The Test of Darkness
by
William Todd Rose
SMASHWORDS EDITION
The Test of Darkness
Copyright ? 2011 by William Todd Rose
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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*****
Sara O'Hare wanted nothing more than her blood to be drained from her body. She longed to know the night as intimately as the most passionate lover, to embrace its cold hand and allow it to lead her through the winding corridors of eternity. Perhaps the touch of death would lend a supernatural pallor to her blemished complexion… or maybe transform hair that was limp and the color of dishwater into something that was so radiant and flowing that an unnatural breeze always seemed to rustle through its silken wisps. If nothing else, the emergence of fangs would lend a more pouty expression to her mouth; and a diet consisting entirely of blood would surely melt away the rolls of what her mother always referred to as baby fat. The chunky glasses that slid down the bridge of her nose, of course, would no longer be necessary and her eyes would shine with a bewitching aura that mesmerized her intended victims into willful compliance. To never have the rays of the sun darken the freckles on her face; to never cower in the lunchroom like a frightened gazelle among lions; to never again be forced to look upon her own reflection in the unforgiving mirror: these were the things she wanted so badly that her soul seemed to cry out for them.
And he would be there, as well. A handsome prince of darkness with features so beautiful and perfect that artists had been inspired through the ages to capture his essence on canvas and in stone. Aloof in some ways, but so protective and devoted in others. Mysterious. Suave. Debonair. She would be his queen and together they would rule over the world of mortals from their thrones of inequity. They would feast when hungry, kiss when the moonlight bathed them in its magical glow, and slumber through the day in a coffin built for two. They'd live forever and the slow passing of the centuries would temper their love like the raging fires of a blacksmith's furnace.
As these thoughts flittered through her mind like a colony of startled bats, Sara sighed. She flopped over on her canopied bed and rested her chin in cupped hands; her eyes scanned the room slowly, almost as if she fully expected her supernatural lover to manifest from the shadows that clustered in its corners. The walls were covered with Twilight posters to the point that the pink paint could barely be glimpsed between their curled edges and the flickering glow of candles made shadows dance across their glossy veneers. The candles were black, naturally, and sat upon almost every available surface: wax dripped down the sides of bottles on the dresser, tendrils of smoke darkened the underside of bookshelf slats, and a tarnished candelabra splashed waves of light across the bedside table.
Though her door was shut, Sarah still heard the muffled shouts from downstairs: her mother's shrill screeching; her step-father's slurred, bellowing roar. Every few moments, the argument was punctuated with the shattering of glass as yet another plate or cup was reduced to shards against the living room wall. By the time they passed out, one of them would have a black eye. The other a bloody nose or swollen lip. Both would sprawl on the couch, bathed in a cloud of cheap whiskey and day old sweat, and the house would finally be as silent as a tomb at midnight. She would still wait until morning to use the bathroom, of course: there was no sense in tempting fate by creeping past them. The slightest creak of the floorboards could rouse one of them from their hazy stupor and remind them that she lived there, too. That there was someone smaller, someone weaker: someone whom they could prey on as easily as she intended to the living.
But, for now, she was trapped.
Rising from her bed, she took a pair of enamel fangs that she'd bought from the Dark Desires website and slipped them over her own teeth. These weren't the cheap, plastic party favors that filled space on drugstore racks every Halloween and she'd had to squirrel away money beneath her mattress until she could afford to transfer the one hundred and fifty dollars onto a prepaid Visa. But the craftsmanship of the fangs was worth the weighty price tag : they were so intricately crafted that they looked as if she'd been born with them. The incisors curled slightly inward and Sara ran the tip of her tongue over their sharp points, relishing the way they scraped almost painfully against her taste buds. As was always the case when she wore them, her mouth instantly flooded with saliva and she swallowed every few seconds, pretending that it was warm blood sliding into her gullet instead of the mint-tinged aftertaste of toothpaste.
