DARK: A Creepy Collection Read online

  Morphy was exuberant.

  “It worked! It worked!”

  A gang of about fifty crazed ghosts rushed around the corner and came at them.

  “Fire again!” Morphy exclaimed.

  “I can’t!” yelled Lynche, turning to run. “That one shot used all my power. I’m out of juice!”

  The two fled back toward the mansion.

  Narrowly escaping the wave of attacking apparitions, Lynche dove into the house, penetrating the invisible shield and reaching safety just in time.

  Morphy entered using the shield code, but as he was much faster, he was able to make it without a problem.

  “That was a close one,” Lynche said, leaning over as he caught his breath.

  “Yes,” said Morphy. “But it was a resounding success.”

  “What’s next?” asked Karla.

  “Now, we deploy the bomb,” said Lynche.

  #

  Lynche stole a Porsche parked nearby, and the three of them rocketed down the empty Highway 10 with the bomb in the back seat next to Karla.

  Waterford nuclear power plant was a perilous thirty mile trip to St. Charles Parish, but they made it in less than twenty minutes, passing hundreds of moldering bodies along the highway, sickening reminders of that first devastating night months ago.

  Lynche lugged the heavy ecto-nuke in through the front gates, the awkward device banging him in the shins as he toted it toward the entrance. Morphy spotted a wall of spirits in the distance closing fast – a massive hoard of thousands of angry, bloodthirsty ghosts descending for the kill.

  “We need to move!” Morphy yelled.

  They hurried inside through the main doors, right into an obvious problem.

  No power.

  “You expected this,” said Morphy.

  “Yes,” said Lynche. “Why do you think I brought you along?”

  Morphy smiled. “You are a wise man, Mr. Lynche.”

  Within minutes, the brilliant ghost had transfused himself into the mainframe and restarted the system. Lights came on and the reactor came to life with a deep hum.

  Lynche smiled at Karla and the three of them rushed through the corridors to the nuclear facility’s control room.

  A pair of rotting corpses sat at the fission control console, their bodies decaying for months since the initial attack. Swarms of flies buzzed around, and the air smelled putrid.

  Karla glanced back down the hall to see a swarm of snarling spirits bearing down on the control room.

  “Go!” Morphy yelled, stepping down the corridor toward the other ghosts. “I’ll try to hold them off!”

  “Hold them off – are you crazy?” Lynche said, staring at the dense army of hexed souls.

  “In order to win the game,” said Morphy, “you must be unpredictable – and be willing to sacrifice. You are the king, Mr. Lynche. Do not let this game end in a stalemate.”

  “Come on!” screamed the ghostly Karla, terrified.

  Lynche turned away from the resolute Morphy and slammed the control room door.

  Morphy bought them a little time – just enough to set up a portable shield around the reactor’s control room.

  Lynche looked out the little tempered glass window as the swarm of ghosts fell upon Morphy. The ghost screwed up his face, focusing his considerable mental power on the nearest ghosts, who seemed to bounce back a little. But as more piled on, he was overcome by the countless raging spirits.

  Lynche and Karla watched as Morphy evaporated, crushed by the hundreds of clawing ghost hands.

  Destroyed forever into oblivion.

  Lynche shuddered, then ducked under a panel and connected the bomb to the main power supply. Outside the room, they could hear the furious crowd of the dead banging up against the shield, pounding madly.

  “I’m going to need to disengage the shield generator,” he said. “The bomb needs to use its shadow coil. This may get rough. Here goes nothing.”

  He switched the coils out, and as he reached for the detonator, a stream of rabid ghosts flooded through the walls and ceiling, charging at Lynche and Karla.

  The spirits quickly enveloped Karla in a frenzy of shimmering white fluidity.

  Lynche was pulled away from the ecto-nuke by his feet. As his head smashed against the hard floor, his fingers scraped across the detonator board, hammering blindly at the buttons.

  He felt an ice cold hand reach into his abdomen.

