Personal Effects: Dark Art

26

The lizard part of my brain—the part hardwired for instinct and survival—ran the numbers and grunted a deduction. Cold ground beneath me. The overpowering, stale aroma of earth, dust, rat shit. Boards creaking less than two feet above my prone, bleeding body. Crawl space.

And that was my last rational thought for a while.

Blind. Blind like Richard Drake. Eyes open now, staring into the abyss, and yes, yes, it stared back at me, an ancient thing, a thing from before before, and I was sinking into its planet-sized onyx pupil, drowning in its inky aqueous humor, feeling my body pull into itself, crushed by the absence of light, warmth, sound, everything.

Everything… but the fear.

Fingers like rail spikes ripped at me, impossibly cold, burning my skin. Shrieks fell short in my throat; there was no air in which they could be heard. But my mind was alive with sounds: the marching of spider’s legs, the rising drone of locusts, the swirling scattering of autumn leaves—tktktkt—the roar of rockslides stones rattling in a clothes dryer, she tumbles and tumbles and now the soul-rending sound of a chuckle, the noise thunderclouds make as they collide and devour one another, growing fat and black for the storm to end all storms.

The Dark Man breathed. Panted, like a hungry dog. I imagined its forked tongue slick with crude-oil drool. It was omniscient. Omnipresent.

“Not… real,” I muttered.

But the shadow-chill slid over me, wrapped tight like a wetsuit, and I could feel the black, January lake water seeping through the membrane of my skin, full-body inoculation, a cure for life—life, the disease, the virus, the thing that must not be. It spoke back to me in its non-voice, a liquid language, sloshing affirmation in my inner ear: oh-so-real, tktktk, oh-so-mine… .

Certainty. This was where I would die. This was my grave. The grave for the meddler, the gravedigger, dead, dead’s dead, what’s dead’s buried, you’d be right to leave it alone.

Buried.

I rocked, weightless in the void, my mind seizing upon this. Join him, Daniel had said. Be buried with him. What did that mean?

Was Richard Drake’s body buried down—

I howled. The black stuff streamed into my eyes now, tears in reverse, piercing my ducts, turning my eyeballs into cold marbles.

—no no, focus, think of something else, Drake, yes, buried here? Then who’s the blind man in The Brink? Body in the crawl space… I need light, I need to see.

I screamed. Razor blades tearing beneath my fingernails now. I screamed again. Echoless.

no. no-tktktk-no-light-so-dark-no-light-now

No. No matches, no lighter, no flashlight in my satchel, nothing in the bag to beat away the

BZZZT.

What the f—

BZZZT.

This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t hearing that.

BZZZT.

I’d gone mad.

The black poured on in earnest now, slithering into my nose, tugging up my lips, squirting though my clenched teeth. I felt it surge through my pierced earlobes (Christ, I haven’t worn hoops in five yeaaaowww), the ink squirming through them like tapeworms.

My frozen hands fumbled to my satchel, to the buzzing thing inside—the impossible thing, no signal, no sender—my stupid fingers finally wrapping around Richard Drake’s cell phone. The cracked thing vibrated in my palm as I pulled out into the black, its LCD screen an impromptu flashlight, a beacon.

I read its screen, not daring to press it to my face, too frightened to listen. INCOMING CALL: SOPHRONIA POOLE. I held it high. The crawlspace came alive in its pale light—floorboards above, rotten earth beneath, limestone foundations. Three feet away, to my left: a crumpled, mold-soaked shoebox.

And there, looming near the box. Him.

It.

The Dark Man.

Picosecond glimpse

obsidian fire, shape of a man, crouching, depthless

Nothing made sense

shifting, intelligent, soundless black flames

anymore

torn paper, burned paper

Madness standing

electrified contortionist, jointless sea-snake limbs jigging, kicking wild

by the box

arms conducting palsied, unholy Butoh dance

It’s guarding

ice-pick fingers twitch-blur-tugging invisible upright bass strings

the box

head rocking side-to-side, gleeful mania, seesaw-seesaw, cheeks clapping against obsidian shoulders

So what’s

head of horns, head of vipers, head of smooth, polished stone

inside

faceless, but inside the nothing: beyond-black eyes… beyond- black teeth

the box?

Tktktk.

I gritted my teeth, trembling. I pointed my makeshift lantern at its face.

“Would you be mine, motherfucker?” I whispered. “Could you be mine?”

The Beast roared.

I clawed my way toward the crumpled shoebox, toward my boogeyman. I tasted dirt on my lips, felt it turn to bitter sludge against my teeth. This box was the “X,” the thing Drake knew/didn’t know, the thing his subconscious prayed was here. Endgame secrets, covered in decay.

The shade-shape splashed onto the crawl space ceiling, screeching, talons swiping the earth, raising no dust, leaving no marks. I edged closer.

“Unfinished business?” I growled, holding the glowing phone ahead of me. “Someone holding on, on the other line?” I gripped it tight, groaning as I inched forward—my body was beaten, nearly broken. “On the other side, maybe?”

Or maybe coincidence, bad timing, Rachael’s voice said from a lifetime ago, as we’d chased Lucas. Bad battery, battery going dead…

The phone’s plastic case squealed and snapped in my hand. A hunk of plastic dug into my palm (the battery cover, I thought, panicked) then tumbled away. The cell’s screen flickered. The device gave a malcontent chime. Fuck.

“Not stopping,” I said, shivering. Vapor surged from my mouth as I gasped. “Not done. Can’t let it go.”

My torn, bleeding fingers pressed against the shoebox. The phone chimed another warning. The Dark Man wailed a laugh, and descended.

Earth became tar and we sank together into this new murk, his shark’s teeth gnashing my legs, my ribs, and I still clutched the sputtering lantern, still tugged at the box bobbing on the slick, viscous surface. It tipped, and the contents of the box were swirling in the ether now, barely visible in the phone-glow.

My capillaries seized, freezing. My eyes fluttered, lungs burned.

I snatched a swirling sheet of paper—

Dear Danny, I have to leave, and I want you to know why…

—and then I gripped the document beside it, the copperplate letterhead already familiar to my mind—

CENTRAL INTELLI…

—and then my fingers found the photograph.

The phone peeped a feeble chime. Battery nearly gone. Its splintered screen light dipped from white to gray.

Do not humanize the Inkstain, Mr. Taylor, Drake cooed, far away. The only human thing about it is the souls it shreds.

The Dark Man began to shred.

The last of my air was lost in a churning, gurgling scream. The pain was indescribable. I stared at the photo with dead man’s eyes.

A short man, angular face, crew cut, unfamiliar military fatigues. ALEXANDROV, PIOTYR, the typeface said in the photo’s yellowed border.

DECEASED, it said.

The tearing and gnashing ceased. Sweet oxygen rushed into my lungs. I gasped, sucked in the air, terrified and grateful.

As the broken phone’s light dimmed to nothing, I looked at the crawl space, at myself.

No new gashes, not a tooth mark. My clothes were intact. The letter and photos lay by my face, bone-dry.

The Dark Man… if he was ever here… was gone.

I closed my eyes, and passed out.