After waiting weeks for the package to arrive, the first thing she'd done upon tearing open the box was bite herself. Not hard: just enough to leave twin dimples in the fleshy part of her forearm and feel the warning pang of pain. But it had been worth it. Her neck was so much softer than her arm and that exploratory nibble had given her a general idea of what to expect when it was her time to be turned. It would hurt, no doubt . . . but, as buying the fangs had proven, nothing worth having ever came without a cost. And this was a cost she would gladly endure.
Never mind that she'd been mercilessly taunted the first time she'd worn them to school. The jeers and taunting, the bottles of water thrown in her face as if it had been blessed by a priest, being jabbed in the chest with sharpened pencils in the locker-lined hallways: that bitch, Kaylee Jarvis (as always) had been behind it all. Just because she was a senior and dating the captain of the football team, that blond haired bitch thought she could get away with anything. But she'd get hers. Once Sara had become a child of the night, she'd stalk the cheerleader like a cat toying with a cornered mouse. The parking garage at the mall; the cemetery where the so-called cool kids swilled bottles of scotch filched from their parents' liquor cabinets; waiting in the shadows outside the gymnasium: wherever Kaylee went, Sara would be waiting . . . and that bitch would know exactly what it meant to be tormented before her miserable excuse for a life was cut short with a well-placed bite.
As had become her nightly ritual, Sara strolled to her only window. It was embedded in the wall behind a desk cluttered with textbooks and a tattered copy of Interview With A Vampire; flimsy curtains rustled in the same breeze that caused the flame of a candle to wiggle and dance and the wind carried the scent of honeysuckle on its wake. The chirping of crickets and the peeping of frogs wove a hymn to the night and she could faintly hear some night bird calling out like a lost soul.
Downstairs, her parents had escalated the war in the gulf between them. Crashes and thuds, curses and shrill, wordless screams that quivered with rage; something thumped against the wall so forcefully that, even upstairs, the window pane rattled. Sara closed her eyes and hugged herself as the cool, night air delicately kissed cheeks that glistened with silent tears.
“I invite you in…”
Her voice was nothing more than a whisper, softer even than the dry leaves that rattled across the yard below. But there was a desperation to her plea that was normally reserved for prayers offered by the bedsides of the dying. A tone of trembling exasperation that came when faith had all but disappeared and only the longing for a miracle remained.
She repeated the words again as if they were some sort of spell that could transport her far, far away from this dingy little house with its fading paint and crooked shutters.
“I invite you in, I invite you in, I invite you in . . . please, please come for me. Please. I invite you in.”
She listened for the slight noises of his arrival, for something to shake the branches of the tree just outside the window as it climbed toward her room. For that deep, timeless voice to answer: I have come for you, my love . . . .
But there was nothing more than a dog braying in the distance and the shattering of broken glass from the living room.
Inside, Sara felt as though she were already dead. It was as if all of her organs had turned to dust, leaving only a hollow cavity beneath this fleshy facade; and it was so empty that her sadness echoed through the cavernous space, mocking her with its repeated cries.
Why didn't he answer her call? He was out there, somewhere.
He had to be.
Wiping tears with the backs of her hands, Sara opened her stinging eyes and sniffled as she gazed out the window. Fog rolled across the landscape like a thick, gray veil and robbed detail from world: the trees looked like dark, skeletal hands that forced their way out of the ground to claw at the sky and the distant lights of the Jarvis farm created diffuse halos in the night.
Between the two properties, she could just make out Pleasant View Cemetery. The tombstones were nothing more than blobs of shadow and the silhouette of a wrought iron fence surrounded the graveyard like a row of black spears. A trick of light and fog made it seem as if one of the stone angels that stood vigil over the dead was slinking through the labyrinth of crypts and headstones. It almost seemed to glide through the darkness, as if granite wings helped it hover just above the ground.
Only there were no wings, now that she really thought about it. And the figure was smaller than the imposing statues that were peppered across the grounds. They were designed to tower over mourners, to look down upon them with gentle, passive smiles and widespread arms, almost as if welcoming them home. But this shape was closer to the size of an actual person . . . and it really was moving. Not an optical illusion at all, but honest to God movement.
