A World of Darkness Read online

  After the meal Barry offers him some of his whiskey, what he of course accepts thankfully.

  After that Murphy begins to narrate. He stalks his head off, while Barry is sitting on the sofa with his daughter’s head again bedded onto his thigh and I am sitting in my old, haggled chair with my hands rested on its arms. I wonder for how long Murphy might not have had a proper conversation. I guess it might have been for about fourteen days.

  He speaks about him with growing anxiety pursuing the news at his old TV and already then being sure that all the incidents on earth wouldn’t come to a good ending. He would have a good friend in Cooperstown, he hadn’t seen for years and whom he now, as the town is just a fuming debris field was missing a lot. At this point Murphy falls silent. And though I know that he surely had not been wasting a single thought on this friend, I feel a bit sorry for my fellow.

  He in a low voice continues telling us how he had noticed that something had been wrong with the world. It began with the lack of radio reception and only a short time after that he had also lacked TV reception. He didn’t get his newspaper – probably young Daryll also hadn’t come to him after somewhere awakening dead – and suddenly there hadn’t been any customers, too. At which I think to myself that Murphy possibly will have noticed this last fact at least, for he even before had had at most two or three customers a day, who on their way through the hillside had bought ahead some snacks or sweets from him. His only regular customers had been his friends and neighbors. And of these one had blown his head, while his wife in her bedroom had resembled more a dead than a living person.

  But what had frightened Murphy the most was the fact that he hadn’t been able to reach someone on the phone. He neither heard the busy signal or the phone rang incessantly without anyone at the other end of the wire answering it. He hadn’t been able to reach even me, his sister in Devon and his doctor.

  In exchange to that at night-time these abhorrent creatures, whom he at my last visit had believed me to be one of, were appearing in front of his house. They like straying dogs had been crawling onto the parking lot and through the rear garden, grunting like pigs. Murphy hadn’t really seen the creatures, for they had only come at night and seemed to be covered by a dark coat. But their shadows and the sedate way, in which they had been crawling through the garden and across the porch had curdled up Murphy’s blood.

  In addition to that there were the noises these beings were uttering. There was nothing human to them, what had challenged his first assumption that they might have been highwaymen or a kind of shade-loving mob.

  I know from experience that Murphy shows a tendency towards padding the stories he tells as if being a big hitter. But this time I know that I can believe in every word my old friend tells.

  Murphy’s mother had born a smart guy, that’s how my fellow characterizes himself. And so he had soon established a connection between the incidents and the last news he had seen. The extremist’s attacks had turned out to be by far more devastating than everything of that kind before. Even ‘Nine-Eleven’ had been “kinder garden” in comparison to the dimensions of what had now come across the world over night. The second day he, armed with his gun and some knives he had been wearing attached to his belt drove to Devon. He mainly had been aimed at his sister’s place. But he had also intended to visit the local police department. In the run being a tax payer he had a right to learn what was going on around him.

  This comment makes me laugh inwardly – not because it had been Murphy who said it, but just because the idea, that possibly no one on earth would ever pay any taxes again and each national budget was meant to be doomed had fast as lightening come to my mind.

  The thought amuses me so that I inevitably hold a hand in front of my mouth and clear my throat. I don’t want Murphy to think that I was laughing about his experiences.

  When he had driven to Devon Murphy had soon let go the idea of visiting his sister or possibly the police headquarters there. The streets had been emptied, he narrates in a low voice, in doing so giving me the creeps.

  I notice that my friend doesn’t want to frighten Demi with his words. Though the child has lived to see more than the two of us old fools together. But Murphy doesn’t yet know about the incidents in Boston.

  The shops had been closed and the windows of the houses had been dark. Every now and then there had been open doors or smashed shop windows. But Murphy hadn’t dared to check back if there still was someone in the houses. One time he had driven along Main Street with its big turning around area that at market days had also been allowed to be used as parking lot, had turned his car there and driven the same way back.

