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Dark Glimmers-Chapters 1&2 10/3/2006 8:55:05 PM
Dark Glimmers
Chapter 1
The Knocker
The two boys stood in the dwindling light. The older boy, Tommy, stood a good head taller than his younger brother, Frank, but despite Frank’s lack of height and gangly appearance he could out run everybody with in two years of him. Tommy liked to describe him as faster than chicken shit on a hot tin roof. Each boy considered the other to be his best friend, and that fact alone got them in more trouble than not.
“You’re just scared,” Tommy said, prodding Frank in the chest with a finger. Tommy was fourteen with short cut hair and a face dominated by a strong jawbone.
“I am not,” Frank, said, but the confidence that he was trying to use as a camouflage was unable to cover the hesitation in his voice. He was scared. Frank was a skinny twelve year old that had a mop of brown hair on his head, and a mouth as quick as his legs. He had heard all the stories, the local legends, even though they had only been in the town for a month. Their parents had moved them out of the city and into the small town to get away from all the drugs and gang banging that had desecrated their once normal neighborhood. When the kid next door, a fine young upstanding child according to his parents, was arrested for drug trafficking the final straw was added, breaking the camels back, and Tommy and Frank were moved from the concrete jungle to Small Town, USA.
“You are to scared,” Tommy said, “I can read it all over your face, you big girl. Com’on chicken just go do it before it gets dark out.”
Frank took a look across the field of carved stone in front of him. He felt as if his stomach was trying to crawl out of his chest wall. All he had to do was walk over to the grave and take the picture, but he had an odd feeling about doing it. His hands felt slimy on the camera he was holding. He wiped his palms on his pants, hoping that Tommy didn’t recognize the action for what it was.
“I am not a big girl, you are,” Frank retorted. “I don’t see you running into that stupid place. Your just as afraid as I am.”
“So you admit it? You are scared,” Tommy chortled him. “And besides I’ve already seen it. Aaron and I looked at it the other day after school.”
Peer pressure, Frank, give into the peer pressure.
He looked up at the horizon and could see the last bit of the sun’s orange crown peeking over the distant hills. The darkness would come soon, and when that happened Frank didn’t even want to be in sight of the old cemetery let alone running amongst the tombstones. The pressure in his chest doubled, and he heard the camera bounce off the concrete beside him.
Tommy looked down at the camera, chuckling. “If that wasn’t a disposable camera you would have broken it,” he said. “Hey- don’t worry if you don’t want to go in there and do it then don’t.”
Frank looked up with a bit of relief on his brow. “Really?” he asked, hoping that Tommy would throw his arm around him and turn him back down the road towards their house.
“We won’t even tell the guys that you were to chicken shit to go take a picture.”
Frank felt the words like a lead weight, and he shrugged Tommy’s gaze from his own. He wanted to be accepted among the older kids. If he went and did this it would help him down that path. “You’re a dick,” Frank said abashedly.
“Yeah that’s what they tell me,” Tommy said with a smile.
Frank turned to the cemetery. The shadows stretched in the dying light, and Frank felt that the elongated shades were the phantom fingers of the dead reaching for him, waiting for him to set foot upon their ground so that they could ensnare him. Tommy pushed Frank in the square of the back, and Frank, unready for the shove, went stumbling past the imaginary border that separated the place where he had been standing and the dark soil of the dead that he was now on.
He wanted to lift his feet, to move forward, and to find the stupid gravestone. He had opened his big mouth, and this is where it landed him. I’m not afraid of some picture on a gravestone. I could walk right in there and take a picture of it for you. Those were the words that he had spoken, and the other boys, most of them older then he was, swiftly agreed that he should prove his quality and do just what he had bragged about. Now he stood at the throat of the graveyard unwilling to step into the open jaws of the threatening feeling that surrounded him.
He looked up at the horizon again, and the sun was gone. Precious few rays snuck over the tops of the mountain, fanning out across the clouds in a blood red sky. Frank felt a knot in his throat. He tried to swallow it down to the larger area of his stomach, but it stuck more fiercely with each attempt to dislodge it.
The ground in the graveyard was a blanket of black and gray. The little light that was left bounced of the tops of the gravestones producing a strange nimbus around each one as if the dead sat on top of them watching, waiting.
Before Frank new what he was doing, before his brain could yell at him- stop fool stop what you are doing- he was sprinting through the headstones in search of Old Anna.
He had heard the older boys telling the stories. Each boy adding parts here and taking other parts away there to suit their liking, but the stories remained the same at the base. Each time he heard one of the stories he felt his hands and feet go cold, and it seemed that every flicker in the corner of his eye was someone coming at him, for him. There had been nights after the story telling when he didn’t sleep. He just lay awake all night listening in the darkness for some form of intruder, for Old Anna herself. At one point he was averaging two hours of sleep a night. His mother was worried, and his schoolwork suffered. He found himself trying to sleep at lunch, because he knew with all those people around he would be safe, that nothing would hurt him. Even then when he closed his eyes he saw the wicked old woman in his mind. He saw her eyes, boring into him with a hatred that stole his breath. He felt her cold hands reaching for him.
Now racing among the tombstones he was going to her grave, and he was going to see the woman face to face. Legend had it that a picture of her had been implanted into the rock of her tombstone so that she could watch for people coming to meddle with her grave. Legend had it that more than one corpse had been found sprawled at the bottom of her head stone. The other kids all said that they had seen the headstone, that they had bared witness to the ancient yellow-brown picture forever immortalized over the grave watching like a silent centennial.
The stories began to fill his head, as he grew closer to the spot. Old Anna had been one of if not the original person in the small town. Some stories said that she was a witch. Others said that she was a cannibal, and still others called her a demon sent from hell. The people had been terrified of her while she was alive, and even now they considered her memory a dark blight on an otherwise quaint little town. They say that most of the strange happenings in the town were either do to something that Anna had released upon the occupants of the town, or Old Anna herself reeking havoc. Frank had heard of many a strange thing happening in the town. Kids like him had come up missing. Dogs had been found hanging from trees, strangled by their own intestines, there was talk of a white wolf that roamed the night searching for victims, and dwellings of some ancient iron chair. Frank had heard all the stories, most more than once. He didn’t know how many of them were true, and how many were hogwash. All he knew right now was the extreme threat of his bladder emptying right into the front of his pants, adding insult to injury no doubt.
The darkness crept deeper into the fading light, and the cemetery was becoming more shadow and shape than anything. Frank spotted the large round gravestone that was his marker, and he stumbled around it.
“Two to the left,” he said in short quick breaths. His heart was racing like a jackrabbit, and he thought that it might jump right out his mouth if he breathed any harder than he was. Fear teased the edges of his brain as nightmares of a haggard old lady standing over his bed came back to him. The eyes, he always remembered the eyes and how they ate away at him, gnawing on his young fragile psyche with razor sharp teeth.
Frank moved two tombstones to the left, and he felt his head go light as he came face to face with the very woman from his nightmare. It was as if someone transplanted her from his dreams and placed her on the tombstone in front of him. The light was scarce but the picture on the tombstone seemed to glimmer softly allowing him to see straight into those awful eyes, those eyes that haunted him, flogging his sanity. He stood motionless for a minute unable to move, unable to think. He stared blankly down on the picture with its yellow tint, and deep dark lines, and he felt a cold hand wrap itself around his heart and squeeze.
Go home little boy, he heard a hissing voice say in his head. Don’t stir me.
Frank thought he saw the eyes of the photo squint, and the face become harder, more stern than it had been before he heard the voice. He clicked the camera from his hip, not knowing or caring if he got the picture.
His feet carried him faster than he ever thought possible back through the gravestones. He thought he felt cold breath on his neck as he ran, thought he heard footsteps after him, but there was nothing there. He saw Tommy on the road doubled up in laughter at the site of him fleeing from the grave.
When Frank’s feet hit the concrete he felt a tremendous pressure lift from him. He looked back over his shoulder, and thought he saw a faint glow, a hanging glimmer, out in the middle of the darkness. It’s her, he thought, and turned his gaze.
“That…was the funniest…thing…I have seen…in a long time,” Tommy said, laughing as he clapped Frank on the back. “The look…on your face right now…is priceless.” Tommy doubled up his laughter as Frank hooked him under the arm and started him back towards the house.
“Shut up Tommy,” Frank said.
Frank looked around sure that eyes watched Tommy and he as they walked down the road. He looked back into the field and the shimmer that he had seen just a second ago was gone. The wind blew and Frank heard something rustling over top of him as if it were following him. Pines trees lined the road and seemed to lord over them as they walked. Frank watched, but he caught nothing other than the branches of the tree swaying in the wind. Up ahead Frank saw the first street light click to life.
They had only gone about thirty yards. They weren’t even past the end of the cemetery yet, and Frank still felt as if they were being watched. Frank looked over at the old empty building that sat beside the graveyard, and the building looked back at him with two empty broken black windows for eyes. It’s not the building that is watching you, his mind interjected. The streetlight sprinkled some light across the old building that was nothing more than one big room, but it did nothing to chase the eerie feeling from the place. It had been the old church back when they first founded the town, but knowing that didn’t bring Frank any comfort. The place still felt wrong.
Tommy choked the last of his laughter as the two young boys passed the on looking view of the old building, and Frank thought he saw a pocket of blackness shift amongst the gray light that surrounded the sides of the small building, thought he heard the muffled sounds of a baby crying.