  He stretched himself toward the detonator with all his might, the ghost tearing at his innards like a bad case of food poisoning.

  And then he hit the button.

  A massive wave of red energy emanated from the device, passing right through Lynche with no effect, but knocking the ghosts off their ethereal feet and sweeping them across the room.

  A moment later, all the ghosts changed.

  They stopped fighting, ceased growling and spitting, relaxed. They released Lynche and Karla. Many of them shook their heads, blinking hard.

  A moment later, they all closed their eyes, smiling gently. They each breathed deeply and exhaled, then shrunk to become tiny, bright lights, which quickly disappeared into the floor.

  Karla floated over to Lynche, and they looked out the window across the Louisiana landscape. In an ever expanding circle in all directions, tens of thousands of tiny pinpricks of light formed against the darkening purple of the evening sky, then faded silently into the ground.

  As Lynche and Karla drove home slowly in the pilfered Porsche, they saw the Living beginning to emerge from their churches and other holy sanctuaries, ready to rebuild their decimated world once more.

  In safety.

  “Ty,” whispered Karla, sniffling slightly as they passed a group of cheering Living, “What about Morphy?”

  Lynche looked at Karla. “Maybe I can figure out a way to bring him back from the second death. You know, like a pawn can bring back a captured piece.” He stared at the deserted road ahead. “We all owe it to him.”

  “I’d like to stick around for a while and help you.”

  “You gonna haunt me, eh?”

  “Yeah, you know – unfinished business.”

  * * * * *

  The Darkness

  She should listen to Tanner89. Or whatever his real name is.

  Real. Huh. Whatever real is.

  Most of the six hundred seventeen “people” living in Yachats, Oregon – a sand-swept wide spot in the road south of Waldport – are less “real” to Ashley Lane than her twenty-nine online friends.

  Except for one.

  Jonas Silage, the vile chunk of rancid meat in filthy overalls and greasy smile. For Ashley, the reality of Jonas is all too much to bear.

  Which is why she should listen to Tanner89.

  Ashley climbs over one of the giant driftwood logs on the desolate beach and finds her favorite secluded cove out of the wind where she can sit in private with a view of the roiling late-October ocean. She wipes the image of Jonas from her mind and flicks open the battered laptop across her gray sweat-pant covered legs.

  Should’ve listened to Mom, too, she thinks, wishing she’d grabbed a jacket on her way out. The sun is out, but the salty wind whipping down the shore is ice cold. Now that she isn’t generating her own heat from climbing down to the beach, the wind that had bitten through her skin is making it hard to warm up, despite the shelter she’s found.

  She inhales the odor of seaweed as she logs into her email. She smiles, her heart reflexively leaping as her computer announces she has mail. The wireless card in her laptop is her lifeline to the world outside her miserable small-town existence. These are the moments she lives for these days – a chance to touch life beyond Yachats.

  Brushing a strand of her bathwater-colored hair back and hooking it behind her ear, she bites her lower lip and opens her mail:

  Ashes2Ashes,

  Where U been? No email yesterday or Friday. Hope JS is leaving U alone. Let me know if U want me 2 ta
lk 2 Tanner. He says he can still help.

  LazyDazy

  Ashley hits REPLY and her eyes bore through the screen. She lifts her gaze and stares out at the ocean, listens to the relentless waves. The few tourists that come through at this time of year love the fact that entire stretches of coastline like this are deserted – not a soul as far as the eye can see in either direction, as if you are completely alone in the world.

  Ashley hates it. Mostly. She does like having a place to communicate online without interruption, but what she wouldn’t give to be on a beach packed with sunbathers and volleyball players and musclemen and families, all glistening in the sun, spread out on their blankets and towels like gems in a jeweler’s case.

  To be among humans. Lost in a crowd. Lost anywhere but in Yachats.

  Instead, she sits here alone, trying not to think of the un-humans in her life like Jonas Silage. She glances back at the screen, the flashing cursor blinking in time with her own heartbeat.

