Darkness Rising: A Novella of Extreme Horror and Suspense Read online

  Marty’s hands started shaking. He wanted to beat the shit out of Lyle Dinkman for talking about Jennifer like she was a piece of ass. But Marty was already on probation for an earlier incident and he didn’t want to lose his job, so he did what he always did and swallowed his anger. He flipped open his journal and, with his pen, carved a mantra across the paper: I will not harm others. I will not harm others.

  Lyle leaned in close to Marty’s ear. “Let me give you a word of advice, kid. Rich girls don’t date poor schmucks like us. Blondie was just using you to get a good grade. Once finals are over she’ll toss you like yesterday’s garbage. Consider that book she gave you a parting gift.”

  Marty’s rage caused his writing hand to tear a long gash across the page. He snapped his journal shut, grabbed his things, and hurried out of the locker room. He wanted to believe that Lyle was wrong, but his words hit home, driving a cold shard into his chest.

  Could Jennifer have really just been using him all this time? Was their connection nothing more than a fantasy?

  When he got to his car, he checked his cell phone to see if maybe she’d left him a text message. The months he had been tutoring her, she had texted almost daily. There were no messages now.

  Forget everything that jerk was saying. Just call her and ask her out. Take a risk for once.

  He actually pulled up her name and phone number, which included a photo of her smiling, and was about to hit the call button. But then he froze. He was afraid of getting his heart broken. He had been rejected enough to know how that felt. But Jennifer wasn’t like other girls.

  In a spontaneous burst of courage, he said, “Screw it, I’m calling her.” Before he could stop himself, his thumb hit the call button. He swallowed hard as the phone rang a few times. His heart beat fast. Her voicemail answered. He listened to her cheerful recorded voice say that she was studying and to leave a message. After the beep he paused too long, panicked, and blurted out, “Hey Jen, just wanted to say thanks again for the Shakespeare book,” and hung up.

  He cursed himself for chickening out. His biggest fear was that Dinkman might be right. That in Jennifer’s eyes Marty was nothing more than a tool to be used and discarded. It was better to stretch out the mystery for as long as possible. Having her in his life, even as a fantasy, was the only thing that kept the darkness down.

  Chapter 3

  The world had always been a cruel place for Marty Weaver. His scars were many and deep. Growing up, his teachers and various foster parents had labeled him autistic, a problem child, emotionally disturbed, while the kids at the foster homes and at school called him names—nerd, wimp, dweeb, freak and worse. He seemed to walk through life with a sign that read “bully me”, even though what he wanted most was a circle of friends and family to love and love him back.

  His best friends were dead poets—Yates, Hawthorne, Keats, Byron, Frost and Poe, to name a few. They taught Marty how to pour the burdens of his soul into poetry. With each poem he wrote and read to the lake, he peeled back a layer of scar tissue and felt a sense of hope that he might one day become a man others could love, maybe even a man who could learn to love himself.

  Tonight was a special night. Every full moon, in a tradition he had started as a teenager, Marty did two things. First, he visited the cemetery and put fresh flowers on his mother’s grave. Then he drove along the wooded back roads that carved between the Blue Mountains to read his latest poems to the lake. Writing poetry helped him deal with all his pent-up emotions. It had helped him through his roughest times―the loss of his parents when he was nine, all the hell he had gone through bouncing between foster homes, and the rocky period that followed when he turned eighteen and ventured out on his own.

  He parked in the lot overlooking the water, eager to share more about this radiant angel who had entered his life. As he climbed out of his car, he noticed a van parked in the shadows of a tree with looming branches. It looked like one of those custom vans with flames painted down the sides. This gravel lot, on the farthest side of the lake, was always empty. Most people didn’t know this place existed because it wasn’t on the campground maps and it took several dirt roads to get here. He came to this spot because it was the special place his parents used to bring him to when he was a boy. The lot and beach were completely hidden by dense woods. Across the water was the most majestic view of pines and mountains. Occasionally a boat passed by, but mostly this inlet was quiet and still. His mother had called their secret spot “the Magic Cove”. She loved to swim here, sunbathe, and take him exploring in the forest.

  His father liked this cove because the fishing was good. He taught Marty how to work a rod and reel, gut a fish with a knife, skin it and flay it. Mornings were always spent with the two of them fishing for whatever the lake offered that day, while Marty’s mother read her books or did yoga. Then they’d have a picnic and cook their fish over a campfire. Those were the best days of Marty’s childhood, before The Bad Thing happened.

  That someone had discovered his private cove made Marty feel invaded. He watched the van for a moment, but it looked dark and empty. Maybe someone had abandoned it there. Or some hikers had gone on a long trek around the lake. He didn’t see anyone, so he didn’t concern himself too much about the van.

  He walked down the hill to the water’s edge with his journal. The moon’s glow cast his shadow across the lake’s glassy surface.