Sara's heart felt as if it were filled with fluttering wings and her hands tingled with excited numbness. The air suddenly seemed too thin and her stomach felt as though she'd just plunged from the heights of a roller coaster.
It's him.
He'd heard her after all, had answered her faithful calls, and come to bless her with the dark gift. She smoothed her hair with her palms and rose up to her full height as her eyes darted about the room. She performed a quick inventory to see if there was anything she'd want to take with her, some little memento of her former life perhaps: but there was nothing. Souvenirs, after all, were meant to act as reminders of good times, like little jolts of memory that you could call upon to ease the banality and boredom of every day life. And there were certainly no moments worth preserving here.
She tilted her head back and to the side and thought about sweeping the hair away from her neck, but then decided otherwise. It would be much more romantic for him to do it, more like she'd always envisioned the moment: his cold hands brushing her locks to the side as his lips touched the throbbing vein in her throat . . . .
“No. No, no, no.”
The hope that had welled within Sara deflated like a balloon riddled with pinpricks. She felt that familiar despair rush into her inner void and the midnight world rippled through a cascade of tears. Leaning over the desktop, she pressed her hands against the windowsill and yelled so loudly that her voice broke with the strain. “Where are you going? I invite you in, damn it, I invite you in!”
She continued to watch the shadow recede away from her, moving further into the graveyard rather than toward her house. The further it went, the more the fog enshrouded it. Within moments, he would be entirely gone and salvation would fade like the memory of a dream. She would be just another silly girl with her fake fangs and dark clothes, struggling to stay afloat as the flotsam of life crashed against her.
“Shut
the fuck up! Don't make me come up there, you stupid bitch. I swear
to God, I'll knock the fear of God in ya!”
Sara barely heard
her mother's screeched threat. She clung to a single thought like a
life preserver, one which allowed her to resist the undertow that
threatened to suck her into the murky depths: perhaps simply waiting
for him to come was not enough. Maybe she had to prove her
dedication, her desire and devotion . . . maybe she had to show
him how badly she wanted this.
Without hesitation, Sara clamored over the desk on all fours, toppling books and pencils onto the floor. She wriggled out the window and stood on the roof for a fraction of a second, took three running steps, and leaped over the edge. Her arms wrapped around the closest branch of the tree, but inertia was simply too powerful to resist. The skin on her inner elbows were scraped raw against the rough bark as her legs flew forward, and then she tumbled through the air.
Her body hit the ground with a thud that felt as if her spine were about to shoot through the roof of her mouth; the air whooshed out of her lungs and pain exploded through her body as black spots burst like anti-matter fireworks in her field of vision. But there was no time to catch her breath, no time to rock back and forth as she held her scraped kneed: even as she was laying there, he was disappearing into the night.
She scrambled to her feet so quickly that she almost fell again; but then she was running like she never had before. The dew on the grass was cool and wet and her soles padded against the earth as she darted through the fog.
By the time she vaulted over the iron fence, her lungs felt as if they were being jabbed with needles of fire and her thighs ached with each forced step. Part of her wanted to stop and rest, to allow time for the nauseating dizziness to fade. But the more time she wasted, the further away he would get. For all she knew, he could be on the other side of the cemetery by now, working his way back to his lair before the sun could tint the eastern horizon with streaks of orange and pink
For a moment, Sara stood and watched the fog curl through the gravestones like an over-friendly cat. She tried to remember exactly where she'd seen her dark prince, what direction he'd been heading, what landmarks had been discernible through the gray mist. But everything out here looked the same: crosses and slabs, square mausoleums with rounded tops, the occasional evergreen dotting the gently rolling knolls.
“I'll find him.” she thought. “He'll draw me to him. Just like a moth to a porch light.”
