A World of Darkness Read online

  Barry’s profession is to fly a search-and-rescue helicopter for a civic hospital in Boston. I used to be proud of him for choosing such an important and well-paid job that he in addition is fond of. Flying had fascinated him already when he had been a little kid.

  I now suddenly get the hope that this job might have saved Barry’s life.

  Perhaps he succeeded in rescuing himself and Shelley as well as our granddaughter Demi up into the air and in flying to a place where the world was still okay. I like the image of Barry and his family flying above the clouds. But at the same time I know that my thoughts are just an old fool’s wishful thinking. Wouldn’t I have heard of them long before if he really had seized himself a helicopter and escaped?

  I let my thoughts stray to the Millers abandoned house, which is situated at the street to Murphy’s shop. Then I imagine Barry’s neat bungalow in a Boston suburb, its white front glaring in the sun and the lawn in its front garden resembling a calm, green sea. What if even this little palace, like I had used to call the house, meanwhile is bound to ruin like every other thing in the world?

  I don’t want to imagine that I might never again be able to hear Demi’s childlike laughter resounding throughout the cultivated bungalow. No, I prefer the thought that Barry had been able to rescue his family with his helicopter and flown to a place, where there might still be other people. That’s why I try to hold on to this image.

  Humphrey’s words for quite a while aren’t able to reach me anymore. Neither does Sam’s matchless piano piece.

  “Barry”, I whisper, staring at the ceiling. The play of colors that comes from the screen is dancing across the decayed plaster. “Tomorrow I’ll drive to the Millers and look in on them.”

  I turn aside and caress Sarah’s cheek.

  Is there a smile on her face?

  Or is it just what I long to see?

  Somewhere along the road I close my eyes and fall asleep.

  While doing so I dream of Barry coming for me with Humphrey’s old plane and flying me to a place, where the grass is still green and the sky is blue. Here everything is only grey.

  Grey and dead…

  III

  When I awake the DVD-player has fallen silent.

  I look around irritated. The device doesn’t show off a light any longer, which means that in the meantime the battery must have been completely emptied. Through the gap inside the window shutter falls in an ugly grey that bathes the small room into deep shadows. It nearly resembles me as if someone had dangled the furniture with dirty cloths.

  It wouldn’t be long till nightfall. And these grotesque creatures, which Murphy calls monsters and I call Shoggothen, use to come in the shadows of the night.

  Before the last daylight is gone I will have to look after Sarah.

  I look wistfully at the black screen of the DVD-player. Never before had I longed so much for Bogart’s distinctive face and his foolish hat. I’m excessively angry about having fallen asleep. Who knows when I will be able to watch “Casablanca” again?

  I put a kiss onto Sarah’s cold cheek and emerge into my slippers. Having just got out of bed I’m instantly wrapped in the awkwardly cool coat of autumn cold.

  I stop beside the DVD-player and doubtfully press the “start” button. I don’t know what I expect: to hear Sam playing the piano or to see one of the ridiculous film kisses that are typical for the forties? I nevertheless repeatedly press the button. But the screen stays black, the battery being definitively empty.

  “Humphrey is gone”, I whisper, looking over to Sarah.

  Her face, which lies at the edge of the blanket, resembles me a bright spot among the twilight. I wonder when we all will follow Bogart, when everything that surrounds us will fall black and our battery will conk out.

  When I‘m out on the corridor again I almost trip over the gun. It must have fallen over while I had been sleeping. I lift it up cautiously. It’s strange. For years I had never been wasting a thought on the weapon and had hidden it inside the dark closet, far away from Sarah’s and my life. Everything seemed to be as secure and banal, that such things were the last to think about. And now that everything has changed so drastically I hardly dare to take a lock on its stock and muzzle, being afraid of destroying the only thing that still lies between me and the world’s madness; it’s as if the gun in my hands could return to dust.

  I squeeze the stock against my shoulder and aim at the ground. To look over the notch and to aim makes me feel good.

  Although I don’t know if I would really be able to fire the gun at all, I feel safe. Perhaps this might relate to the contents of the muzzle. At the same time I think of Murphy and of how this miserable no-good for sure would have shot me into two if I hadn’t left his parking lot. I don’t believe that I would be able to do something like that. To do so I’m not just yet insane enough. But Murphy seemed to have been close to losing his mind. In a world like this who of us two is the luckier man? My old buddy, who apparently had created himself his own realm and who abandons himself to the most ludicrous conspiracy theories, or I, an old man, who still has the doubtful ability of wanting to go about all the incidents of the past ten days rationally?

  Although I would never really admit to myself, where the little voice that constantly tells me to give up and to adapt to the world’s silence comes from, I do envy Murphy.

  I with favor regard the smooth, cold muzzle of the weapon and then lean it into the edge next to the bedroom door.

  At the same instant I’m back-pedaled by some noise. My hand still lies on the cold steel. I glance intensely into the dim twilight inside the corridor, at whose end the balusters shine off like grey posts. The candle, which stands on one of them, resembles a dagger that pricks into the night.

