Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (69 page)

And then it was over.

The cabin was silent.

The beds were filled with immobile bodies and lifeless eyes.

The beds were filled with corpses.

He had pushed himself into the warm August night, and he had run cabin-to-cabin, shouting amidst the drone of the crickets and cicadas. He threw open every door, finding bodies littered about each cabin. He moved through each building, moving among the bodies, his body pulsing with adrenaline. After searching the nine cabins, every one filled with corpses, he made his way to the Assistant Director’s Cabin. Elysa Bucci was dead in her bed, eyes wide in shock, blankets wrapped around her neck like a Siberian noose. He moved down a trail through the woods, pushed through knee-high grass laden with sleeping grasshoppers, and he found the dogs barking outside the Anthony Barnhart

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Director’s House. Annie and Ladybug. They swooned around his legs, leaping and jumping, tails wagging ferociously. He pushed through the back door and entered the house. He flicked on a lightswitch, and in the sudden burst of light, he saw the husband and wife piled over one another. The husband’s body was riddled with knife wounds, and the wife was covered in his blood. Kyle’s stomach lost it, and he pitched against the humming refrigerator, opened his mouth, and vomited all over the tile. He took several gulps of air, head pounding with pain, thick blood winding its way through his veins. He heard the sound of nails against the floor, and he turned to see the two dogs licking blood off the face of their owner, whining together, unsure of what to make of this freak occurrence.
You’re not alone
, Kyle thought to himself.
You’re not alone
.

He sat in his Explorer, turned on the radio, heard only static. He leaned back in his seat and stared through the windshield, gazing up at the moon wreathed in stars, hanging poignantly above the tips of the pines that stood still even in a gentle breeze. He clutched the steering wheel in white-knuckled hands, and as the adrenaline drained from his system, he found that he shook uncontrollably. He balled his fists, closed his eyes, fought with himself. Every muscle in his body twitched, and the floodgates behind his eyes opened, and he curled into a fetal position in the front seat, knees pulled up to his chin, arms wrapped around his folded legs. The tears streamed like a hurricane, and he soaked his knees with the salty tears, the images of the fallen and broken rushing through his mind like a cryptic picture-show.

Sarah
. Her name echoed over-and-over in his mind. He set out that night, and the headlights of his Explorer illuminated the roads before him. His eyes fell upon a few crashes, cars in ditches or wrapped around trees, broken glass and twisted automobile parts strewn across the roads. He made his way into town, and he slowed as he drove. The lights in MCDONALD’S were turned on. One of those 24-hour restaurants. A large Greyhound Bus was parked in the parking lot, and inside the restaurant, bodies were pitched over tables and strewn across the floor. The lights sputtered and sparked as he drove past. He took the highway west. Halfway there he nearly ran out of gas, and he pulled into a SHELL STATION. He walked inside, saw the attendant lying face-down on the cash register, blood trailing down the sides of the machine and forming pools on the counter. He took one look at the woman and walked back outside. He swiped his credit card, shocked to discover that the fuel pumps still worked. He fueled up the car, not even looking at the price of gas, and then continued on his journey. As dawn began to rise, he pulled his wearied and nearly empty Explorer into the driveway of the ranch-style home. He quickly leapt out of the vehicle and ran up to the front door. It was locked. He kneeled down and grabbed a key from underneath the welcome mat, thrust it into the lock, turned. The door opened, swinging wide, and the parlor greeted him.

He stood in the parlor, and a quiet rain began to fall. The kind of rain that makes one sleepy, the rain that taps gently on the windows like a jazz symphony, the kind of rain that children laugh and dance and play in. But the rain was nothing but an overture, and he slowly made his way through the house. Each room held great memories. He had cuddled with her on the sofa before the fireplace. He had shared a romantic dinner with her in the dining room on Valentine’s Day. They had watched chick flicks and the occasional horror film on the plasma-screen, now blank and ominous. He made his way to her bedroom, and he slowly pushed open the door. The afternoon sunlight came between drawn blinds, splayed across the far wall in concentric, vertical bars. His eyes immediately fell to the bed, and all strength left him. He pitched to his knees, steadied himself with one hand against the wall, and his jaw dropped and tears began to brim in his eyes as he gazed upon her lifeless corpse, Anthony Barnhart

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wrapped tight in the bed-sheets, the face stained with blood, the hands having become claws gripping the sheets in mangled clumps. “Sarah…” Her name escaped his lips. His head fell low, and he folded into a ball upon the floor, and he meditated upon her name as the tears inched down his face, and soon he had fallen asleep, the memories overtaking him. His dreams were fraught with terror and death, the cruelest macabre.

