We've reached the third part of the Dark Room. The Dark Room was the final story in a series of works that were gathered under the "Bloodlines" label. They were stories that involved all kinds of supernatural things and spanned throughout several centuries of time. This one was far and away a much different flavor than its predecessors, however. It is interesting to see where the Lord brought my writing from the days of the Dark Room, and I am glad to God I can reflect on such times and see what I have learned, instead of looking back only to see what I squandered. At any rate, let's continue our journey through the Dark Room. Sarah skipped away as he grabbed for her out of sheer rage, and he snagged her jeans a little before she tugged away and jogged off, her hands held before her so she didn’t run headlong into the bus that was ahead of her. She hoped it was ahead of her, at least.
After a few minutes of fruitless searching she found what she was looking for. The bus lay on it’s side, the top of the massive vehicle facing her. She had come the exact way that Harold had dragged her off. She traced the contour of the bus and walked around the whole of it, trying to find a place where she might find a grip that would allow her to climb up the side so she could get to the doors. But if they were buried on the other side of the bus that would be pointless, and she resigned herself to kicking in a window if she had to.
She came to the quick conclusion that this was a DTA bus and not a public school bus, which gave her a measure of relief. Setting herself to the task of climbing, Sarah began to hunt for firm holds that would give her the best chance of getting up. She was almost halfway up the vehicle, climbing up the bike rack that was affixed to the front end, when she heard noises again. Distinct sounds pierced the blackness: the sounds of a man running forward. She berated herself for being so lenient with Harold and not just squeezing until she crushed something, but even after what he did to her Sarah couldn’t bring herself to hurt the man like that. If what he told her was true, then he was hurting enough from his wife’s betrayal and didn’t need much more physical pain to accelerate what he was already enduring. Not that it gave him a right to abuse her as he did, Sarah also added to herself. It wouldn’t be wise to start feeling sorry for the man. The footfalls stopped all at once and Sarah noted their erratic pattern. They sounded like a child’s steps as they ran along barefoot, quick and plentiful, padding along with the relentless energy only a child could summon. What was now somewhere under her was no child, she knew that much. A creeping sense of dread began to grow, welling up in her as it swept over her in a pall of choking shadow, conspiring with her weak body to make her release her hold on the front of the bus. Sarah grit her teeth and cried out in defiance, forcing herself to climb further.
Suddenly something grabbed her left leg. She screamed as fingers made of pure icy wind tore at her flesh through the fabric of her jeans, followed by a piercing pain as if some small, ravenous animal began to bite her over and over on her calf and the back of her lower thigh. Panicking, Sarah screamed and pulled at the side of the DTA, resisting the urge to simply let the thing that held her to drag her back into its embrace. Fingers raked her again, hard as iron, yet not really present at all, and her footing slipped a little. Another painful bite tore through her calf as Sarah plunged over the side of the bus to rest on the side that was turned up, right onto a large window. Her limbs were half-frozen from the icy touch of the thing that longed to take her, and she shivered with a cold that was as unnatural as the room she was trapped in. She lay there, awake and praying, for a long time.
She sat up after awhile and scanned the deep, hoping a higher view might accord her some change in the room. But still the darkness was perfect, and she was utterly alone. For all she knew the presence had claimed Harold and Michael already, leaving her to herself. She drew her legs under her weight, wincing with the effort, and tried to stand. She had only just done so when the window gave in, sending her down into the bowels of the bus.
She landed with a muffled cry as she slid off the pane of glass that brought her down with it, slipping right into a hard plastic seat and laying there awkwardly while she caught her breath. Tentatively she touched her calf with a hand, half expecting to find a vicious bite and a bloody gouge marring her flesh. Instead her fingers came away from her jeans with a fine sheen of ice on them, rounded and oblong, as though in the form of a giant mouth all about her calf.
“Is anyone in here?” Sarah called out as she rose, using the edge of the seat for balance. She felt tired, exhausted to the point where laying down and finding sleep right then and there seemed like the best idea she’d ever had, but she fought the urge, shaking her head angrily. There was no time for sleep. If she slept that thing, the presence, would find her. She didn’t want it to find her again.
“Is anyone here?” she asked again, still unnerved by the lack of any echo. “Hello?” she fairly yelled, to no avail.