“You didn’t piss yourself did you, buddy,” Tommy asked. “Sure as hell looked like you might. Wait till the guys here about this.”
“Don’t tell the guys,” Frank pleaded. “Wait to see how the picture turns out.”
“You didn’t even lift the thing to take the picture. You just snapped it, but I will do you at least that much. If it comes out then I’ll brag you up. If all we get is your feet then you have the choice of going back or facing the torment.”
Frank had known deep inside that he would suffer an ongoing amount of humiliation over what had just happened if it got out in the wrong context. He also knew that he wasn’t going back if the picture didn’t turn out. He wanted to get out of there, and quick. He wanted to get away from the pressing feeling of foreboding that was squeezing him, and once away he didn’t want to tempt having the feeling return by going back into the graves.
Suddenly Tommy was silent beside him. Frank looked over and saw that Tommy was fixed on something ahead of him. Frank looked up, but they had just entered the first circle of light form the street lamp, and everything beyond the light was blind to his vision.
“Tommy what is it?’ Frank asked in a scared voice.
“Just be quite, Frank,” Tommy said in a tone that was more of a request than a demand. Frank knew his brother well enough to listen. The two boys passed through he circle of light, and Frank felt Tommy’s arm push him backwards and behind the bigger boy.
“If I say run you take off for home. You just churn them quick little legs of yours and you keep running, you got me?”
“What…” Frank began to ask, and he heard the word leave his mouth like a squeal. The voice from the grave filled his head again, and he felt an odd prickle ripple across his skin. Frank looked up following Tommy’s gaze, and he saw what had the older boy all worked up. Up the road standing beside a tree was a dark figure of a man. The darkness veiled his face, but they could both feel his eyes watching them.
Frank could feel himself shaking as he and Tommy came to a stop in the middle of the road. Following Tommy’s lead they began to circle to their right.
“Hey you. What do you want?” Tommy said, cocking his head at the dark shape under the tree. No reply came, and Frank was prepping himself to run. It was just a couple blocks to their house. He wandered if he would be able to out run a grown man.
A red flash of fire flicked in the surrounding ebony, followed by a red glowing eye. At least Frank had thought it was an eye for a second before the winds shifted and brought the smell of tobacco to his nose.
“You boys,” a gravely voice reached out at them. “You boys aren’t stirring up Old Anna are you?”
Frank felt weak when he heard the questions, and the hissing voice filled his head again.
Don’t stir me.
“You just go on now,” Tommy said to the stranger waving his hand. “We're going right up there to that house. We start yelling the whole block will hear us and come running.”
Tommy placed his body between his younger brother and the man, like a shield. The two boys were inching themselves along the road as Tommy talked. Frank wanted to scream, could feel the cry swimming in his throat, but he was too scared to release it into the night.
“Whole town will be yelling if you got her riled up boys. You shouldn’t mess with things you don’t know. I know some, and I know enough not to go tramping among the graves at dusk during the fall in this town.”
“You don’t know shit, mister” Tommy replied. They had managed to make their way past the man now, and they had a clear path to the house.
“I do know a thing or two boys, and I would be happy to share it with you if you like. But not now, not tonight. I suggest you get home before all the fun starts. Lock your door.”
The man stepped from behind the tree and Frank felt Tommy stiffen. The man flicked the cigarette onto the ground, stomped on it, and turned to walk away from the boys.
“I’ll see you boy around,” he said with a laugh. “That is if you’re smart enough to go home and lock the door for the night.” The man stopped and looked back over his shoulder. The street lamp splashed a film of light across the man, but it mad his features look deep, and his eyes hollow. “Folks ‘round here call me Spinner, because I weave one mean tale. Like I said, I could tell you boys a thing or two if you got enough gusto to hear it.” He turned, giving the cemetery a slight nod as he did.
Tommy grabbed Frank by the arm, and began to run for the safety of the house. Soon Frank was ahead of his older brother, and he was the first one to reach the doorknob. With a twist of the knob, and a tug on the door both boys were inside, and Frank slammed the door shut behind them.
“Boys?” their mother called from the kitchen.
“Yeah, Mom,” Tommy called as he tried to regain his breath. He looked at the curtain on the front door, and there was no sign of the strange man, Spinner, lurking on the street.
“You boys okay? You sound like you’re in an awful hurry.”
Tommy looked at Frank with a sly grin on his face, and he ruffed Frank’s hair with one hand. Frank returned the smile, although under his clothes he could feel his skin crawling.
“We’re fine mom,” Tommy called. “Just seeing if may brat little brother could still beat me in a foot race.” Frank was about to say something. Tommy could tell by the look on his face. Tommy brought one finger up to his lips and shook his head. Frank gave him a worried look, and Tommy pointed up the steps. “We’ll go upstairs,” Tommy said.
“You boys hungry?” Their mom called after them as they headed up the steps.
“No, mom,” Tommy called back. “We’re going to go play in Frank’s room.”
The boys ran up the steps and into Frank’s room. For the first time since he had stepped foot in the graveyard Frank felt safe again. The boys jumped on the bed, and began to laugh.
“That was wicked,” Tommy said.
“Real wicked if your standing on the road watching,” Frank retorted. He sat up and looked at his older brother. “You ever see that guy before?” He felt a hot flash swarm over him as he asked the question.
“No,” Tommy replied, “But some of the guys have told me about him. Aaron said he listened to a story of his once- had nightmares for a week. Recon he was just trying to scare us a bit. He’s probably the local nut job.”
“What about what he said about stirring up Old Anna?” Frank asked.
“What about it?” Tommy replied as he stared at the ceiling.
“Nothing, I guess,” Frank replied to embarrassed to tell Tommy about hearing voices. “Did you and Aaron really go look at the picture?”
Tommy nodded. “Yeah, but it was the middle of the afternoon. I never thought you would go in there at dusk. You’re one brave little fart no matter how fast you came running out of there.”
“I thought I heard something,” Frank said waiting to see how his brother would react, but Tommy said nothing. “It just felt wrong to be there.”
“Yeah, I felt funny to, like I wasn’t wanted or something strange like that. It was just the stories getting to you, bro. Don’t sweat it.”
Frank crawled under his covers that night without turning off his light. His mother hadn’t protested because of all the nightmares the boy had been having lately. Frank pulled the covers up to his neck hoping that they contained some magic fabric that would ward off all evil. He said a prayer in his head asking God to see him through the night safely.
It was twelve when he last looked at the clock, and some time after that he had fallen asleep. His dreams were haunted by something that he couldn’t quite see in the dark, circling him. He heard whispering, but he couldn’t make out whole sentences only a word here and there. All of the words contained some hint of threat with them, and Frank rolled in his bed uneasily.
He found himself in a fog. Something brushed his leg in the mist, and he let out a small scream. Then in the mist he saw the shape of the old women. Her eyes glowed green, and fire spit from her mouth as she began to cackle. The mist rolled around her as she walked towards him, and she began to say his name softly. Frank was frozen as she reached for him with one bony-fingered hand. Frank felt the cold leathery skin fold around his mouth as the hand clamped down on him, and he screamed with all his might.
Tommy went to bed worrying about his little brother. That trip to the graveyard had rattled him, and it had been Tommy’s idea to go. He was mad at himself. The poor kid was having enough trouble with nightmares as it was. Tommy knew that he had been thinking about his little brother (in a way). He knew that if his little brother went into the graveyard at sunset and got a picture of Old Anna that the other kids would give him a bit more respect. He liked his new friends, but he liked his brother better. He was just trying to get him accepted among the older kids. No matter his intention the poor kid was scared. He was a tough kid, but he was having a rough time of it. That strange guy they met on the road didn’t help matters. If he hadn’t shown up Tommy would have had Frank laughing by the time they made it home.
Tommy thought about Spinner, and the odd sense of truth that his words seemed to hold as he spoke them.
Tommy slipped into sleep, and unlike his brother he had no evil visions visit him in the dream world. He was awoken from his slumber by a sound that he couldn’t place at first. The noise came again, and now that he was awake he recognized it for what it was, a knock on the front door. “Odd,” he whispered into the confines of the bedroom. He looked at the clock and it was quarter after two. “Dreaming,” he said next. If not his dad would wake up and get the door. Sleep took him into its arms once more.
The knocking came again five minutes later, but it was heavier this time, more urgent than it had been the first time. The first spider legs of fear crept across his brain as he heard the last knock echo up the hall. It hung in the air, seeming to shake everything in Tommy’s room. He waited but he didn’t hear any movement in his parents’ room. He thought about getting up and looking, but he decided that it had been a dream. The kind of dream you have when you think your awake, but your really not. He pulled the covers up over his shoulders. His room seemed colder than normal, and his skin had goose bumps peppering it. He listened for a minute and the house grew silent once more. He closed his eyes.
Something crashed into the door downstairs, and Tommy could hear the glass rattle in the old frame as the wood groaned under the pressure. A second hard slam came, and Tommy sat straight up in bed with the sound. Someone was trying to smash in the front door. A third heavy blow rocked the door, and Tommy found himself on his feet beside the bed.
He listened and could not hear his parents moving. Before he knew what he was doing his hand was pulling back the curtain and he was peering into the night. He heard the doorknob rattling as if it was trying to vibrate straight out of the door itself.
