DARK REALITY-A Horror Tale (3 page)

That kind of thing is bigger than a missing beer or a shabby coat rack.

Larger than a strange pile of rocks that some boy must have gathered, photographs in a place they weren't before or a gun that had never existed.

And it was stronger and more important than a wife switching brothers or a different birthday or a change in attitude about military service.

Death, in any reality, was final.

I reached the back door, flung it wide, and stumbled down the three cement steps to the dark back yard. "Davey?" I thought I was choking, I couldn't breathe, I had to find him and stop...

There was a gun shot and it was so loud and sudden it shook me from my feet to my jawbone. I ran straight into the darkness not caring what happened to me, it didn't matter about me, it was about changing things even if I thought I probably couldn't. It was about making a change that mattered to me so much that it meant I was willing to do anything to make it.

I fell over something, let out a scream, and felt with my hands in the dark only to find what I prayed I wouldn't. I felt a man's form, my hands sliding up ribs to shoulders and the dark retreated as a beam of bright white light from a flashlight shone down on Davey's still face.

Millie stood over him with the light, a gasp escaping her. She fell to her knees. I saw the blood on his shirt, the hole, the gun powder burns. I saw his eyes rolling back and I yelled, "Davey, stay! Don't die, Davey, please!"

In some far distance I heard the crackling sounds of rustling bushes as the anonymous killer (or had it been the Grim Reaper, the Wild Thing that Feed on Souls, the Destroyer?) fled the yard, lost in the darkness.

Millie was weeping. I was crying openly.

Davey shut his eyes and he died.

#

Today, two months since we buried Davey for the second time, I woke to find Millie missing from bed. I looked in the closet and her clothes were gone. I don't care. In fact, I'm relieved. If reality is slipping again, I hope she's not in it.

I got dressed for work feeling hungover. I have been imbibing too much. It's beginning to tell on me. That is the least of my worries.

Downstairs I look in the hall at the cabinet and it's not there. I sigh and sit down wearily on the bottom stair step. In place of the cabinet is an old chest, rectangular, with brass hinges. I don't want to look in it.

Instead, I make coffee, fill my travel mug and go outside to start the truck. It's almost Christmas and there's snow on the ground.

In the driveway is a maroon Chevy Suburban. I feel in my pants pocket and withdraw a key with an electronic lock-unlock beeper on the chain with it.

That's okay, I tell myself, thank you, world. The truck was old. I was hoping to get to trade it in anyway. The Suburban is a luxury boat and I enjoy it as I drive to work. When I enter the garage, Barney, the tire man, says to me, "Hey, Lane, the boss is always late, eh? We got it covered, though, you betcha. No ass wipe is slacking around here."

I stand still trying to think. Trying to make it all straight and logical, trying to make sense of it happening again. I am not a mechanic. I am the boss of the place. I either own it or I manage it. Will these changes go on forever? Am I the only one slipping between realities or does Barney do it, does Millie do it, do we all do it?

At lunch I eat at Big Boy Steaks. The burgers aren't half as good as Partners served, and they cost twice as much. After lunch, in my office filling out unfamiliar work forms, Millie comes by and says, "What are you going to do about being late with the child support?"

I look at her bug-eyed. "Well?" She has her hands on her hips. I don't know why I ever thought she was pretty.

"I'll...I'll handle it." Saying anything else is going to prolong this argument and disorient me to the point I'll just start gibbering and drooling.

"You better handle it, or your ass is mine, Mister. Do you think Davey and me can live on air?"

"Davey?" I felt a pain in my chest. I might be having a heart attack. Or the anxiety is so great it's going to give me one.

"Your son? You never paid him a minute's attention when we were married, what do I expect, right? Get that check to me by 5pm. Or you'll be sorry." Her high heels were expensive and her hair was long, shiny, and expertly cut. She gave me one last hard stare and left the office.

I put my head down on the desk and wondered what I was going to do. Davey, my brother--who I had failed to rescue from death's clutches twice--was now Davey, my son. And I knew beyond any doubt it was going to be the same person, but younger. Maybe the Davey I played ball with, the Davey whose hair always fell over his eyes, the boy younger than me who I had to keep an eye on so he wouldn't get hurt, or fail his math test, or...go off to war.

Before I saw him I had to find out what was in the chest in the hallway at home.

Maybe there was something in it this time that would save a life instead of take it. But if I had to bet on it...I guess I wouldn't give it good odds. Because whatever is happening, either to the whole world or just to me, doesn't seem to relinquish the dead to the living for very long.

It only gives out a miserly loan that has to be paid in full, with interest. I don't know that for sure. I don't know anything from one day to the next
for sure
. But all evidence points to the fact that these new mixed up, jumbled lives I am living are just like the one that I started out with in one particular. I never get to keep Davey for long.

THE END

Thank you for reading. Please read on for the beginning chapters of my latest novel, BANISHED.

BANISHED

By

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright@Billie Sue Mosiman, 2011, All rights reserved.

"The Magician rearranges the Universe to make himself the center, the Mystic rearranges himself to find the center."

THE LITTLE DEATH

She could barely breathe she was so hot. She could hear the night birds call and the rustle of her mother’s palm grass skirt as she moved about the small hut. She could see just the light from the flames of the fire in the center of the floor, but she could not make out anything beyond.

