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Darkfire Ch.2- Revelations |
| Written by Andrew Handley | |
| Monday, 14 January 2008 | |
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Share it:      The words whisper through my head, softly at first, but growing in intensity, like a faraway pot of boiling water. I can’t tell if the creature is physically speaking or if it is all in my head. It’s eyes are still burning a hole in mine. It stops speaking and waits, as if expecting a response; a response I sure as hell don’t have. My silence enrages the thing. Black eyes roll up into it’s head, the tentacles twitch as if they are on fire, and the luminescent veins glow brighter, visibly throbbing as whatever hellish fluid they contain is pumped harder and harder. Black saliva stretches from the blood-stained teeth and it opens its mouth to scream… BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! I jumped out of my bed like I had been burned by a cattle iron. “Holy Sweet Jesus!” My body fell to the floor with a thump, tangled up in sky blue bed sheets. I writhed frantically, trying desperately to free myself and get a breath of air. My head finally found a hole and I gulped in the stale air of my bedroom greedily. My heart was pounding in my ears so hard I thought my veins would burst under the strain. I lay there for a second, drenched in sweat, and looked around at the familiar disarray. Wrinkled clothes lay scattered across the floor. The odd CD and discarded plastic wrapper glinted in the soft morning light filtering through the unwashed window panes. Posters blanketed the smudged walls like a patchwork quilt of heavy metal and action movies. It was a mess. It was home. I had never felt happier to see it. It was all a dream What time was it? I pushed myself up onto my elbows to see the clock over the bed, but cried out at the sudden pain lancing through my shoulder. I fell back down to the floor gasping. Tenderly, I peeled back the sheet that stretched across my chest. Crusted blood surrounded a gaping hole in my right shoulder. My head started spinning. My heart sped up and I felt like I was about to either faint or puke. Or both. How the hell could that be there? It had just been a bad dream. Maybe I was still dreaming. I slowly put my finger to the wound and almost cried out again at the pain that shot through my chest. Muffled footsteps sounded on the stairs outside the door, followed by the shrill voice of my mom shouting from the other side. “Are you alright in there dear? What was all that noise” No I’m not alright! I’ve got a damn hole in my arm. “I’m fine mom. I just…fell out of bed.” “I heard you shouting.” “That’s because I fell off the bed. I just said that. I’m alright, I promise.” “Well you know I don’t like you using the Lord’s name like that.” Without answering I looked back down at my shoulder then used my left elbow to push myself into a sitting position. I couldn’t let my mom see this. It’d be too much of a shock to her. And then after she got past the shock, she would start asking questions about how it happened, and what was I supposed to say? Oh, yea mom I got railed by half a crankshaft when a car exploded in this crazy ass dream I had, but then it turned out to be real somehow. Ok, I’ll just tough it out for a few hours, then when school’s out I’ll come home and say I tripped and fell onto a fence post or something. A fence post? Is that the best I could come up with? Or something… “Well you better hurry up and get up! School starts in twenty minutes. You’re gonna be late again.” “Chill out mom. I’m not gonna be late.” I was late. I walked into my first period class about halfway through and tried to get to my seat discretely while the teacher was writing some equation on the board. Without turning around he said, “You’re tardy again Mr. Barone. That’s the third one this quarter.” He finished the equation with a flourish and turned to face the class. “Seeing as how you’ve already missed half my lesson on linear regression, you can go ahead and report to the attendance office to sign for your after-school detention.” “I got stuck in traffic. My bad” I mumbled. The bandage I had wrapped around my shoulder itched and I still felt light headed. “It really wasn’t my fault.” “Well you can explain that to Ms. Griffiths in the attendance office.” Ms. Griffiths wasn’t there. The grumpy looking woman who was just glared at me as I fed her my spiel about bad traffic conditions and the scarcity of parking spaces in the student lot. “That‘s a sad story,” she said in the most uncompassionate tone she could muster, “but I’m going to need you to sign this.” She handed me a pink slip of paper and I made a quick scribble on the line. “You need to be in room 214 no later than 3:40 for your detention.” I scratched absently at the bandage. “Whatever, I’ll be there” I said, tossing the pen at her, “You bring the pot, I’ll bring the beers. We’ll get that party started.” That now-familiar glare was the only response as I turned and made my was across the foyer to the stairs by the large glass entrance doors. My hand kept returning to the gash as I tried to figure out what the hell was happening. Images from the dream were still vivid in my head, as vivid as they had been when I first woke up. I felt as if it was an actual memory, and not just the hazy impressions of a memory that gradually fade away, the way dreams usually do. I glanced out the glass entranceway just before I entered the stairwell. A man in a dark gray coat stood in the middle