A World of Darkness Read online

  While I still am running my thumb over different keys, I wonder how long the battery of a mobile would manage to hold out. Danny during the last twelve days surely hadn’t had the possibility to load up his small phone. And who knows what exactly he had done with it that could have used up the stored energy. He the first day of the apocalypse for sure had tried to dial all the numbers he had stored. And for simply not being able to believe that he couldn’t reach anyone of his friends and relatives he surely had done so repeatedly.

  How likely might it then be that there is a rest of power to the battery?

  But before this thought can drag me down into the deepest of depressions the little window inside the mobile abruptly lights up in an unreal blue color that in the first moment lets me think of the vespertine television picture of days gone by. Onto the display appear small pictures in front of a sunlit hillside setting. To be able to recognize some of the words standing below the signs for “contacts”, “messages” and others, I have to narrow my eyes to small slits. I can’t tell to what extend the phone is loaded. But according to the shining red bar in its right, upper corner I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the compact device for a long time.

  I feel a sharp strain taking possession of me. Cindy and Danny at one blow fall into oblivion. Had my visit to the neighbor’s house after all brought something good? Was this my reward for almost losing my mind inside the dark rooms of the house that had been stinking of blood and urine?

  I anew turn the phone in my hands as if being able to find a secret case at it. Beyond doubt the device has got a last reserve of power, what is something unknown to the world of today. But doesn’t a possible counterpart out there also need some power as to I can reach him with this marvel of modern technology? I once had watched a TV report about cell phone towers and their effects on the health of the people, who were living in striking distance to these stations. Via these towers conversations and messages were transmitted from one place to the other. And I believe to remember that the reporter had said something about an emergency backup generator, which in case of an area-wide power breakdown would step in to ensure the supply of the cell phone users. How long such a generator would possibly be able to take the power supply? May I hope that the cell phone towers in the last twelve days hadn’t lost their functionality?

  An excitement, that isn’t unlike the excitement of a little child at Christmas time takes possession of me. In my thoughts I run through all sorts of people that I had met throughout my lifetime. People, I partly hadn’t heard of for more than twenty years, but now, via this device, suddenly seem to be quite near.

  Just to wallow in the warming thought of at a stroke no longer being alone on this earth I even think of people, whose phone numbers I had never possessed. I don’t allow myself to the ruinous thought that of all the people passing through my mind like an endless film, probably none is still alive.

  Even if I enjoy the parade of voices that might possibly reach me through this mobile, I in the next moment call myself a full-blown fool. In my entire obsession that makes my heart thud like an old steam hammer I don’t even for a second consider the only name I really care for and that resembles me the only real and reachable. Even though it never occurred

  to me that I had been such a bad father that I should put my own flesh and blood last to the list. I used to know Barry’s number by heart.

  I don’t know exactly how a cell phone works. But as I begin to type my son’s endlessly long number onto the small keypad the ciphers one after the other appear on the display. At the same time I feel my throbbing heart threatening to blow up my trembling chest. With a bitter smile coming to my face I ponder that my old heart possibly might not outlive the sudden excitement.

  When I see the complete number typed before my eyes I regard the sequence of numbers with an odd emotion that laces up my throat. Suddenly it’s not a phone I’m holding in my hands but Barry himself. My son at a sudden is as close to me as never before. Even when he had been visiting us in the hillside Barry had never resembled me as present as in this moment, when I’m regarding his number onto the bluely lit display.

  Then the ciphers suddenly disappear. The blue color of the display first becomes grey and then an inanimate black. I horror-stricken begin to type the keys of the cell phone over until the display flashes up anew. But Barry is away. Modern technology apparently doesn’t give you the time to get addicted to your emotions.

  I type the number again, enjoying each of the familiar ciphers appearing onto the display. Then I, without the slightest digression, press the small, green icon showing a receiver that Barry had used to press whenever he had to do one of his important calls at the hospital. I watch how the ciphers one after the other shortly light up and then a line of blinking points appears. I hesitatingly hold the cell phone against my ear, at the same time already thinking about the words I intend to use for Barry’s welcome. What should I tell him in the face of this terrible situation? Would a normal conversation, like the ones we had had for example at birthdays or Christmas, at all be possible?

  While I wait to hear the longed for ringing I tinker with the absurd idea of waking Sarah. Perhaps it would do her good to hear Barry’s voice. After all Sarah had loved our son endlessly and when he one day had told us that he wanted to take an apartment of his own for not being able to bear the spatial separation of his later wife Shelley any longer had cried for days.

  I throw a glance at Sarah’s gently lifting chest. No, I will allow her to sleep and tell her tomorrow about my conversation with Barry.

  I stare into the candle flame.

  I still can’t hear a bell signal. My fingers start to play with each other. I nervously run my forefinger over my thumb. How long does it take a cell phone to connect? Does it take longer than my old device in the kitchen? I remember that Barry had needed only a few seconds to reach his boss or one of the nurses at the hospital.

