THAT FINAL DARKNESS
by Anthony J Fuchs
SmashWords
Edition
Copyright
2011 Anthony J Fuchs
Cover photo by Noah Jeppson
All rights reserved
First published in Volume 6, Issue 24 of Flash Me Magazine
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The Constellation Theatre burned to the ground long ago.
But they still came here, across all the years. It was habit. And it was still possible because what remained of the Constellation had become the unlikely kind of place where memory overruled time.
Will had called them here from far away. They almost hadn't been able to find the place, and Liam was certain they'd never be able to again. And he was sure that Billy, despite his youth, knew it too. Billy had always been too smart for his own good.
The Theatre had once been the kind of one-screen movie house that had long since gone the way of the thylacine. The three of them huddled in the lobby, watching out the windows as the sky fell in furious sheets of blinding snow. They waited for the blizzard to pass, and each of them knew that it never would.
The kid watched his breath fog on the door. He was fourteen, and still captivated by the dreamy appeal of that chaotic ice-storm blasting against the glass. When he saw an uprooted mailbox cartwheel over a pick-up truck in the grip of those blustery winds, he knew better than to venture out into that arctic purgatory.
The ancient incandescent bulbs flickered, then fought back to life.
Liam's breath hitched, and the derelict remains of the foyer seemed all at once more there. He was thirty-seven, and still haunted by the nightmare of Hill 937. It was the unsleeping dæmon that seemed to lurked beneath the surface of all the most ordinary things in his world. And when he saw the strange geometries of that ruined lobby that wasn't really a lobby at all, he felt a steel wire tighten in the enteric abyss of his gut.
He looked to the boy at the door. "Don't stand there, kid," he said to Billy. "All you need is for something to come through that glass."
"Nothing ever comes through the glass," Billy sighed, and Liam knew it was true. But Billy crossed back to the lopsided bench near the concession stand anyway, and Liam breathed his relief. He spoke to the older man standing to his right without turning.
"Not much juice left."
A smile flickered across Will's lips, and he suddenly looked half his age. "Not anymore." He was sixty, and even though he'd left the Department a decade ago, he was still fully capable of holding his own with some of the rookies on the force. Yet when he saw the two people standing here in this tilting lobby, he became intensely aware of just how many of his own years were stacked up behind him like old newspapers.
Billy folded his legs under himself on the bench, leaned against the defaced wall. "First movie I ever saw in a theatre was The Guns of Navarone," he said. "Right here. First week it was out." He smiled at the memory, and suddenly looked twice his age. "Mom didn't want me to see it. Said it glorified violence. Course that just made me want to see it more." He laughed. "My best friend Teddy's older brother worked here. Ran the projector. He got us in." Then he turned to the littered concession stand and seemed to see a memory. "We were buying popcorn when I saw Jenny for the first time."
Liam flashed a broad grin at that, glanced around the rubble with a rediscovered fondness. "I proposed to Genevieve here," he gestured to the bench that Billy occupied, "right after what was left of the 506th got back to the States. I brought her to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I arranged to have both of our families waiting in the lobby." He smiled at the memory, and laughed. "Mom didn't really like that I was seeing her. Thought she was too assertive. My best friend Theo was my best man."
Will smiled at that, looked from Liam to Billy and back. "My daughter and her boyfriend took me and Jen out on a double-date for our wedding anniversary. Meet the Parents." He smiled at the memory, and shook his head. "That's Andrew's sense of humor. He asked Jen and me for permission to marry Victoria that night." He laughed. "Victoria told him it was her permission he should be concerned with."
Then he stepped to the front window again. "Andy was my buddy Ted's kid. He was like a son already. I gave him Mom's wedding and engagement rings to make it official – the ones she'd left to me when she died. She never had any daughters."
Liam nodded. "She always wanted a girl, but she said it wasn't the Lord's plan." He smiled, his hands in his pockets. "But she eventually warmed up to Genevieve."
"Yeah," Billy said. "Especially after Jenny let her teach her how to bake."
Will nodded, sighing, entranced by the dreamy appeal of that swirling whiteout. He watched his breath fog on the door. The bare bulbs faded, waned to a mute dusk, nearly gave up, but strained one last time and lit the foyer again. Will knew without looking that Liam and Billy were studying him. Their silence was stifling, and Will answered it with his own soft and resigned words.
"Andy called last night. Vicky went into labor. My first grandchild." A sad smile flickered, fought for life, faded. "My only, so far as I know." Then his eyes darkened as he looked through the window at the memory again. "It was snowing. Twice this bad. I never saw the ice under all that. Then it was just blood." He stopped, lost, swallowed, blinked away that white light. "So much blood," he said, but mostly to himself.
Liam was beside him then, a hand on the man's shoulder. Will looked to him, saw fierce cerulean eyes that were his own. "They brought me to the same hospital where Vicky was," Will told him. "I held on as long as I could. Long enough for her boy to be born." A smile flared, choked with sorrow. "They named him William."
"It's a good name," Liam said.
"Do you really have to go?" Billy asked, now at Will's other side. Looking up with fierce cerulean eyes that were his own.
Will nodded, solemn and resolved. He rested a hand on the boy's shoulder, and Billy settled his own hand on Will's, each of them sure he was comforting the other. Just a small bit of contact so that none of them would have to be alone in the end.
Then the lights surged a blinding white, and burned themselves out.
And there was nothing left to hold out that final darkness.
END
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About the Author
Anthony J Fuchs was born and raised in Philadelphia, and now lives in Eastern North Carolina with his wife and daughter. He thanks you for your support, and welcomes all feedback and reviews, positive or negative. He's doing this for you, dear reader.
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