of the parking lot, hands in pockets, staring my way. The morning sunshine had been invaded by dark clouds and it was beginning to rain slightly. The stranger did not seem to notice or care; he just stood there, and although he was too far away to tell, somehow I got the feeling he was looking straight at me. I stepped into the stairwell and paused. Something about that guy had seemed familiar. I took a step back and looked again. He was gone. Only a hint of mist drifted across the lot and dissipated in the thickening rainfall. I shrugged and my mind immediately snapped back to the dream as I walked back to class. The rest of the day was uneventful, just seven hours of “Nicholas, why aren’t you paying attention?” and “Quit daydreaming and do your work Nick, you can’t afford to fail any more assignments.” I took a seat near the back in every room so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone and I could quietly go through the dream in my head again and again. My overactive imagination worked out a thousand different scenarios to explain the mysterious lesion. I was still completely at a loss though, for all my thoughts were just that: thoughts and empty speculation. All I knew was that I couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was about to happen, that a sleeping monster had been awakened. Hypothetically of course, there’s no such thing as monsters. I’m not crazy Detention dragged on as well but finally it ended too, and I sprinted through the now torrential downpour to my beat up Chevy. As I tore out of the empty parking lot I saw that same man from before in my rearview mirror, standing in the center of the row I had driven through not five seconds ago. Fat raindrops drenched his worn overcoat and matted his salt and pepper hair against his scalp. Still he just stared my way. Damn hobo moves pretty quick. I barely even noticed the drive home; my mind was elsewhere. By the time I turned into the driveway I could barely even make out the yellow two-story bungalow-style house through the falling blankets of rain. I made a dash for the front door but stopped just short of the stoop. The glass storm door had been shattered and the heavy oak one was leaning on one hinge, thrown wide open. Blood dripped out the doorway and mingled with the rainwater, running in little rivulets down into the flower beds beside the stoop. Within two seconds the storm had completely soaked me. Hair pressed against my forehead and dark brown strands dangled in front of my eyes. I reached up with one hand to push it away. I took a few hesitant steps toward the dark abyss that was my house. All the lights were off and I couldn’t see more than five feet into the doorway; just far enough to see the blood-stained carpet and the shattered remains of the lamp that had lit up the entranceway on so many dark nights. Should I go in or go call the police from a neighbor’s house? “Mom? Dad?” I called into the doorway. The pounding rain made it hard to even hear myself. I took a few more steps forward until I stood in the doorway. “Hello?” Don’t go in. Turn back now. Then I saw it. On the far side of the living room, barely visible beneath the contents of an overturned bookshelf and the splintered ruins of a coffee table, lay a human hand. It disappeared at the wrist under a mountain of Shakespeare, Wilde, and shards of glass. Had it not been for the movement I wouldn’t have ever noticed it. The fingers scratched weakly at the crimson carpet, as if working of their own accord in a last ditch effort to pull their owner into the clear. Oh God, no I ran over and knelt down, vehemently lobbing books away. The soft thud of paperbacks against the wall and my labored breathing were drowned out by the thunderous pounding of a million droplets on the roof. Salty tears streamed down my cheeks, mixing with the pure rainwater dripping from my hair. Suddenly I stopped. A large black Bible lay open, facedown, over the face of the body. It’s leather cover had a massive tear down the middle. I slowly slid the Bible down, revealing first the graying brown hair, then the eyes of my mother, shut to the world forever. I glanced down at the hand; it had stopped moving. A sob escaped me and I shut my eyes. I pulled my hand back to chuck the Bible when suddenly a hand gripped my arm. A cry of surprise escaped my lips and I looked down again. My mother’s eyes were wide, burning with intensity. They weren’t looking at me but through me. It felt like the hand around my wrist was going to crush the bones. The gash in my shoulder must have ripped open again in my frenzy. Fresh red blood seeped through the bandage and flowered slowly on my shirt. The Bible dropped and lay open on the floor, it’s pages crusted blackish red. My mother was saying something, but couldn’t hear it. I leaned in closer, putting my ear next to her cracked lips. “…saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the abyss, and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations until the thousand years were ended. After that…” she gasped as if in pain, grabbing me and pulling me closer. Her hot breath tickled my ear. “After that he must be set free.” All strength went out of her grip and she let go, falling back limply. Her eyes were closed again. I sat there for a second, all feelings and senses temporarily shocked into failure. “Your father is dead too.” The gravelly voice came from behind me. I stood up slowly and turned around. Copyright 2008 Andrew Handley |
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