  The pounding of my heart suddenly seems to measure me up with an icy cold. As if it with each of its fast-paced beatings was bumping cold water throughout my veins. I take the phone into my hand and regard the display. The screen is black. I with agitated movements press several keys at the same time. Nothing happens.

  While I begin to shake the cell phone my eyes are filling with tears. Again and again I pause in my uncontrolled movements and unbelievingly stare at the black screen. I with a hoarse moan begin to slam the phone against the desk top. The draft makes the candlelight flutter and the shadows at the wall begin to dance another grotesque dance. Aren’t there derisive grimaces that mock me?

  Sarah with a deep moan moves beneath her blanket.

  Staring at the display I in the dark screen can recognize the diminished mirror image of my horror-stricken face. Tears are running down the cheeks of the old man, who stares against me, and inside the candle light gently gleam. I again run my fingers over the keys. I press the green phone icon, but the cell phone stays dead; just like does the rest of the world.

  The ciphers are away. The sunlit mountains are away. Barry is away …

  The cell phone begins to blur before my eyes. The borders of my focus get lost inside a grey haze, bringing me a loneliness that bathes me with grave-like fear.

  Even the fact that Sarah is next to me, which in the last twelve days had been my only stronghold, can’t save me from the maelstrom of this never felt and strange fear. The world contracts to the size of this dark screen.

  I at a sudden understand the hopelessness of my situation, which I up till now had always tried to deny.

  There is not a thing left in the hillside and the entire world that could drag me out of the silent grave that has become of my house.

  The silence that each day gets nearer, like a beast stalking by on velvet paws, will last forever and some day will swallow us up as casually as it before had swallowed the rest of the world.

  The world definitely kept turning.

  There is nothing left to live for.

  I throw a gl
ance at Sarah with her chest constantly lifting and lowering.

  I’ m ashamed of this last thought of mine. But it is as true as is the grey that like dropping color spreads over the world. As true as the black display.

  I take the cell phone, one last time regarding the dead, grey man inside the screen and throw it against the dark wall besides the window. There is plastic breaking and something rolling over the floor and then the little room falls silent again.

  With my last breath the grey in the end will take me, too.

  Barry

  I

  My dreams have lost their every color. I move through a world that welcomes me with silence and coldness and whose air smells of moldiness like one was dousing one’s head into the water of a pond that is grown over by algae.

  Without being able to hear my own steps I enter rooms, whose walls also are grey. If I lay my head back the grey with an increase in height turns into a flickering black, until it trails away into complete darkness. I can’t recognize the ceiling.

  A smell of bitter copper and molded food like a thick fur lies on my tongue, making me suffocate. My legs move like from alone. My arms, my hands – nothing belongs to my body any longer. I’m a ghost inside a world of ghosts; without sound, without color.

  I know that I’m caught inside a dream. I even can remember the fact that I had thrown Danny’s cell phone against the wall, in doing so breaking its case. I also can remember having put on my pajamas and with tears inside my eyes having climbed gently, as to not wake her, beside Sarah into our bed.

  While I with a sagging motion stray through this grey land I can see all this clearly before my eyes.

  I should wake up, I think to myself, trying to force me to escape this odd dream only by pure will power.

  But is this really a dream?

  How do you in a dream know that you are dreaming? Something like that is simply impossible, because up till now I never had known that I was inside of a dream. In these hideous moments all the terrible things I had ever dreamt during my lifetime are real to me; as long as I had awoke from these nightmares screaming.

  And now I suddenly am caught inside of this aseptic, colorless world, feeling how I deeper and deeper get absorbed into its ominous maelstrom.

  This can’t be a dream.

  I have to wake up, a voice inside of me shouts in deepest despair. I mustn’t allow the grey to lure me into its dying lap.

  The rugged tors of grey and black mountains like monsters tower around me. I’m strolling through a valley filled by dark shadows, creeping towards me over the gloomy hills like a waving flood. The sky is an endless, black cloth, threatening to suffocate the silent world. Then suddenly I find myself inside a house again, without having passed any door. It’s my house. The house I more than forty years ago had built for Sarah and me in the hillside above of Devon.

  But there is not a thing that still was in color. The wallpapers, whose floral patterns at Sarah’s request had always been shining in bright summer colors, now have the cold color of ashes. The deal boards of the floor resemble me like the washed-out black of a moonless night. Even the air is hiding behind a grey, dull mist that carries the deadbeat odor of death. And everywhere there is this ghastly, all-consuming silence.

  That has to be the silence of death, I think, feeling an icy cold running through my body.

  Is it able to freeze inside a dream?

  I again notice that I watch myself wandering through the ruins of the old world. The only comfort I can get is from the fact that I know that all this is just a dream; a real, drastic and grueling dream. But I still can’t manage to tear my other self out of this pale haze filling the grey hills and the grey house. Perhaps this is the first degree of death? I hear say a voice that sounds a lot like mine.

  Can you prepare for death by a dream journey? Am I not able to free me because I’m already caught inside the cold claws of neglect, whose talons have carved themselves deeply into my sensations and thinking? If this really is death, like we human beings want to understand and experience it, I can only say that I’m very relieved.

