Secrets of the Night
Written by Gregory D. Welch
Copyright © 2009 by Gregory D. Welch
No part may be copied, stored, or quoted in large pieces without authors prior permission except in reviews and where the author is cited by name as being original creator of work.
Two orange embers burned against the night as twin carbon plumes of smoke chased each other up in invisible glory. The smell was acrid, thick, and grey to its core. Not blue, never blue, despite the smoker's claims. This was a dead thing of ashen grey and hopelessness. Eternal hopelessness, ever onward, and always upward.
"Was it good for you?" she asked.
"As good as always baby. You?" he answered.
A heavy and soggy deep drag made one of the embers move in mesmeric little circles and blaze brilliantly bright---a challenge for the second glowing circle to do its worst.
"Too bad you gotta leave," he said. His own circle of fire moved through the solid black night, seeking his lips. The burning circle blazed a brilliant firey orange when as he took a drag.
"Don't start Jimmy. Hell, you knew what you were gettin' into when you fucked a married woman. Jus' be thankful for what you got goin' for you, alright?"
"I am. Jesus I am. I couldn't find myself a better piece of ass if my life depended on it."
His grin remained invisible in the midnight black darkness they were lying in. His teasing words fell flat on his own ears, and he wondered how she'd take it. She wasn't as much of a jokester as him, and his idea of a funny thing to say, seldom sounded funny to her. He hoped he didn't sound like the jerk she was always saying he could be when he wanted to be.
Jimmy stopped to consider how dark the night seemed as it rose up around him in elongated and accusatory shadows. Cold too, he thought. Dangerous even, his deep mind whispered. But before he could think much in the ways of what the dark night meant, he was cut off Lucinda's not finding the humor in yet another of his teasing statements.
"That all I am to you? Ass? Gee, thanks. Least I'm not just a good fuck too. Or was that what you really meant?" she said.
Her bead of orange suddenly cut a sinister jag in the black dull shades that surrounded their nude bodies as she jerked herself up and out of bed. He had no way of knowing where she was---it was so dark---except for the bead of her burning cigarette smiling out at him defiant of the cold choking darkness. That burning cherry traced her every move, an extension of her hidden hands, as she went to work dressing herself.
Jimmy's fire was being crumpled in an unseen ashtray to the side of the bed as he followed her into the black madness of the room. Was it really that dark?
He was breathing heavily; sucking in the air and huffing it back out. He coughed hard for a few minutes but managed to sit upright in the end, he was exhausted after spending all his energy satisfying the evil beast that sex always seemed to be for him and her. He felt he had done a week's worth of exercise. Too many cigs, he thought, as he turned bare assed on the clammy sheets to face the object of his lust and her little dying bit of flame. He watched it as it danced and worked to the rhythms of her getting dressed, then worked its way back up to her mouth and came to a supernova of cancerous life.
"I was teasing Lucinda. Just teasin baby, that's all. You aint mad are you? Not for real or nothing, right?"
She didn't answer, not with words. Her fire shot back down to what Jimmy could only imagine was her ass. She loved it dark when they had sex, like she was ashamed of the adulterous hunger they were so desperate to fulfill. And why shouldn't she be? She'd been married to a good man, a hard working and honest man. A preaching man.
"Babe?" Jimmy got up and walked around to the side of the bed she had been sitting on. She was shaking when he found her, thin whispers of teary eyed sobs floating up on the cold night air. Her cigarette snuffed out for moments long unnoticed.
"You crying Cin?" he asked. He'd never been in love with her, and he thought she understood that. But he did care for her, and he thought she had understood that too. It was never enough for her though, she felt dirty after doing what she really wanted to, and try as he did, he could never talk her into leaving the man she had married. Jimmy knew she would've been happier if she had done that, and in the end he wouldn't be so upset about it either. Not really.
"Don't call me that, not right now. Don't do it, ok?" she said, pulling away a little. Jimmy felt it and moved in closer, gripping her shoulder with his rough working hands---mechanic's hands---in a way that let her know he was strong enough to keep her if he needed to.