  “Hello, old friend. It’s been a few weeks. I’ve got some new poems for you.” He opened his journal, feeling the worn leather cover against his palms. The oversized book, filled with hundreds of pages of his handwriting and drawings, was a memoir of his inner world from childhood to now. The stiff, heavily inked pages crinkled as he turned them, and that sound always made him feel a sense of nostalgia. The book had been a gift from his mother on his eighth birthday. Across these pages he had written countless poems, short stories, and glued-together collages of magazine pictures of things he wanted to one day own or become. At age eight, he had wanted to be Batman and pasted cutouts from a comic book. At age nine, it was Aquaman. As he got older, the pictures changed from superheroes to cars, to girls, to the things he now aspired to have as an adult, like an education, professorship, someday a wife. Next to a pamphlet of St. Germaine College was a photo of him and Jennifer at the campus gardens where they had taken a selfie standing in front of a fountain. The last fifty or so pages were filled with his love poems, some so sappy he felt embarrassed to read them. Most of his poems were amateurish musings, while every now and then he wrote something he was proud of. The only one who had ever heard any of his writings was the lake.

  Marty held the big book open like a preacher about to give a sermon, only his congregation was the frogs and the reeds and the dark water. “I’ve been seeing Jennifer around campus more and more. Today she gave me a gift and kissed me on the cheek. The way she acts around me sometimes, I…I think I might actually have a shot with her.” He felt his heart expand just thinking about her. “Her beauty has awakened something in me that I’ve never felt for anyone. I can’t stop writing about her. I’ve got at least a dozen new ones. This first one’s still a work in progress. The beats aren’t quite right, but this is what I’ve written so far.”

  He read the poem aloud:

  In her eyes, fireflies

  Sparks from my caress

  On our faces, warm smiles

  Cannons in our chests

  Time's first gentle touch

  Feathers along our flesh

  Tall grass all around us

  We whisper, touch, undress

  Butterflies in our heads

  Opening wings together

  Taking flight in purple skies

  Evaporating like the weather

  The sound of hands clapping startled Marty.

  “That is the most beautiful piece of shit I ever heard,” a man’s voice echoed off the water, followed by laughter.

  Marty turned to see three silhouettes walking along the shoreline towards hi
m. A bright light suddenly blinded him. A guy with brown dreadlocks and a patchy beard hurried across a log like an acrobat on a tightrope. He circled Marty, filming him with a video camera.

  A skinny girl leaned against the shoulder of a muscular guy with a shaved head. He was the one talking. “What kind of nut sack reads poetry alone out here?”

  Marty felt the same bad vibe as when he’d first spotted the van. He looked towards his car parked up the hill. He thought of running, but Dreadlocks and the couple blocked his path.

  The guy with the shaved head stepped in close and pushed Marty’s chest. “I asked you a question, nut sack.”

  “I-I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Too late for that. You’ve already disturbed our party with that sappy shit.”

  “I kinda liked it, Zane,” the girl said. She had shoulder-length black hair but the ends had been dipped in red hair dye. The effect made her look like her hair was bleeding. Half a Slipknot concert T-shirt showed off her tattooed belly. She had several piercings on her ears. “I wanna hear some more poems,” she commanded.

  “You heard her,” said Zane. “Whatever Tara wants, Tara gets. Now read her something.”

  Marty held his journal against his chest. “Look, I didn’t mean to spoil your party. I’ll go.” He started up the hill.

  Zane said, “Stop him, Seth.”

  The guy with the dreads stepped in front of Marty and pushed him back with a hard shove. “We ain’t through with you.”

  Marty took a few steps back. In a fight, he could probably handle Dreadlocks, who was tall and skinny, but Zane was all muscle and spite, and the two of them together could probably overpower Marty. He had seen this gang before, hanging out at the Razor’s Edge Roadhouse on the outskirts of town. That was where all the freaks gathered. Marty drove past the bar every day on the way to and from work. He had even ventured inside a couple times, but decided it wasn’t his crowd. These three were often lounging around out front.

  Now, with the light of the full moon, Marty could see their eyes were wild. Seth’s breath reeked of weed, but he bounced around and fidgeted like he was jacked up on coke or meth.

  Zane’s girlfriend walked up to Marty. “Give me the journal.”

  “No.” Marty hugged it tight.

  She wailed and jumped up and down, stomping like a three-year-old. “I want to hear some fucking poems!”

  “Now you’ve made Tara upset.” Zane shoved Marty to the ground and pressed a boot against his chest. He ripped the journal from Marty’s hands. “Here you go, baby doll.”

  She giggled and started reading the book’s inscription on the first page. “‘To my dearest Marty, a place to write your hopes and dreams. Love, Mom.’” Tara looked at him. “Ahhh, isn’t that the sweetest thing? Mommy must really love you.”

  “Who names their kid a wimpy name like Marty?” Zane asked.

