Beloved Darness

"

No.

" Freddy shook his head, backpedaling into the road. Despite the lack of traffic, cars, or people, he found himself looking both ways. "I saw this movie. The guy died."

The door stayed open. Clouds gathering into a dense blanket across the sky, thunder rumbled again. Freddy felt the impression as though the sky itself were hungry, and the lack of traffic, cars, and people were no coincidence to this - yet

of course

this could not be the reason.

Still

. Wherever a thought like that came from, it wasn't a bright, or warm place.

The door hung open over the entry, two granite steps would be all it took, and he would be dry, and warm - or warmer than he was now, at least.

There he was, at a crossroads. The imminent rain, and storm. No car. No phone. No way out of town - at least not for now.

Or.

Shielding from the elements, in the very least.

"I guess."

Freddy

knew

better than this. In every story, and movie he'd ever seen. Ever. When someone was presented with an ominous opportunity, and accepted it, they always died. Or became one of the monsters.

Even the

latter

of those two options was horrible. Monsters, like vampires, always said that they weren't scared anymore. That they were scared because they didn't understand - but now they understood. That it only hurts for a second.

Freddy shook his head.

That's bullshit.

It hurts for a second. Then you die. Then you're undead. Then you're hungry forever, and

that

hurts. That hurts more than dying to some monster, because at least then you're dead. You're not hurting yourself, or other people because of what you've become.

The fuck with Zombies, or other unintelligent monsters. Get bitten, and that's it. Mindless corpse. You're body's a host, but your mind, and soul is gone. At least you're dead.

...but that's the point. They always die, or turn into something worse than death.

That

's exactly what he

didn't

want to become. Dead, or something worse.

Freddy held his breath, and stepped over the stairs, past the threshold.

_ _ _ _ _

The door did not close shut behind him with a loud slam, or a soft click. It hung on its hinges, wide open as it had before he entered. Outside, the winds were picking up.

Freddy fought the urge to call out

Hello?

, knowing that was only another opportunity for some horrible creature to kill him, and climb into his skin. Or make him into a human leather couch, lampshade, and matching curtains.

There were plenty of shadows, but that was because there was plenty of darkness to go around. The wall fixtures were lamps, not electrical lights. He reached out to the door, and closed it behind him.

Darkness enveloped him, only for a moment, and then his eyes adjusted to the fading light from outside.

Freddy was good at being quiet - too good, but those days were long behind him - and he edged through the main entry, and into the parlor. It was as he feared. No electricity. Likely, no phone.

Fuck

.

There were antique couches, positioned around a hearth the way modern people positioned furniture around a television set. Entire homes, where the focus of design was wherever they were watching movies.

The hearth had a partly burned log in it, though the dust around the brickwork, and on the tongs, and poker showed its disuse.

Next to the hearth was a small bundle of cut logs, well over seasoned wood, probably dry enough to go up in flames over so much as a spark.

The mantle held various porcelain figurines, similar to the ones his grandma kept in her lifetime, if not

much

older looking, and more rudimentary in their sculpture. Looming over the mantle was a large oil painting of a girl - a young woman - in a forest green dress. It looked like it could have been satin, or silk, or crushed velvet. The artist captured what must have been her likeness, but was very ambiguous with the material in the dress itself.

Freddy coughed, clearing his throat. There was dust on

everything

, and immediately he understood that this house, like the town itself, had not seem people in a long time. Footprints on the dusty floorboards revealed to him that he was, and had been for some time, the only person to set foot here.

Fine

, he thought.

There's no one else here.

It seemed worse, than better. Now he was in the middle of nowhere in a town so unfrequented that it was

dead

.

Freddy sighed.

What am I going to do?

Decisively, he trod toward the next room, which turned out to be the kitchen. In there, a table set with empty plates, and a seat at the head of the table half pulled as though someone had just risen from it.

The table, set in lace crocheted settings, was classic Victorian in design. The crystal candelabra in the center was covered in old web. The candles were half melted, brittle wicks, and yellow with age. sitting beneath them, beneath the candelabra, an old silver framed matches case.

Half opened, and empty. No dead match sticks anywhere in sight.

Somewhere between a half hearted grunt, and a sigh, Freddy turned away from the kitchen. Outside, thunder crackled aggressively across the storm cloud infested sky.

He needed fire before it got

really

dark.

O O O

In all the years working for J. Carrol Grady, he had seen, and done it all as far as odd jobs were concerned.

Every time he had to wince at the acrid smell of rat piss while cleaning the ducts, or scrape pigeon carcasses off the roof of the building, along with pigeon shit, and the random dead rat, he

felt

it would all come to a point where it paid off.

One certainty in working for Grady, Freddy developed a Jack-of-trades skill set. In the very least, he could be - and was - a skilled janitor. This may have come across to many as a mundane task, but there's a certain amount of pride in knowing the difference between clean, and

clean

. He could make a mean cup of coffee, serve food, and host. He did this a few times for office mixers (which he was never invited).