"Listen Lucinda, nothing we done here to be ashamed about. People fall in and out of love all the time. Not your fault. Hell, if the man spent half as much passion and concern on you as he did those damned high and mighty sermons of his, maybe you'd feel a little more strongly for him. But being as he doesn't, he aint got no body but 'imself to blame. If you ask me, that is," Jimmy said. He was surprised she had let him say all that he had. He felt her body give a little under his wiry strong arm, lifting the tension just slightly. A good sign, he thought, scooting closer to her.
A sudden chill darted down the spine of his back, black tendrils of cold dead electricity chased after it. Jimmy felt chilled to the core, and thought of his long deceased mother. What had she said? A goose just crossed over your grave boy. That was it. He shrugged it off and enjoyed the warmth of Lucinda's body.
"Besides, it aint like either of you have kids, is it? That might make things a little stickier, maybe, but, you don't. So, there's that. Right?" he said. He hoped he'd get through to her this time, but knew down deep he wouldn't. That he couldn't. Not until she'd let him; but in the end it would always be her decision alone to make.
The warmth of her body felt colder than usual, faked if that were possible. And her skin seemed placid and almost manufactured. Not quite real, though he knew it was, it just wasn't the same. He fought off the urge to push away, and as if in defiance of his own mind, held her tighter instead.
"I gotta go Jimmy, he'll be calling me soon, and I don't think I could handle talking with him with you sittin' beside me. Besides, I don't feel so hot tonight, might be coming down with a cold or something."
"On one condition," he said. The thought of suddenly being left alone was growing spiders legs and scurrying across his mind in black fury. He didn't want to be alone, not tonight, not in all this thicker than normal dark madness.
"What's that?" she asked.
"You give me a damn good kiss goodbye and promise me I aint got nothing to worry about when you leave."
"Oh Jimmy. You're the one thing that keeps me sane. Down deep I mean. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you to escape to," she said. He felt her turn in the darkness and knew she was facing him now. He felt her moving and knew she was hovering near his face, looking at him maybe. The room tried to steal this kindness from him, swimming deeper down into the black abyss of night's darkest hour. But he wouldn't let it win, he wanted her, and wanted her to stay fiercely. What would it take, he suddenly wondered, to keep her hear with him?
Their lust soaked room, stinking of sweat and passions burning fire, teased his mind one final time before she kissed him. Her lips felt wet with pulsing life and thick with desire. He enjoyed it more than he had ever enjoyed any other kiss she had given him and wondered why he felt so lonely when it ended.
"He won't be back from his big conference trip for a week. So, we got some play time if you want? Call you soon?" she asked, rising from the bed. She was leaving him, and more than ever he didn't want her to go. But he couldn't say that to her, he couldn't voice such fear and loneliness could he? It was his toughness she had came to him for, his strength, not this soft side of him. He pushed it away and did the only thing he knew he could do.
"You better," he said. He followed her to the bedroom door, and intended to go further. Would have done just that, except all at once the world slowed down and everything good and normal---everything familiar---passed away. Slipped out of their hands like little children fighting a losing battle with a kite that tasted the sky. He didn't know it then, but his world would never be the same.
She stopped so suddenly in front of him, his nose and face smacked the back of her perfumed hair---hinting only slightly at the dirty sex they'd just shared.
"What is it?" he asked her.
She was silent; deadly silent. Silent as the grave his mind whispered in a harsh suggestive tone. He cursed that voice, demanding it to silence itself while he stood naked and still hoping for her to speak soon. For an understanding of what was going on around him? His mind felt slippery and wet, sliding further from his hopeful grip. He was just about to speak---feeling that if he didn't he would go insane---when she suddenly cut through the thick blackness like a shark's tooth and saved his sanity for just a little while longer. Her words were jagged and primal.
"You believe in Hell Jimmy?"
She was turning he felt, her hair tickling his nose as danced across his skin. She was facing him now, he felt her eyes considering him in their feline like way, but didn't see. Sight was a distant memory in the hell of darkness that had possessed all he had known and twisted it in upon itself. There was only those eyes, those eyes he would never see so clearly, so filled with life, never again.
