Unfinished Tales, Vol. 1

Fear of the Dark

Mike stood in the backyard under the old oak, sucking on a cigarette and watching the sky grow dark and angry. A breeze tossed brown leaves in swirls, then piled them against the fence. Mike knew eventually he’d have to bag them up. He took a drag.

Behind him, he heard a window slide open.

“Mike, you coming in?”

Another drag.

“Mike!”

“Just give me a moment,” he said, clenching his hand into a fist.

“You okay?” she asked.

Mike looked around in the dim light, into the neighbors’ backyards. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

A burst of wind swayed the tree overhead, leaves gnashing together. Mike’s cigarette blew out. He gave the sky his best evil eye then flicked the butt into the next yard.

Off in the distance, lightning flashed. Mike counted, “One…Two…Three…F…” The sonic boom washed over him in a loud, chest-shaking rumble. Mike smiled and trekked into the house.

Mike found her on her knees in front of the couch, bent forward, looking for something. He stared, appreciating that her cotton shorts required little of his imagination. She sat up, tucked a long black bang behind her left ear and looked at him.

“See anything you like?”

Mike smiled. “What’re you looking for?”

“My panties. Know where they went?”

He shrugged. She stood, scooped up her backpack. “I gotta go. I’ll be late for class.” She trod over and kissed him on the cheek. Mike placed his hands on her narrow hips, pulled her close and kissed her, taking his time. She put a hand on his chest, stepped back, smiling.

“You doing office hours tonight?”

“I’m supposed to, but...”

“Maybe I’ll drop by after class,” she said.

“You know, I will be doing office hours this evening.” He watched her walk to the front door. “Hey, Michele, be careful. The storm and all.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure thing, Professor.” Then she was gone.

Mike yawned, scratched himself and shuffled his way to the office, soles of his Birkenstocks rasping against the hardwood floor. He made the area ready – flipped open the blinds, flicked off the lights and mashed on the computer – then settled down in his rickety wooden banker’s chair.

Damn, he thought. I was going to get a beer. Too much effort. Fuck it. He tilted back, hands behind his head, and stared out the window while Windows loaded. The lightning outside created almost a strobe effect, the oak twisting as though it’d pull rooty feet from the ground and walk off.

Once his desktop settled, Mike checked his email, did 15 minutes of surfing, then reluctantly opened Word, selecting the latest chapter in his already late novel. He reread the previous day’s work, correcting as he went, and wondered not for the first time whether it was all wasted effort. So much of it sounded like amateur gibberish.

An hour passed and Mike never once looked up. He noted, perhaps in a subroutine, that the sun was gone and thought to check the clock.

Thunder shook the house, rattling the black-and-white photos hanging from the walls. Then two more rumbling booms, one overlapping the other. Mike wondered if it were an earthquake. He saved the chapter and sat back, peering out the window.

Light flickered and something moved out in the back yard. Mike sat forward, squinted.

“The hell was that?” he said.

More thunder. The windows shook, then another strobe of light, shadows dancing from the fence to the bushes to the oak. Though the light showed him different, Mike saw movement in the hazy blackness. The power went out.

He stood, slipped out of the office, down the hall and into the dining room. Ten feet separated him from the wide sliding-glass door. Beyond, he could see most of the yard; the redwood deck, the oak the back fence and its hedge-like ivy. Plenty of shadows, places to hide.

Mike put on his glasses.

Something large and black stood just beyond the oak, looking back at him, chest heaving, hands on the ends of long, muscular black arms clenched into fists.

Mike could not will his body to move, lungs to breathe, eyes to blink. His tongue was dry and his heart hammered against his ribcage. He could feel his own pulse along his neck.

Lightning flashed and Mike stared at nothing.

“Fuck…” Mike said, under his breath. He backed out of the dining room then ran to the front door, grabbing his brown leather satchel and house keys. He dashed out the front door and down the sidewalk toward campus.

Mike stayed as close as he could to the streetlights, nearly running through the dark places in between, propelled by the wind. He thought he heard movement behind him, but did not look. It might’ve been his imagination. He kept walking, moving toward the light.

