The Dark Room, Part 4 of 4

Welcome to the final installment of the Dark Room. I hope hat you've enjoyed the story; it has been odd to reread this work. If you have any commentary regarding it, please feel free to drop me a lone either on this site or Facebook; I'd like to hear what anyone following along thought.

“You’re dead already, Harold!” Sarah blurted in his face. “We found your body, and Michael’s body, too, inside the bus we’re on! We’re all dead! Don’t you get it? That’s why we can’t find a way out! That’s why there’s no light and no echo in this place! No one kidnapped us, you idiot! This is the afterlife, Harold! I wonder which way you’re going to go?”

“Shut up, you stupid little witch!” Harold roared. He stood and dragged her forcefully to her feet with him, then tossed her off the bus with a grunt of effort. She landed awkwardly and rolled, coming to rest right beside Michael. He was laying on his back and breathing still, but he was unconscious. Desperately, Sarah tried to rouse him.

“If we’re dead, then why can I hurt you, Sarah?” Harold’s voice came from above. Then she heard his weight shift on the bus, and his shoes landed heavily on the stone floor. They clicked lightly as he came toward her with unnerving accuracy. It was almost as if Harold could see her, at least faintly.

“And if we’re dead, how come I’m enjoying myself so much still? You know, it’s ironic,” he told her as he grabbed for her. Sarah shifted twice, then bit him when his hand found her shirt. He growled with pain, then slapped her so hard that star bursts formed in her eyes. “As I was saying,” he spat, “It’s ironic that I’m going to kill you. You see, you aren’t the first person I’ve killed in the last twenty four hours.”

“Oh my God,” Sarah said, her entire body tingling with eerie premonition. “You killed your wife.”

“I gave that woman everything,” Harold’s hold trembled but Sarah didn’t dare loosen it yet. He was in a fit right then, and she didn’t doubt for an instant that he would beat her to death if she so much as twitched. So she steadied herself and feigned to listen.

“She took everything I gave her and left me with nothing. Then I find out that she’s with another guy? I wasn’t good enough, no matter how much I did for her, so she screwed around with somebody else? Why? But you can’t tell me, can you? Guess what, Sarah? She can’t tell me either! She’s in Lake Superior right now.” Harold let her go and stood erect, laughing to himself. “She always did like swimming.”

“I’m not your wife, Harold,” Sarah said sincerely, and Harold seemed to pause.

“No? But you’re close enough. I already know that I don’t like you. There isn’t a convenient lake to dump you in, so I’m just going to have to kill you with my bare hands, Sarah.” He stepped toward her and she recoiled, holding an arm up to protect herself…

…When he slipped suddenly and dashed his head into the floor. Sarah started. Harold moaned and rolled away from her, his groans of pain getting a little dimmer. She realized that her legs were immersed somewhat in cold water. More than an inch of it was covering the floor suddenly. The temperature of the room began to descend and behind her she fancied that she could hear the swell of a lake wave, like when Lake Superior was being blown by strong winds. One wave swept past her, and then another, bringing cold water that both froze and invigorated her. Then something else went past her, and her blood went as cold as the water around her.

She felt a body wash past, brushing her arm and right leg. It was sodden with water and clammy, with clothes that were pasted to the flesh, and it was dead. Despite that, this thing slipped past her like a serpent, silent and cunning as it hunted, and Sarah stared into the dark as she fathomed what it was. It swam away from her, and it found Harold. She could almost see it climbing onto him with the rush of another wave, sliding onto his body and pinning him to the floor. He screamed, and Sarah stood, torn between what to do. Harold tried to cry out again, but his voice sounded like he was submerging, trying to yell underwater. He thrashed, but his limbs sounded far-off, as though he were sinking, sinking straight into the floor. Sarah lunged forward and grabbed for Harold. What she found was a mattress of soaking wet hair and soft, pliable skin that had been underwater for long hours after death. Writhing within the hair and against the flesh was a bed of serpents, small and coiled, slithering all over her exposed appendage. Then, like the water itself, it slipped out of her hands and was just gone. Harold’s last muffled cry was so distant that Sarah wasn’t certain if she even heard it, and then the water fled. Harold was gone. He had escaped the Dark Room.