Those eyes, the ones he couldn't see, they were cutting him deeper and deeper; dissecting him like a pathetic green frog on a teenager's lab table for science class. He felt them. They were burning him and whispering cruel accusations deep into his nude and defenseless soul.
The darkness built to an epic storm around him, making him feel cold and caught. There was another feeling, a feeling of closing in and drowning in the tar thick void of nightmare insanity the night was beginning to take on. How was it this black all of a sudden?
"Naw, not me babe, not my thing. Just a grease monkey with a year of college he still can't afford under his belt. No theology though. Why?"
She breathed on him, the smells of leftover cigarettes tainting what little air he found left in the room. She didn't offer an answer, just stood there, stone still, breathing on him. He felt a little prickle of concern dance up his spine, and worry followed after.
"Something I should know about Cin?"
"All have fallen short of the Glory of God Jimmy, you ever think about that? We're all damned..."
She was really beginning to creep him out, her voice trailing with the morbid hint of dark secrets and something else. Something his balls picked up faster than his head, they were tucking in tight worried or fearful of some primal thing, some thing wicked and deep. Some thing that hid in the dark. Some thing like a troll hiding just behind the next shadow, hungry for human flesh. The room was warping around him, its thick shadows choking him, sweat popped out on his brow and bled down the crease of his forehead to burn in his eyes.
"Cin?" he asked.
The silence was deafening. He heard her breathing, but it seemed further away somehow. And then there was nothing except her breathing. The silence was perfect except for that.
"Cin, quit it."
But she didn't, she just stood there, as still as ice. Her breath growing calmer and calmer, as if she were dying or fading from existence. Jimmy took all he could then he spoke up in a weaker voice than he wanted.
"Dammit you're scaring me baby. And I don't scare easy."
Not even her breath was upon him anymore, and without even having to reach out he felt her presence no longer there. Jerked away in a stale dead air, as if a crypt vault had been eased open and she were yanked in and away from him forever. Jimmy reached out and swiped the empty air anyway, his hands slid through the spot she had been occupying just moments before. He felt his guts turn into a tight knot of pain and nausea. What the hell was going on?
"Ok Cin, ha ha, you got me. Come on baby, quit this shit, k?" he said. He turned to face the dark room behind him. A wave of searing and angry guilt burned through his head, but not knowing where it came from, or why, he shrugged it off and searched for any hint of Lucinda. He found none.
The little bedroom was more than silent; it was unnaturally---as if haunted and waiting---still and deathly cold with decay and rot. The smell of sex was no longer fresh and pleasant in its salty undertones; it was now old and putrid. Left over sex always rotted faster than fresh lovemaking, but this, this was stale and old.
Then, as if from nowhere, the shrill hint of a painful whimper and the sudden release of air came out of the night. Meaty sounding slash noises came up, one after the other with a somber splatter of some liquid upon the ground. Jimmy didn't like that noise, it was evil to its core. It made his balls dig further up inside him, but they had reached their limit of just how far they could go. He was alone in the night and hated the darkness for its gripping hold on him.
Jimmy turned toward the bed and tiptoed with a prisoner's caution. One step before the other, he told himself. The creaking wood floor screeched up at him, driving his nerves to madness, each step a vicious bite of cold pain. His skin prickled and danced with gooseflesh as the temperature plunged deeper into the depths of a Hell even Dante in all his wild imaginings couldn't summon. He swore once or twice his breath had to come out in plain view. Except there was no view.
Open the damned windows, a voice in his mind screamed at him. He never noticed it, or even that he was obeying it. He just turned to face where the windows were and began to fumble and feel around. His big awkward hands hit the dresser and knocked a collection of Lucinda's perfume bottles and other makeup off. Things she insisted on keeping in his apartment despite his feeble attempts at not wanting his world tainted with too strong of a woman's touch. She had won, in the end. He had a special liking of her. But this time, it was him that had won; he had made the balance by crashing most of her fragile things to the floor in a glass shattering rain of noise.
He jerked his hands back anticipating she'd give up the charade now and cuss at him for his fumbling mistake.