  She knows she has to give piano lessons to those horrid Grant twins tonight (the demon-spawn nine year olds), so she types:

  LazyDazy,

  Tell Tanner to meet me in our chat room tomorrow night at six. I’m ready to deal with this.

  Ashes2Ashes

  She hits SEND, and changes her life forever.

  #

  Ashley sits on the edge of her bed with its sinking middle and threadbare blankets and slips her skinny legs into her torn black jeans. She pulls on her sand-worn Nikes, a pink shirt and a jacket, then heads out the front door to school, her enormous backpack over her shoulder.

  The road to Highway 101 has no sidewalks and deep puddles line the gravel shoulder. It rained again last night – hard – and only stopped a few minutes before she left the house. Now the sky is just flat and gray like her life. The rain water still drips from the power lines to disturb the muddy puddles.

  Last night she’d managed to get through the piano lessons with the Grants without killing either of them, which is a plus. And she got paid cash. Today, she’ll put half in the bank for Mom, and take the other half to the Radio Shack and finally get the mp3 player she’s been saving up for. Everyone else seems to have one – it’s about time she had a way to listen to her tunes without carrying her laptop everywhere. Of course she’ll keep carrying the laptop anyway, since it’s her one window to the real world.

  Everyone calls the internet the virtual world, but when you’re only “virtually” living in your own world, the universe that can be accessed via the web is as tangible and welcoming as any “actual” place.

  As she approaches the highway where the bus stop is located, she passes the small antique dealer and shudders. The peeling white paint on the siding, the bizarre artifacts in the large front window of the old house, and the dull black eyes she can feel watching her from deep within the main room make her skin crawl. Silage is in there, and she knows that he knows that she knows it – the shared understanding like a violation of her mind.

  She quickens her pace and catches the school bus that will take her to Waldport just as it’s about to pull away from the curbless sidewalk of the highway. She holds her book bag in front of her as she makes her way down the narrow aisle to the back row of seats past kids of varying age engaged in homework, boisterous conversation, or in some cases, sleep.

  Seated back here above the noisy engine, Ashley can slide her laptop out and reach out to the world without anyone looking over her shoulder. She plugs her headphones into the jack so no one will hear the sound effects of her chat program.

  - DING –

  LazyDazy is ONLINE.

  Ashes2Ashes: U there, LD?

  LazyDazy: Yeah, whatsup?

  Ashes2Ashes: Just walked past the hellhole again. Ugh. I’m on the bus now.

  LazyDazy: Tonight, things will start to change, girl.

  Ashes2Ashes: Yeah, I know, but he just CREEPS me out so much. And I’ll still have to go by there on the way home 2nite.

  LazyDazy: Got2go – Mr. Thompson is glaring. Math sux.

  Ashley closes her laptop. LazyDazy is a couple of time zones ahead, so she’s already halfway through her morning classes. Lucky.

  The bus pulls into the school and Ashley is, of course, last off the bus.

  Last on, last off. Always last place for Ashley.

  She heads to first period and tries to push away thoughts of Jonas and Tanner89 for now.

  #

  Ashley always has trouble sleeping. Her typical night consists of chatting online until about two, when her eyes are too heavy to see the words clearly on the glowing screen and she finds herself blinking way more times than could possibly be healthy. Then she drinks a mug of hot chocolate and spends the next two hours trying to get comfortable in her bed.

  The next two hours are a raging dream cycle – one extra-long REM zone filled with the horror of that evening four months ago when Jonas had got a hold of her - always ending in a heart-pounding awakening, just in time for the false dawn and real fear to keep her awake despite the fatigue. And it starts all over the next night.

  In between, especially on school days, Ashley makes up for the lack of rest by finding a quiet corner of the library and putting her head down for a half hour or so, headphones on, plugged into the laptop, instant messenger open.

  Thirty minutes of blissful, dead-to-the-world blackness – a dreamless sleep for a weary young woman.

  But today is different. The moment she lays her head down, she enters another world.