I suggest you get home before all the fun starts. Lock your door.
Tommy looked down on the man at his door, and couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Suddenly the doorknob stopped rattling, and the man’s head turned to look up at Tommy in the window. Tommy wanted to pull back, but he felt as if he were rooted in place. The man looked at him with two empty dead holes for eyes and smiled.
“Frank wake up!” He heard, and it wasn’t the same hate filled voice that Old Anna had been spitting at him. It was his brother. Frank opened his eyes, and Tommy was over top of him. It was Tommy’s hand over his mouth not the hand of Old Anna, and Frank stopped trying to scream.
The clock beside the bed said two thirty eight.
“Frank let me crawl in with you. I just saw something, and I don’t want to be alone.” Frank could see the anxiety on his brother’s face. It was something he wasn’t use to seeing. He slid over happy to have a companion to spend the night with.
“What did you see, Tommy?” Frank asked. He really did not want to know the answer, but the words came out before he realized that.
Tommy looked at him with apprehension, and Frank saw the fear, actually saw the fear in his brother’s eyes. A cold chill took him, and he rubbed at the hair on the back of his head trying to get it to lay flat.
“Tommy?” Frank asked, but is brother just looked at him.
“Someone was outside of the house,” Tommy finally said in a trembling voice. “I heard them knocking on the front door.” After a pause he continued, “Didn’t you hear it? I thought mom or dad would get up to see what it was, but I didn’t here anybody moving. I figured that I had dreamed it so I laid back down and tried to get to sleep. About five minutes later I heard it again. The knock was heavier this time, angry almost.” Tommy shivered, and his eyes were a long way off as he recalled the recent events that had sent him scurrying into his younger brother’s room for comfort.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Frank said softly. It wasn’t like Tommy to have nightmares. It wasn’t like his brother to be scared, and knowing that made Frank feel sick to his stomach. His brother was scared now. He was more scared than Frank had ever seen him. Frank cold see the cold sweat on his brothers face, could feel the way the bed vibrated from the shaking of his brother’s body. It ignited that burning fear that Frank had felt earlier in the graveyard when he had heard the voice and seen the picture glower at him.
“Well I did,” Tommy said matter-of-factly. “When mom and dad didn’t get up the second time, I got scared. Then I heard someone pound three times on the front door as if they were trying to break the door in. Before I knew what I was doing I had gone to the window. Why did I go to the window?” he added almost to himself.
Frank put his arms around his brother both to comfort the bigger boy and to comfort himself. “Let’s get dad,” he said, hoping that Tommy would agree.
“No,” Tommy said. “If they didn’t hear it then they’ll think I was just dreaming.”
“Maybe you were,” Frank said, recalling his own nightmare.
“No, Frank, I wasn’t dreaming. I saw someone standing at the door when I looked out, and I bashed my shin against the nightstand-look.” Tommy pulled his pants leg up, and Frank could see the welt on his leg.
“Sleepwalking,” Frank said hoping to find any answer other than the one Tommy was presenting.
“I saw it,” Tommy said. “When I went to the window I saw it. What ever it was.”
Frank felt his heart skip a beat at the way his brother emphasized the word it. “What did you see?” Frank asked, his voice brittle as he spoke.
Tommy looked at Frank, and Frank saw the sternness that his brother normally processed. “Didn’t that Spinner guy tell us to make sure the door was locked?”
Frank thought back, and he was pretty sure that he remembered something to that effect. “Yeah. He said something like that. Why?”
Tommy swallowed hard, and Frank watched the boy’s Adam's apple bob in his throat. “Well when I looked out I saw this guy rattling the door knob like he was trying to get in. He was dressed in a white cloak with a hood, and I thought that I was dreaming at that point. He looked like a ghost or something, but solid. Well he shook the doorknob a few times, and I could here the metal rattling, because he shook it so hard. Then with out any sign that he was going to do it, he looked right up at me. It was like he knew that I was watching him. When he looked up his hood fell away and I saw his face, or what was left of it.
He had empty sockets for eyes, and his cheeks were all sunk into his face. He had no hair, and the skin on his head was all rotten, and gross. Then he smiled at me, and I felt as if the world was crashing in around me. He was missing half his teeth, and what he had left were all black and pointed. I thought I was dreaming, but I pulled back from the window anyway.”
Frank let out a whimper. “You’re just trying to scare me,” he said, but then he saw his brother’s eyes and knew that Tommy was just as scared as he was.
“I wish I were, bro, but I’m not. I turned from the window, and hit my leg off the nightstand as I tried to get out of the room and down here.”
Frank’s bed was against the right wall of his room, and Frank pushed his back up against the wall as he pulled the covers over his head. The light was still on in the room, but it no longer helped eased Frank’s conscious. Tommy put an arm over him.
“Don’t you think we should get dad?” Frank pleaded
“No,” Tommy protested. “I’m going to stay with you tonight. So you get some sleep okay.”
Both boys jumped as the door to the bedroom opened.
“What are you boys doing? It’s a school night you know?” Their father said as he poked his head into the room.
“Frank had a bad dream, dad, and so did I. We’re just going to keep each other company.”
Their dad frowned. “I don’t know what’s going on with all these bad dreams, boys, but as long as you’re quiet then you two can share a bed tonight. Now get some sleep.” Their father turned to leave.
“Dad?” Tommy said forgetting his pride.
“Yeah son?”
“Did you here anything a little bit ago?”
His dad poked his head back in the room, and gave both of them a reproachful look. “Just the two of you jabbering away in the middle of the night. Now go to bed.” Their dad pulled his head out of the doorway, and flicked the light out before he shut the door.
“The light,” Frank swallowed hard as the darkness consumed him. A faint glimmer of moonlight filtered in through the curtain of the window at the head of the bed, but it wasn’t enough to help illuminate the room.
“I’ll get the light,” Tommy said as he began to slide out of bed. He turned back to Frank, “You’ll be alright. I’ll be right back. Close your eyes so the light doesn’t hurt them.” With that he stood up and started across the room. He made it half way across before the sound (delicate as it was) filled the room.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tommy turned back towards the window. Frank was balled up at the bottom of the bed crying. “Tommy,” he said between sobs.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Tommy, its at my window.”
Tommy rushed for the light switch.
Tap. TAp. TAP.
The noise was ominous, and Tommy knew that if he could just turn the light on it would all go away. His heart pounded in his chest as Frank’s crying filled his ears. His hand found the switch in the dark, just as something heavier hit the window. Tommy heard the glass crack under the weight of the blow, and he flicked the switch. Brilliant yellow-white light flooded the room.
He ran back to the bed and grabbed Frank, just as the door to the room slammed open.
“Boys?” Tommy heard his parents say in unison, and both Frank and he ran to the protective shelter of their parents.
Tommy and Frank jumped off the front porch and headed for school. They had a walk just over three-fourths a mile to get there, but that wasn’t what worried Frank as they started up the road. The problem was they had to walk past the cemetery to get to school, and neither one of them wanted to do that.
They had spent the rest of the night wedged in-between their parents. Their dad said the window looked as if someone had thrown a stone at it and cracked it. He placed a call in the morning to the police department to lodge a complaint just in case anything else happened later.
“How you doing today, bud?” Tommy asked.
Frank shrugged his shoulders. “Okay I guess, but I just don’t like what was going on last night.”
“I know,” Tommy said. “Listen don’t mention this stuff to the guys if you run into them. Something strange is going on, and I don’t want them to catch wind of it.”
Frank nodded. “Fine by me.”
The walked in silence after that, each one of them looking sideways as they past the graveyard. They started down the hill that lead into a small dip just before the flat land that the school rested on.
“What’s that?” Frank asked pointing at something beside the road. They walked over, and saw what used to be a cat lying in a pile of fur and blood. “Gross,” Frank said as he picked up a stick and poked it.
A truck pulled over at the bottom of the road, and Tommy could tell it was a city municipal truck from the crest painted on the door. “Come on let’s motor,” he said to his little brother. A man got out of the truck, and something about him caught Tommy’s attention. Frank must have noticed it also because he had a queer look on his face.
“Boys,” the man said as he passed them and both of them stopped dead. The man had only spoken the one word, but that was all they needed to hear. From that one word they recognized the rough gravely tone, even though it was masked somehow under a softness that wasn‘t there the night before. They turned around. The man was standing over the cat shaking his head. He felt their gaze and looked up.
“Told ya there woulds be some fun lasts night. This is the tenth animals I found today that was all torns up. I sees you boys must have listened and locked the doors. Yous look tired though. I recons you had a visitor or two.”
Tommy stepped forward. “What do you know about it,” he demanded.
“Me? Tolds ya I know lots of things. Recon you new boys don’t knows all the unwritten rules around here though. Tells me whats you seen last night. Come on now don’t be shy.”
“We don’t got to tell you nothing,” Tommy said, but Frank had swung around his older brother. He was eyeing the man suspiciously. Spinner looked back at the boy, nodded, and Frank felt a sense of calm that he hadn’t felt since before hearing the first stories of Old Anna.
Tommy grabbed Frank by the arm. “You leave my little brother alone, mister.”
“Tommy,” Frank said, turning to his brother. “If he wanted to hurt us he would have done it last night. Isn’t that right, mister?”
