A World of Darkness Read online

  Danny and Cindy never would have left the door unobstructed; especially not in times like these. As I imagine yelling out for Danny each little hair in my neck stands on end. But I at the same time know that the mere sound of my forlorn, echoless voice would only frighten me even deeper to the bones. I remember only too well the ghastly tone of the words I had uttered in front of Murphy’s shop.

  I for some minutes stand still indecisively; a motionless, grey shadow among wafts of fog, withered leaves and a ghastly silence. I stare at the gaping mouth that is the door … and the house stares back – directly inside my soul. It’s watching me with a stoical calmness, waiting for the things this intruder on the step up to the porch is going to do. I finally manage to break free from acting like in trance and regain some control over my whirling thoughts. While I cautiously climb up the creaking stairs and over the boards out of dry wood approach the door the muzzle of my gun is aimed directly onto the center of the door. To its right a wicker chair is leaned reversed against the wall, as to being guarded against rain and leaves. I remember that when I had come to a visit Cindy had often been sitting in this chair. There usually had been a book lying upside-down inside her lap, so that I had been able to recognize its cover and talk about different authors, we had liked both. Sometimes she had only been sitting there with her eyes closed and her hands folded inside her lap. Then I had used to sheepishly clear my throat like a shy school boy would do when meeting his early love’s parents, until Cindy had opened her eyes and welcomed me with her best smile. These pictures out of olden times at a suddenly overwhelm me as my eyes fall onto the wicker chair. I get to know that Cindy Miller probably will never again be sitting in her beloved chair. How terrible this thought might ever be, it in this day’s silence is at least accompanied by a dreadful reality.

  I again turn towards the door. Though I try to sneak as silently as possible I believe to hear my pace hammering through the hillside like thunder. I step aside of the fly screen, pushing it completely open with the muzzle of my gun and foolishly anew get frightened by the squeak of the rusty hinges.

  A few moments after there is silence again. I with narrowed eyes stare at the blackness before me. It takes me some seconds to get my eyes used to the new lighting conditions. I then can recognize grey shadows that soon turn out to be the dresser and the small table that for years had been standing in the Miller’s entrance. When visiting them I had used to deposit my car key onto the round table. And the dresser used to serve me for storing away coats and my grey hat, which now lies uselessly inside a wardrobe in Sarah’s bedroom. I inside the Miller’s house am nearly as street-smart as in my own house. I had been here too often to admire Cindy’s cookery or simply to spend an evening on the porch with Danny over a cold beer. This is why I know that the door in front of me, which in the darkness had presented itself as a black rectangle, is leading directly into the living room.

  I hesitate to set the first step over the doorsill. But then I against all reason step into the darkness and pause beneath the door case. A short glance over my shoulder tells me that the world still lies silently in the dull afternoon light. As I turn around again my eyes anew need some seconds to get used to the night inside of the house. It resembles me that Danny had closed all window shutters.

  I cautiously set one step in front of the other, trying to penetrate the darkness with my eyes. In doing so the muzzle of my gun follows my every move. My finger is set on the trigger. An acrid odor of urine and sweat, mixed with waste and old food gets to me from inside the house. And there still is another odor that I first refuse to accept. But I’m bound to admit to myself that it reminds me of old, rancid meat.

  I take a step in front of the living room door and by putting an ear against the wood listen.

  Silence.

  I turn round and browse the small room Cindy had used to call her “parlor”, although it’s nothing but a rectangular corridor. From here different doors diverge to other parts of the hut.

  While I think about in which room I should begin my investigation a noise makes me stiffen. I fast as lightening turn round again and stare at the closed door leading to the living room, at which I had listened before. There’s a short, dull crack, as if something was hitting the ground and then rolling some inches over the carpet.

  Then silence again.

  The most horrible pictures begin to grow inside my head like flowers in a storm-battered night. I shake my head the way one normally knows only from cheap films, when the chief character is trying to protect him from the influence of bad thoughts. I without a motion remain standing in front of the door, aiming my gun at the center of the door leaf and virtually looking daggers at the door.

  If in that unholy moment something would dash through the door I surely wouldn’t have the nerve to discern good and evil. My trembling forefinger inevitably and with precise accurateness would press the trigger. And in this moment of angst I wouldn’t give a dime for what I might hit.

  A great hero I am – the last of his kind.

  I’m waiting for the noise to reoccur; waiting for anything to be thrown over, or – in the worst case – steps approaching the door.

  But there is no rumble.

  There are no shuffling steps.

  And yet …

  Something moves behind the door.

  I can’t say whether I begin to hear noises that only exist inside my head or whether I here, inside this dark room, am slowly but inevitably am losing my mind.

  But short of hearing them I can also feel the movement – with every fiber of my body.

  It’s like a velvet haze being tenderly dragged over my skin; a tempting but yet horrible caressing, sharpening my senses so that I for a few seconds feel dizzy. But I keep the muzzle of the gun steadfastly aimed onto the dark rectangle that is the door. I can’t tell how long I have been standing there, holding my breath and my heart pounding heavily inside my chest. It resembles me like a never ending eternity.

