Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (123 page)

Alone
.

That is what he is now.

Alone.

Again.

The man stands out on the portico, smoking his cigarette. He looks to the east, where the sun is rising above the decrepit stalks of corn. A throbbing yet gentle rise into the sky, pushing back the night; on the other side of the world, the dark-walkers are just beginning their reign of terror as dusk is dwindling to night. But here, in Colorado, the sun is rising, and it is rising on the dawn of a new epoch for the man, a new age. He left Cincinnati with several others, but now he is the only one remaining. He tries to remember their names, but they are fading into the background. Part of him feels awful for this, but another part of him knows that if he is to survive, it must take place. He cannot be overwhelmed by sadness. They are gone. It is the end of that. He must continue. And he Anthony Barnhart

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tries to convince himself that what he feels—no sadness, no remorse, nothing—over Sarah’s death is something good, that it is not something within him to be feared. But he cannot convince himself of this. So he stands and smokes his cigarettes and goes back into the house. He has two cups of coffee to drink now. He sits down and lights a cigarette.

He gets up from the table and goes into the bedroom. He stands in the doorway staring at the corpse’s backside. She had been alive just hours ago. Alive. And moaning. And groaning. And sweating. He had been inside her, and it had been warm. It’s cold now. He walks over to the vanity and leans around her. The side of his hand brushes her shoulder-blade, the cold skin against his frightening. Her stiff body, stricken with rigor mortis, shudders in its chair. He grips her arm and lifts it, the joints creaking. He pries her fingers away from the bayonet and pulls it from her. He leaves the bedroom, shutting the door, and he goes to the kitchen. He pours distilled water from the jug over the bayonet, and he scrubs off the dried with a washcloth from a drawer. He fits the bayonet into his belt and sits back down at the table. He picks up his coffee, sets it down, lights a cigarette, smokes. The smoke rises to the ceiling, crawls along the wax paneling, licking towards the windows like a thousand tongues.

He drinks his coffee, wonders what to do with Sarah. He decides that he will leave her there. It is obviously what she wanted. Had she performed the act in the bathtub, or hung herself from the ceiling, it would be different. But her steps had been methodical, well-planned. And he decides that he will respect her wishes by leaving her alone. He grabs the GARAND from the kitchen and heads for the door. He pauses, looks to the bathroom, the empty toilet bowl. He sets the GARAND against the wall and enters the bathroom. He unzips and flips it out, begins to urinate, looks up at the ceiling. Something catches in his peripheral vision.

He whips his head to the side, but there is nothing.

Just the dusty and cracked window.

He wonders if he saw anything at all.

You’re imagining things.

And then he hears it: footsteps on the front porch.

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Anthony Barnhart

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Chapter Thirty-Nine

The Angels of Sunset Avenue

“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

- James Baldwin (A.D. 1924-1987)

I

How did it come to this?
Those words resonate like a gong in his mind, nearly drowning out the sound of the snarling dark-walkers outside, the wooden timbers shaking and quivering, the entire foundation quaking. Dust fills his eyes, mixing with his tears, and he grips the GARAND in his hand.
Three bullets.

Not

enough.

Just

enough
.

He turns in the gloom, sees them cowering against the rusted tractor with blown-out tires and cobwebs strewn along the gearshift. He looks back towards the door, the heavy wooden beam placed over the hinges. A fissure had appeared down the middle of the beam, right in the crack between the two doors, and with each bulge and push from the other side it threatens to snap. He knows they will be in soon. He knows what will happen. A sense of clarity grips him, a clarity that is defied by his own saltwater tears. He walks over to the tractor, and with his free hand he grabs the first one by the arm, pulls her away from the tractor. She looks up at him, her twinkling eyes hopeful, the golden strands of hair curling along her shoulders. She looks up at him hoping for strength, wisdom, comfort—but all she finds looking back at her is the cold, steely glare of resolution. He begins sobbing, and she realizes what is happening, tries to pull away. But he tightens his grip, and she gasps, his fingers bruising her bare skin.