Then something stirred in the back of the bus. Sarah perceived that the darkness became deeper, as though something more black than the shadows around it rose from the depths and looked at her. She froze, staring into the heart of darkness.
“I’m here,” it said.
The voice was a whisper and a growl, mingled in a parody of sound. Sarah spun on her heel and leapt for the opening at the window where she fell in, grasping with numbed fingers, jumping with tired legs. Her face was caked with sweat and her heart thundered from the endless ordeal the room was putting on her. She didn’t have the strength to get back out of the bus.
It seemed to know this, and without sound or motion, it came for her. The darkness consumed everything in its path as it surged forward, and it appeared as if a tunnel of night was racing for Sarah, racing forward to drown her in it. She leapt hopelessly, grasping for the rim of the window, not even knowing if she was reaching for the right spot…
…When a hand closed around hers, yanking her painfully out of the bus and back onto its side. She collapsed on top of Michael, who lay panting beneath her, before she yelped and rolled away, almost falling clean off the bus in fright. Michael caught her again.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “I hear you screaming bloody murder over here and find a DTA sitting here, and your voice is coming from inside it! I’m surprised I heard you at all!”
“Something was in the bus with me, Michael!” Sarah informed him; she reached forward and wrapped an arm around him, seeking comfort from the terror that clung to her. Michael put an open hand to the back of her head and she laid her head against his shoulder, crying silently as she tried in vain to calm herself. Michael patted the side of her face in alarm.
“What happened? Did someone in there do this?”
“Harold did that,” she told him. “He found me when I lit the lighter, and drug me to the bus. He helped me find it, I suppose you could say. But I hurt him and ran again. I shouldn’t have come to the bus alone. I should have kept my head and waited for you to follow me to begin with.”
“I’m just glad that I found you again. Even a blind guy can be happy to see someone, if you get what I mean.”
“I get what you mean,” Sarah laughed nervously, pushing gently away from him. “Thank you for saving me.”
“Saving you from what?”
“I really don’t know, or maybe I do know, and I just don’t want to say it again.”
“Tell me,” Michael commanded. “I’ll believe you; I promise.”
“Do you believe that demons are real?” Sarah asked hesitantly. “I grew up in a Catholic family, and I’ve developed my own views about God and faith and the bible, but what I’ve felt in here, in this room, has led me to believe that demons are every bit as real as God and Heaven. They’re in here with us, and they want something from us.”
“That’s a lot to swallow,” Michael answered plainly, sighing. “I believe in God, too. I believe what He says in the bible must be truth, and he says there are demons. His own Son cast them out all the time in the New Testament. But what if it is true, and there are demons out there? This isn’t Hollywood, or the movies. Demons aren’t little monsters with pitchforks and tails.”
“I know that!” Sarah shot back. She smoothed her voice and added, “I’m just saying what I think it is, what I don’t know is why this is. Is there some reason why we’re here and no one else? Why are we being punished this way?”
“Don’t think of it that way,” Michael told her. “If this were punishment, I don’t think it would be this simple. So let’s just say that the darkness isn’t just darkness. It’s symbolic of something. It’s symbolic of the thing that’s in here with us.”
“I just want to find a way out of here,” Sarah said to no one in particular. She lowered her head, feeling the drum of pain beating its rhythm in her head still, as it would for a long time to come. She knew what being hit in the head could do to someone. She had been concussed before. She had been knocked out once, too. Harold wasn’t anything new for her, though it really was a lesson she didn’t care to repeat.
“I’m starting to think that there is no way out of here,” Michael replied, making her head snap in his direction.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Any conventional way, I mean,” he amended. “There is obviously a way out of here.”
“How do you know that?” Sarah asked lightly.
“Because we’re in here. If we got in here, then we can get out of here. At least that’s the way I see things.”
“You’re the eternal optimist?” she asked.
“I like to look at the glass as being half full.”
“I look at the glass as broken and leaking like a sieve,” Sarah responded dryly. Michael laughed, and his laugh made the shadows recede a little. Sarah felt that she could almost life the veil cast over them if she willed it hard enough. She could almost see Michael sitting there no so far from her. Suddenly she very much wanted to see him, see his face, to learn if it reflected the light-hearted kindness present in his voice. She recalled the lighter and presented it before her, making sure that Michael wasn’t so close that she’d burn him if she lit it.