“Spinner, son, calls me Spinner, and he’s right,” he said, turning to Tommy. “I don’t wants to hurt ya. Matter of fact I wants to help ya. You boys broke some rules last night. Like I said I recons you got some visitors late last eve. You keeps breaking them rules you don’t know about and well…”
“Well what?” Tommy said as the anger left his voice.
Spinner looked at him and smiled. “Well, son, I imagines that next time they’ll do more than knock.” He straightened as two girls walked past. “Gots to be careful round this time of year,” he started. “This the time of year it all went down ways back when. This the time of year people shut the house up nice and tights once dark comes a calling.” The man stopped, looked the boys over from head to toe, and seemed to weigh his conclusions before he spoke again. “I’ll be on the bleachers after schools today. I likes to watch the football practice. There be plenty of people around if you boys care to talks a bits more. I gotsta get back to work now, though.” Spinner nodded, and went to the truck to get a shovel and a black garbage bag.
Frank watched him as he went about his business, and he tried to figure out everything he could about the man. It felt important that he learn about him. Spinner stood a few inches over six feet, and Frank couldn’t tell just how old he was. His face was narrow with a strange scar just above his right eye. Wrinkles had begun to invade the corners of his mouth and eyes making him appear old.
There was something odd about the man, and Frank didn’t think that Tommy could see it. Frank saw a strange purple glimmer in the man’s eyes that seemed to flow out of him. It wasn’t always there. Frank could only see it when the man looked right at him. It was as if his eyes went into sunburst of purple. The strange colors reached out from his skull, searching the surrounding air like whaling arms of an octopus. Frank saw the man’s eyes blaze, and he felt a strange twist in his gut as if there were a hook behind his navel pulling him towards the tall stranger. When the man looked away Frank could tell that Spinner’s eyes were set back in his head, which made him look somehow dangerous, like a hawk. Fine gray stubble covered his face, and Frank thought he saw a second scar among the course hair on the man’s cheek.
Spinner bent over the cat, and pushed his sleeves up. Frank caught a hint of a tattoo on the man’s right forearm, but he couldn’t tell what it was. It glimmered like the man’s eyes as Frank looked at it, but the whole thing didn’t seem odd at all. Frank watched the tattoo trying to get a sense of it, but then suddenly Spinner’s sleeve fell back down his arm concealing the mark.
Tommy and Frank turned and headed for the school. Frank gave one final look back at the odd man cleaning up the cat. Spinner looked up, smiled at Frank, and nodded. There was something in the man’s look that Frank couldn’t place. It was as if the man had a great secret that Frank and he alone shared.
The school bell rang indicating the end of the classes for the day. Frank had spent most of the day trying to stay awake, and the other part thinking about Spinner. What rules was he talking about? What was the odd glimmer about his eyes? And what was that mark on his arm? Frank was at his locker when he heard Tommy behind him.
“Hey, bud.”
“Hey,” Frank replied as he turned.
“I’m going to play some ball with the guys-you in?”
As much as Frank wanted to be part of the group, he shook his head no. “To tired,” he said as he closed his locker.
“You okay, bro?” Tommy asked, and Frank smiled.
“Yeah man-just tired. You know.”
“I know,” Tommy said and gave Frank tap on the shoulder with his hand. “Tell mom where I’m at?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
Tommy was off down the hall. Frank saw Aaron waving, and he gave him a quick wave back. Then Tommy and Aaron were gone among the crowd of people. Frank walked down the corridor not paying much attention to the loud talk and the lockers banging that surrounded him. He was lost in his thoughts.
You have to go past that cemetery by yourself.
That was true, but it was light out. That made it better some how. He had no plans of entering the cemetery. As a matter of fact, he would probably run as fast as he could right by it not even chancing a look as he past.
The air was crisp as he exited the school. Heavy clouds hung in the sky threatening to drop rain down on the sleepy little town. A few kids said bye to him as he headed up across the parking lot on his way home. The football field was on his left as he walked, and he glanced over that direction to see if Spinner was actually there. Various people speckled the bleachers, and Frank walked over to the chain link fence to take a better look.
At the very top of the bleachers, leaning against the rail of the very last row, Frank saw Spinner. The man was looking at his nails, not paying much attention to the people around him. He had on a long black coat, and the ends of it rustled in the wind. A cigarette was burning in the man’s mouth, and plumes of white smoke danced from his nostrils.
Go talk to him.
Frank did want to talk to the man. He felt a connection with him some how. He felt as if he needed to talk to the man to figure out the queer feeling he had earlier. All day he had wondered what rules Spinner had been talking about. Frank looked around as he considered going over to the bleachers. It would be better if Tommy was with him, but the bigger boy wasn’t in sight.
If the man could help- then why not?
As young Frank Jordan climbed up the steps, lugging his book bag behind him Spinner lifted his head and watched him come. He snuffed the cigarette on the bottom of his boot, and tossed the remaining bit over the edge of the bleacher. There was something about the little kid that drew Spinner towards him. Spinner had spent all day trying to refuse the idea, but as he had watched the child walking across the field there was no denying it. The child was open. It takes the right kind of person to be open, and Spinner hadn’t seen one in this town for some time now. The last two had been young, to young to understand, and they had become victims to the town. Spinner ran a hand through the crop of white hair on his head, and he tried to pick up on the boy’s glimmer as he climbed towards him. He could see it there snaking from the boy in a deep purple then snapping back inside of him. Spinner looked harder, and he thought he saw a hint of red speckled among the purple.
Powerful and brave to boot, Spinner thought. Maybe. Just maybe, I can help this one, teach him. He rubbed his right forearm unconsciously.
The boy sat down beside Spinner without looking at him until he adjusted his coat.
“Glads you came, son,” Spinner said in a low voice.
Frank looked at him. He didn’t speak. He just took the man in for a minute. There was something about him. Frank didn’t understand why the man’s eyes glimmered like that, or why it didn’t scare him to see the purple tendrils leaking from the man’s sockets.
“Those things will kill you,” Frank said, pointing at the pack of cigarettes in Spinner’s front pocket.
“Something will kills me longs before those cigs has a chance to.”
“Why do you do that?” Frank asked as he watched the boys on the field practice. Spinner flicked his head. This boy had more to him than it first appeared.
“Dos what?”
“Change the way you talk to people?”
Spinner looked at him for a minute amazed at the child’s perception. He was smart, and he asked questions- that was a good sign. The boy had the glimmer. Spinner could see it, but only when the boy would be considering something. The glimmer was there, and Spinner knew that he had been right about the boy. He could almost feel the strength pouring from him as he sat next to the child. He had to help this one. He had to make sure that the boy understood what peril he was in. Spinner smiled.
“I knows you were special.”
“You didn’t talk like that last night. You talked normal, used grammar. Why are you talking like a bumpkin?” Frank turned towards the man, and Spinner saw a flash in the boy’s eyes.
Spinner laughed. “You know what a bumpkin is do you, I mean dos you.” He winked at the boy, leaned in closer so only Frank could hear, and Frank felt a low vibration shoot across his skin. “I can’t go telling you all my secrets just yet, son,” Spinner whispered. His voice was strong and sure like it had been last night “While we’re here you play along with my games, and I’ll give you what you came for. Deal?”
“How do you know what I came for?”
Spinner leaned back. “Why son, you comes for information, that’s why everybody comes to old Spinner. You wants to know more about this town, and what yous can and cants do. You needs to know the rules.” He rolled the last word giving it the appropriate dramatic twist. “You needs old Spinner to weave you a tale.” He lowered his gaze, and Frank saw the glimmer sneaking from the man’s eyes. “You needs old Spinner to fill you in on a few things.”
“What are the rules?”
“You gets right to the points. I have to ask yous a few things first.”
Frank felt a twitch in his gut. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer questions for this strange man. He started to get up, decided that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea to come without Tommy after all. Spinner didn’t try to stop him as he left, and Frank was glad for that. Frank hoisted his backpack onto his back and began down the bleachers.
“Son?” He heard the man say, and the tone was different than the man’s voice had been. His voice had reverted back to the way it had been last night. It was solemn and full of untold wisdom. Frank turned, and looked up at the man. “How bad are the dreams, son?” Spinner paused then, leaning forward a bit in his seat “Have the dreams hurt you yet?”
Frank felt a cold chill race up and down his spine. He had never told anybody about that. He had never told anybody about how he would wake from nightmares with fresh cuts on him, or how bruises would appear on his body the next morning. He had always blamed it on the dreams, knew it was them reaching out and touching him, but never told anybody about the injuries. That was why he had feared the nightmares of Old Anna so vigorously. She had been one of the first ones to really strike fear into his heart. She had been one of the first to wake him screaming in pain as he fought to get away.
Spinner ran a finger over the scar above his eye. “That was one of the worst,” he said dropping the bumpkin accent. His face was almost sad as he looked down on Frank. “Son, I need to talk to you about this town.”
Frank considered going back up the bleachers and sitting back down for a moment, but then he turned and started back towards home. Before he left he looked up at the narrow faced man at the top of the bleachers. Frank could see concern on his face. How had he known about the dreams? The man was rubbing his right fore arm, the one with the tattoo. “You going to be here tomorrow?”
“I hopes so, son. I hopes so.”
Frank took one last look at the man’s eyes, trying to burn the image of the dancing purple sunburst into his memory, trying to lock down the feeling he had in his gut, the pull. “Maybe then,” he said as he turned and left.
Spinner smiled. “I hopes so, son. I hopes so.”
