13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors, Page 2

  I write my story on and on and on and off, ad infinitum. I had a dream the other night about a guy looking for litter in an old pool of inflatable toys and it weirded me out. I think about this when I'm writing but it doesn't really go anywhere because when I was younger I missed some important lessons. That's why I still write about books, so I'm told.

  My gran used to worry about the thickness of my glasses and the way I squinted. Said I'd be a spooky kid. Said I was destined to be a nosey parker forever, amen. Said I was going to be one of those people; the ones who dream and watch, on and on, ad infinitum. I dream and I watch, sure. I dream and I watch some very dark things, especially since the new package arrived: the black book.

  I type the words and read the pages from sun up 'til sundown, the light leaves me and the room is dark. A cat strolls past under the desk, his patchy fur tickling my bare legs. A screen, a square of pitch perfect light interrupted by tiny ramblings, a window. My fingers, illuminated against the glare of the screen in a silent place, dance across a keyboard and the words lie across the screen: a series of promises and observations and suddenly the room is cooler. But then, I've never written about a book like this before. Never seen pages like this or words so savagely scored into the deep pile of age-old pages.

  A breath tickles the inside of my thigh. I blush. Now I'm warm, it's stuffy, the breeze is tailored to me alone. Something could be amiss but the words keep going down as the cat makes another pass.

  Behind me the dark is noisy: black like velvet, thick like molasses, insincere and not really here. There's few reasons to be afraid of the dark but silence is one of them. The computer screen disappears for an instant, my eyes bulge, and the vision goes red around the rings, the letters stay but the page is elsewhere. I can't remember what I'm writing as the room goes pitch dark for a second and then the noisy little island of computer-light flashes back in view-but wait.

  The flash gets nostalgia dripping into places it hasn't for years. I remember that I'm not even getting paid much to translate this thing, and my name won't appear anywhere for it. I remember I should really change my plaster because the blood is still flowing from where I cut my wrist on the book's ragged brass fringe. I remember the shapes of blood on the book and the warning that followed. The smell of decay.

  I remember I don't have a cat and haven't since I was six.

  I carry on typing, not wanting to stop for a millisecond because I honestly don't want the silence. Tears sting my eyes and a wet patch on my neck tickles cold down the nerves of my spine. I don't have a cat and haven't for years. Again it rubs past my leg, this time harder. I hit the keys as the thing thumps me lightly and I notice for the first time the deadly cold and a smell like mould. Something awful is happening. There are few reasons to be afraid of the dark but silence is one of them because you never know what you might hear.

  I locked the door. That much is sure. The windows are shut tight. The room smells like the cigarette burning in real-time off to the right. From the pitch blackness a tiny orange light flickers, its glow trailed off in a thin strand of smoke. I imagine the smoke up in the dark, circling my head, dancing around something awful on the ceiling, something with too many legs and not enough teeth. I panic and write, type viciously and think inconclusively. I dream and I watch.

  The door is locked-definitely locked-and the room isn't big at all. Five by five metres, tops. I heard nothing, so no one entered. Besides, this doesn't seem like a no-one. My breath catches in my throat as the silence is barely punctuated by the tap tap tap of the keys. This is all nonsense. There is nothing under the desk. My tongue scrapes across the roof of my mouth like sandpaper, so I go to grab my glass of water while repeatedly typing something with my left hand.

  The sound is a blessing. Press your ear to a wall, any wall, then you'll hear the beating of your own heart. Every time. In the dark everything is amplified and the sounds, wishfully, become you. The alternative is too terrifying. The rustle of feet, the beating of a pulse, whispering. Talking is the hardest to forgive. Two people talking has the essence of normality. One person talking aloud in the other room, when there's no one in, now that almost hurts to hear.

  The glass is gone. Did I even put it there?

  I type something quick and short with my right hand and fumble to the left. Under the noise of the keys something sniffs. It's nothing.

  No, not there either. I gasp as the hairy bump comes again, only this time it feels solid, a statement rather than a suggestion. I panic and I whimper, then bite my lip and swear silently. Whatever it is may just leave me alone. Maybe it doesn't know I'm real. Of course, that's bullshit, because I've spent the past hour yawning, typing, and shuffling in my seat. I think I even reached a hand down to stroke it earlier. Actually, come to think, my hand feels sticky and it's too dark to see what colour the mess on the keyboard is.

  Who knows how long this thing has been waiting? Waiting to be read. Still, for all my attempts at subtlety, I type mercilessly and will for a long time because I am dreamed and I am watched. My gran used to say I'd stick my nose somewhere I shouldn't have and she was too damn right. The pale pages on the table beside me-I can just see them in the dull light-are spattered with black lines. I reach a hand out to flip the cursed pages.

  I just about scream when a grunt comes from my feet. A heavy muffled din like an angry pig in a sack, the sort of noise you pray not to hear in the dark, and its right there in front of me. A slurping noise follows soon, but I block it out with harder tapping, my fingers crushing the little black keys like flies. It's there, as muffled as the grunting but more unsettling. When you've decided you're petrified, your own brain goes one step further and tries to rationalise the terror with images and ideas. Ideas and guesses, condemnations and fuel for the raging fire. But they never help. Something really reeks and I think it's the book. Maybe something came from its pages to be dreamed and watched for the first time in years.

  I clench my teeth and wait for it to chew on my toes or lick my foot. I'm prepared for a cold sticky tongue to drag up my hairy leg. I wait, but it never comes, so I summon the courage to dart a hand over to my lamp, while furiously hammering the letters within reach.

  Shit. I knock the lamp and it falls noisily to the floorboards, its wire knocking loudly against the leg table like this: tick, tick, tick. A wire must come loose because it flickers on and off erratically. Within seconds I have a beating head and throbbing eyes. Moments of utter blindness are followed by dazzling light. I'm on a bungee cord between Heaven and Hell and it hurts so bad I'd like to stay in Purgatory. From above I must be a pitiful sight, naked and pale shuddering in front of a lamp in a tiny room, a big and blood-drenched volume on the nightstand beside me.

  I chance a look at the book and there's a sketch of me, vague and doodled.

  A stop-motion shadow scurries over the wall, gargling and grunting as it scampers. There's scratching on the boards behind me, and then something darts between my legs, back under the desk where it makes me sick to think. I decide to sit back in my seat and take a peak under.

  Too dark to tell. Too dark to be sure. The table smells like old book and the walls look printed. My clothes reek of mulch and there's writing on my arms. The book has disappeared now, and something rustles its gorged pages somewhere. In the next room a man's voice mutters as the walls ooze venom. Everything is futile now. Yet, with the next pulse of fractured light, I throw the chair back and make for the door, ignoring the signs that I am dreamed and I am watched, ad infinitum.

  3. BLACK HOLES

  Erin Callahan, United States