Long After Dark Read online

  “The human brain, in an attempt to make sense of the information it is receiving, will often fill in the blanks in the visual plane, substituting similar objects from memory for those it cannot readily identify, particularly in cases of peripheral vision…For example, if an object cannot be seen clearly, a visual substitution of something similar will be used from memory in an attempt to fill in the blank spaces or explain what a blur or undefined field is…These substitutions are normally vivid and appear quite real...The concept of ‘seeing’ the movement of dark blurs or even dark figures in the peripheral vision (typically described as the corner of one’s eye), is a fairly common occurrence in most human beings, even during lucid moments…Most reports indicate that if the subject turns to look at the figure, it moves away rapidly or vanishes by the time one is looking directly at it…”

  “But these didn’t vanish,” he muttered to himself.

  “…An overwhelming majority of studies (including our own) have shown that this phenomenon increases dramatically during periods of extreme duress or exhaustion, as the eyes begin to function less efficiently and therefore the need to substitute visuals becomes more and more necessary…Those inclined toward occultism believe these visions are glimpses of real entities, perhaps ghosts and the like, but the phenomenon is a simple optical illusion…However, these visions are so powerful they may result in the manifestation of other ‘real’ experiences beyond visual occurrences, meaning these events could be ‘real,’ strictly imagined, or a fusion of both. The greatest difficulty in determining that is the fact that once the subjects have endured sleeplessness for extended periods sufficient to produce these events in vivid detail beyond the norm, they slip into a state of consciousness where it is problematic (and sometimes impossible) to determine if the participant is still awake (in any meaningful way) or if they are in fact asleep. This is a consistent phenomenon in human test subjects in these and other studies, as numerous parallel tests show that without exception, subjects experiencing extreme periods of sleep deprivation all eventually fall into this state, where the person is essentially trapped somewhere between consciousness and sleep, existing in neither but rather in some alternate form of consciousness not yet fully understood…”

  Outside, the pipe-scraping noise sounded again, echoing along the street as before but this time sounding much farther away. Harry winced as fear that began in the pit of his stomach crept toward the back of his neck. Like icy fingers it slowly walked up his spine, then fanned out across his shoulders and down into his arms.

  Memories of the man at the window returned.

  Without the wind and rain it had become deathly quiet, and somehow that was worse. He removed his glasses, reached for the baseball bat and slammed shut his eyes, praying for the noise to stop.

  Much to his surprise it did.

  But his relief was short-lived, as from the ensuing silence came another sound, one far more disturbing.

  Harry looked up at the ceiling, listened, and heard it again.

  There was someone on the roof.

  8

  The beginnings of moonlight moved through the windows and fell across the base of the stairs, providing a sliver of visibility. Baseball bat in hand, the Dictaphone in his pocket, the digital camera slung around his neck and the cordless phone stuffed into the waistband of his sweatpants, Harry crept to the staircase and gazed up at the second floor landing.

  Shadows…darkness…silence…

  He absently reached for the light switch on the wall but caught himself just before flipping it on, remembering that at least for now, it was safer to remain in the dark.

  There was movement on the roof again.

  His stomach clenched. Gagging back the nausea he continued forward, slowly ascending the staircase. An errant ache shot up his right leg, across his knee, along the thigh and into his groin. Groaning quietly, he slumped against the wall, one hand dragging the bat and the other clutching the railing. He was about halfway up the stairs and already lightheaded, out of breath and sweating profusely. The dizziness left him quickly but his heart continued to race. The fear was getting worse, and his inability to rein it in threatened to shatter what little patience he had left.

  Hold it together…

  In response a legion of images fired through Harry’s brain like a movie reel, and the same dark figure he’d seen earlier emerged, lying back on its hands and feet in that unsettling crablike position. Only this time he was much closer, moving across the roof above him and searching maniacally for avenues into the house.