  Running.

  The sand under her feet forming hands and arms that pull at her clothes, strip her naked, scrape her flesh.

  Under the night sky, the ocean a black maw with fanged surf rushing up the beach to devour her.

  Seagulls the size of cars swoop at her, metallic echoes scream from their gaping beaks.

  Tidepools of oozing blood.

  Ashley scrabbles up the cliff face, stinging sand filling the cuts on her legs.

  She looks over her shoulder at the ocean, its jaws opening wide to her. Closing in.

  She looks back up to the cliff wall and a tattooed hand extends over the edge to her.

  No time to think, she grasps it.

  Ice cold.

  It pulls her up and over onto the grassy cliff top.

  She kneels and covers her nakedness with her arms, looks up and sees –

  Ashley’s head pops up off the table and she breathes heavily, as if she’s just sprinted the length of the library.

  DING –

  LazyDazy is ONLINE.

  Ashes2Ashes: Laze, I just dreamed of him again. Only in the daytime this time.

  Ashley’s heart is still pounding in her chest.

  LazyDazy: I’m sorry, Ash. Why don’t you just go home and get some rest?

  Ashes2Ashes: Well, I don’t wanna be here anymore, but I can’t get rest. I’m scared I’ll see him again if I fall asleep.

  LazyDazy: By tonight you’ll be able 2 sleep. Tanner will help.

  Ashes2Ashes: Good, cuz I’m sick of this.

  LazyDazy: Let me know what happens 2nite.

  Ashes2Ashes: I gotta get 2 class. Bye.

  Ashley decides to stay at school – it’s a long, long walk home, and nothing to do there but try to stay awake. Better off staying here where there’s something to do.

  #

  Ashley gets home just after five and heads to the music room. It’s not really a music room – nothing so fancy – just a cramped sitting room off the dining room that Mom has been storing Dad’s stuff for the last few years – but it’s where the brown spinet piano fits and where she goes to play.

  No lessons to give this evening. Just a chance to play her heart out before her mother gets home.

  Aside from the internet, the only other place Ashley finds solace - can escape from Yachats - is when she’s playing the piano. She’s always had a gift for playing – even composing – since as long as she can remember.
r />   Although she hates teaching most of the local kids (there’s only one who’s not a total brat – must be something about kids who are forced to do things they don’t want to do), it brings in some extra money that she splits between savings and contributing to the household.

  Since Dad died four years ago, Mom has had to work extra hard (two jobs) to pay the mortgage, keep the lights on, and keep food in the fridge. Days at H&R Block, night’s at Mo’s.

  Dad never thought to take out life insurance (the fool). As if, in his line of work, it wasn’t just a matter of time before he’d get flattened by a six ton log.

  Whatever. It is what it is.

  Ashley warms up with a couple of her standard pieces – Cristofori’s Dream by David Lanz, some Brahms, a little Ravel – and then moves into a jazz arrangement by Harry Connick Jr.

  Once her fingers are warm and limber and her mind cleared, she lets loose with her own sweeping melodies, pulled straight from the secret places in her soul where the darkness of the world cannot trespass.

  She closes her eyes as the notes flow, the music pours out of her through her fingertips. The piano is an extension of her body - she is one with the instrument.

  The sounds speak her existence to the indifferent walls.

  Shout her existence.

  Reveal her to the deaf universe.

  The music announces that Ashley is.

  “Knock knock, sweetie.”

  Ashley flinches on the piano bench, her feet kick off the pedals, the music coming to a sudden stop. She turns and glares at her mother with that don’t sneak up on me! look.

  “I’m sorry, Ash, I always try to give you a little warning, but you just get so carried away, and I have to do something to get your attention.”

  Ashley just turns back to the keyboard.

  Mom strolls over and leans on the side of the spinet.

  “Ash, that was some really dark stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “That music you were playing. It wasn’t like your usual stuff – it was heavy and black. I’ve never heard you play like that before.”