He was torn from the dream. Darkness cloaked the room. Not even moonlight came through the window’s blinds. The thunder had awakened him, the booming thunder-claps that shake buildings’

foundations. The picture-frames on her dresser shuddered with each new roar from the heavens. In the impermeable darkness, he groped at his eyes. A ferocious lightning bolt danced its white-hot light through the room, and his eyes were upon the bed: the sheets lied at the foot of the mattress, and Sarah’s body was nowhere to be seen. His heart leapt within his chest, a concoction of excitement and dread.

He pulled himself to his feet, and the brisk light from the piercing bolt faded. He stood in darkness. “Sarah.” Her voice came between quivering lips. He put his hand upon the bed, felt the cold mattress. “Sarah.”

He looked over to the door. It was open, swung into the hallway. He moved about in the shadows, entered the corridor.

“Sarah.”

Lightning cast its light into the house, the light curving upon the walls and glinting in the glass picture frames fastened to the walls on either side. He stood in the hallway, and the lightning illuminated nothing but a dead-end that branched into the parlor and kitchen.

“Sarah?” His voice grew louder, though it found itself filled with more tension. He crept forward. Thunder shook the walls. Dust fell from the wooden beams held high above. He put one hand against the wall, felt sick to his stomach. Lightning sent its light into the house once more, and at the end of the hallway he saw a figure: a figure in pajamas, the figure of a girl.

Her head was lowered, hair draping around her face. Her arms were plastered to her side, and he could have sworn the hands were curled up into claws.

“Sarah?” He moved forward slowly.

His eyes adjusted, and the figure didn’t move.

She continued to stare at the ground.

He went forward some more; she looked up.

Lightning danced, reflecting in her eyes—and he saw something ghastly, horrible, morbid in those eyes: the eyes that once spoke volumes of laughter and love now held the kindling of an evil fire. He staggered backwards, and her mouth opened, and the most hideous and bloodcurdling scream escaped her lips. He turned and ran into her bedroom, legs carrying him; he pulled the door shut, heard her running towards the room; he locked the bolt, heard her slamming against the door. He grabbed her dresser and thrust it against the door, stepped back, heart pounding, mind racing, head spinning. He sat upon the bed, heard her slamming her shoulder up against the door, heard those god-awful shrieks.

It continued until morning.

When daylight came, he moved the dresser out of the way, cautiously opened the door. There were claw-marks over the walls, bulges and splinters in the door. But Sarah was nowhere to be found.

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∑Ω∑

The geese are returning from the water, moving about in the grass once more, squawking and eating. Kyle looks back over at Adrian, who continues to stare at the grave. Kyle says, “I never saw Sarah after that. I don’t know where she went.” He kneels down beside his friend, puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be tough, Adrian. But you have to let her go.”

Adrian shakes his arm away, growls, “Just be quiet, all right?”

Kyle sighs and stands.

The sun continues to sink lower.

“Adrian. We really need to go.”

“In a minute.”

“I don’t want to leave you out here.”

“I’m not asking you to stay.”

Kyle looks back over at the setting sun. “They’re going to be out soon…”

As if on cue, the first howls of the dark-walkers carry up into the warm March sky. Adrian stands, brushing mud from the knees of his jeans. “Okay.”

IV

Carla sits in the darkness of the sanctuary, and she hangs her head low and hears their growls and screams permeating the thick walls. She clutches the Bible tightly in her hands, and her clenched eyelids beckon a memory that has remained rooted in her mind ever since the day the seemingly dead began to rise:

∑Ω∑

The choir began to take their seats. She sat in the back row, exhausted, and her eyelids dared to slide shut. She clutched the coffee-cup in her hands and took a long, burning drink. The preacher, a heavyset man with wide-rimmed glasses and cutting blue eyes, took his position behind the podium and opened his Bible. “We left off last week in Luke 21:36 with ‘That ye may be accounted worthy.’