“This won’t hurt…” he chokes. “This won’t hurt…”

And he raises the GARAND and puts the end of the barrel against her forehead. The last thing he hears before the gunshot are her frantic shrieks.

∑Ω∑

He quickly zipped up his pants and ran out of the bathroom, grabbing the GARAND on his way towards the door. He checked to make sure it was loaded, and without losing speed, charged the door, kicking it open. Brilliant sunlight blinded him, and he stumbled out onto the porch, the rifle held at the ready. He swung around and pointed the gun down the stretch of the porch leading to the corner of the house, and standing on the porch there were three little girls, their eyes filled with fear, one standing before the others, the two remaining hiding behind her. The man didn’t realize what he Anthony Barnhart

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was seeing, thought it was some sort of illusion, a mirage, shook his head, tried to shake the image away. But they stood there still, as real as the breath in his lungs, breathing rapidly, just watching him. The man kept the sights trained on the girls, and then the one barring the others stepped forward, held her arms out, like an angel, and said, “Please, Mister. Don’t hurt us. We don’t mean any trouble.”

The three girls sat at the kitchen table, and the man asked if they wanted coffee. None of them did. He found some cans of pears and peaches and opened them with a can opener, a can for each of them. He sat down with them, and they ate quietly as the sun continued to rise. The silence was suffocating, the only noise that of their fingers sloshing through the juices in the can, the popping of fruit into their mouths, the methodical chewing as juices streamed down the corners of their lips. The girls watched him, and he felt uncomfortable, so he looked away. He looked towards the bedroom, adjacent from the living area, and something twisted in his stomach.
The girls shouldn’t be here
. His thoughts were jarred as the one girl spoke: “Why are you here?”

The man looked at her. “What?”

“Why are you here?” she repeated.

He didn’t know how to answer. “It was just for a night.”

“I know,” she said. “But why are you here?”

“I’m traveling west. We just… I just stopped by here.”

“What do you mean ‘we’? Is someone with you?”

“No,” he said. Grimly: “Not anymore.”

The girl was quiet for a moment. “Your friend is in the bedroom.”

“Yes.”

“How did it happen?”

“By her own hand.”

“Why?”

“Does there have to be a reason?”

“There’s always a reason.”

“Not always.”

“That’s interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“You say there’s no reason. But there’s always a reason.”

“There’s not always a reason. Sometimes there’s no reason.”

“You’re ashamed of why your friend did it.”

“You know why I’m here,” the man said. “Why are
you
here?”

She folded her hands on the table. “This is our home.”

“Your home?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“If this is your home, then where were you last night?”

“We were at the orphanage.”

“What orphanage?”

“The orphanage in Strasburg. Where we grew up.”

“What we’re you doing there?”

“We were hiding. Trying to be quiet.”

“Oh.”

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“They found us.”

“Who? The dark-walkers?”

“You mean the vampires?”

“Whatever.”

“No. They know we’re there. We’re protected from them.”

“Then who found you?”

“The bandits. They found us.”

“So you came here to escape.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

The girl smiled. “Do you believe in fate, Mister?”

“No.”

“I believe in fate.”

“Okay.”

“I believe that God brought you to us.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“You seem like a compassionate man.”

“I would kill you here and now, but I’m keeping you around for sport.”

The girl grinned. “Okay, Mister. But I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t make me prove myself. Eat your peaches.”

She continued eating quietly. Then, “Do you want to know what happened to us?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Every story is the same.”

“Every story is different. It has different characters.”

“The plotline is the same. It’s wearying after a while.”

“Let me tell you what happened to us.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know you don’t care,” she said. “But I’m going to tell you anyways.”

II

“Our mother abandoned us when we were born,” the girl said. “She was a drug addict. Heroin. She worked the streets of Denver, and she was knocked up. I guess she couldn’t take care of the three of us. She left us on the doorstep at the Saint Francis Orphanage. I’d like to think that it was selfless, that she knew she couldn’t give us what we needed, couldn’t raise us well, couldn’t give us an education. I’d like to think that she abandoned us for our sake, not just for her own.”