He was wrong; she remained silent, too silent. Jimmy shivered in a mixture of cold and fear. He welcomed the growing fear with more ease than he had expected, standing nude in the cold black bedroom. His left hand brushed the cloth of red curtains---now turned an evil shade of black, as everything else had been---and with a wave of sudden excitement, he yanked the curtains back hard. So hard in fact, he heard the sickly sound of the fabric tearing loose and freeing itself entirely from the rod above.
The lack of sunshine was expected. The void of glaring black desolation just beyond, was not. Jimmy blinked his eyes three times, squinting so hard the third, tears came burning up his wide open tear ducts spurting out little wet pleas for mercy. Jimmy leaned close to the frost bitten window and felt the coldness belch out at him, his breath steamed the glass as he gripped himself and fought off a shiver. He turned his head back and forth, looking for something familiar. He again found nothing, saw nothing, sensed nothing. That was worse. Sensing a void even before you could see it.
"What the hell?" he said, half turning to consider the still hopelessly black room behind him. He saw no new details, and had no new reason to think he would see Lucinda anywhere. But he did hear something new, something bordering on the liquid like sounds of a drowning smoker fighting hard for their dying breath.
"Cin? That you?" he called out in just above a whisper. He held one hand out against the blackness as he carved a thin path to the sound's source. He never knew there could be so much terror in one man's body until he felt it in his own. The sound was grating and harsh on his ears and felt wrong to him somehow.
"Cin?"
The sound grew thicker, and gained a deeper and more hellish quality to it. He was nearly to its source, fighting his own terror like a madman, seeking all the reservoir of strength his body had within him. His adrenaline coursing through his veins like heroin, burning with the cold cutting edge of a razor as it ate him alive. His eyes buzzed and blurred, filling the black void of his bedroom with fire bursts of red and orange ferries.
He felt his outstretched hands brush the wall hard sending pain up his arm as three fingers nearly jammed on him. He hadn't realized he was walking so hard. The breathing sound suddenly cut off in mid breath as if disturbed by something. He jerked his hands back, and felt the thick string of cold dead phlegm that had stretched out from the wall to his hurting fingers. He thought he would be sick if he didn't get that shit off of him and quick. But it was thick like glue and hard as hell to shake free. He won that fight in the end, but paid a price for ignoring the room behind him.
A loud commanding smack hit the floor hard, sounding muffled and strangely body like. He jumped and turned to face it, momentarily forgetting how poor his vision was. He saw nothing, but heard plenty. Terror choked his mind again as the fight or flight part of his brain kicked into high gear.
He bunched his shoulders up tight, drawing his twin fists forward to meet the danger. It was the perfect stance of a fighter prepared---a thing he had done plenty of through his life was fight, and he'd be damned if he would let something take him in the sanctity of his own place.
"Cin?" he called to the black graveyard silence of his bedroom. He knew it wasn't her, not that sound. No way it could be. But some part of him wondered why it shouldn't be her, and it was this part that kept his arms ever so slightly relaxed---just in case.
The soft serpentine whisper of a scratching sound came shouting its horrible presence back up to Jimmy's ears. They were clawing the floor, those deadly fingernails, his mind whispered. They're scratching their way to you Jimmy, don't you hear?
He did hear, he heard each horrible scratch and the sickly wet slurping sound of a body being dragged just behind those damning nails. As if it were a body with no muscles anywhere except in those vicious hands, pulling itself closer and closer with each exasperated breath Jimmy puffed out. He suddenly wished he had a cigarette when an idea struck him. A horrible idea, as it turned out.
Jimmy lunged across the bed, rolled to the opposite side and jumped straight up. He was close to the wall when he felt the rush of claustrophobia he had known as a nine year old boy locked inside his bedroom closet suddenly rose up and took him. He wanted to get away from that wall badly. It was closing in, he just knew it. He heard it. Felt it. Hated it. But there was another noise he heard that he hated more. Nails scratching, digging hard, and turning that wicked corpse like body his eyes had never seen but his mind had thoroughly painted over and over as being a nightmare of George Romero's making.
Jimmy snapped his mind free from the devilish daydream and thrust his hands to the bedside table in a flying hurry that toppled an overfilled ashtray to the floor. A little lamp (that wouldn't work after five tries) was the next victim, its crunching death cried out across the almost perfect silence as glass shot out everywhere. The table shook hard as he searched through the disheveled mess, and then he found it.
