screwdriver and banged away, covering his eyes with a forearm. More thumps. The gap looked crawlable.

  He returned to the boiler room to retrieve a flashlight he had seen in the drawer where he found the screwdriver. Once through the hole, he turned it on. The beam caught a wall switch. He tried it, and overhead lights flickered on. Dead bulbs outnumbered the living, but there were enough for him to turn off his flashlight. Shadows clung to the walls, but these were the regular kind, harmless in the light. The walls curved, like a giant pipe. Perhaps other tunnels joined. Borkins had only mentioned going to Landon Hall.

  Water dripped, forming a miserable stream that trickled along the pavement. Floating, floating, he hovered…no walls now, not constructed walls, a world-artery. World-blood coats the shadows, clings to them, traps them, and once trapped, they take on a blanket of sediment, hardened glop that stinks and clogs. A shape projected from the sediment. Closer, the shape formed a body…Borkins…skull-face locked in the fright of the dead, resting now in the muck of solidified shadow.

  Trickles combined, one stream joined another, growing a broad and sluggish river, a river thick with shadow, more shadow than water, conduit of a great shadow beast. A body floated past, then another, victims of the endless dark. Miles separated Newsome from the opposite shore, but he spied details on the far-off bank, a city, a white and crystal city that repelled shadow. And in the city walked figures clad in bright colors, more yellows and blues than he had ever seen. How could he reach them? He came upon a stone wharf and, moored to it, a ba
rge that could fit maybe a dozen people. From the opposite shore, a chain ran through a box on the barge and around a pulley mounted to the wharf. Newsome stepped onto the barge. The box that the chain went through had a crank on one side. He turned the crank. The barge moved! Cranking, cranking, he entered the flow. But the shadow-water rebelled. The barge tipped one way, then the other. A third tip flung him into warm, sinuous water. He went under, fought to the surface, fighting the shadow-water’s grasp. Never much of a swimmer, not like his brother, but…his brother…lost to shadow-water despite his skill. Pattern of stroke, this leg, that arm, breathe, keep face clear of shadow. His arm struck the barge’s chain. He pulled himself along and onto the wharf. Shadow-water squealed but let go.

  A voice startled him. His body jerked at the unexpected sound. Something shook him. He focused; the voice became clear.

  ‘Bookboy, sleeping on books.’ O’Neill, with a hand on Newsome’s shoulder. ‘Bookboy’s sister needs him at home. Time for her to go to work. Kid needs babysitting.’

  Newsome sat at his desk, books and binding-repair tools spread across its surface. When had he returned to his desk? The city…he needed to reach the bright city.

  ‘Come on.’ O’Neill pushed his shoulder. ‘No time for walking. Get your shit. I’ll be outside in my truck.’

  A mound of rubbery darkness lay under Newsome’s desk, shadow-residue that had dripped from his clothes, his skin. He pushed a pencil at it. The material quivered and stiffened, resisting the pressure. He left it and hurried outside. In the truck, O’Neill lectured him about being more considerate of his sister’s needs. ‘The world is unkind to single parents,’ he said. Newsome wondered what television program gave O’Neill the insight. O’Neill seemed oblivious to the shadow-dark and also unaffected by it. Darkness needs cleverness, and O’Neill was decidedly unclever.

  His sister’s screech greeted him and he forced himself to respond. ‘I’ll take care of the boy tonight,’ he said. ‘But that’s it. You fix things.’ He retreated to the kitchen, to the safety of the fluorescent light. The boy had eaten. Newsome fed himself.

  Throughout the night, Newsome felt oddly at peace with the boy. They worked on a puzzle for a while, and watched television. The boy’s joyfulness repelled shadow. The boy wasn’t like his mother. His father’s genes, whoever the man had been. Perhaps she didn’t know—one of the many who enjoyed her company. A life of proximity to her would ruin him, joy or not.

  He helped the boy prepare for bed and lay beside him reading aloud. The boy’s room had none of the shadow-oppression that sickened the rest of the house. Calm seeped into Newsome. When had such calm last touched him? Glow of calm like summer mornings. He forced himself to shift to his own room. Outside his window, the night-shadows taunted him. Distrusting his senses, he no longer knew which shadows were benign and which were the opposite. Newly acquired calm fled his body, leaving dusty bitterness. He closed the curtains, turned on the blue light, and went to sleep. In sleep, he begged for calm, for light—a blaze to burn the shadow away. Shadows glowed red, then white, then yellow, and with a shriek, disintegrated.

  He took a flashlight to work, setting off before his sister awoke. Snow had fallen overnight. Few tracks marred the snow-carpet, and the pillowy whiteness gave comfort. Down in the library basement, someone had leaned a sheet of plywood against the hole in the brick wall and replaced the boxes. He pulled everything aside and crawled in. But no shadow river flowed, no city glistened from the far bank. He walked an endless tunnel, a tunnel inhabited by dust…carcasses of burned and banished shadows.

  The tunnel spiraled downward, through layers of darkened crystals and green wafers. Thickened air resisted his intrusion. A final spiral revealed a cavern that stretched out of sight in all directions, a subterranean bubble over which much of the town must sit. Ladders, rows of them, extended to the far-off ceiling; many were broken, sheared off at various points. On one of the intact ladders, a figure moved. His sister came into focus. He concealed himself behind another ladder. She appeared oblivious to everything but the rungs under her hands and feet. More people appeared on the ladders. He recognized Henderson, the Spanish professor from his street; Nosey Ninny, from the grocery store; and others, many others. No one descended the ladder that sheltered him. His sister reached the cavern floor. The ladder to the left of hers was broken about five feet up. He concentrated on remembering its position. Her ladder came—he was sure—from his basement. He would ascend and block it from above.