  With my eyes narrowed to small slits I try to look through the twilight. I hold my breath, only listening to the heavy beat of my old heart and the blood whooshing inside my ears. I don’t dare to completely let go the weapon. Something had banged into the kitchen door leading out onto the porch; a short, hollow blow, as if someone had hit the rotten wood with his fist.

  I steadfastly gaze at the stair leading down to the ground floor. In my panic I believe to recognize some unreal figures on the very high stair. But the shadows melt with the grey light and then disappear.

  Everything stays silent.

  No steps, no more blow against the kitchen door.

  The longer I stand leaned forward in front of the bedroom door with my clammy hand lying on the soothingly cold steel of the gun, the more surreal the situation seems to me. Hadn’t I only a few minutes ago reflected on Murphy beginning to go mad?

  I suddenly feel like a little boy, who at night had been woken by a creaking deal board and is too frightened to run into his parent’s bedroom. My back begins to ache, my legs tremble. I straighten up, lose hold of the gun’s muzzle and hear my bones click remonstratively. But I keep my eyes set onto the resting place at the end of the corridor: shadows that move on the very high stair, twin themselves around the wooden balusters – and then disappear again.

  I close my eyes, waiting for something to lap against the wood of the kitchen again, for glass to break, for the sound of steps on the stair, for the middle step to creak. But the only sound that inside the increasing darkness resembles me loud is silence.

  But I’m sure that there had been something out on the porch. Something had banged into the kitchen door. Something tried to batter it in.

  The beating of my heart makes my body tremble like a lifted toy. It still isn’t night. They only come out of the woods when it’s dark. Outside it is still clear, though dull and gray.

  Does this mean that they are changing? Did the world turned again? I curse you, Mr. King! You and your damned sentence!

  My damp fingers seize the gun and I in the face of its weight at once feel a bit eased. I keep the weapon levelled and in doing so sneak towards the stair.

  I again think to recognize shadows.

  But the mo
re the banister crystalizes from the grey light of the corridor, the less creatures I’m able to see. I don’t dare to light the candle. The flare could betray me. A circumstance I hadn’t yet thought about in the past days.

  When I reach the stair I cautiously peek over the banister down to the ground floor. The corridor is dark. The doors that lead to the living room and the kitchen resemble me like dark portals into strange planets.

  No movement.

  No steps.

  Aiming muzzle from the left to the right side and back again, I descend the stairs. Step by step. My heart palpitates. The creak of the middle step nearly made me shout. It costs me a lot of effort not to fire aimlessly into the darkness that has taken control over the ground floor. I for several minutes remain stock-still on the steps, trying to melt with the twilight. No one shall see me.

  But aren’t they able to smell my fear? I’m reeking of it like I had fallen into morass.

  I move along hesitantly

  The silence that obtains the twilight at the foot of the stair seems to be mocking me. I even believe to hear whispering voices out of the corners.

  Is there someone calling my name?

  Something…?

  My body is drenched with cold sweat, which adds to my fear and makes me grown. My legs that one after the other descends the steps towards a strange, threating apartment no longer feel like mine. But as much as I wish I could run back into the bedroom, barricade the door behind me and hole myself up together with Sarah beneath her blanket stinking of death – I mustn’t make myself the slave of my fears.

  It still isn’t dark!

  What had banged into the kitchen door possibly couldn’t have been one of the beings, which I’m referring to as Shoggothen. Perhaps it had been an extremely big branch that the wind had hurled against the house. Or something that had been standing on the porch has fallen over.

  I like this thought, but the next moment my overwrought, panic-stricken mind asks me which wind I was referring to.

  I know that it’s possible to hear even an upcoming wind howl around the ridge. How often had I been lying in bed on harsh winter evenings, listening to the tough tune overrunning the house? I always had loved these moments, for in the end it was them that had brought the coziness of our house home to me.

  But this afternoon I had neither heard a howl nor a wind. I though hold on to my theories. They sooth me and allow me to work my way into the kitchen with the necessary courage.

  The dreary, square window inside the kitchen door is staring against me.

  I will have to board the windows; I say to myself and at the same time could slap me in the face that I hadn’t done this long before.

  Only closing the shutters wouldn’t deter potential offenders from getting into the house.

  In front of the milky grey window nothing moves. Even the silhouettes of a bush have frozen to complete motionlessness. I pause under the door, scanning the kitchen with my eyes and in doing so aiming my weapon into every corner. My finger lies on the trigger. My hand feels cold and numb. But the door is closed and the window is in good order. Nobody could have sneaked into the kitchen without leaving a trace.

  Some more endless minutes go by. My heart threatens to burst: my breath comes fast and hurts inside my chest.

  Then I – without knowingly reflecting on it put – the gun onto the kitchen table, glance one last time through the little window out into the garden and finally with automated movements begin to prepare dinner for Sarah and me. In doing so I don’t think about the things I do. My hands seem to have a life of their own, they resemble me strange. In my mind I ceaselessly hear the cracking noise against the kitchen door.

  It still isn’t night, I think desperately. But my mantra isn’t able to calm me down.

  When dinner is ready I put it onto a tray, take the gun into my right hand and silently climb the stair towards the bedroom. In doing so I listen to every sound, hold my breath – and curse the beating of my heart.