The last phrase in this verse is what I want to talk about: ‘And stand before the Son of Man.’ When the Harpazo, the Rapio, the Rapture takes place, we who are God’s people will be ‘caught up to meet Jesus in the air.’ This is what the Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Jesus said in John 14:13, ‘Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.’ This, I feel, is talking about the very same thing that Paul is talking about in 1

Thessalonians 4:16-17, where he writes that ‘For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of the archangel, and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first…’”

She had emptied her cup. She set it on the pew beside her.

The preacher shook his Bible in the air. “Let’s go now to 2 Timothy 3:1. ‘This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.’ My friends, we are living in the most perilous times we have ever lived in. On the world stage, one slip, one miscommunication, one miscalculation, one spark could plunge us into a Nuclear Holocaust. Just recently, the weather in the U.S. alone has spawned two huge storms bearing down upon the Gulf Coast, and possibly even the Eastern Coastline. We are Anthony Barnhart

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starting to see food being rationed where we buy our beans rice, corn and other foods. The seas and the waves are roaring—just as Jesus predicted in Luke 21:25. We are living in the time that Paul told Timothy about! A lot of friends, and myself included, are having prophetic dreams. We have a feeling that something big, something devastating, is about to happen. Could this be the Rapture? Jesus said in Matthew 24:36 that we would not know the day nor the hour, but that we would know the season.” He closed the Bible and gazed out into the eager congregation with his maniacal eyes.

“Something big is about to happen, folks. And the dead who are in Christ shall rise.”

∑Ω∑

Her eyes open.

The flickering light from the oil-lamp illuminates her Bible.

The weathered pages stare up at her.

Her hands shake as the text seems to crawl from the paper:

“And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that set on him was Death,

and

Hell

followed

with

him.”

V

Morning sunlight is beginning to weave between the blinds of the window as it shatters. Glass shards become tangled in the blinds, and the blinds are madly pushed away as a figure crawls through the broken window. Mark tumbles over a sofa against the wall and lands on the floor. He leaps to his feet, pointing the gun through the room illuminated by morning sunlight. The room is abandoned. He moves to each room, making sure no creatures reside within the building; he rushes to the front door and unlocks it. The sunlight hurts his eyes as the man and Sarah enter, holding a moaning woman in their arms. Mark leaps out of the way as they move into the living room; blood from the woman’s head drips in a trail on the carpet, and he can’t help but remember the tale of Hansel and Gretel and the Wicked Witch. The man and Sarah find the kitchen, adjacent to the living room, and set the woman on the table. The man steps back and curses, blood covering his hands. Katie appears, and Sarah tells her to start searching. Katie begins rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, yanking out plates and bowls and glasses. She finally finds a drawer holding the hand-towels, and she tosses several to Sarah. The man is behind the woman on the table, and he lifts up her head. Blood pours from a wound across her face, and shards of glass, embedded in her face, sparkle with fresh blood. He shouts for Sarah, and she begins bandaging the wound. The woman moans, and her fingertips begin to twitch. Her face goes pale. Mark watches in stoic silence. Katie paces back and forth, watching the woman begin to shake and quiver. She holds her hands up to her head, covers her eyes. Mark looks down to the floor, can hear the man’s cursing and Sarah’s silent pleadings.

Anthony stands out in the street. His clothes are sticky, and they mold over his body. He finds his hands still shivering. Kyle is pacing around the Explorer, shaking his head, mumbling under his breath. Anthony looks up and down the quaint street: the houses lined up perfectly on either side, the streetlights hanging like icons of an ancient world, the well-manicured lawns now overgrown with weeds and briars. The sun breaks through the clouds and sears his eyes. He turns and sees his shadow sprawled over the pavement. He looks at his hands, covered in dried blood. He can see his reflection in the tinted windows of the car, and he can see that his face, his hair, his shirt…