  And Kelly…her image was there too…watching him from the corner of a dark room he didn’t recognize. Barefoot and wearing a delicate but full slip, she was backed into a corner draped in shadows and the webs of unseen spiders. Her makeup smudged, eyeliner running down her cheeks like she’d been crying and her hair mussed, she wore an expression of sorrow and despair that looked as if it had been permanently carved into her face, the flesh like newly chiseled stone, a dark vision from some crazed sculptor’s nightmares.

  From the back of his mind came a whisper: “Tunnel of love.”

  As it all fell away into oblivion, an itch tore at Harry’s throat and erupted into a brief coughing spell. He managed to muffle it by holding his forearm to his mouth, and then he hurried to the upstairs landing.

  The hallway waited…quiet…empty…dark…the bedroom doors closed.

  Sudden footfalls running directly overhead stopped him dead. He looked up at the ceiling, following the sound as whatever it was hurried across the roof toward the front of the house. If he’d tracked the footsteps correctly the person, or whatever it was, had moved to the portion of roof above his and Kelly’s bedroom. Harry swung the bat up near his shoulder and cocked it back. It felt awkward and heavy, causing his grip to tremble as if he were struggling to hold aloft a piece of granite. Cautiously, he moved toward the door, then reached out, turned the knob and pushed.

  The door swung open, revealing the dark bedroom beyond.

  Nothing appeared out of place or disturbed. Harry’s nose had filled and clogged again, so he breathed quietly through his mouth and stood in the center of the room and listened. As gunk trickled down the back of his throat he noticed through the window that Rose’s house was still empty and quiet, but a nearby streetlight had come on, producing a single pool of light on the otherwise dark cul-de-sac. He lowered the bat and pulled the Dictaphone from his pocket.

  “I’m having a harder and harder time thinking straight but I know for sure there’s someone on the roof,” he whispered into the microphone. “I’m in the bedroom and I can hear whoever or whatever it is moving up there.”

  Slinking closer to the window, he listened for further movement, but the night had again gone quiet. His eyes stung as another wave of dizziness slammed him, and he could feel his fever rising, burning through him and dragging him toward total exhaustion. Harry tore his eyes from the ceiling and allowed them to sweep the room. Almost immediately he felt something new, a sensation that something was wrong not just outside and on the roof, but inside as well.

  Here, in this room.

  The bed was just as he’d left it, the comforter askew and the sheets kicked aside. It felt like an eternity since he’d curled up in bed, but he fought off his body’s pleas for rest and continued surveying the room. The bureaus, Kelly’s dressing table—everything was fine—nothing disturbed, nothing in the corners, nothing in the shadows. His eyes slid along the mirror over the dressing table, and he caught a glimpse of himself standing there.

  Jesus Christ Almighty.

  He looked like a lunatic, a deranged member of the paparazzi, his hair mussed, his face pasty and pale, eyes ablaze with sickness and terror, a camera dangling from his neck, a recorder in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.

  But before he could worry too much about it he noticed something else in the mirror…something behind him that chilled his blood...

  The closet door was open.

  It had
been closed when he entered the room, he was sure of it.

  I’d have noticed otherwise. I walked right by it.

  Inside, beyond the open door, there was only darkness. No longer simply a closet, it had become a pitch-black portal to a place of nightmares and horror. He slowly brought the Dictaphone to his mouth.

  “They’re inside the house,” he whispered. “I think…I think they may be inside the house. The closet, it…” He gripped the bat tighter with his free hand. His heart felt like it was about to explode from his chest, thudding so violently it left him short of breath. “The closet’s open—it—someone’s opened the closet door.”

  His throat suddenly constricted.

  Not now for Christ’s sake!

  Breathing through his mouth in short shallow intervals, he dropped the Dictaphone back into his pocket, gripped the bat with both hands and backed away, trying to slide closer to the far wall as he made his way toward the hallway. By the time he’d reached the doorway the need to cough had gone. With one foot in the hallway and one still in the bedroom, he raised the bat and readied for a swing were it to come to that.