Dark Glimmers
Chapter 2
The White Wolf
The rain bounced off the windshield in fat ripe drops that exploded like bombshells when they hit. The sky had looked threatening all day, and now it had released its fury onto the earth, catching Merle Brown on his way home from a hellish day at work. Merle was in his late twenties with greasy brown shoulder length hair that needed washed as badly as his face needed shaved. He wasn’t a bad man, but he never really did anything especially noticeable either. His job was tedious and boring, and it set the tone for the way he lived his life. His job was what had him in such a foul mood. He was supposed to get off at six (that was five hours ago). Some young punk had called off, and his dick of a boss made him stay to cover for the punk.
Merle cursed under his breath at the thought of it. What he would do to that man if he could get away with it. If he had left at six, he wouldn’t be hunched over the wheel trying to see more than ten feet in front of him, hoping that he didn’t drive right off the damn road. If he had left at six, he would be saddled up to the bar working on his next beer. He hadn’t left at six, and now he was ass deep in rain and fog. His shoulders hurt from the tension he gripped the steering wheel with. He tried to take his hand away and flex the muscles hoping to relieve some of the tension that had knotted up inside of his fingers, but he was afraid to take his hands off the wheel for to long. Every twenty seconds or so the Ford truck he drove skipped in a deep puddle of water. He wanted to make sure he had full control of the wheel. He was traveling fast, to fast to be correct, and he was aware of that. He didn’t care, though. He wanted to get home and get drunk in front of the TV, while he watched old reruns on cable.
He ventured his hand away from the wheel long enough to turn the radio up in order to hear his country music over the thudding of rain drops hitting the windshield and roof. He looked up into the sky wandering if the rain would ever stop or if he would need to go home and start building an ark. An ark, he chuckled at his own joke.
The music banged and twanged inside the cab, and Merle actually felt some of the tension lift from him as he began to crow along with the songs. He past the small town of Meadsville, and knew that in under a quarter of an hour he would be home, chugging his first beer and warming up a Boston Market meal in the microwave. He thought for a minute that the rain had began to slow down, but then it pelted the car in a blanket of water that made him jump from the sudden ferocity of it. Frickin’ no good rain, he thought, but it was the perfect ending to a perfect day. Some of the tension returned to his back, and his shoulders seemed on fire.
Unconsciously Merle’s foot pressed harder on the accelerator in hopes of getting home earlier. The truck moved its way up to fifty miles per hour, which was to fast for the conditions on the road. The wheels floated on the thick blanket of water that covered the highway, but not enough to cause Merle to ease up on the gas. Almost home, he was thinking as he sang in a high-pitched squeal to a Faith Hill song.
From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of white streaking through the woods, keeping pace with his truck. When he final decided to pay it notice, he turned his head and saw what looked like a big white dog, darting in and out of the trees. Can’t be, he thought as he looked at the speed odometer. Can’t be. But then the white blur cut straight across the road right in front of him. Time seemed to slow down as his body reacted, and his mind tried to grasp what was going on. His hands yanked hard on the wheel, and he waited to feel the dull thump of metal on flesh. The thump didn’t come, but the damage had been done. His truck began to hydroplane sideways. He pumped the brakes, not knowing what to do to stop the truck from spinning out of control, hoping the damn thing would stay on the road and not roll on him.
“Stupid dog!” he yelled as the wheels of the truck left the road and began to crawl onto the shoulder of the road. He could hear the wheels digging at the gravel and dirt, and he braced himself for what was coming. His leg tensed and pressed the accelerator to the floor, bolting the truck up the bank. “Stupid, frickin’ dog!”
The front driver side of the truck tapped a small but sturdy tree, and the back end of the truck was lifted into the air. As the truck spun tenderly in the air Merle grabbed onto the steering wheel, turning his knuckles into white clumps of flesh. A scream escaped him, but it was not about the thing that ran in front of him, or because he was airborne in a truck. He was yelling to Heaven, hoping that they would hear him.
The back end of the truck spun around, and Merle was looking at the road under him when the bed of the truck hit a second tree. The truck wrenched harshly, and Merle felt the muscle in his neck rip as his head bounced of the back of the seat then forward again. The truck hit the road as if it were trying to balance itself on the front fender like a ballerina before it rolled onto its roof with a crunch of metal. The cab of the truck crumpled under the weight of the vehicle. The seat belt dug into Merles side and chest. His body screamed with pain. He hurt so much that he couldn’t pin point one particular area of agony. The truck slid in the rain as sparks mingled with muddy water in a fan shaped wake before the truck came to rest with an angry groan.
Inside the collapsed cap Merle lay in a heap. He released his seat belt, and landed on his already injured neck. Pain radiated up and down his spine, and he could taste blood in his mouth.
“Alive,” he whispered. “Holly shit, I’m alive.”
He tried to move, and the pain in his neck doubled. Blood dripped of his brow into his eyes, stinging him and blurring his vision. Move, his brain told him. He tried and his body refused. He could hear the rain pouring outside of the truck, and the rhythm of the falling water seemed to echo in his head, making it hard for him to think. Move, his brain shouted at him, and he began to look around for a way out of the wreckage.
Straining against the pain, he checked the driver’s side door, but it was jammed shut. The crash had crushed the roof into the door, pinning it, but Merle couldn’t conceive the concept through his pain.
There was blood on his hand as he lifted it and tried to push the door open. In the dim flickering light that escaped the controls of the dashboard, he could see the red stain flowing from an unseen cut, draping his hand in a flowing cloak of dark crimson. But that wasn’t right. He could see where the blood was coming from. He just didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t want to admit that his forth and fifth fingers were missing from his hand. He stared in disbelief. He expected to feel a wave of fresh pain come, but it didn’t. Instead of more pain, a crushing blow of urgency pelted him. Gotta get out of here. Shock was creeping into him like the dampness drenching his skin. He forgot the pain, forgot the fear, and he tried to kick the driver’s side door open.
Again and again his foot pounded the door, sending ripples of shock over his entire body, shaking the pain deeper and deeper into the muscle until it bit into the bone. The door stood strong against his blows. His lungs burned from lack of oxygen and adrenaline, and his labored breathing out sounded the rain pounding on the undercarriage of the truck like death knocking. He twisted his body so that he could focus the force of his attempts on the spider-webbed piece of plastic that had been his front windshield no more than ten minutes ago. White spots formed in front of his eyes as he fought to maintain consciousness. His head spun.
After taking a minute to chase away his pain, and to gain his breath he began to slam his feet into the windshield. On the third try he felt it give. An excited cry left his lips, but it was full of exhaustion and pain. Hurry, his brain cried. We’re locked in. We have to get out. It’s a casket if we stay. Move. The voice gave him strength through fear, and he slammed his feet outward. The windshield popped loss, and for the first time that night Merle was glad to see the rain hitting the road in front of him.
He began to pull himself out, dragging himself with one arm. He cradled his injured hand under him. The rain began to slap at his skin as his head cleared the inside of the cap. He put his injured hand down to help push himself free of the cap and onto the road. His finger touched something small, soft, and fleshy as he pulled it forward. He felt his stomach churn, and the thought was too much to bare. His stomach revolted, and bile splashed in the water on the road, bouncing of the concrete and back onto Merle’s face.
He pulled himself free of the cap, and moved from under the rest of the truck. As he stood in the dark night the dimming headlights cast shadows that danced around him. He looked up into the night and found no moon to aid him in his vision. The clouds had completely eclipsed it.
The pain found him as he stood in the dark. It started at his feet, and began to climb over him, like a giant snake, constricting the strength from his muscles and squeezing the breath from his lungs. His muscles went weak, and he bent to one knee, cradling his injured hand in his good one. He began to cry as he looked at the twisted metal that lay before him.
He felt his head going light again, and white butterflies began to dance in front of his eyes. The pain had him completely, and he had decided to lie down on the concrete in the rain, in the dark, and just wait for someone to come whether it be help or death. The concrete was damp and rough against his forehead, but the coldness felt pleasant. He had closed his eyes, was on the edge of drifting into a pain-induced sleep, when he heard the first clickety-click on the concrete. The noise cleared his head of drossiness. He tried to discern what it was making the noise, and was afraid of what his brain was telling him.
Clickety-click, clickety-click the sound came again- nails on a concrete.
He pushed himself up. The noise was on the other side of the truck, getting louder with each step. He tried to peer through the darkness, and he caught a strange whiteness pushing against the dark night from the other side of the truck.
His mind filled with the legends.
“Dear Christ,” he whispered, but it wasn’t a voice from the heaven’s that answered. It was death dressed in white fur, and death responded to his plea with a low hungry growl.
Fran Jordan shut the hall light off before she opened the door to her son Frank’s room. She wished that there were something she could do for the boy. He had come home from school and something just seemed off about him. She had asked, but he refused to relinquish what was on his mind just as he had done for weeks now. She felt shame that she couldn’t help her son through what ever problems he was having, and anger that he refused to let her help. She wasn’t angry with the boy, but at the amount of independence he had shown in trying to deal with his own problems. Her little boy was growing up, and that made her feel sad in a way.
He had seemed excited about the move when they first got here, but then he started having bad dreams. The kid was exhausted half the time. She slid the door open to his room. The light was on. He had been leaving the light on more and more often these days. She walked softly over to his bed and kissed his forehead, trying not to disturb him. He looked so peaceful tonight. A good sign, she thought.