“What are you doing?” he whispered. She hushed him with a smile and flicked the lighter once.
To her delight it glowed for a brief second. In the light of the flame which pressed back the lurking dread of the room, Sarah saw Michael’s face. He was in his latter twenties with brown hair, cut short and combed so it held a slight wave to it. He was clean shaven and slightly thin, judging by his cheeks and neck. His eyes were a soft almond color, a handsome shade as he looked vacantly into the light she produced without seeing it. Then the glow faded and black silence filled the void. Sarah smiled sadly as she lowered the lighter to her lap.
“The lighter went dead,” she told him. “We don’t have a way to see anymore.”
“I never had a way to see,” Michael assured her. “But I’ve always managed to get by. What were you looking at?”
“Just looking around,” Sarah said lamely, suddenly feeling awkward and embarrassed. She remembered Michael saying how he could read the tones of people’s voices and she prayed that he didn’t see right through her just then. Inwardly she berated herself for acting so juvenile, considering the present situation. Sarah cleared her throat and leaned forward, stuffing the lighter in her pocket for safekeeping.
“What do we do now?” she wondered, hoping Michael might have an answer.
“Where do you think Harold went to?”
“Harold is over the edge, Michael. He doesn’t have all his dogs barking, you know what I mean? If I live, I’m going to be in pain for a month from his little tantrum.”
“I was just wondering so we can avoid him, if possible. I’d like to find if there’s a car in this room along with the bus.”
“You still think there’s a car?”
“The hubcap didn’t come from a DTA,” Michael said pointedly. “The car might be a clue.”
“The car might be trap!” Sarah exclaimed, fear dripping in her tone. “You didn’t fall through the window into the bus, Michael! You didn’t feel what I felt, or heard it speak to you.”
“It spoke?” Michael sounded incredulous.
“It told me that it was here, with me, I guess it meant.”
“I still think we should find the car.”
“If you insist,” Sarah stood cautiously, feeling her legs protest the exercise. Sleep still sounded awfully good, and she had to wrestle with the inclination not to lay right back down and search for sleep. “Don’t worry, I won’t run away next time, okay?”
They slid off the side of the bus, Michael first and Sarah right after, then waited in silence. There was nothing in the darkness that their senses perceived and after a short time they began to march again, guessing which direction they had yet to take and using the bus as a launching point. They strayed far into the room, and Sarah counted almost two hundred paces before they stopped briefly. She felt bewildered, almost dumb-founded by the sheer size of the room they were trapped within. Michael seemed to feel much the same way, and she could feel him shaking his head as she held his hand.
“How large is this place?” he wondered aloud.
“If it’s the size of someplace like the DECC we could be going in circles, Michael,” Sarah informed him.
“I have a pretty good feeling that we aren’t going in circles. We just haven’t found the opposing wall yet. But I could be wrong about that,” he conceded at length.
“I knew following the walls would be a good idea, if only Harold would have listened to me from the start!”
Michael was about to say more when the defined sound of glass crunching under his shoe gave them both pause. Michael started and stepped back hastily. Sarah knelt down at once and gingerly placed an open hand over the floor, feeling dozens of tiny shards of glass littering the floor before them.
“It feels like glass from a windshield, when it shatters.”
“The car must be nearby,” Michael observed, tugging at her hand to make her stand.
“A turned over bus, a car that’s obviously been in a car crash. What is the point of all this?” She had to raise her voice as the gloomy quiet they shared became a festival of popping and scraping sound underfoot, distinct and defined each time one of them lowered their foot to the ground. Michael stopped all at once, his legs colliding with an obstruction.
“I think I found the car,” he declared solemnly.
Sarah circled him and reached out to find the vehicle. Michael snatched one of her hands by the wrist and directed her to the hood, placing it palm down so she could feel the surface. Slowly, as though afraid, she ran her hands along the hood of the car until she found the windshield, which was missing for the most part. The driver’s side door was intact, but creased oddly along the middle of it, and the window was finely shattered, though the glass was largely present still. The front tire was missing a hubcap, she noted upon examination.
“Is this what it’s like for you all the time?” Sarah inquired.
