Darkling (3 page)

To comfort myself as I plunge further into the woods, I remember how Scarlet used to come home from her lessons with the most wonderful tales. I would sit on the hearth with baby Jasper in my lap while she acted the stories out, her raven-dark hair flying behind her as she spun in mock battles and dances and tales of true love. In many of those times, we forgot about the darkness and felt only the light and warmth of home.

I stop running. If I turn my head from side to side, I can glimpse a dim glow through the ash and birch trees. By the time I reach the source of the light, I can’t control my shivering. What I glimpse through the tree trunks makes me pause and hide myself. There before me is something I never expected. The light is not coming from a bonfire or even a cabin, but a two-storied mansion.

Its windows are all lit by candles and lamps, glowing warmly. I have never seen such a stately home. It is constructed of beams and planks, not logs. Despite the peeling paint, the front porch is so elegant with its buttresses and steepled roof that it takes a while before I realize I’ve been staring.

It is so out of place compared to the suffering of our village that it feels surreal, which is how I know it is his. I have to keep blinking as my eyes adjust to the light. Despite its cheerily lit windows, the house feels anything but happy. I can hear whispering from someone inside. The same voice I’ve heard before on the outskirts of the woods. Him.

I climb the stairs and open the door and the whispers stop as soon as I turn the knob. Whatever lies within knows I am here now. Stepping inside, I close the door behind me and wait in the entryway as my skin thaws and my eyes adjust. It’s not much warmer in the house, but at least the roof keeps out the moisture.

The interior is poorly lit. Placing all of the oil lamps and candles in the windows does little to illuminate the rooms I glimpse from where I stand. To my left is a parlor, to my right, a dining room and beyond that, what appears to be a kitchen. The darkness pooling in the middle of the rooms is eerie. I try to reason with myself that it’s no different than the darkness outside, but I know that’s a lie. This darkness is charged with threat.

“Hello?” I call.

My voice echoes throughout the rooms. Holding my breath, I listen but there isn’t a single noise in response. But someone had to light the candles and lamps.

Like a child, I’m convinced the Bringer will pop out and frighten me. I let my irritation over the idea grow, coating my senses with armor.

“I know you’re here,” I say, quieter this time.

Then I hear it.
A quiet scratching like a rodent or the rustle of fabric. Someone is moving away from me, hidden in the shadows. I grab the candle nearest me and thrust it forward. The sounds cease.

The first thing that I notice is a shape. Grotesque and distended by the flickering light, it is a hunched man on the stairway. Only it isn’t his body on the stairs, I realize. It’s his shadow, which means…

I spot him clinging to the wall. I hardly have time to register the red, gnarled flesh of his back when he scurries up the wall like a spider then leaps off of the banister, disappearing into the shadows above.

Gasping, I drop the candle, spilling hot wax on my thawing toes, making me shriek. Men don’t move like that. This fiend defies gravity.

My heart is hammering so loudly that I can hear it in my ears like a drum again. I have to remind myself why I am here. I think of Jasper’s smiling eyes. I think of the scent of my mother’s skin. Father’s hands. I think of Scarlet whispering to me that I knew what I had to do.

I listened to her, not because she could read and was smarter than me. But because when my sister told me she believed in me, it was after Elias had announced his plan for a sacrifice.
When my sister was already dead.

B
iting my lip, I keep my eyes on the patch of wall where he disappeared as I bend down to retrieve the candle. The creature slipped into one of the rooms upstairs, and I’m not eager to follow. Now I know why I couldn’t sense him at Sacrifice Rock. I can hear the spirits of the dead, but this creature isn’t dead. In fact, I am now sure it once stalked Draven.

The few hunters who still venture out saw something shortly after the darkness stole our days completely. Draven was among them, and he described a man-like shape moving just beyond the light of their lanterns. The brief glimpse he’d had of the creature’s flesh revealed skin gnarled and red, like tree bark. They were certain they had seen the Bringer. They tried to shoot him but he darted about
with inhuman speed and escaped. Inhuman.

Just like whatever climbed up the wall. But someone in this house
is
dead. Otherwise I wouldn’t have heard anything, and Scarlet wouldn’t have said that I could help. She knew about my gift.

Whispers from the dead most often come just as we are about to sleep and are between dreaming and waking. The veil between our minds and spirits grows thin and we
hear things that jolt us awake. Most don’t remember what they heard, but as a Listener, I always remember. Even when I want to forget. And if I can hear a spirit, I can help it move on and find peace. I had thought the Bringer would be no different.

I’m alone in the entryway and the spilled wax has hardened on my slippers. The creature hasn’t hurt me, though he has had plenty of occasions to, so I try to pretend he isn’t hiding upstairs. Instead, I focus on the spirit in the house to find out what it wants. Its voice was the same as the one I’ve heard before in the woods, so I know it is linked to the shadows.

The chamberstick illuminates the room to my right as I shuffle towards it. The train of my dress is heavy with forest debris but I let it drag behind me, anchoring me to this world. The air is musty, rat and mice droppings are scattered on the floor, and the peeling wallpaper is speckled with mold. In the kitchen, I find a knife and suddenly feel less exposed.

A shriek sounds upstairs and the shock of the noise makes me stumble. It sounds like a man having his organs ripped out. My heart is hammering so much that my arms are shaking even as the scream fades. Then something shuffles before all is quiet again.

Is it the creature?

I take a moment to calm down before continuing.

