Supernatural: Night Terror (9 page)

“Okay,” he said glumly.

“Be a brave boy for me?”

Daniel nodded. “I’ll try.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she said and kissed his forehead again. “I’ll ask your father to trim that tree in the morning.”

“Okay.”

This time, on her way out, she left his door ajar, so she could hear him better if he called for her. Accepting the compromise, Daniel tried to sleep again. He rolled onto his side, back to the window so he wouldn’t see the shadows, and drew his knees up close to his chest.

Wind and shadows
, he told himself.
No reason to be scared
...

Another yawn, wider than before, and he was drifting off to sleep much sooner than he would have expected after his scare.

With his eyes closed and sleep tugging him down into unconsciousness, he failed to notice the nightlight flicker and wink off. Seconds later, he was oblivious as a splotch of darkness in an upper corner of his bedroom uncoiled and drifted toward him like tendrils of obsidian and impenetrable smoke. The darkness flowed across his bedcovers, passed over his face and gathered over his bed’s headboard. Slowly, as the darkness condensed, a shape began to emerge, like a silhouette, but in three dimensions. First a head formed, dark and unknowable and, beneath it, a pitch-black arm extended from the center mass, the tip stretching to coalesce into a hand and shadowy fingers that splayed across the boy’s forehead.

Outside Daniel’s home, the wind picked up, gusting as with a coming storm and the white oak’s branches stirred and swayed and became agitated, reaching for the house and the boy within...

Dean brought a cold six-pack of beer back to the motel room, stuffing a few bottles in the packed ice bucket to keep them chilled. Considering he had two other six-packs, he needed a much bigger bucket. Or an ice chest. The local supermarket would have a cooler. He sipped from a bottle as Sam perused old news stories on the laptop computer.

“Found it,” he said eventually and spun the computer around for Dean’s benefit.

“That accordion was a ’68 Dodge Charger?” Dean asked.

“That’s what it says.”

Dean peered at the screen.

“Color matches. Cherry red, white racing stripe.”

Sam turned the laptop around again, scrolled down through the story.

“Hit a retaining wall. Driver’s side took the brunt of the impact.”

“Even if it was possible to repair that damage,” Dean said, “doesn’t explain how the car can disappear. Could be a lookalike car but unless it belongs to a magician...”

“Maybe it’s a vengeful car, not a vengeful spirit.”

“All we need. Car with a grudge. Christine comes to Clayton Falls.”

“Kid lived with his paternal grandmother,” Sam said, relaying information as he skimmed through articles. “Mother died in childbirth. Father and son lived in New Jersey. Father died five years ago. Massive heart attack. Heavy smoker. Grandmother only surviving relative. Took the boy in.”

“Lot of tragedy in that family.”

“That dead teenager is the only connection we have to any of these sightings.”

“If it’s not a vengeful spirit,” Dean said. “Maybe we need to concentrate on the living.”

* * *

Daniel Barnes squirmed in his bed.

Lost deep in REM sleep, his eyes darted back and forth beneath his eyelids, tracking the stuff of nightmares. Removed from the waking world, he was unaware of the shadow-hand and fingers pressed to his forehead. He was equally oblivious to the creature of darkness taking form over his bed. The creature’s head continued to solidify, with glowing red eyes pulsing in its sunken cheeks. Beneath a long, malformed nose, its mouth opened wide to reveal a row of black, fanglike teeth. As the young boy moaned in distress, the creature hissed in delight.

Outside the boy’s bedroom window, a rush of wind pummeled the house. The white oak’s branches heaved up, and dropped, twisted and shook, flailed in the night, striking the house’s siding, scraping the windowsill and rapping against the windowpanes with a ragged drumbeat of persistence.

When a branch struck the window with enough force to crack it, the shadowy creature emitted a gurgling hiss of satisfaction and withdrew its hand from the boy’s forehead.

Daniel’s head whipped to the side and a startled cry escaped his lips. A moment later, he awoke and pushed himself up from the tangled bedcovers as if he were coming up for air. Staring across the dark room, without even the benefit of the nightlight’s meager glow, he called for his mother again.

Behind him, the shadowy form lost its cohesion, thinning to irregular splotches of darkness that climbed up the wall and slid across the other shadows, once again invisible and unknowable.

“Mom!”

This time his father came down the hall and pushed the door open. Even in the best of times, Daniel’s father had less patience for his nighttime fears than his mother. Daniel hung his head, ready to apologize despite the feeling of dread that kept his heart racing.

“Daniel, your mother asked me to come up here,” his father said, standing at the foot of the bed, arms across his chest. “You need to stop this nonsense.”

“I’m scared.”

“It’s just a storm. You don’t—”

“The tree broke the window.”

“What?”

“Look!”

But Daniel’s father had already crossed to the window to assess the damage.

“You’re right. It’s cracked. Hard to see.” Daniel’s father walked over to the doorway and flicked on the light switch. Nothing happened. He tried again. “Try your lamp.”

The wind gusted and rattled the house. Outside the damaged window, the tree branches danced in the wind.

Daniel leaned over and tried his bedside lamp to no effect.

“Broken,” he said.

“No. Looks like we’ve lost power.”

His father returned to the window, ran his hand along the crack.

“Okay,” he said and turned back to face Daniel. “I’ll put some tape on this. Tomorrow, I’ll trim the branches so they don’t—”

Suddenly the wind howled with renewed ferocity and a thick branch thrust forward, shattering the window with a loud crash. Daniel jumped out of bed with a cry of alarm. Then he noticed his father hunched over, making choking noises as he tried to say something.

“Gah—gah—guhgh!”