  “I know you’re in there,” he said, but it came out as little more than a croak. He cleared his throat, and with all the authority he could summon, said, “Come out. Now goddamn it!”

  In answer, deafening silence.

  Gritting his teeth, Harry started back toward the closet, taking each step as if it might be his last. The closer he got the deeper the darkness inside the closet became.

  He continued toward it. Closer…and closer still…

  Pouncing, he threw the switch just inside the doorway and the closet filled with clarifying light. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden intrusion, Harry focused on the clothes hanging on the bar, then the shoes on the floor and finally the very real possibility that someone could very well be hiding in the back of the closet.

  Sudden visions of a crazed psychopath vaulting out from between the hanging clothes flashed across his mind’s eye, his screams and the maniacal cries of the intruder echoing in his head long after the images had gone.

  The inside of the closet door distracted him. The same strange glyphs he’d seen before covered every inch of it. Only this time they appeared to have been painted across the inside of the door in blood, the symbols appearing to have been hastily smeared there by hand.

  Harry pushed the clothes aside with a single violent shove. The hangers screeched as they slid in unison along the pole and out of the way to reveal the back wall of the closet. It too was covered with hieroglyphs.

  He put the bat aside long enough to steady his hands and take a few pictures, then took up the Dictaphone. “The same odd symbols have been marked on the back wall of the closet and on the back of the closet door,” he whispered. “I don’t know what they mean or what they say. They could be a form of communication, an attempt to establish contact with me. Or maybe it’s a warning—I don’t know—but I’ve taken pictures of them, evidence that proves someone’s been in the house.”

  Call the cops—I need to call the cops right now, and—

  But what if they didn’t believe him? What if they wrote him off as a nut again? Even worse, what if they thought he was responsible for these things himself? The glyphs, the footprints…

  Was that possible? Could he have done these things and not realized it?

  Harry studied the glyphs more closely. Though a few looked similar to letters most were just odd lines and designs so it was difficult to tell if any of it looked like his handwriting. And what exactly had it been written in? It could’ve been a red dye or paint of some kind but looked an awful lot like blood. And if it was blood, then whose was it? Could he risk having the police here without knowing for sure if he’d had anything to do with this or what it all meant? He hadn’t made the phone calls to Kenny either, but who would believe that?

  “I didn’t do this,” he told the Dictaphone, clinging desperately to the scraps of sanity he had left. “I did not do this. Whoever hears this tape, I want you to know that. I did not do these things. I don’t know anything more at this point. But someone or something has been in the house and left this behind.”

  Just hearing himself say such things was deeply disturbing, but even more so was the realization that if they’d gotten into the house once they could do it again, probably at will. There were no more boundaries, no more walls or safe zones. All bets were off.

  He looked up at the section of closet ceiling that housed the pull-down stairs leading to the attic. Gaining entry through attic vents in the roof would be difficult at best, but that was surely how they’d gotten in. He eyed the door in the closet ceiling. There was no way for him to lock it. The only option was to wedge something between it and the floor, preventing anyone on the other side from pushing it open and dropping the stairs down, but he couldn’t think of anything tall enough that would do the job properly.

  Harry stepped out of the closet, closed the door, then dragged the chair from Kelly’s dressing table over to it and propped it up under the knob, fixing it in place as tightly as possible. It wouldn’t prevent a determined intruder from gaining entry, but it would certainly slow them down.

  Them.

  Another shuffling sound scraped the roof.

  Whatever was up there was on the move again.

  There was no way to see the roof from inside the house, but at least upstairs in the bedroom he could keep tabs on the movement.

  What if it’s a distraction?

  Could others be trying to get in while he waited here, listening intently to the activity on the roof?

  Other than through the attic, the only other way into the house from the roof was if one hung onto the gutter and swung down and through a window. All the windows were locked, therefore the pane would have to be broken, and now that the storm had gone and the night had become so quiet he’d hear it shatter from anywhere in the house.

