(A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL) DARK TALES FROM BRIGHTON, part seven (final)

"The Soul Stealer"

You know my name. I told you in the lobby last Friday when I came out west here to get away from the shit. I did a good job of it, too. Or maybe I didn't, not alone, but I thumb my way out. You saw me do it. Not too proud to say that I had to rob a few of 'em at the end of a knife to keep me going. Most of the cash went toward beer and a roof on colder nights in the cities just like you taught me. That's where I found you, remember? I would've been face down without the coffee. Or was it pills? I found you on the bad night and you dealt me a good card. Take this, you said. Take the card and tell me what you see.

And what did I see? We'd both laugh our asses off with the things you'd show me and I'd tell you to shove that hocus pocus. You with your little voice and me with my past, we're pals. And what did I do? Do you remember? That's right. Scooped you up. Saw your devils' magic and raised you a one-two. That card, the future, you held it out with your awful hand and thought I'd turn Yellow. Said you'd make me a deal. Sonofabitch, you even smiled at me. One hand dealt is a devil trying to trick you, and the other is a hand that feeds you a black bottle. You're in there, aren't you? You can hear this.

And what did you think when you saw me? You saw what everyone else sees. Who gives a shit, right? The bartender took seventeen minutes to take a drink order for beers I'd have for myself anyway. The blonde and the cheap date next to me, probably. Want to look at them? You saw me and found a mark. Can I blame you?

No, now, it's just us. I'm out here and you're in there and I can't thank you enough for your help. It's the quiet times like these when I have all the beer a man could ask for that I wonder about what you know and how you know it. Did you know about me? One could say that you were looking for weak food - prey - but I'm starting to get smart to it. You showed me my card and thought that I'd buck and piss and shit myself and do whatever it is that every other dark soul runs up against when their number is up, but I didn't flinch. Was that what you were expecting? I didn't move or blink or call out for my mother. No, I grabbed this here beer bottle and brought it down on your head. All of the crooked wisdom and tricks of Hell, but you lose a bar fight? I don't buy it.

All the same, I did what The Others said I could do. Lit candles very much like the ones you see here and zapped you. Pink smoke and all that jazz. You shot up in a scream I didn't much like and tried to kill me. The very same Bud I smacked you around with sat up on its ass and pulled you in crying like a mad cat. Even now, I can remember the squeezed look on your face. Totally insane. You wanted me dead. I think you were scared of Hell.

We have work to do.

(A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL) DARK TALES FROM BRIGHTON, part six

"Hell"

Maura came in from the rain with lightning at her back. The wind from the porch spit inward as it came through the doorway, its sticky, dark leaves, with it, whipped and stuck to the cupboards like frogs. The rug was a mess. She was wet mess. Her arms were wet. Her boots were wet. Mud and spots of soggy wood streaked her forearms. She had cuts. Her palms stung. The storm door crying on its hinges made her anxious as she ruined newspapers on the table with wet logs.

Weathermen from surrounding counties stuck pretty close in the days leading up to the storm to telling similar stories on the radio about its quick passing. Everything anyone had forecasted for the storm explained nothing like this. The picture people had in their minds was something basic. Unheard by most listeners in the broadcasts were intermittent cracks of distant lightning translated by their set speakers with small, interrupting clicks. The sun still showed, and there was nothing about how dark it would be.

Eyewitness testimony days into the happening started in on amateur, emergency bands and broke through no louder than a far-off whisper in static. People explained highways lifting away in front of their stopped cars and did so moments before disappearing forever. A truck driver out in Penobscot got on in his marooned truck and hollered a while for a tow before going quiet. An old man north of the highway updated every hour with things he could see from his front parlor window. His details became simple before giving way to an airy sound that cut out like something turning off. A couple and two children screamed once and were gone. From the kitchen, all of these and more sounded like radio voices out of time, little, tinny ghosts that offered messages helping no one.

The weather reports were small to start in the beginning. Over time, they became broader in the way they captured what was actually happening to everyone. Major cities without lights or repair loomed in front of string lightning like trees when there was lightning, small towns cut off and darkened in the distance of places with better visibility looked hollowed and sunk like ships or hills; these were the first unnerving signs that something was wrong. The state was covered in it.

And Maura got to work the first day with the eerie sense that something in the world was broken. Look up into the rain, she thought, and you can’t see the sky. No moonlight. All around you, the constant sound of full rain blocked the world. Loud patters of mud mixed in tone to play tricks on your ears. The woods were full of laughing goblins and devils and beasts that never became complete expressions of evil. You could be close to total sentences screamed without actually understanding them. Dogs could bark. In the rain, the night could step to your side with a knife and all you would hear would be water.

Full, solid bullets fell so close in front of your face without any light to mark its passing. Leaving the candlelight of your home, you could feel the wet like a pool. The woods felt nearer. The clouds above, even, felt as close as a ceiling. In the dark loomed a danger of unexplained terror.

All she could do was hide, too; she knew that much. Stay inside. It had been days since the radios, and it had also been enough time to know that the sun wasn’t coming back. She hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time. She slept in the kitchen. The rain had come during the night on Saturday, and the screams may have been Monday. Everything about the noise in the dark took time and stretched it into a single, maniacal evening near the refrigerator. She slumped in a metal chair and kept her eyes on the lantern. The candle flickered against the glass of a nearby window in a double reflection. Inexplicably, Maura felt horrified, as if watched!