  But he hadn’t come across a single body. And that though it had been the best time of the day and at least the shops should have been crowded. But what had been frightening Murphy the most had been the cars that had been standing on the road. There hadn’t been many of them. But the ones he could see had been standing in the middle of crossings or the median, with their doors standing ajar or their windows smashed. And at some door or on some engine hood he had been able to see traces of blood, as if someone had been torn out of the car by force.

  In addition to that there had been this silence, Murphy keeps on narrating in a low voice, as if he was afraid of being overheard by someone, who shouldn’t hear his words. A city never sleeps, he whispers. One always can hear the buzzing of the wires or the impertinent droning of the traffic; the laughter of children some streets afar or some dogs barking; perhaps also basses booming out of some car. But in Devon one didn’t anything of that. The streets and houses had seemed like covered by a silent hood soaking up every noise that the world normally produced. And nothing was worse than a silent town.

  He had felt like being on a strange planet, Murphy continues with a weepy voice. Barry long ago had poured him a second whiskey, which my fellow quaffs off in one.

  “Do you know the feeling of being caught inside a nightmare and not being able to awake?” Murphy addresses us all, though gazing only at me. “That’s exactly how I felt when I was in Devon. It was terrible. It was like something gnawing and eating on you and you were just able to calmly sit there and watch how piece by piece was getting ripped out of you.”

  I never would have believed Murphy to be of such a poetic depth. But his words hit me like a stab into the back; especially because they are conveying exactly the mood I had been in during the last days.

  “All the places we had visited together, Harv. The little restaurant at the market place, the cinema or the bowling hall – they all resembled me like a gigantic, silent grave. There had been no more memories or pictures inside of my head – just nothing.”

  He looks at me and I now can see tears inside Murphy’s eyes.

  “The whole world seems to have died.”

  I try to remember when I had last seen my old friend cry. He even hadn’t cried when the thing with Audrey had happened; at least not when I and Sarah had been around. This time he cries. And had I needed yet another proof for the consequences coming from the last days, Murphy is just presenting it us now. I glance at the plate with soup I had prepared for Sarah.

  “Would you please excuse me?”

  I get up from my chair, in doing so feeling all my bones refusing against it. I with trembling hands grab the plate and one of the candles that are standing on the table. Then I with my legs being weary climb the seemingly endless stairs up to the bedroom.

  The soup is almost cold. But Sarah had used to let her food cool down before eating it. This is one of the manifold features of hers, which I love so much about her.

  In the room everything is silent. Barry’s story has banned all sounds from my brains. While I’m feeding Sarah one spoon of soup after the other I don’t talk to her. I’m out of words. What should I have told her? That there will be no tomorrow? That the world had turned into an empty, grey desert?

  Sarah shall not know what’s going on around her. She shall keep dreaming of a world in color, whi
ch had fascinated her each day anew. She shall dream of Humphrey and our evenings in front of the fireplace. And perhaps she once and again also dreams of me, her toy boy.

  Tears roll down my cheeks, falling onto the blanket, where they leave behind some dark spots. I put the plate aside and caress Sarah’s cheek. Her skin resembles cold and dry.

  Suddenly the fear of the last days brutally clears its path into my consciousness and I unrestrainedly begin to cry. My stomach tenses up. I can’t breathe any more. As I, weeping at her breast like a baby take her into my arms, my hands grab for Sarah’s nightdress. The sour odor of her dying body hits my nose. But beneath that I can smell the tender aroma of her favorite perfume she had used to wear when we went to Devon.

  I know that this feeling is mere imagination. But it helps me to with my tears cry out all of my despair. I weep like I had done last as a little boy. And there’s nothing to be ashamed for.

  V

  As I get back to the living room Barry is standing at the window, spying outside through the gaps between the boards. A pale ray of daylight falls onto his face, seeming to straightly divide it into two beginning from his forehead down to his chin.