“Mom?” his sleepy voice asked.
“I didn’t mean to wake you baby,” she replied as she scorned herself for doing just that.
“Dad home?” Frank asked, and his voice seemed concerned.
“He’s coming baby. The roads are bad, and he stayed late at the office to get a few things done for a big meeting tomorrow.”
“Have him wake me,” the boy asked and his mother smiled softly.
“You need your sleep.” The boy didn’t say anything for a second, and she had hoped that he had slipped back into slumber. She began to leave. Her hand hovered over the light switch as she reached the door. She looked back at her son, and decided to leave it on. What ever helps him.
“Mom tell him not to pet the dog,” she heard Frank say as she began to shut the door behind her. His voice had a dreamy texture as he spoke. She turned back towards her son. He’s just talking in his sleep, she thought, but she heard herself asking what Frank had said anyway.
“Tell him not to go pet the dog. Don’t let him pet the dog, mom.”
She looked at her son for a minute. A chill came over her at the concern in the boy’s voice. “Honey we don’t have a dog.”
“It’s not our dog,” Frank said in a lazy voice. Fran felt a lump in her throat, and she couldn’t find the words to ask Frank what he was talking about. “I’m going to try and tell him, but I don’t know if he’ll hear me. If you see him first tell him not to pet the dog.” Frank rolled over, pulling the covers up over his head as he did so. Fran turned from the room, and felt suddenly alone in the big house. She rubbed at her arms trying to restore the heat that had been there before her son had started talking.
Outside the window, the trees danced in the rain and the darkness seemed to get blacker by the minute. Inside the window, Spinner sat hunched over a desk covered with old newspaper clippings, and ancient handwritten books. Perspiration was on his forehead despite the chill in the air outside. His hands moved furiously over the pages of the books, looking for an allusive answer.
No one in the town knew this side of Spinner, whose real name was Trent Noca. He made sure that no one ever found out about it either. The town had a history, one that people remembered, lived by, and no one would take kindly to his studies no matter how noble the cause.
He searched the old chronicles for answers to questions that had plagued him since childhood. No one had been around to help him learn, to teach him, to show him what he needed to know in order to control the dreams, to survive, to remain sane. He had learned through pain and experimentation.
He rubbed his forearm. The pain was more phantom than real, but his mind traveled back to the marking on his arm whenever he thought about the strangeness locked inside of him. When had he first noticed it? He thought back, letting his mind drift from the manuscripts in front of him. It had been nearly twenty years, more perhaps. He had been a young man in his early twenties then. It was the same night he had pushed himself within the dream. It was the same night that he received the scar above his eye for his efforts. It was the first night he had stopped running, and turned to fight. He let his eyes slip shut as he recalled the images. They had been burned into his brain like words carved in stone.
He was standing in a graveyard in front of the iron chair. He had begun to reach for the cold black metal, hoping to discover some of its secrets, when he heard a low growl drift towards him on the wind. He looked that direction, and saw a wave of fog creeping along. It rolled in thick, puffy pillows of white mist, rolling over and under itself as it came ever closer.
Spinner had turned to run, but his eyes seemed fixed on the fog. His body felt as if it moved through a pool of water, retarding his movements, clasping him in suspended animation. Two eyes blinked from a dark shape shrouded by the fog. Anna, he thought as fear invited him into its domain. He focused all his thoughts on getting his legs to move forward. Have to get away. Have to run from Old Anna. Don’t want the pain.
He watched as the old woman crept closer. Fear began to overtake Spinner’s mind. He focused harder, and his feet moved. Focus, have to move, have to run. Anna pulled even with the iron chair, touched the black seat with a smile on her face. She stopped for a moment and caressed the arm of the chair. Spinner was moving again, pulling himself away from the danger that was confronting him.
Anna looked up, her eyes rimmed with green fire, and Spinner felt his feet become heavy. Distain washed over him, and he felt, as if he was buried in the deepest darkest underground cave, as if he were the lowest form of life. He looked into Anna’s eyes and knew at that point that he had to fight. He had to make a stand.
She must have seen the courage shine in his eyes, because she took a reluctant step back. Her lips curled away from her teeth. The fog circled her, and soon the white mist surrounded her. She was gone.
I did it, Spinner thought. I don’t have to run any more. He felt a strong sense of release. He had taken control of the dreams. He didn’t have to fear closing his eyes. He felt an odd sensation on his forearm, and he looked down to see a strange purple aura. The purple light seemed to be spilling from the inside of his shirt. He rolled up the sleeve and for the first time he say his brand. The mark of the dreamer. The mark of the Chimera.
He stared in amazement. He did not understand what the mark was or how it got there. It would be years later before he learned its meaning or name. His astonishment quickly fled him as he heard the low growl again, only this time it was closer, more meaningful, and viscous. He looked up, and out of the fog sprang a beast covered in matted white fur with teeth the size of fingers and sharp as razors. The beast stood at least three feet tall at the back. The hair on its back stood on end, making the creature seem larger, more deadly.
Fool, his mind screamed at him. You should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
The wolf took a step, lowered its head, and bared those long razor teeth. Spinner decided to run, but it was to late. The beast had sprung at him. He had enough time to bring his arm up and try to block the White Wolf from sinking its teeth into his neck. He felt knife-edge pain as the animal bit into his forearm, which contained the strange mark. One of the wolf’s clawed feet swiped at his face, and he managed to duck his head enough to save his eyes. The beast claws ripped across his forehead, and warm pain filled every inch of Spinner.
Purple light flashed.
Spinner shot up in his chair. Remembering that night always made him jump. He had woken the same way the first night he had encountered the White Wolf, only he was bloody and in a lot of pain back then. The doctor had to put twenty stitches in the cut above his eye in order to hold the wound shut. He fed the doctor some bar room story, and the doctor smiled politely and accepted the story as factual. The spot on his arm where the wolf had bitten him was bloody that first night, but he could find no trace of the puncture wounds that he was sure should be there.
Now all these years later, he sat rubbing his arm imagining the pain, remembering the hot breath of the beast swarming into his face and choking him, remembering the fear that filled him like a glass, leaving him frozen like a statue.
He was the one that had to discover the answers after that. He had learned a lot in all those years, but he still had a lot to learn. Endless secret hours had been spent gathering clues, analyzing ancient text. Deep inside he knew that if people of this town found out that he was different then he would be in trouble. This town was different. They would make him into a martyr.
He had considered leaving many times, but he had a strange feeling that he couldn’t shake. What if there were others like him in the town. It wouldn’t be unheard of. The town was a pinpoint for this kind of strange thing. Every generation had a different story to add to long list of brutality that the town suffered from. Maybe there were others like him.
Through time he had explored his strange gift of the dream world, and found that he held a certain power while asleep. There were different powers one could have. He had learned that from his study. He knew what his single power was. He was a dream guide, and he was meant to help those that would come.
The others had come. They had all matured at different ages, most of them maturing to soon, and falling victim to horrors that they did not know could harm them before he could help them.
He searched in the old text and found that over the years some had survived like he had, but those that had survived had gone mad and added to the bloody list of victims that the town kept. Only through studying the Chimera and keeping constant vigilance of himself did he hold his sanity. There were nights when he questioned his resolve, but he had managed to maintain his sanity so far.
So far.
He leaned back, rubbing his face. All these years, he thought. All these years I have searched for a way to release the evil that Old Anna has called to this place. And now, this new child processes more of the glimmer than I have ever seen in another his age. He rubbed the scar again, and looked at his hands. He expected to see blood on his fingers as he pulled them away. None was there.
Frank’s dad, Rob Jordan, eased up on the gas as he entered the small town of Meadsville. He hated getting home so late from work, but he had a big meeting in the morning with a major client so he had stayed at the office and prepared. Now he was mucking his way through a blasted downpour. It was late, and he was tired.
The town passed by without incident, and he watched as it disappeared in his rear view mirror. The radio was playing, but the rain drowned the music out. Home and bed, he thought as the night seemed to get blacker and the rain pelted his car with another blast. I just want to get home and go to bed.
He rubbed a hand across his temple, hoping that the simple message could rub away the pain that had taken residence there. The pain had started about an hour ago, right before he left, and now it was pulsing through his brain. The pounding rain, and the heavy smack of water off the undercarriage didn’t help matters. He clicked the radio off, hoping that the elimination of at least one noise may help him, but his head pounded anyway. He just wanted to close his eyes, just wanted to be snuggled up in bed next to Fran, just wanted to be asleep. His head pinched with pain.
He looked over at the stream that ran beside the road. It churned with dark muddy water, and threatened to spill over the edge flooding the road. It would do just that if the rain didn’t subside. Great, he thought, all I need is for the road to be flooded in the morning.
As the stream turned away from the road disappearing into the cover of the trees, Rob knew that he should have been watching the road, and not the stream. As he turned his head, and saw the overturned truck appear out of the darkness, and he knew that the condition of the road tomorrow should have been his last concern, and the condition of the road this evening should have been his first.