  As I reach the bedroom door, open it up and then with demonstratively slow movements close behind me, I feel a dark shadow that had insistently been latching onto me drop away. I brought the gun along with me to the bedroom.

  While feeding Sarah, I concentrate on her apathetic face and the smacking noises she makes. I don’t want to think of anything else than feeding my Sarah and afterwards washing her. I don’t want to think of what might be sneaking round the house right at that moment. And not of what might be staring through the small window in the kitchen door right now.

  I feed Sarah, wipe her mouth clean, eat a bit myself and after that wash her with cold water. Warm water is only available from above the wood stove in the kitchen. And wild horses couldn’t drag me there today.

  IV

  A bit later I lie next to Sarah, listening to her snoring quietly. The dull light of afternoon has gone; the window is just a dark hole.

  I’m not able to sleep.

  My hand is set on the butt of the gun, which I’m holding against my chest.

  Sometime during the night I hear the creatures howl. But none of them comes up to the house again.

  Danny

  I

  Somewhere down the road I nevertheless must had fallen asleep.

  As I open my eyes the room is bathed in grey colors, as if one was regarding the world through glasses, which were out of focus. Feeling scared I straighten and curse myself for instead of the thread not having stayed awake at night but abandoning myself to the luxury of sleep, which I can’t afford that the moment.

  I look at Sarah. She is sleeping; her lips again are squinted to a straight line. Which dreams might haunt her? They surely aren’t as terrible as the world around her.

  I get up with my heart pounding, at which the gun slides from my chest and crashes on the ground. Sarah briefly moans inside her sleep.

  “Damn”, I swear in a low voice, pick the weapon up and look at it disgustingly. Inside the silence of the house its rumble resembled me much too loud. Did even the gun gang up on me? I would have liked best to throw it into the corner. Instead of doing so, I squeeze its stock beneath my arm, take the empty tray, which I had used the last evening and step out to the corridor.

  In the light of day that bathes the house like grey fog everything looks far less threatening and strange than it had the evening before. There are no shadows on the very high step of the stair. There are no noises that now suddenly, in the face of a new day rising, could remind me of a very intense dream that had tried to fool me at night. The sound of something crashing into the kitchen’s door again comes to my memory like a distant rolling thunder. But the rumble, if contemplated in light of the dawning day, oddly seems far less threatening than it had only a few hours before. Perhaps it’s just because I don’t have enough energy left to give it too much thought.

  I know that I, as soon as I make myself the pariah of my fear, will have not the slightest chance to survive in this mad world. And who should then look after Sarah?

  Perhaps it merely is this fact that resembles me as crude and yet as threatening, which prevents me from running back to the bedroom and just waiting for something to crush into the kitchen’s door again; or from simply holding the cold muzzle of the AYA under my chin. Both of these options resemble me so inviting that I nearly can’t resist them.

  I rather go, if though very quietly, down to the ground floor, in doing so skillfully avoiding the middle step.

  No unnecessary noise.

  The kitchen is bathed in a depressing grey. No colors. Nothing that is familiar.

  A dirty, comfortless mist hangs in the air, giving the room the charm of a faded photography.

  I feel like I was sneaking a peak into a long forgotten past.

  At the door I pause and try to all in once put in the impressions of the kitchen like I had believed it to be. But the room is silent and cold.

  I take a look at the old cast-iron wood stove, Sarah had always loved to cook at and which I after she had become
ill had kept out of mere sentimentality, for I prefer to cook our meals at the modern electric cooker. If I didn’t want to actuate the electric generator I would have to light the oven with wood. I possibly can’t expect of Sarah to from now on take only cold meals.

  Holding the gun levelled I step up to the door, line up at its side and with caution peep through the inserted, quartered window. Across it pane are running dirty reams, as if someone – something – had wiped it with his hand or a flaky claw. But they might as well be resulting from wind and rain.

  I joggle the door and to my relieve notice that it’s still barred. Nevertheless I don t deviate from the thought that I have to lock them better. The noises that came by night had been a clear-cut warning

  As I turn the key – and in doing so approach the inhospitable world outside there up to few centimeters – I feel the cold fear, which I had used to feel by night, creeping back into my bones again. I open the door ajar, back off and aim the gun at the narrow strip of daylight that falls in onto the outworn kitchen floor.

  I suddenly make my thoughts run through all the sickening things that could happen to me right now at that moment.

  But everything keeps quiet.

  I use the muzzle of the gun to push the door thoroughly open. The awkward, damp cold that streams into the house reminds me of the fact that I only wear my pajamas. As I step over the doorsill, breathing the fresh, acrid morning air, I suddenly feel observed. Being unable to move I stand still beneath the door. Pressing the gun hard against my hip, my eyes browse the run to seed garden. Across the fence that separates the garden from the meadow and the wood I can see upcoming wafts of lazy haze. Not a single movement at all. But the feeling of being observed is so intense that it makes my skin feel tingly. A chilly wind, which brings about brown leaves and an odor of rotting flesh, runs through the grass inside the garden. I don’t think further about the scent of decay, because this would automatically encourage my mind to move around in circles, whose center resembles a gorging abyss.