  “We’ll have to drive to Devon”, he claims as if this was the most natural thing to do.

  I pause in the middle of my movement, looking from the one of them to the other. Barry’s tersely spoken words have made my stomach a cold quagmire. A sour taste comes up my throat.

  Murphy is standing beside the living room table, staring at the blind TV screen. The chair in front of it, in which I had spent so many cozy evenings marveling at the young news anchor, never before had resembled me seemed as empty.

  “We need some stocks”, Barry continues, looking at me. The ray of day disappears from his face. “You said yourself that your stocks are as good as gone.”

  “What about your shop?” I hopefully address to Murphy, though I think to know his answer before.

  My old fellow scornfully shrugs his shoulders. It’s not before now that I see that Barry has poured himself another whiskey.

  “My shop? It doesn’t exist anymore, Harv.”

  He glances in his glass as if the whiskey was the only thing that kept him in touch with his old life.

  “Two nights ago these monsters forced their way into my shop and ate up everything they could find. They devastated the shelves and tried to get into my flat. But, as you know, my mother has given birth to a clever chappie. I right in the beginning of the catastrophe had lined up the door between the shop and the flat with wood and a steel plate. Even the army wouldn’t have been able to get through that.” His face shows off a bitter smile that makes him again resemble a sad clown. “I never had thought that I once would owe my life to this plate. But it really stopped these creatures. They for two nights had been trying to force their way into the flat. I don’t know if this night they will come again.”

  I look at Murphy and what I see standing in front of me is an old man. His shoulders have got slimmer as I remember them and are hanging down faintly. His cranky face is haggard, his eyes are dreary. He stands there bent forward, with his thin long fingers rolling the whiskey glass between his hands. An old man, I think anew, unable to take my eyes off my best friend’s sad figure.

  Damn, how young we had felt once. Holding our wives – our girls, how we had used to call them – in our arms we, resembling vain peacocks, we had been sashaying through Devon, in doing so talking nonsense like normally only enamored, stupid teenagers do. During the little town’s annual fair we had abducted our girls into fun rides that clearly were not made for people of our age, catching the partly amused, partly indignant glances of other people of our age. The carousels had nauseated us. But we had laughed and kept on talking rubbish. One of us had brought up the other by calling him a weak old man. And our girls had laughed, calling themselves aging maids, who were running around with their toy boys. Then we all had laughed. We had been young and hyper. And one night in Devon had been too short for the four of us. Where these times are gone to? Where my young friend of back then has gone to? I look at Murphy, who a few days ago had wanted to shoot me down and now would have liked best started to weep. But I turn away, trying to meet Barry’s eyes.

  “I had rather set my hope in Murphy’s shop”, I say, looking concernedly down to the floor. “I’m sorry for what happened to the shop, Murphy”, I whisper, in doing so not looking at my friend. I suddenly get bashfully aware of the fact that he lost his entire living and I till now had not found a single word of comfort.

  Murphy doesn’t respond.

  “So we got to go to Devon”, answers Barry instead of him. He steps between us, looking first at the one and then at the other. In doing so he spreads his empty hands as if he had just told the most obvious thing.

  “I think you’re right”, I hear myself say, at the same time having liked best to rip my voice out of my throat.

  Out of the corners of my eyes I can recognize that Murphy gives a faint nod.

  “I would have said we should fly to Devon with the helicopter;” Barry continues. “But I fear that the engine makes too much noise, what might attract these creatures out of their hide-outs. In addition to that in an emergency I can’t start the helicopter as fast as a car.”

  With these words Barry looks at me and I’m aware what he is up to.

  “My old Pickup still works”, I answer his questioning gesture with a laugh that rather resembles a deep sigh.

  “We shouldn’t lose any time then”, Barry says.