A sense of mind-numbing shock settled as the final echoes of Harold’s pathetic cries for help subsided, and it occurred to Sarah that it was the first time the dark room allowed an echo to elapse at all. But the crushing silence resumed all too soon and she rushed back to wake Michael.

Michael was lying on his side, an arm pinned beneath his weight, his breathing slow and steady. Sarah pushed him onto his back and shook him once, then again, but he failed to stir. Somewhere in the vast darkness something moved. It rose high into the air and stared through the black, its gaze piercing until it found Sarah kneeling there, defenseless, and it began to move. She didn’t know that it was moving by any sound or motion that it made, but rather a dread feeling welling up in her. An urgent sense of self-preservation made her giddy with panic as it strode forward, this silent stalker. It had claimed Harold. Now it would take her and drag her into the cold stone of the floor, away from any human grasp, away from all presence of light and hope of rescue. The presence was strong, a hole of spiritual blackness in a room of nothingness, and it sought to draw her in. Sarah recoiled from it and threw herself on Michael in a desperate bid to wake him. He roused a little, then turned on his side and lay very still.

It was scant feet behind her now. It towered where it stood, powerful in its domain. The presence stopped stalking forward. It was close enough to touch her, though she dare not look back for fear of confirming what her inner mind was screaming a warning about. The cold of death washed over her, and the remnants of water lingering about froze into fine sheets of cracking ice, sticking to her and numbing her limbs more. Like hot, rancid breath it leaned close to her and tickled her neck, but for all that she could not see it or truly, physically feel it. It receded suddenly, and she felt a tremendous well of relief break in her as the presence faded into the endless shadow of the room. Sarah shook Michael once more…

…When a strong hand like living ice clamped down on her arm, dragging her backward. Sarah screamed as she fell back, and the frozen grip dragged her across the floor, pulling her along a frigid path toward the nameless hole it had come from, a deep, dismal place that it wanted to share with her now. Sarah kicked with her feet and swatted with her free hand, but when she tried to strike the presence with her free hand there was nothing there. All at once it was gone as though she had never been pulled at all, and the freezing, biting grip found her legs instead and dragged her with incredible force in the opposite direction.

“God help me!” Sarah cried aloud as she sat up, trying in vain in fend off the irresistible pull of the presence. She let out a painful, hoarse yelp when her body collided with the wall, and the thing began to drag her up with it. It was scaling the sheer wall as if it were walking, and now Sarah found herself sliding up the vertical surface, being dragged upward toward the lofty ceiling, if there even was one.

“Sarah!” came Michael’s voice out of the shadows, and by sheer chance his hands found her arms and caught tight hold. He was brought up with her for a split second, then the presence wavered and hissed angrily, a venomous noise that was amplified in their sightless surroundings.

“Michael, please don’t let go!” Sarah yelled as she dangled upside-down.

Michael pulled with all his strength, and the presence seemed to simply allow her to fall. She collapsed atop Michael and the two lay there in a heap, panting until they were both sure that the presence had left for good this time. Then Sarah pulled herself to her feet and grabbed until she found Michael’s hand, helping him to stand.

“Harold’s gone.”

“He found a way out of here?” Michael asked.

“He murdered his wife, Michael,” she explained shortly. “He told me that he killed her, and he was going to kill me. He thought it would get him out of here if he killed both of us. He drowned her in Lake Superior, and I think she came back to get him. She came in water, like a giant snake, and she drown him.”

“He chose how he was getting out of the Dark Room,” Michael answered. “I’d like to find a different way than that, that’s for sure.”

“I’m really glad that you found me,” Sarah confided as she drew him into an embrace, laying her head on his shoulder. Michael patted her back gently as he sighed.

“I thought you weren’t going to run off on me again.”

“I didn’t run anywhere,” Sarah assured him. “Something else was doing the running for me. I don’t want it to find me again, Michael. How do we get out of here? How do we stop it?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But we haven’t found your body yet. That might have something to do with it. What were you doing when the DTA crashed? I’m guessing that Harold either hit the DTA and it swerved or vice-versa, either way it came to the same end. But where do you fit in, Sarah?”