He first noticed the truck when it was about twenty yards in front of him, and if it hadn’t been for the soft red glow of the taillights he might not have seen it in time. He slammed on the brakes. It was a natural reaction, but the moment he did it he knew that it was the wrong one. The back end of the car began to slide to the left. He took his foot off the brake immediately. If he didn’t correct the car’s course the back end would hit the truck, and send the car into an uncontrolled course. He did the only thing he could think of and hit the gas. The wheels caught, and he wrenched the steering wheel in the opposite direction of the spin. The back end of the car reversed it slide, and shot to the right instead of the left. Rob started pumping the breaks again as the front end of the car spun barley missing the front end of the truck. He felt a dull thud under his tire as his hands struggled with the wheel for control. The car made two complete rotations before rattling to a halt.
Things went black for a minute.
Rob stared at the dashboard for a moment after the car had settled. Okay, he thought, I’m okay, but I hit something, not the truck but something. He felt his stomach turn, and he didn’t want to look up at the road in fear of seeing what he may have hit. Slowly inch-by-inch he lifted his eyes. The road appeared before him, and he was looking into the flickering glow of the trucks two headlights. He swallowed hard, as his head lifted farther, and he saw the foot of a person lying in the road.
Holy shit, I hit a person, he thought. His breath caught in his throat as the reality of the situation flooded his mind. I hit a person. His mind argued otherwise, but he didn’t listen. He could see the person’s foot. Reluctantly he lifted his gaze again, and he saw more of the person lying in the road. God forgive me.
You didn’t hit him, his mind protested. Look where the body is, how it is laying. You hit something else. “No,” Rob said aloud. “I hit something, and there is nothing else out there.” His hands were shaking and he rubbed them together, trying to get the chill to leave them. “Have to go check,” he murmured, and he knew he was talking aloud to no one but himself. Somehow talking aloud seemed to drown out the argument from his brain. “Have to go check.”
His muscles seemed to freeze as he reached for the door handle. It was his brain’s doing. It felt like two separate people- the one reacting to the situation, and the one listening to his brain. His fingers wrapped around the handle of the door.
Don’t go. “Have to go.” Don’t “Might still be alive.” He isn’t. “Have to check.” Don’t go you hit something else. “Gotta see if he is still alive.” Can’t you feel it? Doesn’t it feel wrong? Don’t go. “No choice.”
His hand pulled on the door handle, and the door clicked open. He set his foot out the door onto the pavement, never letting his eyes drift from the person laying face down in the road. They weren’t moving. They hadn’t moved. He couldn’t tell how much blood there was or if there was any blood at all because of all the rain. His leg felt numb as he tried to but weight on it. “Gotta check,” he murmured again, but his brain gave no dispute this time. He pushed the car door open wider, and rain began to soak his arm.
“Dddaaaaadddyyy!”
Rob heard the static voice fill the car. He broke his gaze from the person lying in the road and looked around the car, trying to find where it had come from. He found no trace and decided it had been a last ditch effort from his brain to keep him in the car. He lifted his eyes back up to the road. The body was in a different position. It looked like someone had dragged it towards the side of the road.
Rob felt his blood go cold.
“Still alive,” he murmured. He pushed the car door completely open this time, and as he started out of the car he heard the voice again only it was stronger this time, more defined than it had been.
“DDDaaaaaaaaaddddddyyyyy!”
That was Frank’s voice. He looked inside of the car, and saw that the radio was back on.
“Daddy don’t pet the dog, daddy.”
Rob began to wonder if a person could actually recognize when they were going into shock. It was the only thing that he could think of that would explain his son’s voice coming from the radio. He wanted to run from the sound of the voice spewing forth from the radio, which he had turned off. He stood in the rain trying to decide what to do.
Get back in the car?
Run?
He reached into the car. “Frank?” he asked as he looked at the radio, and immediately he felt stupid. Maybe you hit your head in the middle of the spin. You could have bounced it off the window or something. That was it. He had hit his head, and he was in the middle of a dramatic experience. His noggin was a little juiced. Gotta help the person on the road. He turned off the radio, and as he stood back up he thought he saw a pocket of white among the darkness along side the car.
“Don’t pet the dog,” he murmured as he searched for whatever he had seen through the windshield. “You must have hit your head. Voices. Now your seeing things in the dark.” His eyes drained back to the person in the middle of the road, the person that he thought he had hit with his car. The body was closer to the edge of the road now, and Rob thought he saw dark smears on the person’s clothes.
He walked around the front of the car, not bothering to shut the door. Rain drenched him, and he had to push his hair out of his eyes with one of his hands. He watched the person on the road, watched to see if they had been dragging themselves along.
“You alive?” he shouted over the rain, but the person didn’t move. He stepped closer surveying the road, hoping that someone else would come along and help. He looked to the side of the road again, trying to find the spot that had grabbed is attention a few moments before, but found nothing but the trees, dancing in the dark.
The next thing he knew he was kneeling beside the person, shaking them gently with one hand. They were still warm, but he received no response from his prodding. He said, “Hey buddy, you still alive?” When he got no response he leaned back on his knees, and lifted his face into the falling rain. He sat like that for a minute, trying to collect his thoughts, trying to think what to do. If he is alive by some chance, he thought, I have to get his face out of all that water.
Rob stood and placed two hands under the man. The guy was big, maybe two-thirty, two-forty, and Rob wandered if he would be able to roll him over gently. As he lifted with his legs, his brain remarked on how light the big man felt. Rob looked down as the body began to roll onto its back, and he jumped back. A scream formed in the bottom of Rob’s gut, and it rattled in his rib cage on its way out his mouth as the body rolled onto its back with a hollow splash.
There was a reason the man had been so easy to roll over, and Rob could see why now as he stared in horror at the corpse on the road. He hadn’t hit the person, and if he had he hadn’t killed him. He tried to draw his eyes away from the torn flesh, tried not to focus on the empty stomach cavity, or how the man’s face had been ripped off. He did manage another scream before he rolled over onto his stomach, shielding himself from the half eaten man on the road.
Rob looked up at his car, and knew that he needed to get back inside of it, but his body refused to move. His own headlights blinded him as he crawled forward. He used the front of the car to push himself up, and once his eyes cleared themselves of the headlight’s glare he caught the whiteness among the darkness along side the road.
It didn’t disappear from sight this time, and he unwittingly took a step towards it. His hand ran across the hood of his car, and he felt an indentation. He looked down to see a dent in his front quarter panel, and a tuft of white fur stuck in his fender. He looked up quickly searching for the white thing on the side of the road, and he heard a whimper sneak towards him from the darkness. His eyes focused now as his mind began to recognize what he was seeing.
It looked like a large white dog laying in a puddle along side the road. He took a step forward, and saw the awkward angle of the back leg. There was no doubt that it was broken. I hit his dog, he thought. His brain was trying to communicate with him again, but he was focused on the animal. He could see the labored raise and fall of the animals chest, imagined he could hear the short quick, liquid breathing of the animal. He stepped forward, and began to reach a hand out.
Don’t, his brain finally shouted. It’s not his dog. His hand hesitated four inches above the dog’s hind end.
“DDDDDDAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
He heard Frank’s voice screaming from the car. His head jerked back that direction, and he began to stand up. Run, his brain told him. Get back in the car. Run. Static from his car radio filled the night air, and he began to turn back towards the car, began to hear the things his brain was saying. An occasional syllable broke through the static that filled his head. He stood in confusion as the rain poured down.
Rob heard a splash of water beside him. He looked back down at the dog, but the dog wasn’t there any longer.
Run you idiot, run.
Tommy and Frank had spent the evening rearranging Frank’s room so that the window wasn’t at the head of his bed. As a matter of fact the bed was on the other side of the room in the opposite corner of the window.
Frank had fallen asleep thinking about Spinner and what the man had said. How had the man known about the dreams hurting him? Was he telling the truth about how he got that scar? What was the strange glow he saw about the man’s eyes? Tommy hadn’t mentioned that he had seen anything that peculiar about the man even after Frank implied that there was something very odd about the man. Frank’s brain raced inside of his head. As he walked home after talking to Spinner, he felt as if he was walking away from something that he shouldn’t be, but that was nuts wasn’t it?
As sleep took him he envisioned himself floating upwards into a perfect blue sky. The land fell away before him, as he climbed higher and higher. He could view the whole town. Eventually that faded away as he rose, and he found himself looking up instead of down. He tried to control where he was going, but he didn’t seem to have any power over the direction or speed in which he floated. He thought that he would be scared. What if he fell? If the dreams could hurt him, and he fell then he might never wake up. He wasn’t afraid, because he felt no form of threat as he rose into the atmosphere. He stole a glance back at the rapidly fading definition of the ground below him, and saw a mixture of greens, browns, and blues. He lifted his gaze because somehow he felt his destination was up here, up in the clouds. Off in the distance he saw a huge puffy, white cloud distinct against the blue backdrop. That is where he was going. That was his destination. As he grew closer he saw banners snapping in the wind atop high stone towers. There were five towers in all each with a different colored banner. He saw green, red, blue, purple, and yellow banners. A smile formed on his lips as a sense of calm formed over him, draining all his fear. He watched as more of the high stone towers were revealed. He watched the banners snapping in the wind. Each of them had a strange shape on them, but he couldn‘t make it out.
Just as he thought that he might gain a view of what lay beneath the towers, a wind rose around him, trying to force him back, back down to the earth, down to where his nightmares dwelled. He struggled against it. He wanted to see what that single cloud held, but the wind was fierce. It pushed him backwards, and he clawed at the air desperately as he began to fall faster and faster. He was falling to fast, and he closed his eyes waiting to feel the horrible pain that would lead him to death as he crashed into the earth below. He denied what was happening in his head. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. But that trick no longer worked for him. It had at one point, but no longer.