“Being blind, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it isn’t usually this weird, if that’s what you mean. I don’t usually get dropped in strange rooms with people I’ve never met.”
“You know what I mean, Michael. Is this…your world?”
“My world?” Michael suppressed a bit of laughter. “That was a little melodrama, Sarah. You missed your calling. You should have been an actress. But I guess you can say that. This is my world, my life. I was blind before I was six. It’s some hereditary thing that skips so many generations of your family and then you have the great luck of inheriting it from some great uncle that you’ve never met, but you’d like to, just so you can hurt him. I can hardly remember what it is to see anymore, but you learn to cope. What else can you do when you’re six years old?”
“I can’t even imagine,” Sarah told him sympathetically.
“Actually, I think you can imagine. You’re living a day in my life right now.”
“You liar,” Sarah teased, “I thought you said that you don’t normally get dropped in strange rooms with people you’ve never met.”
“You caught me,” Michael admitted with an overly loud sigh. “I’m actually a secret agent. The whole ‘blind’ thing gets people to lower their guard like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Well,” Sarah began, “We found your car, Michael. Are we going to look inside it?”
“Do you feel that it’s safe?”
“I don’t feel the presence here,” Sarah admitted. “But that doesn’t mean much.”
Sarah grabbed the handle for the driver’s side door and pulled with all her strength, but it didn’t budge. She ceased her efforts and peered into the darkness where she presumed Michael was standing. “This door won’t open.”
“Let me try this one, then.” Sarah heard him fumble with the handle and the car rocked for a few seconds, then she heard the tell-tale sound of a car door swinging open. “I’m surprised it opened at all,” he told her. “The front end of this thing is pushed in, as if another car rammed right into the passenger’s side front end.”
“That would explain why the driver’s side door is jammed.”
Not wanting to be alone, Sarah crossed around the car and took hold of the open door as Michael crawled into the passenger’s seat, looking for clues. He gasped and recoiled, almost falling out of the car and bowling Sarah over. He was frantically wiping his hands on his jeans as he scrambled away from the open door, leaping to his feet before collecting himself. Sarah put a hand on his shoulder and felt his chest rising and falling with newly instilled emotion.
“What did you find?”
“Blood,” he told her in a strangled tone. “A lot of blood. There’s a dead man in the driver’s seat.”
Compelled by curiosity, Sarah ducked into the car without sitting and reached across the length of the interior. She felt first an arm, then a shoulder. The man lay in the seat stiffly, his flesh cold and clothes bathed in his own blood. The steering wheel was pressed down into his legs and his head had been slammed into either the wheel or the dashboard that his skull had split open. There was an oozing head wound that Sarah touched a little before retreating, feeling some slime mingling with the cold blood along his neck and face. A terrible odor lingered inside the interior that was closely linked with death, and it conspired with the feel of dead blood. Sarah’s stomach twisted in knots and bile rose in her throat. Her heart pounded. Then she placed her hands more urgently on the dead man’s face, his cheek, his brow, his chin. She felt the coat that he wore and the shirt beneath it and she felt suddenly dizzy.
Michael yanked her from the car, holding her steady while she hyperventilated, eyes pressed shut as she contemplated her newfound knowledge. Michael held her at arm’s length, alarm plain in his voice.
“Are you alright, Sarah?”
“I know him,” Sarah said between rapid breaths. “I know him. That’s Harold. That’s Harold in there, Michael. Harold killed himself.”
“That can’t be,” Michael informed her softly. “The man pinned in there was killed in a traffic accident, and he died hours ago, Sarah. Maybe longer. His body would still be warm, not so stiff.”
“Nothing is warm in this room,” she reminded him sharply. “And I know it’s Harold. He attacked me. He tried to… I’d know him, even in the dark, Michael. Who’s to say that he isn’t dead and still roaming around in here with us? We’re on the verge of accepting that there are demons in this room, if this is even a room at all.”
“Alright,” Michael began slowly, “I don’t want to argue with you. But if your line of thinking is accurate, then we’re in here too, somewhere.”
“What do you mean?” Sarah retorted, though the reality of her own words were beginning to sink in, and she felt numb. Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, speaking from outside herself, saying words that no longer possessed meaning. Was she dead? She still felt, and the tears rolling down her cheeks reminded her of how bitter life could be. There was something warm inside the dark room after all.