“I don’t drive,” she told him. “And I don’t take the bus unless I’m going somewhere out of the way, like the mall. My place isn’t far from the diner I work at, so I usually walk home at night.”

“Do you walk along Grand Avenue?”

“Of course,” Sarah answered easily. “I don’t live far from…”

“From what?”

“I was walking when the accident happened. “The red car came onto Grand Avenue at the stop lights too fast and the bus tried to avoid him but ended up losing control and tipping over, but not before it clipped the car really badly. It spun out of control and into a telephone pole, but not before it…hit me. I got hit by the car when I was walking home last night! Harold killed me!”

“He killed me, too it seems,” Michael told her soothingly. “Trust me, Sarah. I’m sure he’s regretting his choices even as we speak.”

“So I’m…I mean my body, it’s laying out there in the dark somewhere?”

“I suppose,” Michael replied uncertainly. “We’ll start near the car, since that’s the last thing you remember, and work our way out from there, alright?”

“I hardly call this alright, Michael. I feel so strange, so scared, but there shouldn’t be anything to be scared of. If I’m dead, then fear is dead, too. But the presence is in here with us, and I know I’m afraid, Michael. The Twilight Zone doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel right now.”

“We just got done examining my dead body, Sarah,” Michael pointed out to her. “I think I can empathize with you.”

She felt his hand brush her sleeve and she gratefully clung hold of him. He was the only real thing she had yet to find in this maddening room. “Back to the car,” Sarah said, half to Michael, half to herself. Hand in hand they ventured back through the darkness and away from the wall, encompassed in the deep gloom of the room’s desires. “We’re really at its mercy, aren’t we?” Sarah asked suddenly as they walked, giving Michael pause.

“Who’s mercy are we at?”

“The Dark Room,” she declared ominously.

“This place?” Michael fairly laughed. “It has no mercy, and it doesn’t have hold on anyone, Sarah. This room is nothing more than what you bring into it. I think that’s its greatest secret.”

“What did I bring into it that made the presence come for me? It didn’t single you or Harold out, or at least not until the end for Harold. The thing won’t leave me alone!”

“Doubt?” Michael offered.

“Doubt about what?”

“I think you know.”

“I just came out of a bad relationship,” Sarah explained. “I was battered, physically and emotionally. I doubted a lot.”

“You don’t have to defend yourself,” Michael told her. “I’m just trying to help you get out of here.”

“What about you, Michael?” Sarah replied quickly, insistently. “What did you bring to the Dark Room?”

“Hope,” he stated unflinchingly. “A hope that God can restore my sight, so that I can see like other men in the next life. It’s made my faith strong.”

“You’re accusing me of lacking faith,” Sarah said acidly, the hurt of pride rearing up in her heart, inflaming her desire to fight. Michael had the gall to stand there, in this place of all places, and pass judgment on her?

Sarah wrenched her hand angrily from him and was about to spew hot words, anger seething in her like a wakening volcano, when she felt a strange tremor on the air. The dull stillness of the blackness trembled, as though afraid. It receded briefly, and a normalcy filled the vacuum, leaving them breathless and confused. Then the wall of angry darkness raged and crashed back down on them, almost making their legs buckle under the onslaught. Sarah steadied herself and blinked dazedly around, straining to see if the veil that bound her sight had been lifted. To her regret, it had not.

“What in the world was that?” she breathed softly. If she had to approximate the feeling that just sped past the two of them, she would have to describe the sensation as a prelude to an explosion. But an explosion of what?

A few feet after the floor was again covered in freezing water, and they found themselves wading almost waist deep before it leveled off. The chill crept along Sarah’s spine until it curled around her neck, breathing against her exposed skin just so, so that the hair curled and stood on end. No more an ominous presence had she ever felt than here, now. Michael felt it as well, she could tell by the startled jerk he gave while standing there, making the water ripple past her.

“It doesn’t want us to come past here, Michael.”

“And there wasn’t water all over the place, either.”