Jimmy held the little lighter up against the darkness and struck it. There was nothing, not even a proper flicking sound. He nearly lost his cool, forgetting those damn child locks they had put on the lighters now, then struck it again. He got the flicking sound and only a little spray of fire but no catch. It took at least eight good attempts---and one brief panic attack---before the flame caught and rushed yellow weak light out across the void.
Shadows and black darkness darted away from the fire in what he hoped must've been a screaming fit. His sight was thin but much more improved than it had been. He searched the floor, unsure if this was a good thing or bad. Terror seizing his heart and threatening to stop it more than once.
Jimmy felt his eyes ache as they returned to their former bulging seats of terror. He was creeping to the foot of the bed now, where the scratching horror was still working its way around. He leaned his head out and over the edge, peeking cautiously, his heart pounding hard, sweat driblets trickling down his heavily creased forehead.
Jimmy shrieked at what he saw and in a fit of unholy terror worse than anything he even knew had existed, dropped the hot lighter. He was immediately punished by the return of a black night so foul, even Satan would have shivered in its wake.
Jimmy didn't understand what he'd seen, didn't want to, but he had seen it and that was maddening.
It was a woman, a mess of nude flesh, yellow tinted in the flame, and cruel black splotches of copper red lifeblood dried in chaotic poetry across her fully exposed and writhing back. Her hair clung to her upturned face in more of the drying life's gift of blood, and tickled its way across the floor below as her two elongated hands scratched their way toward him. Her eyes were twin shadows, void of sanity and overflowing with demonic laughter as blood stained her skin and oozed from where each orb should have been. She was dragging herself, he saw, with a determination both admirable and terrible at once.
He had jumped backwards, hitting the bedside table hard. He yelled out in a way he would never admit to if asked about it later. The fear was tangible now, as a huge bruise worked its way up his back from his confrontation with the table. Hot vomit freed itself from his mouth. He was splattered out on the floor when he turned his head and blew out steamy chunks of a dinner he didn't even remember eating anymore.
The scraping, clawing sounds of the gash covered woman was nearly around the bed when she spoke. It was the broken winded voice of a dying nightmare. Vaguely familiar, and never more than a whisper.
"Jiiiiimy."
"No..." Jimmy said, holding his ears and shaking his head.
"Jiiiiimy."
"No...no...no..." Jimmy said.
"Why Jimmy? Why'd you let this happen?" she called, sounding more and more familiar as she spoke. "We've been caught. He's found out. He's found us out. It hurts Jimmy, oh God it hurts..."
"No... you're not real. You're just not real damn it!" Jimmy shouted pulling his knees in close as the scraping sounds were blazing a snail's furious path upon him.
"Wasn't I good Jimmy? Wasn't I your best?" she said. "That must be why, has to be why he had this done to me. He killed me Jimmy, he killed me because of you!"
Jimmy felt a cold chill---a goose stepping on his grave as his mother would've said---as the feminine voice spoke. He knew her, recognized her, but how? How could it be her? She was just here, and very much alive, not this mess of monstrous proportions. How?
"Cin?" Jimmy asked the darkness as he heard the little lighter fly across the floor, she was that close, dragging her bleeding body behind. That close and what was he doing? Sitting there and waiting.
"Oh Jimmy, why? How?" she asked. "How'd he find us out?"
Get up Jimmy; get the hell up and run damn you! That nagging part of his brain bitched at him. He wanted to, but found himself glued to his seat as he sat there trying to figure the voice out. It was Lucinda's, but older, raspier. It held a mysterious depth to it, more...dead...rotten.
Jimmy felt tears flowing in shameless reverie.
"Jiiiiimy? I'm almost there. I can feel your warmth Jimmy. It's so cold, being dead, it's so cold Jimmy. And lonely. Keep me company? Hold me?" she called. "He's stabbed me. Oh God, I'm bleeding. My back, it hurts so bad. It hurts. It hurts so bad. So many hands, so many hands stabbing me. Ripping at me. Did you stab me too Jimmy? Did you stab me in the back too?"