The man noticed that one of the girl’s sisters was glaring at her, something spiteful in her eyes. She acknowledged her sister, said, “But there’s no way to be sure. Maybe she abandoned us because we’d be a financial burden, drain her heroin funds dry. I like to think positive, you know?”

The man wasn’t quite sure that such thinking came warranted in the world, but he didn’t say anything.

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The girl continued, “Whatever reason for it, she left us on the orphanage steps. We were taken in. It’s the law… Excuse me,
was
the law… that orphanages had to accept any infants left on their steps.” She shrugged. “And so we were raised in the Catholic faith. We were raised to be good, devout Catholic women. Sister Clancy believed that if she raised us well enough, we would become good citizens in society.”

A frown draped over the girl’s façade. “Truth be told, Mister, most of us, when we turned eighteen, went to work on the streets. So many girls got caught up in selling their bodies, so many became alcoholics, so many became enslaved to hard drugs: heroin, like my mom. Or cocaine. Or meth.” She shook her head. “It is a sad story. But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”

The man shook his head, finished his peaches.

The girl said. “When everything happened, we were just sleeping. I’ll always remember that night. Everyone remembers the night it happened; how can you not?”

“We were sleeping. They always made us go to bed early. I remember what woke me up was my bunkmate. I heard her groaning and moaning, and I thought she was crying. She would always have these awful nightmares. So I got up to comfort her, and I climbed onto the top bunk, and she was just lying there in her sheets, and she was bleeding like they all did: blood from her nose, her mouth, her eyes. Everywhere. It was all over her face. And she was moaning and scratching at her face. I don’t mean scratching like you scratch an itch. I mean
violently
scratching, digging her fingernails into her skin, and scraping so hard that her skin broke and began coming off in ribbons. I remember… I just crouched there on the top bunk and watched, and I couldn’t take my eyes from her. I thought I was dreaming. She was scratching so hard that she scratched the skin off her cheekbones, and I could
see
her bones, they were as pale as the moon and as white as the snow. That was when I knew I was dreaming, knew I needed to wake up. You know how when you scream when you’re in a dream and you wake up? That’s what I tried to do. So I screamed and I screamed. But I didn’t wake up. My screams were met by those around me. Everyone was screaming. I was screaming in fear, but they were screaming in pain. I looked out over the rest of the room, and there was chaos in the bunks. Girls were grabbing at themselves, banging their heads into the bedposts, attacking one another, attacking themselves, screaming obscenities and shouting and just… I remember it was chaos, and it’s hard to remember the details. I lost my balance and fell from the bunk, and I was knocked out. It was my sisters who woke me. They’d been through the same thing in their own rooms. When I woke up… When I saw all the bodies around me, the blood on the floor and on the walls and on the bedposts, when I saw how they had ripped one another apart and smothered one another with pillows, when I saw what they had done and what had happened to them… The blood drying on their faces… That’s when I realized it wasn’t a dream. But it wasn’t any less of a nightmare.”

“We searched the entire orphanage. We were the only ones who survived. We went outside. Everything was empty. The entire town. All of Strasburg, nothing but a ghost town. There were bodies everywhere. In every building. And they were horrific. People went crazy, did awful things to themselves and to one another. Jessica wanted to go into Denver, but I knew that it wouldn’t have mattered. So we just went back to the orphanage. And we began burning the bodies. One at a time. There were nearly two hundred girls in that orphanage. We weren’t supermen, we couldn’t carry all of them out and burn them in a few days’ time. But we got most of them. Burned them right out back, on the soccer field. It smelled like burnt pork. That’s what they said it smelled like with the Holocaust. And honestly, that’s what it was like. A new Holocaust. A different Holocaust. Except the culprits weren’t evil men. The culprits were unseen. And not just specific ethnicities were targeted: Anthony Barnhart