She closed her eyes to blessed darkness and wondered when she would die. She knew she would never be well again, never stand and walk, never kiss her mother’s cheek, or feel the comfort of her mother’s loving embrace. She had not lived long, a handful of years, so there was not much to miss. Yet she knew she must fight against death. She must not let it take her willingly.

A blanket of coolness slipped over her bare skin and it was not from the water her mother had been sponging onto her. She tried to reopen her eyes to discover the cause, but her lids were too heavy. She was so hot! The coolness that temporarily enveloped her was not helping. She wished they would carry her to the sea and float her in the waves.

Dark grew darker. Grew to pitch black. Grew to a void. She struggled to take a breath. It would not come; her lungs would not obey. She thought, Death has me. Death has slipped his arms around me and holds me so tightly I cannot breathe.

Faintly she heard her mother’s wails, but she couldn’t lift a hand for her to come near, nor could she whisper the compassion she felt for the loved one she was leaving behind. She couldn’t even say goodbye.

Take me to the sea,
she begged of Death.
Take me from this heat and pain and let me float in the cool frothy waves. I always loved…I always loved the sea.

The heat grew like a malevolent cloud in the darkness until it filled the void. She couldn’t feel her body. She knew she was but a pinpoint of matter, a tiny bit of consciousness floating in the emptiness. It seemed time had stopped or it was moving so slowly it would last forever and nothing for her would ever change.

I’m not ready
, the child complained.
I’m too young.

And then she was swept off into the dark beyond where there was no more thought or heat or life.

She was done with this world.

A NEW TRUE BEGINNING

“
Life. A wriggling mass of cells blindly replicating, always in motion, endlessly in search of food. Is that life? They say it is.”

The girl lay dying. Her week-long fever had put her into a coma and though her mother kept bathing her with cool water, her skin felt like hot coals. Though fevered, her light coffee-colored skin shone smooth and beautiful as a river stone in the flickering firelight.

In the little one-room shack made from date palm leaves the heat was stifling. Not one stray breeze made its way through the open doorway. Flies were so thick they congealed the air and had to be batted away constantly from the comatose child.

The mother, frantic about losing her only child, knowing in her heart death stood close with a skeletal arm extended, ran from the hut crying to the night heaven. She sped along the lone path through the jungle to the witch doctor’s hovel and stood outside wailing loud enough to wake the dead.

In her native tongue she told the witch doctor about the dying child and begged for him to save her.

It seemed to take him forever to gather his special feathers, shells, rocks, and sticks tied in bundles with strings of dried pig skin. As the mother raced back along the path to her baby, the witch doctor stayed at her side, pacing her, a pale sickle moon at their backs.

Bursting into the hut where a small fire in the center of the floor burned, grotesque shadows swathed the little girl who lay against the back wall. Both mother and witch doctor knew it was over and done with.

The child’s arm lay limp off to one side, her head was turned toward them, her eyes open, glazed, and forever stilled.

The mother turned to the witch doctor and in her grief made the ultimate request. She knew of the rumors.

“They say you have raised the dead. Raise her up!”

“I have only raised a few animals,” he said. “Never a human being.”

“Raise her!”

It was true he was renowned across the island as the most powerful witch doctor ever to have lived, but what the woman was asking he thought was surely beyond his powers. He had brought a dead chicken back to life. A dead dog. And once, even a dead panther, just to see if he could. But a human being? He had not dared try. He was not even sure that the gods would allow him that kind of power.

“I will give you anything,” the mother cried. She beat her chest and rolled her eyes. “Anything! Anything!” She was close to madness.

The witch doctor’s countenance darkened, his eyes took on a glow. His gaze left the mother and settled on the child. He stepped closer, two steps. Three. He went to his haunches and studied the girl. She was undeniably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her skin was lighter than most islanders, as if it were lit from within by soft white flame. Her nose and lips and eyes and brow were perfection, and the face was shaped like a heart. Her long dark hair was smooth, shiny with whale oil, and it fell in curls like coiled snakes from her scalp. He reached out and trailed his fingers along her cheek. It was cold, so cold. It was a shame she was dead. It seemed to Mujai that the gods were intentionally cruel when children died.

Suddenly, and without knowing how it happened, the witch doctor fell in love with the dead child. If he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected he was under a spell not of his own making. His face softened, his lips parted, and he let out a little sigh. He swiveled on his haunches to face the mother at the hut’s door opening.

She was silhouetted in the firelight, a gaunt figure with clenched hands held before her breasts. He could feel her grief as if it were an extra person in the hut. It loomed over her, a dark, heavy figure bearing down on her thin shoulders.

“You will give anything if I raise her up? Anything? You will even give up your child to me?” He must make sure she meant it.

A look of dawning understanding and then dismay filled the mother’s eyes. She hung her head. Her tears kept falling, drenching her sweaty naked breasts. She had to decide. Bury her child or see her rise up and walk again, alive and well, but belonging to someone else. Belonging to…

“Yes,” she said, jutting out her chin in defiance. “Yes, I told you, yes. Anything. If you must take her, then take her, as long as she is alive again.”

The witch doctor stood and came to the child’s mother. “When I raise her, she will be mine. You understand? Forever mine. I will take her from here and she will live with me. One day, when she is old enough to wed, she will be my bride. Tell me you understand.”

Since the mother made no protest beyond the horror of what she was doing to her only child reflecting from her eyes, the pact was sealed.