He felt a sudden jolt, and he opened his eyes, but saw nothing but darkness. This is death, he thought, when a light blinked on from the corner. His eyes refused to focus at first, but after a minute he realized that he was looking at a television. The picture screen danced with a white and black static. Frank looked around the room, using the light given by the television to give him perspective. The walls, ceiling, and floor were jet black. There were no doors and no windows. He only other thing in the room besides the television was the black leather seat that he sat in. He got up, and began to feel around the room for a crack in the wall, anything to indicate there was a way out. He found none.
Suddenly the static on the television was gone, and the screen read one word written in white on a black backdrop.
SIT.
Frank sat in the chair, nervously trying to figure out what was going on. The television screen flickered, and Frank saw a black truck driving down the road in the middle of a rainstorm. The television flickered again, and he saw a white wolf stepping out of the darkness. It’s eyes bore into him from the TV screen. Frank pushed himself back into the chair, trying to get as far from the TV as possible. Just as he thought that the wolf would step through the screen and into the same room as him the television flickered again. Now the black truck was upside down on the road. A man was crawling through the windshield, and he looked like he was in bad shape. The picture snapped back to the wolf, and Frank could almost feel the animal’s breath chilling the room around him. The next image was of the wrecked truck, but there was a car in front of it now. The man that had crawled out of the truck was face down on the road.
Frank’s heart skipped as he recognized the car. It was his dad’s car. The TV flickered again, and Frank saw the white wolf lurking in the dark. Its muzzle was stained red, and its eyes were full of hunger. Frank was afraid of what he was going to see next. He knew that his dad was in trouble.
The television flickered, and it was his mother’s face.
“Mom?” he asked bewildered. Maybe he was waking up.
“I didn’t mean to wake you baby,” she replied.
“Dad home?” he asked, hoping that she would say yes, hoping that the nightmare was over.
“He’s coming baby. The roads are bad, and he stayed late at the office to get a few things done for a big meeting tomorrow.”
“Have him wake me.” Frank said. He wanted to wake up, before he saw what was going to happen out in the storm. If he woke up than his dad would be safe.
“You need your sleep,” his mother said, and he wanted to scream- No more sleep. I want to wake up.
The television flickered again, and his mother was gone. He saw his father in the rain, with his hand hovering over the white wolf. No dad! He screamed, but the words never left his mouth. The television flickered again, and Frank saw his mother.
“Mom tell him not to pet the dog,” he said.
“What?” she asked confused.
“Tell him not to pet the dog. Don’t let him pet the dog, mom.” He panicked. What if the television blinked back, and he say his father dead. His mother wouldn’t be able to do anything about that would she? He didn’t think so.
“Honey, we don’t have a dog.” He knew that, but how would he explain it to her?
“It’s not our dog,” Frank said, but the picture of his mother had begun to fade, and his own words sounded diluted in his head. You have to do it Frank. You have to tell him. “I’m going to try and tell him, but I don’t know if he’ll hear me.” Frank said, but the picture of his mother was still fading. “If you see him first tell him not to pet the dog,” Frank yelled at the television. He now realized that he had come out of the seat and was sitting directly in front of the TV.
The picture blinked again, and the black truck was cruising down the road in the rain. Frank saw the wolf running beside the truck hidden amongst the trees. He thought he could here it talking.
Blood. Flesh. Kill. Tear. Rip. Blood. Taste so good. Kill. Flesh. Tear. Eat.
The wolf bolted in front of the truck, and Frank watched as the truck bolted up the bank and into the air. The sound of the crash echoed in the black box, and Frank covered his ears, trying to block the angry scream of the metal.
Frank watched as the man crawled out of the truck. He watched as the man stood only to end up back on his knees in the middle of the road. He heard the man screaming as the wolf came around the car, then as the wolf proceeded to rip into him. Frank covered his eyes in horror, and he thought he heard the cackle of Old Anna fill the room. He tried not to look, decided not to, but he heard the squealing of rubber on the road. The earlier image of his father’s car in front of the wrecked truck came back to him, and he opened his eyes once more.
The television faded in and out switching from static to his father, static to his father, static to his father. His father was sitting in the car. Frank felt the need to scream. He pounded on the screen. He felt his heart sneak into his throat, choking him as his father’s hand reached for the door handle. His father didn’t know what was out there. He didn’t know the danger he was in. The television blinked to black. Frank sat back on his legs. Suddenly the television sprang to life again, and all Frank could see were the eyes of the wolf staring at him. The television flashed back to his father, and he screamed as loud as he could.
“Dddaaaaadddyyy!”
His dad hesitated, and the television flashed back to the wolf dragging the guy from the truck towards the side of the road, then back to his father, then back to the road where the guy from the truck lay alone, then back to his father. Frank hit the television with a fist. His father opened the car door
“DDDaaaaaaaaaddddddyyyyy!”
His father halted again, reached over and turned the radio off. What was he thinking? Why was he going out into the night? Frank rested his forehead against the screen, and he began to cry. Was this all really happening? “Just a dream,” he whispered. “All of it just a dream.” He started repeating the words over and over as he rocked back and forth on his knees. It had to be a dream. It had to be.
He didn’t look up when he heard his father scream. He was too afraid to. He just kept repeating the words to himself. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream. He looked up hoping that his father was no longer on the television, but he was. He was hovering over the wolf. The television flashed and Frank saw the wolf’s eye open as his father inched closer.
“DDDDDDAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
The screen went blank, and Frank was driven back into darkness. He pounded on the television with an open fist. “Just a dream,” he stammered, but somehow he knew that it wasn’t just a dream. Somehow he knew that his dad really was in trouble. He focused on the images from the television. He erased everything from his brain, and he focused on the road that they had been on. Suddenly the black walls fell away, and Frank was standing in the rain.
Rob Jordan felt his bladder start to give and held it. He had seen the back leg of that dog and there was no way it could get up and move. The leg had been too badly broken. He began to back up towards his car. His foot caught the arm of the dead man and Rob fell backwards onto the concrete with a splash. He moved backwards on his hands and feet, never taking his eyes of the spot where the dog had been.
Get up, his brain shouted. Get up and run you idiot.
Rob pushed himself up with his hands, and as he did his eyes filled with the battered, rip face of the man on the road. He took in the empty stomach cavity, and he finally realized what had done that to the man. It had been that dog, and now that dog was somewhere close by. He spun in a circle as water shot off his hair whipped by the force of his turn. He found his car with his hands. What the hell was going on?
He edged around the car, and a hair-raising growl filled the night. He froze out of fear, and turned his head back to where he had heard the noise. There in the middle of the road beside the overturned truck stood a huge dog, but it wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf. Blood smeared its white muzzle, and a long thing piece of uneaten innards hung from one of its back teeth. The wolf steeped forward, and snapped its jaws.
Rob turned, moving slowly back towards the door. If he could get in the car, just get in the car, he would be all right, but he didn’t think that he would make it into the car before that thing had its teeth in him. The wolf took another step forward, and Rob started to count the seconds he had left in life. He began to cry, because he would not get to tell his family good-bye. The wolf stepped forward again, and Rob could see an odd humanity in its eyes. The door bumped him, and he wondered why he had left it open in the first place. He would never make it around the door, and into the car before the wolf sprang at him.
As if reading his thoughts the wolf crouched, and Rob Jordan knew that if he had any chance then he would have to go, and go now. He went for it. He heard the animal’s nails push of the concrete behind him, felt its breath on his neck, and knew he was about to die clamped in the jaws of the animal. To his surprise he felt no pain. As a matter of fact he felt nothing as he swung around the door, and slipped into the car, slamming the door shut behind him.
Frank felt the rain on his face, and he looked around. He had done it he had made it out of the black box. He felt a strange tingle on his forearm, but he forgot it as soon as he felt it. He was standing on the side of the road behind his father’s car. His father was backed up against the door, only feet away from safety. Frank didn’t think his dad would be able to make it into the car without getting hurt. He sprinted from the shadow, his bare feet stinging with pain from the sharp rocks he stepped on. He saw his dad make a move around the door, and the wolf jumped. Frank left his feet at the same time as the wolf, and felt his shoulder plow into its ribs the second before the wolf’s teeth would clamp down on his father. The force of the blow sent the wolf over the car into the darkness.
Frank heard the car door slam shut, and he jumped up in his bed. The phone was ringing, and he heard his mother’s voice in the other room. She hung up the phone, and started screaming for the boys to get up.
“Mom?” Frank called. “Mom, what is it?”
His mother came into his room. Her face was flush, and Frank could see a hint of panic in her eyes. “Get dressed, buddy,” she said to him, and started to turn back out of the room.
“Mom?” Frank said as he grabbed her hand.
She turned back to him with tears in her eyes. She bent down and hugged him tightly.
“Mom what is it? What’s wrong?”
“That was the police, baby,” she started, “Your dad was in an accident. They say he’s okay, but he hit his head pretty good. They say he probably has a concussion, and that he lost consciousness for a bit, but he should be okay. We have to go to the hospital. Now you get dressed, and I am going to go and get Tommy up.”
She kissed him on the forehead and left his room.
“Just a dream,” Frank said. “Just a dream.”