Heading over to the foot of the staircase, I gather up my dress. Though my step is light, each stair still creaks with my footfalls. I find myself on a landing facing a hallway, my knife at the ready. Three doors line the wall with a fourth at the end of the hall. All are closed. The creature must be hiding behind one of them.

I hold still and listen for several moments. Though the house makes several quiet sounds as the wood settles, I don’t hear any more moaning.

“Hello?” I whisper.

No one answers and I can’t sense any sort of presence. The thought of the creature leaping out at me or shrieking, frightening me again, makes me bristle. As a Listener, I can’t always control how I feel. Sometimes the dead ambush me with their emotions and it takes a lot of fighting to push them out. So if there’s one thing I hate, it’s when my own feelings run rampant.

Grabbing the knob on the first door, I yank it open and thrust my candle and knife inside. It’s a room with a fireplace, a desk, a bookcase, and a bed. I linger in the doorway, sweeping every corner with my eyes, making sure the flickering light of the candle doesn’t trick me into thinking I see something moving. Remembering how the creature had defied gravity, I check the ceiling and walls. Nothing’s there but a water stained ceiling.

Stepping inside, I hold the light in the cavern of the fireplace and under the desk and bed, making sure he isn’t hiding somewhere. He must be in another room, so I leave the door open and slip out. I scan the hallway and what I can see of the downstairs to make sure I am alone before I continue.

The second door is difficult to open, like it has been stuck for years. I briefly wonder if the creature has shoved something in front of it to keep me out. The idea of a beast being frightened of me almost makes me smile. The door suddenly gives and as I tumble within, something grabs my hair.

I panic and slash with the knife. A thin, sticky substance coats my hands and wrist. I realize that I have been trapped by spider webs, nothing more. I feel so stupid that I actually do smile now.

There’s no need to step further into this room to know that it’s empty. The floor is covered in rat droppings and abandoned nesting material from elsewhere in the house, but nothing anyone could hide behind or under. I check the ceiling again and take a moment to admire just how many spiders have made their home here. I’ve never seen such a billowing, dusty curtain above me.

Two doors left. I leave this one open and keep going. The third door is stuck, like the second, and that alone tells me that the creature isn’t in here. I would’ve heard the racket these doors cause.

Leaving a trail of open rooms, I face the fourth and final door at the end of the hall. I slowly step towards it, readjusting my grip on the knife. Yet even in the shifting light of the candle, I can tell that it is not like the others. This door has something wrapped around the handle: chains.

The chains and key and even the doorknob are all so dusty that I know it hasn’t been disturbed in ages. The creature couldn’t have used it. So if he wasn’t in any of the rooms upstairs and he wasn’t downstairs, where was he?

I reach out to wipe at the dust to see how thick it is on the knob. I only have time to be surprised by the coldness of the metal. So cold that it’s hot. Then the door starts rattling and banging.

Whatever is behind it is trying to get out. Suddenly I’m filled with anger that isn’t mine. I yank my hand back and drop the knife. Sprinting, I race down the hallway. Each open door slams shut as I pass it. Painful, echoing claps. The chained door is still rattling as I reach the stairs.

My hand slips on the railing. I fall, bouncing down several steps until I manage to stop my descent with my right foot. My ankle erupts in fire and I know I’ve twisted it. The chamberstick has fallen to the bottom of the stairs and the candle is going out. My landing is hard and coughs the air from my lungs.

The flame is flickering and all of the lanterns and candles lining the windows are snuffing out.
One by one. Closer and closer to me.

I try to yank myself onto my feet but keep getting caught in the hem of the long dress. I hear it tear, feel a draft up my thighs, and start moving. The house is now completely dark and the candle is flickering. I reach the door and grab the handle, twisting. Nothing happens. It’s locked from the outside.

I am trapped. Then the candle dies.

My ankle is throbbing and my side is starting to hurt where I smacked my ribs on my fall. Leaning against the sticky wall for support, I straighten, taking weight off my ankle. I was foolish to have tried to run. Where did I think I’d go?
The woods?  Home?

“Stupid,” I curse at myself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid…”

That’s when I realize the foreign anger within me has left. It disappeared as I fell down the stairs. So whatever frustration I’m feeling now is mine.

The air around me starts to charge. I don’t know if it’s something only Listeners can sense, but I can feel it getting colder, too.
So cold that the hair on my arms stands on end. I can detect something moving closer in the dark, something that I wouldn’t be able to see even with the lights on. Because you can’t see the dead. Sometimes people think they do, but it’s only an image. Their mind making sense of a spirit’s presence by painting a person.

And I feel whatever it is step right up to me. My chest gets tight and I can’t breathe while it lingers in front of me. I’ve never had this strong of a reaction before. It moves past me, into the dining room. Once it is several feet away, I can breathe again.

Moistening my lips, I try to take a few steps towards it. My ankle throbs and I whimper. I wouldn’t make it back home even if the door was unlocked. Quieting my mind, I listen for the presence in the other room. By stilling my own thoughts into the surface of a quiet pond, I invite the dead into my being. I am open, ready to listen, but the only emotion I can feel from the other room is a strange sort of indifference.

“I’m here to listen,” I say quietly. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to help you.”

All the lamps and candles in the house light so suddenly that I flinch. And it’s not just the ones in the windows, it’s sconces on the walls that I hadn’t noticed before, with glass so coated in dust that they give off an eerie orange glow, as if the air is foggy. I only can barely wonder at the strength of this spirit before I hear shuffling in the other room. At first, I’m sure it’s a rodent. But then it becomes clear that it’s footsteps.