  Harry started for the door, stopping just before it to peek out into the dark hallway. Satisfied the area was clear, he hurried to the staircase. Faint gray moonlight touched the last two stairs. The surrounding shadows moved slightly, flickering as if someone had moved by the bay window. A bat or night bird in flight perhaps, or the moonlight disturbed by an unknown presence rustling the bushes.

  Legs weak and shaking, he carefully descended the stairs, then waited and listened. All was quiet. He looked to the den. Even in sparse moonlight, the glow from the room couldn’t be ignored. So many little lights everywhere. The lights on the face of the satellite receiver and DVR, the muted but still lit brand name on the front of the television, the digital clock and multicolored lights—reds, blues and greens—on the DVD player and Garret’s old XBOX. In the corner, two lights on the base for the cordless phone. Though everything was allegedly off, things still moved in the wires, things still live…alive…things that continued to function, receiving and processing information without him, operating on their own in the dark. In today’s world, anyone could stand in virtually any room in their house at any time of day or night and see a vast array of lights, tiny windows, clues to the existence of a silent electronic universe operating independently. Or maybe they weren’t windows at all, but little eyes watching him, keeping track, missing nothing and cataloguing his every move for whatever was on the other side of those lights, the other end of those wires.

  The world never really sleeps. No one’s world does.

  Harry went to the door and flipped on the front lights. A large pool of light immediately filled the darkness around the door, driveway and even a small portion of the front lawn. He expected to hear more movement overhead as a result, but none came. The lone streetlight allowed him to better assess the road, but from what he could tell there was no one out there at the moment either.

  He checked the kitchen. The coyote was standing and staring into space as if it were straining to listen to something far in the distance, which perhaps it was. After a few seconds the animal turned and looked bac
k at Harry, its eyes riddled with concern.

  They’re here.

  Harry nodded to him through the glass.

  I know.

  He returned to the den, flipped the back lights on to illuminate the patio and beyond. Nothing looked out of the ordinary and yet the backyard didn’t look quite right either. Even the mundane seemed menacing, as if it were only a curtain designed to hide that which was hidden beneath. The plastic garden hose caddy, the green hose coiled around it, dirty and kinked in several spots like a dead and decomposing snake…the barbeque grill partially covered with a black tarp ravaged by weather, split and torn in spots as if by some wild animal…the empty patio, the outdoor furniture that normally resided there already packed away in the cellar...it all seemed so…threatening. But Harry had no idea why.

  He focused on the light. There was no way to know if illuminating the area would in anyway discourage the intruders, but it was worth a try.

  At least I’ll see them coming.

  As he crossed by the bay window, he stopped and crouched. He’d seen something out in the road—something that didn’t belong—a quick blur that shouldn’t have been there. He leaned back toward the pane and squinted out into the night.

  Watching the house from the center of the road was a lone figure. Dressed in black, its flesh was deathly pale like the others, but this stranger was small, like a child. Only it wasn’t a child.

  Something else…

  What he’d originally mistaken for pale flesh was in fact a wrap of some sort around the being’s limbs and face.

  Bandages, it—it’s bandaged…

  He stared in disbelief at the being from his nightmare, the same strange bandaged figure he’d seen flashing in his head, quaking about in seizure.

  Apparently disfigured by some sort of birth defect, degenerative disease or injury, the dwarfed figure stood hunched forward, the posture reminiscent of a stroke victim, arms in tight against the chest, wrists protruding from the dirty bandages and curled upward, fingers balled into loose fists. As it took a few steps closer to the house Harry was better able to see the face. It too was wrapped in what appeared to be old and badly worn bandages, but for a slit for the mouth and a pair of jagged eyeholes. Tufts of hair protruded from openings in the bandages wrapped about its head, and although the being appeared to be human, it moved with a strange hobble, as if the legs were not the same length, or perhaps mere stumps. It continued forward nonetheless, and from the angle it took Harry realized the right leg stump was dragging behind along the pavement with a disturbing scraping sound.