  More people left their ladders. They moved deeper into the cavern. He joined them, keeping behind his sister. No one spoke. All walked slowly, calmly, as if strolling their neighborhood.

  The cavern narrowed, narrowed so quickly that Newsome didn’t comprehend the narrowing until the walls pressed him into contact with the others. An odor permeated from them, an odor of dark, a thick, wet scent that clogged his nostrils and caused a tingling on the back of his tongue. The crowd carried him forward—not the subterranean river that he had sought, but one just as entangling. Overhead passed a black shape that he at first took for a bat, but it more resembled a jellyfish, though without dangle of tentacles. It shimmered in and out of sight, dark on a dark background, and he became aware of more of them, crowding the air. Newsome tried to turn, but the body-tide bore him onward, bodies packed too tight for him to break free. The creatures howled, a shadowy noise that faded and rose with their shimmers. And they had faces, human faces, or at least impressions of them, eyes, noses, mouths, and the mouths—they were the source of the shadowy howls!

  The passage opened into a larger space, not as vast as the ladder room but large enough for the press of bodies to loosen. The ceiling rose too, and into that vault the jellyfish-faces flowed. Newsome was glad to have more distance from them. The others moved forward. In the larger space, he was able to remain in the rear. He could make out a dark shape on the floor ahead; closer, it proved to be a pit. The first to reach the pit leaned over and vomited downward, spewing darkness. Another followed, and another. They formed a line on the edge. The shadow-odor worsened, a choking stench that twisted his guts. Breath held, he backed away, backed and turned…ran out of the vault-room…breath, more breath, but he couldn’t lose the shadow-stench. He ran toward the ladder room, but the corridor brought him back to his starting point.

  Darkness covered the hole that he had torn through the rotten brick. He kicked—the darkness quivered like the black pile that had collected under his desk. Screaming, he kicked and kicked, kicked himself to the floor. He lay in the dark dust. Laughter reached from across the wall, O’Neill and his sister, triumphant. Let them laugh, let them think the darkness had defeated him. He would find a way through the ever-shifting passages.

  But everywhere he turned, a wall confronted him, old brick sealed by impermeable tar. Batteries drained, his flashlight dimmed to nothing. He crawled across the blackened floor, down a chute carved from bones of darkness, ever downward to a place where light had never lived.

  S.K.

  James Cooper

  ‘“ S.K.” is really my love letter to Stephen King. I first read Carrie when I was twelve years old in 1981 and his wonderful tales have been travelling companions on my own journey for the subsequent thirty-four years. King’s work has been the one constant in my life and my relationship with his stories has, I’m astonished to admit, outlasted every one of my friendships, bar one. Stephen King has been with me since I was a young boy; I’m now a middle-aged man and still await each new book with the same kind of heady anticipation I did then. His work has influenced me beyond measure, and I hope this story captures something of what reading Stephen King has meant to me over the years.’

  James Cooper is the author of the short story collections You Are The Fly and The Beautiful Red. His novella Terra Damnata was published by PS Publishing in 2011 and was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award. His novella Strange Fruit and his novel Dark Father were both published in 2014 to critical acclaim. His most recent colle
ction, Human Pieces, is available to buy from the PS Publishing website. Forthcoming are Country Dark, which will be published next year as part of the TTA Novella Series, an eBook from Cemetery Dance collecting the best of his early short stories entitled Head Space & Other Uncomfortable Surroundings, and the short novel The Fade from Spectral Press. You can visit his website at: jamescooperfiction.co.uk.

  October 4, 2012 Dear S.K., It’s the strangest thing; I had the start of this letter all mapped out in my head, but now the time has finally arrived to put pen to paper, I find myself scrabbling around for the right words. If anyone understands what that’s like, I guess it’s you, right? It must be awful feeling this kind of corrosive pressure every day of the week, as the minutes and the hours tick away. The terror of the blank page; the knowledge that the story’s locked in that expanse of white, waiting to be developed, if only you can tap out the right sequence on the damn keyboard.

  The truth is: I don’t really know what to write. The act of doing so at all seems like a betrayal, as though I’m searching for the answers in the wrong place, reaching out to the nearest thing I have right now to an old friend. Constant Reader, that’s me; the guy who’ll happily read anything you write, even the laundry list. I should confess that it’s Dylan who asks me to write to you after I finish reading Carrie to him in the hospital. Dylan is my son; he’s fifteen years old and has acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Doctor Pollard, Dylan’s consultant, tells me that reading to him at night by his bedside might help him relax. I don’t imagine for one minute that Carrie is the kind of book he has in mind, but how better to ease the suffering of a young boy than to read about the bloody vengeance wreaked by a humiliated telekinetic girl! He is captivated by it, as I hoped he would be. He tells me it is the kind of book that makes him feel sad, because the plight of the girl seems so real. I point out to him that the final retribution is Carrie’s; the last laugh is undoubtedly hers. He thinks I am missing the point. Carrie has been driven to do something she despises, he says. She never for a single moment wants, or expects, the prom to end in the way that it does. I smile at him and agree. It is the longest conversation we have shared in the last twelve months. When he sinks back onto his pillow and closes his eyes, I imagine him remembering the book, years from now, and reading it with his own child, the pair losing themselves in the strange, haunting narrative. It is a hopeless fantasy, of course; a vision of the future that I know will never come to pass.