The Darkness, Page 3

  A perfect shot.

  * * * * *

  A Visit

  A rapping on the door resonated through the house, smacking into each wall and rebounding with equal force. The sound reached every crack and crevice. A woman jerked her eyes open. The world around her was dark. The blackness of the room began to collapse on her when the sound never repeated. She began to fall back into the trance of sleep.

  The knocking continued; this time she sat up. The eyes adjusted to the obscurity till faint objects could be made out: the television on her cabinet, the floral print border encompassing the perimeter of the room. She shook the man lying next to her. A grumbled retort was the answer. She tried dismissing the thumping as nothing more than wind or a branch on a tree, but the growing ball of ice settling at the pit of her stomach would not drop the notion. She whispered in the dark.

  "Rick, go check the doors," The man raised his forearm, reading the time as 1:18 AM. He threw his arm back on the bed. Shifting covers, the man rose from his slumber, lumbering around the bed in the black. His heavy breath fell deep in the house, and she listened intently to her husband, who walked to each and every possible entrance into the home, checked the lock, then moved on. He stumbled back into the room and fell onto the bed like a corpse dropped into a coffin. She too fell against the comfort of the bed, and almost drifted back into slumber.

  But this time, both had heard it.

  Rick peeled his eyelids back open at the hard knocking. He threw the sheets off him. He slid his hand between the mattresses, fumbling around for a weapon. He grabbed the hilt and dragged out the knife. Rick pressed a button on the side, and watched the blade eject from its sheath with blinding speed. He poked the tip and pushed the blade back in. He shuffled out of the room, knife in hand. A door to his left creaked; his eyes darted the same way. His son had heard as well, and wielded a wooden bat. They looked upon each other with assurance, and forged on. As they snaked through the house, the woman followed close behind, clutching a phone close to her breast. She had already punched in 911, and had her thumb hanging over the talk button. They scuffled across the tile in the living room, inching their way closer to the front door. The mom tried looking out their front window, but could see nothing: no car, no headlights, no body.

  Rick turned the knob, his blade held in hand; the son's bat gripped in two; the mom's phone seized by white knuckles. Rick opened the door: the faces of anticipation morphed into faces of surprise. The grasps on the weapons were eased up and set aside, for the guest. Behind a darkened screen was a familiar face. His eyes hovered higher than the rest of the family. Their suspicious gaze peered out from behind glasses, observing those on the inside in silence. He curled the right corner of his lips up into a snarling grin, barring the brown-yellow teeth that served as prison for the abused tongue. The skin and unshaven hairs on his face followed the movement of his mouth.

  "Hey there Jeffrey," Rick said monotonous.

  "How ya doin?!" The man hollered back. His speech carried the loud greeting and the stench of alcohol through the screen. Rick picked up the scent of vodka, Grizzly, and sweat. A sad mix, but it really made sense.

  The mom was the only one to respond. "We're doing good, Jeffrey. Why don't you come on in?"

  "That'd be swell, sissy." He pulled open the door with a casual swing and walked a path through the doorway. Jeff donned a pair of faded camo-parachute pants. His feet were encased in a new pair of black boots, richer than the man that bore them. They glistened in the faint moonlight beaming through the petite holes in the screen. A dirt-colored jacket hung from his shoulders, and within that was a tan beater. He looked homeless, and probably was. That, Rick didn't mind.

  It was the pockets that made him cautious. There were ten of them alone on his pants. He had pockets on the inside of his jacket, and he had pockets on his boots. Rick wasn't fond of Jeff, nor did he know if he was a hostile person. All he knew is that a man who knocked on his door at one in the morning with the smell of booze and tobacco on him was now standing in his doorway, unwelcome yet given hospitality.

  "So Jeff," she started, "what are you up to this late at night?" The man hesitated for a moment, conjuring up an answer. He scanned the room for it, but the room told him nothing. From the pit of his heart he welled up an excuse.

  "Well, I just stopped by to tell you all goodbye." The son and dad squinted at Jeff. Their uneasiness was quickly replaced with interest in where he was going, and why it was of such urgency that it had to be this late (early) at night (in the morning).

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "That really ain't important. I already talked to mom, dad, and our sis. They're all comin' with me." The same question of destination repeated through their heads.

  "Well that's great!" she exclaimed, unsure. "When do you leave?"

  Jeff scratched his beard, waiting for the answer to fall out. "The others have already gone, you guys're the last ones I had to grab." They all were intrigued; wherever they were taking them was with the rest of the family, so something must have happened, they assumed.

  "Jeff, what happened?"

  His face darkened. "Nothing, we're all going home."

  Jeff's hand lashed to the inside of his coat, and in a silver blur came the bullet. The shot rang in the minds of the parents, but the bullet rang in the skull of the boy. The fragment of steel was lodged in the depths of his mind. The bullet that entered through the space between the eyes left a black tunnel through which blood poured out in a stream. His eyes went cross and he fell to the floor, the thud of his skull against tile resonating through the stillness of the house. Rick froze; the wife wailed in agony over the bleeding corpse. Jeff took no mercy; he used the new boots to send Rick crashing to the floor. He choked on air as Jeff stood atop him, applying pressure to his ribcage-enough to fracture. He aimed the revolver down at the face of the beaten man, and fired off two rounds into the eyes, each puncturing and squirting blood all across the carpet of the living room and the leg of the assailant. The sound of sobs and the slow beep of a dialing number whipped Jeff back around to face his sister, a horrid mess almost more grotesque than the bodies before her. The other side of the line answered, asking what the emergency was. Jeff fired off another round, this one pushing its way through the soft neck of the woman in front of him. The brute force threw her against the wall, where she slid to the ground, choking on her own gushing liquids. It poured out her neck and mouth in waterfalls, drenching the white of the walls and the brown of the tile.

  As she drowned in her own blood, Jeff walked over to the phone.

  "Hello? What is the emergency?"

  "There is none. We're just going home."

  The operator listened to a gunshot on the other end.

  * * * * *

  This concluded the end to the short collaboration, The Darkness. The author thanks you for taking the time to read this work, and requests that you please leave a review on the site of which you have downloaded this free book. You can check out more horror/suspense on the author's blog, www.horrorzealot.com. You can also contact him at his email, [email protected].