  He looks from Murphy to me. Suddenly life has returned into my son’s dying shell. But he doesn’t manage to transmit his hope, which I unmistakably can see inside his eyes, onto me. When I think of Devon I automatically see Danny sitting on his sofa and me being able to recognize his weapon only as a black shadow in the dark, in front of my eyes. I see Cindy standing in her bedroom; this thing that had once been a beautiful, witty and charming woman; this thing that had begged me to kill it. And I can smell the bitter fetor of death and decay inside the Miller’s house. Mixed with the acrid odor of gun powder and dying flesh this fetor, which after Danny had blown his head, had been covering the rooms like a cloth. What if Devon is full of creatures like Cindy? Or, what resembles me even worse; what shall we do if the creatures out of hell that I call Shoggothen by night hunker inside the houses of Devon? What chances have we got then?

  There is only one way to find out about all that, I think to myself, frightened by the coldness that suddenly got into my veins. But perhaps what’s controlling me and turning off my brains is just deep resignation.

  The promise that we in Devon might find death perhaps resembles my unconsciousness too inviting as to that I could still be afraid of dying. I believe I deep down inside of me, where there had never been any sunlight and where the most absurd thoughts and feelings are cavorting in an everlasting blackness, know that mankind will only have one future.

  “I propose that the two of us shall drive to Devon”, Barry breaks in on my dark thoughts, a thing that I am extremely thankful. “Someone has to stay with Demi and mum”, he continues, in doing so looking at Murphy. I from the relieved expression on his face can see how much my son’s decision accommodates him.

  “Is this okay for you, Dad?”

  Our eyes meet. I would have liked best to beg Barry to forget his offer about Devon. I want to propose to him that we should make our house a little stronghold, equip each of us with a weapon and await the things to come at night. I want to shout at him and to desperately beat my fists against his chest.

  “It’s the best solution”, I answer instead. “We can’t leave Sarah alone. And regarding the condition that she is in, I don’t think it advisable to take Demi with us.”

  I glance at Murphy, who is still standing next to the TV set. He looks helpless, as if he had dozed off while standing.

  “Someone has to guard our two girls”, I whisper, winking at my old companion.

  Murphy nods, smiling.r />
  “You can rely on me, old man.”

  We both nod shortly, a gesture that in all the years of our friendship had become used to us. A gesture so simple and lapidary, but yet says more than thousands of absurd words.

  I look throughout the room. It’s only now that I notice that Demi’s place at the sofa is empty. While panic begins to arise inside of me Barry seems to be able to read my mind. He pacifyingly raises his hands.

  “Demi again went upstairs to her grandmother. These two always have been close. I thought …”

  I put my hand onto Barry’s arm.

  “It’s a good idea.”

  Barry smiles and looks down bashfully, a gesture that for a man of his size seems almost ridiculous.

  “Okay, we should work out a little plan”, he finally whispers in a hoarse voice, going back to the window and looking outside between the gaps inside the wood.

  “You got your gun, Dad. And I got an automatic inside the helicopter. In addition to that we got Murphy’s gun and …” He pauses and looks over to me. “Demi got a weapon, too. I will hand it out to her.”

  We look at each other, but I don’t have any objections. To do so my blood running throughout my veins is too cold.

  “I taught her how to shoot down at the hospital.” For a short moment a tentative smile runs over his face. “She’s a little natural.”

  No one answers or contradicts him. With that it’s a laid out plan that my little granddaughter, who I, in allusion to an old TV series she had liked to watch when she had been visiting us, had used to call a “midget”, would carry a weapon in her hands and perhaps even kill with it.

  This thought makes my body feel like being dunked into a deep lake out of ice. But this time the cold inside of me doesn’t attest to calmness, but to a paralyzing horror.

  The world has moved on; I think frustrated and turn away.

  Barry, who again seems to recognize what’s going on inside of me, comes over to me and lays his arm around my shoulder. The touch does me good. I for the first time since we had been talking about a ride to Devon feel something like sympathy again. As I look up to him I see the candlelight being mirrored in his eyes.