  “Hey look, I’m Farty Marty.” Seth danced around and made farting noises.

  “Yeah, I never heard that one,” Marty said angrily. “Will you please give me back my journal? Those are my private thoughts.”

  “Not anymore,” Zane said.

  “Whew, listen to this one, guys,” Tara said as she tore out a page.

  “No, don’t!” Marty reached for her, but Zane’s boot pressed deeper into his sternum.

  Tara read in a mocking voice:

  In coiled sheets I sleep

  Fitful, twisted, hot

  An inferno burning deep

  Flesh sweating every drop

  Chained to an empty bed

  Where her sweet scent lingers

  An eternity fills my head

  With caressing phantom fingers

  A space inside me hollows deep

  Building love or dying dreams?

  On passion's bed I cannot sleep

  The hole inside me screams

  Zane stared down, arms crossed, shaking his head. “Pathetic.”

  Tara and Seth hooted and danced around Marty. He wiped tears from his eyes as his mind filled with memories of his days in foster care, when other kids had danced a circle around him, taunting and making fun of him.

  Zane’s deep voice sounded eerily like Mr. Crowley, the worst of the foster parents. “You aren’t nothing but a worthless sack of bones.”

  Marty pushed at Zane’s leg, but received a painful stomp to his chest. Then Zane pulled out a hunting knife and pressed it against Marty’s groin. “Move again and I’ll cut off your balls.”

  “Assuming he’s got any.” Seth laughed and kicked Marty in the side. “Wussy-ass queer boy.”

  “He’s not queer,” Tara said, flipping through his journal. “He’s got a whole shitload of poems about some girl named Jennifer.” Tara read the next verses:

  Jennifer

  I know not what to say, reveal

  For she may not want to hear

  The trueness of my heart for her

  Could be her deepest fear

  So in silence I admire her

  Like a painter does a painting

  In hopes that she falls for me

  But until then, I am waiting

  Tara looked down at him, frowning. “What are you, some kind of stalker? Probably a rapist too.”

  Seth said, “Bet he wants to bring Jennifer out here and stick her good.”

  “You like to peep at girls, do you? Well, get a good look.” Tara stood over Marty’s face, letting him see up her skirt. She wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  Marty pushed her off him.

  Tara fell on her ass in the dirt. She kicked his arm. “Hey, don’t ever touch me, creep! Or I’ll let Zane cut off your balls.”

  “Say the word, babe, and I’ll do it.” Zane’s blade poked into Marty’s thigh just beneath his groin.

  “Let me go.” Marty tried to move.

  Zane pointed the blade at his face. “Try to make a run for it and I’ll cut off your nads and stuff them down your throat.”

  The realization that these weren’t ordinary bullies sent a wave of adrenaline coursing through him. “Wh-What are you g-going to do to me?”

  “Wh-wh-whatever the he-he-hell we feel like,” Zane mimicked Marty’s stuttering.

  Seth aimed his video camera at Marty’s face. The light hurt his eyes. “Maybe we should take him into the woods, cut him till he squeals like a pig. That would be a hoot.” He flicked open a switchblade. “I call dibs on first stab.”

  Zane said, “Seth, you can cut him anywhere you like but leave the face for me.”

  Tara stood, dusted off her butt, then picked up the journal. “I’m not done reading. Zaney, make us a campfire. I need better light.”

  Chapter 4

  Marty sat shivering with a mix of terror and anger, as Seth and Zane fed logs into a campfire. Then the two guys lit up a fat joint and started smoking.

  Seth inhaled. “Sweet. What is this shit?”

  “Agent Orange,” Zane said. “Got it from my last trip to Colorado.” He spoke in a mocking voice. “It’s got a nice citrusy blend.”

  “I like this much better than Alien Dawg. That shit reeks and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

  Seth and Zane went on talking about different strains of weed.

  Seated next to the crackling fire, Marty kept his eye on a log a few inches away. He quietly watched the others get stoned and drink beers from a cooler. Occasionally they threatened him, but the higher they got the less attention they paid him. Seth thought it was damned funny to blow pot smoke into Marty’s face. Marty coughed and did his best not to inhale. He thought of trying to make a run for his car, but feared they’d chase him down and stab him. Better to wait. If they got high enough, he might see an opportunity.

  “So are we going to have some fun with this douche bag or what?” Seth asked, looking intently at Marty.

  Tara shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Seth kept recording video of Marty. “Maybe we should keep this one around, make him our pet.” He pulled a raw wiener fr
om the cooler. “Here you go, doggy.” He tossed the wiener on the dirt in front of Marty.

  Marty looked away. He could take the verbal and physical abuse. He’d been bullied his whole life. Whenever people tormented him, he’d close his eyes and think his magic word three times: Cerulean. Cerulean. Cerulean. Then all the pain would go away and Marty would escape to that place in his mind where happy memories lived. He went there now and the warm June night changed into a hot summer day.