At once, the rain stopped, snuffing her lantern. Maura’s eyes grew dead white and a scream was lost to her. Her mouth hung open as she shook uncontrollably in her chair. Her radio slammed on at full volume. All of the logs and the newspaper on the table ran off to the floor in a mess unseen in the darkness. In a quick, horrible succession behind her, the doors of her house flung open violently in the pitch black, their sound blacked out by the radio and made hellish. She was grabbed up with a horrible, invisible quickness, pulled in half like a doll through the window by the sink, and was never seen again.

(A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL) DARK TALES FROM BRIGHTON, part one

"Yo te protejo de los dientes."

She regained consciousness by the front wheel of the rental. Smears of blood and sweat and hair ran along her forehead in pawed smudges. A layer of fine sand dulled the half of her face that had been resting in the dust. It was hard to breathe. Her ribs were loose and painful in places that let her know she must have broken a few. Two of her fingers were missing. All around her was the smell of gas, and her back didn't feel right. Her hair had been shaggy, tied into a ponytail with a flowery elastic. The sides of her scalp now throbbed mercilessly by her temples where mottled patches of bald skin refused hair.

Headlights and the cold chrome of the front end made her wince and turn. She brushed bits of glass out of her palms on her jeans. Doctors would call this shock. Swirls of laden mist swayed in front of the car and made way for the light to cast deceiving shadows on the alien terrain in front of her. Bright light faded in the distance to a dull, desaturated shade similar to dry earth. In center of her view at a distance sat a plain stone well backed by a barrier of darkness.

David.

They had been driving along a coastal stretch of 23 for most of the day hours and had stopped in La Joya for supplies before dusk. For years, their travels had involved these kinds of detours. Ghostly roads. Old hotels. Highways that stop with a gate and a sign to bar passage. Years ago, they booked a trip to Alaska to explore old coastal hospitals. Coasts were the best for this. The edges of the world. Outer space.

She recalled the man in the consignment shop, the withered, Mexican man. He was sitting on the sill of the front window. They understood little of what he told them as they stood there and, from the wreck, she couldn't remember much of their actual meeting. Most of what scratched from his throat they had to later reference in a travel-sized Spanish guide. He had been a dentist. He had served the town's basic health needs, or had since his retirement some years ago. He seemed kind but had the sharp eye of a younger man, and he spoke with a peculiar urgency. "No vaya," he told them. That much they made out. No vaya. No go. Michelle had to turn from grabbing coins in the front pouch of her backpack to laugh a bit. Neither of them understood. The shopkeeper looked plainly. David paid for the gas and a bag of trail mix and the two of them left with a nod.

Much of what had happened seemed impossible. She remembered trying the radio a few times for chatter. She quit on the idea after an hour. She had her feet up on the dash and was resting a hand behind David's head on the seat. There were periods of complete silence in the car with the night fully realized in front of them. The moon was full. As they edged further out of town, the headlights seemed in an illusory struggle with the dark. The passing road underneath them pulled slowly into a small circle of visible ground in front of them. The stars. The headlights. The occasional and bare-worn signs. The rythym was hypnotic.

It came from nowhere. Whatever it was looked like a deer. It looked to be the size of a deer. It jumped quickly into the road and was gone before they could hit it. Nothing moves that fast. Nothing jumps up in a blink that passes too quickly for anyone to react, to even get a word or a sound out, but this did, and whatever it was jumped up and over the headlights and David was gone. The driver seat was empty, the driver's side window smashed out and flecked with gore. The form of a man or an animal flew through the air on the side into the night and was gone. Without its driver, the car's wheel strayed left, hit a snag, jerked violently to one side, and the rental lurched far in the air. Michelle's last memory of the crash was the sound of keys flying across the dash and glass being turned to sand under the weight of the roof. Darkness.

The old well was deep.

The well was old and deep and surrounded on all sides by footprints. From a distance, Michelle had figured the marks as a sign of struggle, but everything was too clean - one line out, the other in. Small feet in small rows, a column of indescribably awful feet. The footprints were traffic leading to a hole at the end of the world. Besides the well, there was nothing to mark the landscape. No sounds. No mess. No David.

The stones of the well were heavy and impossibly smooth. Some of the stones seemed glassy in the light of the sedan. The wood of the bucket pull was pitch and smooth like boatwood. Beyond the well, there was nothing. No light. No sky beyond the horizon. Michelle looked down into the hole at the end of the earth and began to cry. Insane evil.

Guard? Did he say Guard? She reeled in delirious thought and nearly feel forward. He was talking about helping. Or was it Defending? The Spanish word for Defense is easy enough to understand - "defensa". No vaya. He talked about things like Teeth. Teeth and the old town he was from. Dentistry. Teeth. Retired. He was a retiree from an older town where he worked with teeth. I protect teeth - wasn't that it? Wasn't that what he was talking about before he said "no go"? And why was he so adamant? Why would a retired dentist be so worried and abrupt? Did the shopkeeper see? Did anyone see us leave town? Did they? We didn't hear him right, did we? Oh God, I'm bleeding. Oh, David. We...