  But while still being wrapped in deep silence an absurd self-assuredness begins to fight back the deep-rooted, cold fear. I feel some strength, which in this ghastly situation is absolutely inadequate and whose existence amazes me to the utmost, arising inside of me.

  I with gentle steps step towards the door, listening through the wood again; I finally push the door leaf inwardly open with my foot; in doing so I like a cowboy hold the gun against my hip and aim at the black rectangle opening in front of me. I hectically gaze throughout the blackness. But like it had been with the corridor before, it takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the grey twilight inside the living room.

  I recognize the suite with the monstrous marble table, we four had been sitting around at numerous evenings, enjoying Cindy’s cookery or each of us a glass of Cognac. In doing so our two ladies had only sipped at the sharp alcohol whereas Danny and I had been feasting on the good Cognac until our tongues became heavy. After that the two of us – as gentlemen – had stopped drinking.

  Opposite the couch I recognize the TV-set, whose screen in the darkness is showing off a ghastly, pale glow, as if it was the entrance into a strange, dark world.

  Through the drawn curtains opposite of the door a sickish strap of dying daylight falls into the room, bathing it into a faint grey. But this dull light is enough to recognize the figure cowering in a chair at the front end of the table.

  My body tightens immediately. I pull up the gun, squeeze its stock against my shoulder and aim its muzzle onto the figure that without a motion remains in the darkness. Because of my sudden movement the torch at my hip hits hard against my thigh.

  “Who’s there”, I ask, frightened by the feeble sound of my voice.

  I in the sight of the cold horror, which holds on to me, am not able to think of an answer that under normal circumstances would have had to be obvious. Therefore it’s the shadowy figure that throws a light onto what is evident.

  “Put the gun down, Harv.”

  One after the other the most cont
radictory thoughts and scenarios are chasing through my mind, so that I need several moments until I can recognize that this tired and slow voice belongs to my friend and neighbor.

  “Damn, Danny!” I whisper in a mixture of horror and deeply felt relieve. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

  I let go the muzzle and step into the twilight inside the room. It for a short eon seems as if we were staring at each other through the dark, neither of us moving.

  In the meantime I notice the intensive odor that had already come to me out on the porch and now saturates the room like a dark cloud. I can smell cold sweat, spoilt food and old beer among the acrid odor of urine and excrement,

  The figure in front of me slightly moves as it finally answers me: “The darkness is all that’s left to me.”

  Danny’s voice has nothing in common with the vital and friendly man, whom I while staring at his shadow can see inside my memory. A deep resignation has taken possession of my neighbor’s words. His voice nearly sounds like the desperate weeping of a tormented man.

  Cold sweat comes to my forehead and inside the palms of my hands. In the dreary glow of the little twilight I browse the living room, searching for Cindy, who most of the time uses to hover over Danny. But my friend and I seem to be the only living creatures inside this room.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask in the absence of encouraging words.

  Somehow I can’t seem to remember what to do. I had come here in the intention to learn more about the whereabouts of my friends; and perhaps also to prove to myself that the crazy Murphy and I were not the only survivors throughout the hillside or perhaps even throughout the entire world. And now, standing only a few meters in front of Danny Miller, a man whom and his mind I had always enjoyed, I can’t find the right words to suit the situation.

  “Tell me, Harv, where has gone the light. What has become of the world?”

  I’m tempted to tell him that outside, in front of the closed shutters and curtain a dull but fair day is gradually fading to night. But before I’ m able to address to Danny I understand his question. He’s right. The darkness that has come over the days has nothing in common with the light of those days, when I had entered this house with a bottle of Cognac or red wine in my hand, looking forward to a homelike evening. Just like the smile and presence of my friends the light seems to have become dark and lifeless.

  While regarding Danny’s shadow I’m assailed by a resounding and barely manageable wave of sympathy; not alone for my friend sitting in the dull twilight and speaking to me in a voice that has nothing in common with the young man I once knew. Through Danny I get hit by the brutal insight that outside there nothing was left to remind us of the well-known and familiar life we had used to take for granted. When did we last stop to regard a cloud? Or to knowingly smell the perfume of a wild meadow in the early morning? All these things that had used to emboss our lives and feelings had lost their colors and sickly duck down into deep shadows. The perfume of wet grass has turned into an odor of moldiness and decay. And the fresh hillside air, which had used to imply some flavor of old trees, in its icy breeze now brings along an odor of decay.

  We’ve lost, I think, feeling my blood turning to ice and letting my body freeze to death. The hubris of mankind isn’t up to the age-old strength of our world, even if we had used to believe something else. We got trampled down, like we used to trample down flowers on a meadow; and we lost everything we had ever believed in and that had made up our life.

  While regarding Danny, I suddenly understand all that. In the room’s twilight I can only recognize his face as a grey oval. But he doesn’t say a word.

  “Where’s Cindy?” I finally chime in.

  In the face of the silence that is saturating the house, my voice resembles me empty and strange. In spite of the odor I can’t even hear flies humming. The answer I get is a hoarse giggle. The shadow moves. When Danny answers his voice sounds nasal.