  In this new, terrible world that lurks outside of the house and in which creatures like the Shoggothen are walking abroad, I had imagined the death as a black, plague like decay.

  I never would have dared to think that I would be allowed to begin my last journey in such a gentle and silent way.

  For the first time since I have been watching myself inside this grey world I can recognize a smile on my face.

  But the world isn’t silent …

  My eyes try to pervade the dull paleness lurking inside the rooms. My ears listen into the omnipresent, back-breaking silence, from which suddenly a steady hum comes near. I pause inside my dream and turn one time around myself. The grey of the walls is blurring to a sooty haze, remembering me of dancing demons. The sound seems to ooze out of the dull colors, fulfilling the perishable air. It makes my whole body tremble.

  I lose my footing, my back banging into the wall, and even in my dream can feel the stabbing pain that runs into my shoulder. Through the haze I stare at a world, whose outlines get blurred like under water. I run my hands over my eyes, feeling the pain of exhaustion behind my senile lids.

  I have to get out of this nightmare, I in silent despair shout at myself. This is not death. Death is silent …

  The hum becomes louder. Something moves towards the house.

  With hands that can’t be mine I grab for the Harv Jennings, who is cowering paralyzed against the grey wall of the grey house. My fingers get hold of the cloth of his pajamas. I even in my dream am wearing the pajamas that I use to wear normally because it’s one of the last presents I got from my Sarah.

  As my hands roughly shake the grey man cloth swishes. When I want to drag him out of the house I can feel his paralyzed body resisting. Get away from the grey rooms. Get away from the unspeakable dream. Get away from the ghastly hum …

  I begin to cry. I’m screaming like a hysterical hag.

  Wake up.

  But there is no tone that would break the silence of the dream. There is only this continuous hum that comes nearer.

  My hands take a stronger hold of the old body. They tear at it as if they were trying to pull the arm off the body …

  I wake up with a hoarse cry and my eyes that are wet with tears poke hectically through the pale twilight inside the room. My heart palpitates; the top of the pajamas soaked with sweat sticks to the upper part of my body. My chest lifts and lowers quickly.

  The pale shadows of the furniture inside the room resemble me to be blurred like a hot summer breeze oscillating above asphalt. I narrow my eyes, feeling the pleasant chill of my tears but also a great fatigue hiding behind my lids. Suddenly I wonder if I this night had been sleeping or if my dream possibly was correlating an abnormal reality.

  I gaze at Sarah, whose chest lifts and lowers slightly but regularly. Her eyelids flutter as if in her thoughts she was regarding pictures, which only she was able to see. Is she dreaming of grey rooms inside a grey house?

  While I still regard her peaceful face I feel the warm sensation of affection turning into an ocean out of ice crystals. Like in my dream the world around me isn’t silent any longer. The deep hum drags through the house like a dark cloud.

  Not a dream …

  I instantly jump out of bed and stand still in the middle of the room. I breathe hard, at which the breath nearly bursts my lungs. The room seems to shrink, its walls coming down on me. My gaze rushes towards the door that is standing ajar. Through the gap I can see the blackness inside the corridor. Then I stare towards the window. Wan rays of light looking like the fingers of dead bodies drop through the small chinks inside the timber shutters and tentatively search their way into the room. In the dull daylight I can see floating fluff; grey, dirty dust.

  The murmur comes from everywhere. It seeps through the walls, floods the room with its disastrous muttering, creeps over the ceiling and lunges at me like a famished beast.
The sound like a sinful haze ascends even from the old timber floor and encloses my trembling body with cold fingers. It takes quite a while until my overstrained brains realizes that the hum comes from outside. It stands above the house as if something giant was cowering on the roof. And it’s getting louder and louder.

  It reminds me of a swarm of grasshoppers that like a dark, all-consuming cloud spreads over the land and blackens out the sun; just the way I had seen in various horror films.

  At the moment this absurd comparison is the best what this hum makes me think of. Breathing heavily I spin around and run over to the gun that leans at the wall beside the bedroom door. With quick, studied movements of my hand I check if the barrels are loaded.

  Then I aim the gun towards the empty room, trying to find out from which direction the noise comes near; and – most of all – what advances the house.

  I hectically spin once around myself. The murmur becomes a constant pulsation seeming to split the air, as if something big was tilling the skies. My imagination of a swarm of grass hoppers vanishes into thin air. At a sudden I wearily think that, in comparison to what really is outside there, the insects might have been the lesser evil. What if the Shoggothen are not the only monsters that had disgorged from earth? Which monstrosities might lurk in the air?

  I can feel the air around me beginning to vibrate. Even here, inside the darkened bedroom that is only scarcely lit by few rays of daylight, I feel the invisible commotions around me. They are running over my face and my hands, as if the air itself was trying to caress and seduce me with its ice-cold touches. They with a merciless cruelty creep beneath my clothes. A feeling as if something was ripping out one little hair of mine after the other comes over me like the breakers of a dark sea.

  I take a glance at Sarah. She unimpressed by the imminent danger breathes even and calm. How much I envy her that moment.