She ran blindly into the necropolis, zigzagging through the monuments and leaping over the markers that had been embedded into the soft ground. A few times, she thought she saw something moving within the churning tendrils of fog and changed directions sharply, toppling withered floral arrangements in a frenzy of motion.
“I'm coming, I'm coming . . . please, please, wait for me, please wait…”
In the end, she nearly tripped over the body sprawled across the grass and had to pinwheel her arms for balance as she staggered to a stop. The girl was lying on her side with her arm stretched out, as if grasping for the empty whiskey bottle that was just out of reach. Her blond ponytail was embellished with dried leaves and she was as pale and motionless as the marble Jesus whose base she was curled next to.
“His victim . . . he drained her. He's really here.”
As Sara studied the girl's neck for the telltale bites, recognition dawned on her. Those perfect, high cheek bones; the upturned curve of the nose and rounded forehead; it was unmistakable: her undead savior had feasted on none other than Kaylee Jarvis.
Sara squatted by the body of her nemesis. The acrid bite of whiskey hung about the cheerleader in a cloud that was nearly as thick as the fog and her bottom lip glistened as drool slid out of her open mouth and onto the grass. A crumpled piece of paper was tucked just beneath the girl's outstretched hand and curiosity demanded that Sara snatch it away.
Squinting her eyes, she read the message that was scrawled in a masculine script on the back of the receipt, hoping that it might be instructions from the beautiful creature who'd killed this bitch for her.
“Babe, had to bail. Tried to wake you, but you were fucked up. See you tomorrow, Sleeping Beauty. PS: They're coming to get you, Kaylee. LOL.”
As Sara read the note, Kaylee muttered thickly and smacked her lips in a way that reminded the young girl of her own parents . . . after the nights bout had been fought to a draw, when they were both snoring on the couch, safely tucked away into the oblivion they'd drank themselves into.
She wasn't dead, after all. She hadn't been left as a symbolic token or macabre signpost on Sara's journey into darkness. She was stone cold drunk, ditched by a boyfriend who didn't have the class or nobility to safeguard her most vulnerable moments, and would live to torment Sara for yet another day.
But why? Here she was, like a goat tied to a stake in the middle of a wolf den; coursing with blood and defenseless . . . she probably wouldn't so much as screamed when he took her. She should have been nothing more than an easy meal, but for some reason she’d been spared. Why?
Kaylee swallowed once and mumbled something about dancing dogs before exhaling deeply through her mouth. Around the two girls the cemetery was silent and Sara closed her eyes as she tried to make sense of this unexpected scene.
When she opened them again, a crooked smile stretched across her face and her eyes twinkled like they did when she'd solved a particularly difficult algebra equation.
It was all so simple, really.
It was a test.
A way to see exactly how devoted Sara was.
She lowered her head toward the sleeping girl and parted her lips, exposing the enamel fangs still securely held within her mouth. The warmth of her breath tickled the cheerleader's flesh and the other girl waved her hand as if halfheartedly shooing a fly. Her arm was limp, however, and she offered little resistance as Sara guided her slender wrist back into the grass.
Without further hesitation, she sank the incisors into Kaylee's graceful neck.
He'd come once she'd proven herself to him.
Once she'd shown him that she wasn't afraid.
That she could take a life as easily as she changed clothes .
He would surely come then.
He had to.
****
Like The Test of Darkness? Why not try A Feast of Fools: The Cannibal’s Cookbook, also by William Todd Rose and available at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/128783
William Todd Rose is a dark fiction author currently residing in Parkersburg, West Virginia. His short works have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, as well as having been featured on several podcasts. To date, his published books include the surreal and experimental Shadow of the Woodpile, the apocalyptic thriller Cry Havoc, and the grindhouse horror inspired Shut the Fuck Up and Die!, which is currently available only as an ebook. The 7 Habits of Highly Infective People was quickly snapped up by Permuted Press for a second edition only months after its initial release and will be available in 2011. Living Dead Press will also present his short story collection Sex in the Time of Zombies in the coming year. For more information on the author, please visit him online at www.williamtoddrose.com.