“Or we might not be dead,” Michael informed her all at once. “This could be some kind of…crossing point for us, between life and death. One side is very present, obviously.”
“How can we know for sure?” Sarah asked.
“I remember the last moment I can recall before being here. I was on a DTA, going home for the night. Going down Grand Avenue, when my memory ends. It ends like a wall in my mind. If…if I’m dead too, then I’m on that bus back there.”
“This is getting slightly crazy,” Sarah shook her head, leaning back on the car as she tried to assimilate the prospect of the truth of the room. “You can’t be dead and here at the same time!”
“Why not?” Michael parried. “The body and the soul are two separate things, Sarah. A Catholic should know that rather well. There’s one sure way to find out.”
“How will we find our way back to the bus?” she questioned. “This place is gigantic, Michael.”
“The blind walk in darkness all their life,” Michael replied cryptically, “But we have a light to guide us, you and I. Let’s let it guide us.” The tumult of her mind fell away briefly, leaving Sarah calm and collected, stripping away the silent chaos the room endeavored to weave and ensnare her with.
“Let’s find the bus,” Sarah agreed.
Their shared walk was long and heavy, each step bringing them to an answer that neither of them may have been ready for. They found the bus without fail. Michael boosted Sarah back up onto the bus and then scrambled up after her. Haunted by her last encounter inside the DTA, she felt her limbs seize with fear.
“I’ll go down first,” Michael said. “I’m looking for myself after all, if that makes any sense.”
“I’m not staying here all alone, Michael,” Sarah warned him. “If Harold doesn’t find me, something else might.”
“I welcome the company,” Michael answered, and she felt his hand slip over hers and draw her closer. Michael went down first, making almost no noise as he entered the DTA, touching down gracefully on the opposite wall, which was now the bus’s makeshift floor. Sarah spun her legs over the chasm and edged herself down, taking great care not to slip. Her heart was already racing with the prospect of a second encounter with the thing that had been here when she first arrived. Her fears proved groundless, and she fell a couple of feet to the bus’s side where Michael steadied her. There was no malevolent presence waiting for her. The darkness, though black as pitch, carried no secret threat within it this time, and for that Sarah was grateful.
“So where were you sitting?” she asked after she gained a semblance of her bearings. In the murky confines of the damaged bus, there weren’t many bearings to collect.
Michael stumbled in front of her, seeking a passage that was barred by seats or some other obstruction. He dipped down about a half dozen feet in front of her, she wagered, and fell silent. Curious, Sarah moved forward with her newly adopted caution and stooped down beside him when she found him. He was on a knee, examining the area with his open hands. Sarah left him to his business for a short time but began to grow listless and a little worried. Lingering anyplace in the dark room didn’t sound like too great an idea to her.
“What are you looking for, Michael?”
“This is where I usually sit,” he told her plainly. “I take the DTA home all the time, at the same time. The driver knows my name and where I live, so I can just wait for her to tell me when it’s time to get off the bus. Where would my body have been thrown?”
“Do you think…you might have been thrown out the window?” Sarah suggested, aghast at the mere thought of hunting for his mangled body if it had been ejected from the bus when the accident occurred.
“I don’t know,” Michael whispered back, distress plain in his voice. Sarah felt a sudden urge to cry but suppressed it, pushing it back in her mind and anchoring it with concerns that dominated the moment. There would be time for tears later, or there wouldn’t. She didn’t have the luxury of making time for them right now. Instead she reached out and found Michael’s arm, gently tugging him until he was close enough to embrace. Sarah wrapped her arms around him haltingly, unsure what he might do in response, but he simply knelt before her and sank into her embrace, grateful for a fleeting hope of respite. They stayed like that for several seconds until she helped him to his feet, and his breathing was husky as though he was also on the verge of tears. She prayed that he didn’t cry or she was sure that her own would begin, and what a pathetic sight that would have made; not that anyone would have been able to see them, she thought sourly.
“Are you going to be alright?” she asked sincerely. She could feel Michael shrug as she still held onto his arm.
“Seeing as how I’m dead, who knows?”
“Don’t lose your optimism right now,” Sarah begged urgently. “That’s the only thing keeping me going still, Michael! If you fold I don’t think I have the strength to keep up for the both of us, and I still might need you.”