Five minutes later, he crossed Jefferson and strode onto campus, and for the first time wondered why there was so much thunder and so little rain. He could smell it on the air. He slowed and looked up at the clouds racing across the sky, churning and undulating like live things. He glanced back the way he’d come. All the lights were out; storefronts, apartments, streetlights.

Mike took a deep breath, laughed. He was being paranoid, letting the dark get to him. It’d been a long time. He made himself walk his normal shuffling pace to Eddard Hall where his office sat on the top floor, tucked away under an eve at the end of a hall where he couldn’t bother anyone. No one found it by accident, which he liked.

At the door to Eddard Hall, Mike glanced back, paying particular attention to the shadows. Across the street, under another old oak, Mike thought he saw someone sitting on a bench, but when lightning pulsed, it was vacant. He looked up and down the sidewalk.

“Anyone there?” he yelled.

Mike slipped into the building and over to the stairs where he began the five-story climb to his office. Every half-floor, the staircase switched back on itself. Mike let his left hand trace the top of the wooden banister as he climbed, tapping in time to the song in his head, occasionally mumbling a lyric.

“Face the thing that should…”

He heard the door open below him and stopped. It squeaked then whisked shut, bottom seal brushing the floor as it closed. Mike peered over the rail, down between the flights. No one emerged, though when the lightening flashed, he thought he saw the shadow of a person stretch across the lobby floor.

“Hello?”

Lightening flickered again, again Mike saw the shadow.

“Hello?”

Thunder shook the building. He climbed the final two flights, but stopped at the top to catch his breath. After 45 years, he just wasn’t in great shape. He resolved to start running tomorrow.

He resisted the urge to look down, instead looking toward his office at the other end of the hall. Someone had turned off the hall lights, so Mike flipped the switch and waited for the fluorescents to flicker to life.

Once he was sure they on and buzzing, he moved toward his office. Halfway down the hall, he heard a pop behind him. He spun.

The far panel of lights, immediately next to the stairwell, was out. Mike thought it odd, then started moving again. As he reached the next panel of lights, he heard another sputtering pop. Again he turned. The panel of lights next to the stairwell had relit, but now the next one closer to him was out.

Mike felt the rush of adrenaline like someone had punched him in the stomach. He swayed and blinked to clear his head. His eyes flicked upward, counting the panels of lights between himself and the one that was out. He began backing toward his office. As he reached the next panel of lights, the one down the hall popped back on, then the next closer to him popped off.

He reached in his pocket for his keys, still moving. They caught on the edge of his frayed jeans and tumbled to the floor. Never taking his eyes off the unlit panel of lights, he lowered himself and felt around like a blind man.

The off-panel moved one closer, the panel where it had been flickered to life. Two panels separated Mike and the dark. His hands found the keys, and on his knees he began backing toward his office. The keys clanked against the floor and bit into his hand each step.

The dark kept pace.

Mike’s feet hit wall. He stole a glance at his door, then held his keys up between he and the dark. His hands shook as he searched the ring. When he found the key, he gripped it between his thumb and finger and started poking toward the lock, reluctant to take his eyes away from the hall.

On his third attempt, he missed and dropped the keys. The dark moved one panel closer. One lit set of lights separated him from the dark.

“What do you want!” Mike yelled, picking up his keys. Mike’s brain struggled to make sense of what was happening, eyes beginning to tear up, chest heaving with quick intakes of breath. He found the key and jabbed it in the lock.

The dark moved closer, right next to him. He closed his eyes and waited. He thought he could hear breathing, but it was low, almost inaudible beneath the sound of the wind and thunder outside. He opened his left eye, peered sideways. The light above him went out the same time the unlit panel flickered back to life.

Mike knew his eyes were open, but he could not see. His world was black. He could feel a weight pressing on his back from above, and a rumbling, the heave of a chest, the exhale a low growl. Clawed hands grasped the sides of his head, nails digging under his jaw. He felt himself lifted by his jaw, up off his knees, feet dangling into dark space.

He began to scream.

Then he was falling, collapsing against the rough wood grain of his office door, slump-sliding to the floor. He opened his eyes to see the dark moving back down the hall, toward Michele.

As she began to scream, Mike closed his eyes, curled up in a ball and tried not to cry.