  “Cindy? You want to know where my beloved Cindy is.”

  I nod, but at same time get aware that Danny can’t recognize my reply.

  “She isn’t here? Has she gone to visit her parents?”

  I go through all the possibilities that could nourish my hope for Cindy being well. But Danny stabs into my back again.

  “Cindy is here, Harv; in our bedroom.”

  Knowing that this room is situated on the first floor, I automatically look up to the ceiling as if being able to see Cindy through the boards.

  “Is she okay?”

  I again glance at Danny and believe to see him shake his head and then let it faintly sink onto his chest.

  My friend begins to breath faster. Here and there I can hear some low sobs. I get increasingly concerned. The cold feeling of moving inside a surreal dream fills my stomach alike hard stones.

  I slowly approach towards Danny, at the same time holding the muzzle of my gun aimed to earth. But then the sharp, metallic click of a trigger gets me to stop abruptly. I horror-stricken stare at the bulky shadow of my neighbor, who – like me – apparently holds a gun in his hands.

  “Cindy’s ill”, Danny answers out of the dark, as if he had never pulled the trigger on me and this had been only a product of my overwrought phantasy, “She got itched”.

  His words sound emotionless and seem to have no weight at all. The sound of his voice is swallowed by the darkness inside the room, leaving behind only a dead whisper.

  The silence that follows Danny’s words sends cold shivers down my spine.

  “What …”, I prepare to say in a frail voice.

  But Danny anticipates me.

  “This goon had been in the garden;” he murmurs, as if speaking to himself. I never had heard Danny talk about his wife that way before. Only a long time after, when I found the time to think all this – and particularly Danny’s situation – over behind these words of his I had recognized a sad anger and true feelings.

  “Our stocks were declining; at least the ones coming from our garden. You know how much attention Cindy had used to pay to healthy food.” In spite of the darkness I believe to see a bitter smile coming to his face. “Even in this bloody time, in which her God doesn’t give a damn on healthy food.” Danny’s smile is definitely gone. “She wanted to collect some apples. You know we are keeping some in wooden baskets over in the shed.”

  I imagine a colorful picture of my neighbor’s garden that doesn’t at all harmonize with the dusty grey colors of the reality we are living in. At the same time, even before Danny is able to confirm my anticipation, a dark and threatening shadow moves into this picture.

  “One of these critters had been hiding behind the shed; at the place we use to store the firewood.”

  The shining picture of a summer garden full of flourishing trees and incomparable perfumes from its frames is dying to a deep black, like the way if you burn a photo. The perfumes of wet grass and flourishing bushes are changing into an odor of beasts.

  “I heard her cry and wanted to run outside. But just as I had reached the door she was stumbling towards me.” Danny’s voice is breaking and from the twilight inside the apartment a miserable snuffle gets out to me. “She had all over been stained with blood; Harv, it had been over her dress and, her hair. Even over her face there had been blood.” There again is this bitter smile. “And in her hand she still held an apple, a goddamn apple!”

  Danny falls silent. He neither moans nor says a word nor breathes any more. For some seconds the silence that lies over the house seems to choke everything down. Even I myself seem to have stopped breathing. The shadow inside the living room sits there without a motion.

  I’m tempted to step into the darkness and back Danny with the warmth of a friend. Just the way we had used to do throughout all these years, whenever one of us had been in difficulties. But I remember him pulling the trigger and so I stay motionless and silent beneath the doorframe. For some endless seconds the world seems to have stopped turning.

  “She’s dead, Harv”,
Danny finally begins to speak again, his words tearing me out of my rigor. “I bedded her onto the sofa and tried to get hold of some doctor:” A deep sob. The shadow trembles. “But the whole world has gone to the dogs. Whoever I phoned didn’t answer. I hadn’t even been able to reach my sister or my mother.”

  I search for words. I want to say something; no matter what. I at all costs have to end this maddening silence inside my thoughts. It’s as if my brain had stopped working. But before I’m able to utter something senseless, I suddenly feel Danny staring at me penetratingly – it’s the ghastly feeling of being watched that makes the hair in your neck stand on end.

  “When I came back, she had been dead,” Danny’s voice abruptly sounds sober. It’s like mentioning that Cindy was dead had robbed him of all his emotions. “But she hadn’t stayed dead for long.”

  The tight feeling inside of my head turns to dark, opaque scarfs, that – alike a runnel – slowly let Danny’s words percolate into my mind. Did my friend over the death of his beloved wife go crazy? Does he abandon himself to madness for being able to escape the dreadful reality in front of one’s door?

  I also seem to lose my mind, for I can understand Danny as well that I nearly envy him for being insane. Perhaps this is the only way to survive.

  “I had been holding her hand; all of the time. Simply have been sitting on the floor in front of the sofa and holding her. Damn, Harv, I had lost everything and didn’t know how to carry on without Cindy:”

  I automatically think of Sarah. What if she wasn’t at my side anymore?

  The thought that Sarah is the only reason for me to live frightens me to the bones. For how strong could the bond Sarah that had been waving to the keep the two of us together get? Is she still strong enough to know that I in these days need her more than ever?