Again the darkness trembled, and from somewhere ahead a pulse of singular light glowed like a faint beacon. It flashed with a shimmering white glow, and sped toward them like an arc of electricity, so purely wondrous in its appearance that all Sarah could do was stare at it until it swept past here, allowing her a quick, perfect glimpse of everything around her. Michael was only a couple feet from her, a bewildered look coloring his face. He’s taller than I thought he would be, Sarah found herself thinking, and flushed with embarrassment. It was rather a bizarre time to be taking in details about a man, she berated herself sternly.

The arc of light ebbed and faded, leaving a cascading luminescence over the surface of the crystal water they were wading in, until that, too, faded. The darkness had met its equal in this simple, beautiful wave of radiant light, and the confusion of the room permeated the very air, saturating both of them.

“I can hear something,” Michael told her quietly. When Sarah began asking him to explain he hushed her with a hand over her mouth and they both stood very still. A pronounced, distinct noise ruptured the silence with God-like force, and Sarah quailed at it. It sounded like a drum being struck by a giant, somewhere deep in a forgotten cavern. It was remote, powerful, yet wanting to come closer. But the sound was waiting. Immediately following the thunderous sound the pulse flashed anew, washing over the clear water until it sped beyond them, but now it was stronger, more forceful and brighter, and Sarah could pierce the depths of the waters with her formerly impaired vision. Laying at the epicenter of this strange glow of radiance was a body. Her body. It floated lithely on the water. It was not bloated and white with death, but pink and pulsing with the remaining hope of life unspent. The eyes were open and seeing, and through them Sarah somehow knew that she could see the waking world, the world of flesh and blood that had been stripped from her with one tragic accident. She could still reclaim it.

“Michael!” Sarah exclaimed, excited and petrified in turns, “I’m not dead! I can see my body, and I’m not dead!”

The wave of radiance passed over the bus and the red car, where Harold’s battered corpse lay, and the headlights of the vehicles suddenly flared to life, making Sarah flinch. Both vehicles were partially submerged in the crystal waters, which refracted the light and gave it an eerie glow which twisted and drifted as if it possessed will and reason. Sarah turned slowly back to Michael, overwhelmed by the peculiar turn of events. His face was contorted in an emotion that must have been incredible surprise as his mouth trembled but failed to form words.

As if in a trance he looked upon her, half afraid, and his expression failed to change. “Sarah,” he began slowly, looking deeply upon her. “My God. You’re beautiful.”

“I don’t think now is the time for flattery, Michael,” Sarah warned, then she felt her tongue go lame. What was he talking about? “What did you say?” she asked.

“I said that you’re beautiful,” he repeated triumphantly. “I can see you. I can see, Sarah. I have my sight back.” The conviction in his tone was truth enough, and tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. She smiled sadly at him.

“I’m not dead, Michael.”

“I know,” he told her. “I can see that. It isn’t your time yet, that’s why the presence has been hounding you. It isn’t your time to die, Sarah. Go back to your body. Go home.”

“What about you?” she said, though her throat was tight with despair. She already knew that Michael wasn’t going with her. It had come too soon, their parting. “Will you be alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” Michael assured her patiently, and he took her in his arms. She slipped her arms around his back and lay her head on his shoulder for the final time. “I’m going home, too. I can’t go any farther, Sarah. You have to make the last bit of this trip alone. But remember, you aren’t ever really alone.”

“Have faith, right?” she said lightly.

“You know it.”

“Good-bye, Michael,” Sarah leaned away from him and kissed him lightly on the cheek before stepping away from him. “I’ll miss you.”

“I look forward to seeing you again,” he said with a smile. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Sarah gathered her strength and strode into the freezing water of that odd lake, seeking her body. The lights of the vehicles, parallel with one-another, cast a stark picture of her own body as it lay before her, floating atop the water’s surface. The lights streamed forth, issuing a strange haze that whirled without purpose, pausing here and there and gathering form around her. The mist appeared to be people each time it coalesced, some figure wrought with horror and concern, peering down at the seemingly lifeless body displayed before them. But they were nothing more than insubstantial haze, and parted like playful shadows when Sarah strayed too near them. The sound of the thunder buzzed in her ears, resounding in the recesses of her soul and she knew it to be the sound of her heartbeat echoing.