For a moment, Daniel’s imagination tried to fill in the blanks. He thought his father had grown a third arm—that it had sprouted from the center of his chest and was dripping on the floor. But as he took a step toward his father in the dark room, the true nature of the shape became apparent. The branch had come through the window and speared his father, whose blood was now running down the length of the branch and dripping all over the floor.

“Dad...”

His father’s head rolled to the side, almost resting on his shoulder. Blood leaked from his mouth, forming little bubbles that spread like foam across his chin.

“Dad!”

The house shook, vibrating beneath Daniel’s feet.

Outside the window, the white oak seemed to heave against the house, all its branches surging upward. Daniel’s father was lifted by the branch that had impaled him, up to his tiptoes, and held swaying there. His gleaming eyes seemed to stare at Daniel, even as his head flopped from side to side. Hands that had grasped the bloody tree branch now fell limp at his sides. The branch then pulled him to the right and back to the left, forcing his dragging legs to perform the plodding steps of a macabre dance.

Daniel backed away until his own numb legs bumped against his bed. Then he dropped to the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees, head turned to the side as he screamed over and over again.

“Mom!”

Before she returned and without his notice, the splotchy darkness slipped out of the bedroom window and into the night.

Another sleepless night was what the gray-haired woman had come to expect. She hardly ever slept well in her bed. Maybe an hour here, a half-hour there, tossing and turning. Aches and pains too numerous to categorize contributed to her long nights. But not all the aches were physical. Memories had a way of keeping her awake into the wee hours. Invariably, she would surrender the idea of sleeping in her bed and, instead, settle into her musty recliner and watch television. If she was lucky, she’d catch a few hours of sleep spread over the long night.

Lately, her level of exhaustion had become more pronounced. Throughout the day, she would bumble through her inconsequential routines and by evening, she had so little energy it was a wonder she didn’t collapse simply from climbing the stairs or completing a minimal amount of housework. Nothing seemed to matter much to her anymore. She wondered how long she could go on simply marking time. Living had become a reflex, a habit. She found no joy in it, and hadn’t for some time.

She reached for the remote control and her hand, with veins and liver spots more prominent than they’d been a week ago, trembled with the effort. Such a simple act was almost beyond her current level of physical stamina. Maybe it wasn’t physical. Maybe it was a neurological issue. Health problems plagued the elderly, became the focus of their twilight years. Marking time in the interval between taking one pill and the next.

She turned the television on and leaned back in the recliner, her eyelids already heavy with a sleep deficit she could never pay. It would do her good to see the doctor. Another routine to pass the time. Of course, he didn’t care if she got better. Wouldn’t know her name if she bumped into him on the street. But he tried to shock her with predictions of death and disease. Inevitable, but he made it entertaining. A jolt to remind her she was alive and not yet worm food.

Yes, she’d pass some time with the doctor again because, oddly enough, he was a comfort to her. He was as familiar with death and violence and tragedy as she had become...

Images flickered on the television set and she was only half conscious of them. As she slipped in and out of her troubled sleep, she was unaware of another image, an expanse of darkness that slipped under her door like a trick of the light, then flowed up her wall, slid across her ceiling and descended to the back of her chair, dyeing the ivory antimacassar on her headrest deepest black. And there it began to swell into a roiling mass of darkness with a head and glowing red eyes rising from the center and arms growing from the sides. Spindly, crouched legs formed beneath the torso. These were new but improving, strengthening. As were its abilities.

The darkness became as comfortable as the old woman in her recliner. The house and the chair and the woman had already become familiar to the monster. It had mined a rich vein of darkness with this one. But soon their collaborations would come to an end. It sensed time was running out. Yet all was not lost. The town presented so many intriguing possibilities. And the night was young.

As twin red eyes burned in its obsidian head, it reached out with fingers of solidified darkness and draped them over her forehead. In moments, it began to feed.

In keeping with his nightly routine, after grading the eighthgrade science homework and preparing a lesson plan for the next school day, Harvey Dufford jogged along Welker Street, turned left on Main, past the municipal building and the factory fire memorial and then turned left again onto Bell Street.

He followed Bell past the commercial district and into the business district at the west end of Clayton Falls. Most of his jogging route kept him in view of the restaurants, nightclubs, and shops with evening hours. Though the crime rate in town was generally low, he thought it prudent to remain in high pedestrian traffic areas for his daily cardio workout. And so it was always with a little trepidation that he concluded his nighttime run by crossing through the cluster of professional buildings across from his townhome community. Most of these offices closed at five or six o’clock with the exception of the scattered general practitioner or dentist who offered evening hours once or twice a week.

Streetlights shone down on the modest parking lots, revealing an eerie absence of cars and people. Sometimes Dufford experienced an otherworldly vibe from the professional buildings, as if he had slipped out of the normal time stream and had lost contact with the rest of humanity.

On more than one occasion, he had considered planning a new route to avoid these “dead” spots, but ultimately he thought they provided motivation for him toward the end of his run. He was closing in on fifty-five years of age and his legs lacked the spring of youth, had for some time, and that leaden-leg feeling regularly overcame him toward the end of his route. Probably psychological, knowing he was almost finished making his body crave rest. So why not counter the physical exhaustion with a burst of adrenaline derived from his anxiety when jogging through this deserted section of town.

As he approached the cluster of professional buildings, the bright lights of open stores became scattered, the sounds of pedestrian activity became hushed, the rush of cars separated into the passage of individual vehicles separated by increasing intervals, as if the heartbeat of the town weakened and slowed, nearing a flatline. That was when Dufford picked up his pace, placing one foot in front of the other faster and faster with each long stride, forcing himself into a last sprint to feel his heart rate quicken. His mouth opened and he sucked down air in great gulps to satisfy his demanding lungs.