“You ‘might’ still need me?” Michael joked.
“You have been useful,” she reminded him with a playful tone. “A little bit useful, anyhow. Men are usually only a little bit useful; otherwise they’re in the way.”
“Far be it from me to be in the way,” Michael replied as he patted her hand. He stepped past her and paused, stock still all at once.
“What is it?”
“If the bus rolled, or even if it just skidded onto its side, I was probably flung across it.” He stooped again, this time Sarah helped him fumble for the edges of the pane of glass that had brought her into the bus to begin with. They hefted it up and cast it behind them. She stepped forward, but her foot collided with something laying beneath her and she yelped with surprise. Her hands went to her mouth as she pursed her lips, knowing what it was that her foot just touched.
“My body,” Michael told her, his voice strangely even. “We just found my dead body.” Reluctantly, Sarah knelt and ran her hands over the face of the man laying before her. He was clean shaven with curling hair and a thinner neck, younger by the strong feel of his features. He was cold and very dead, with a terrible wound on his head where it must have struck the side of the bus before falling. The hair was matted with cold blood and Sarah’s hand came away sticky. She grimaced, trying in vain to wipe the blood off of her fingers.
“How can this be?” Sarah demanded to know, her voice rising with indignant anger. “What is going on here? How can you be laying here, in here, when you’ve been walking around this room with me the whole time? Where are we?”
“I can’t stay in here,” Michael suddenly declared. He was on his feet and bolting for the open window that was their only escape with berserk strength, and Sarah didn’t try to stop him. She couldn’t even imagine how his mind must have lost all scope of reason when his fingers touched and examined his own dead face, layered with his lifeblood. She couldn’t imagine now, but her turn was coming. Somewhere in the dark room her own lifeless body was carelessly cast away, waiting to be found by its prior owner like some macabre Easter egg hunt.
When Michael was clear and she could hear him settling himself on the side of the bus’s exterior overhead she leapt to follow him. Her fingers barely grasped the edges of the window when she heard a hiss like a snake below. Steely fingers, rigid and cold with death, latched onto her ankle and she loosed a scream as it sought to drag her back down. She could envision, in her mind’s eye, Michael’s lifeless corpse grabbing at her with one dead-white hand, pulling while he lay on his back beneath her, patiently waiting.
“No!” Sarah cried in defiance. She kicked wildly, breaking loose from the freezing grip of the thing beneath her and pulling herself onto the side of the bus to join Michael. Her breath came in ragged inhalations and she bent over to calm herself, groping to find where Michael had gone to.
Another hand found her arm, but it latched with wicked strength, making her gasp with shock. It wasn’t the chill hand of something from beyond the grave, but the fanatically strong hand of a madman. Harold chuckled as he spun her about on her heels and grabbed her waist, pinning her to him from behind. She struggled until his other hand found her throat. His grip was astonishing, and it was all Sarah could do to keep him from choking her to death with his bare hand. She slipped both hands under his steely grip, fighting to loosen his hold, but he refused, laughing hoarsely as he throttled her.
“You thought that was really funny, what you did to me, didn’t you, Sarah?” Harold demanded to know as he shook her in his grip. It was so violent that dizziness swept over her and she felt that she might vomit. Were the dead supposed to feel these sensations any longer, she wondered? What would happen if she simply allowed him to strangle her? If she was truly dead, Harold couldn’t kill her again. Sarah suddenly decided that she didn’t care to find out right then.
“What did you do to Michael?” she rasped through a half-crushed trachea. Harold snarled with hatred and threw her under him. She lay there panting, waiting.
“I threw him off,” Harold said. “I guess he doesn’t know how to jump really well, huh?”
“You monster,” Sarah snapped. She scrambled away but Harold stomped forward and caught her again. He threw his weight on her and pinned her to the side of the bus, so close that his face brushed hers. A trail of saliva slid down her cheek from the corner of her mouth and she spat in revulsion.
“You know what I decided, Sarah?” Harold explained calmly as he lay atop her, his face an inch or two from hers. “I’ve decided that the men that abducted us might let one of us go if the others are dead. Maybe that’s part of their plan. And truthfully, I really just feel like killing you anyway.”
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