Apprehension gnawing at her, Sarah reached out a wet, quivering hand for the peaceful-looking body laying now just before her. She hissed with fear as a dead white arm slunk around the body’s waist and pulled it beneath the surface. Beneath Sarah’s body was a net of silken hair and piercing eyes, black with death and hatred, sunken into a gaunt shell that had forsaken life. Withering arms embraced her, and she felt the chill of looming death creeping over her. It swam deeper into the water, and without thought Sarah gave chase.

She swam down until the shimmering lights of the vehicles were sparse orbs of illumination far overhead, and still the grim thing that claimed her body swam farther down. Here, where almost no light shone, lay the dead. There were thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, laying in the earth, planted like seeds, trapped where they were placed, waving in the water as they drown, but unable to die. Their eyes were mirrors of pity and loathing as they regarded Sarah. In her heart she recoiled from their eyes but she swam after the thing regardless.

At length the thing dropped her body, allowing it to slowly sink to the bottom of the room’s cavernous depth, where hundreds of groping arms sought to lay hold of it; they opened their mouths to scream for it, to vent their endless agony, but the cold water filled their lungs and drowned them, but they failed to die and it simply stole their will to speak. Sarah thrust with her legs, forgetting the pain of her injuries, forgetting the veritable sea of the damned that swarmed all around her, and chased her body. In her ears her heart still beat strong. On the edge of sight the drowned, dead body of a haggard and destroyed woman melted into inky darkness, the living essence of the Dark Room, and it pursued her.

It was just behind her, the presence that sought to keep her there, bound and blind in the endless darkness, when she grasped the fingers of her own body, and she felt an instant reaction. The racing pulse of life was like an inferno of light that welled up in her, and it drove back the presence. Its wail of fear and pain was hideous, low and deep as it surged through the waters and retreated where it would not be harmed by the light, reluctantly allowing Sarah to escape.

Wrapping an arm around the torso of her own body, Sarah paddled with her legs and swam for the surface, feeling her lungs burning with her efforts. Could she drown in this wretched place? The hopeless visage of the dead that were rooted all about were testament that she would not, but she didn’t want to taste the bitter water that held them all prisoner, so she fought to hold her breath as she swam with her failing strength, feeling it ebb and bleed out of her even as the surface drew closer. The lights of the vehicles were just overhead, bright and welcoming, a beacon of salvation…if only she could breach the surface…

Sarah’s eyes fluttered and opened slowly. She was instantly aware that she wasn’t wet, or in the Dark Room any longer. She lay in a small bed, complete with bed rails, and a filmy curtain separating the room like a flimsy partition. A steady, slight rain beat against the window beside her and a television mounted on the wall was vacant, casting only a gray reflection of the room back down at her. Sitting in a chair beside her, head down on the side of the hospital bed, was a young woman whom Sarah instantly recognized.

Smiling sadly, Sarah reached out and shook her shoulder, trying to rouse her. The young woman snorted and sat upright, sleep heavy in her eyes. She stopped and stared suddenly, as if seeing a ghost.

“Have you been here the whole time, Denise?”

“I was just dropping in to say hello, sis,” Denise said through sudden tears, and she grabbed Sarah’s hand as though afraid her sister might disappear without warning.

“You came all the way from New York to say hello?”

“What can I say?” Denise shrugged and laughed, “I got fired.”

“You got fired from the police force?” Sarah shook her head. “You’ve been holding back on me.”

“I’ve got quite a story to tell you,” Denise offered, shaking her head. “But I guess you have a story or two to tell me. Either way, it can wait until you’re better.”

“I already am,” Sarah patted Denise’s hand reassuringly. Her eyes drifted past her sister’s face to the cold window catching rain just beyond the safety of the room. For a brief second she fancied she caught sight of a man reflected there, smiling warmly at her, but she blinked and the image was gone as quickly as it came, as if the rain had washed it away. “You can say that I already am.”

The End