With all he learned in dealing with vermin, he could have been an exterminator.

None

of these things were in his interest. All he ever wanted was a gig as an investigative journalist.

Freddy moved through a long hallway. There were two doors on each wall, and one at the far end. They were all closed. He crept up on the door at the end of the hall, and knocked.

Silence

. Of

course

silence. Freddy felt a little ridiculous in that moment.

...but not

so

ridiculous.

He entered college a bright eyed kid, just out of high school. Mom, and dad were paying for college, and the world was his. That sort of thing. He was the chief editor for his high school news paper, and yearbook. His paper was always interesting, and sometimes controversial. A hybrid of tabloid, and legitimate news.

He did well -

very well

- for the college news paper. He made assistant editor his freshman year, and editor the following. There, he stayed until graduation. During his time there, he took courses that weren't necessarily applicable to his major, but handy all the same. Criminology, and psychology.

He even took a home course on private investigation.

That

was a joke, if ever there were a joke of home correspondence courses, but in college he was idealistic, and he learned what he could from it, even if it wasn't for credit.

He excelled in anything journalism, or related, but was at best, average in every other class, or subject. He did not mind then, and he did not mind now.

...

but

. There was a nagging detail, one that pulled at the fringes of his attention since he set foot in the house.

Everything

was covered in a thick layer of dust. There were no evidence marks, or signs of habitation. Everything -

everything

- looked like it simply

stopped

mid breath, and froze.

One of the easiest things for him to figure out, once he got the hang of it, was finding the rats. Details, like their tiny (and sometimes not so tiny) hand, and footprints led him to places they frequented, and sometimes, upon them in the act of haunting a duct, or a dank corner.

There were no prints in the dust. No skittering in the walls, or through the ceiling.

Here, the dust settled evenly, and the only evidence marks in the house were his, footprints across the floor, fingerprints, a smudge here, or there where he brushed against a surface.

Freddy paused a moment longer, his hand now on the cool crystal doorknob. He sucked in a breath of air, fought the urge to cough, and opened the door.

Freddy shivered.

A small empty bassinet stood nestled in a corner, half covered under a sheet of canvas.

Everything

, or mostly, was covered under sheets.

Freddy choked back the acidic taste of bile, as the urge to look into the bassinet was choked off by the need

not to

.

The walls were decorated in delicate paisley wallpaper, the designs leafed in gold. A mobile hung down over the bassinet on a long, glistening wire that could have been gold, or silver, or copper, or any of them - or none. It hung with the same terrible, absolute, and unmistakable silence he had grown so familiar.

The same silence his car made, some few miles back on the side of the road.

Dead silence

.

An engine that wouldn't turn. A sound, even with the sound of his breathing, that came hollow, and meaningless in a place that swallowed sound. A silence where a baby should be crying, or laughing, or cooing.

Dead silence

.

Freddy closed his eyes under the threat of tears, and backed out, closing the door as he did.

There were four more doors, excluding whatever was up stairs.

Up stairs

. Freddy shook his head.

Two of the remaining four doors were closets. The other two were smaller rooms than the room at the far end of the hall. Empty.

Disappointing.

The lower level was, with exception to the baby's room, a parlor room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a laundry room, complete with tub, washboard, and wringer.

Freddy was losing light. He made his way around, hoping to heart he understood the basic floor plan enough to find the foyer.

_ _ _ _ _ _

The stairwell was magnificent, not one, but two sets of stairs arcing upward on either wall. The stairs were a black, dense looking wood, covered in a plush, dirty, though red carpeting. The carpeting was accented by a black, and gold border, complimenting the gold leaf banisters.

Upstairs was the last place Freddy wanted to be. It was no man's land. Irrevocable. Inescapable. Whatever his gut insisted he was afraid of, he swore it would be on the second level.

The same gut instinct said whatever he needed for light would be up there, too.

The banister rails were cool to the touch, grimy, but dry. The air, Freddy noticed with mild abandon, was

very

easy to breathe for a place that suggested itself so old, and so untouched. He closed his eyes for a moment, drawing in a deep breathe. Freddy raised a foot, and stepped forward, releasing his breath as he took the first step up the stairwell.

_ _ _ _ _ _

To his relief, and possibly a subtle horror, Freddy found light much easier than he expected.

Freddy deduced the first room -just right of the stairwell ascending- was the guest room. Within, the basic essentials of guest life in a Victorian era home. The vanity chest of drawers, a four post full size bed, night stands, and lamps.

On the vanity, a small silver match case, not unlike the empty one on the kitchen table. Next to it, a hybrid perfume-lamp bottle, which turned out to be a lighter. It still has a little fuel.

"

Deus ex Machina

." Freddy said, holding the silver match case to eye level. It rattled in his hand.

Take

that

Euripides

.

Freddy open the silver case, adorned in etched paisleys and inlaid with a golden looking filigree. He pulled one of eight matches out of the box, and stared at it. A round timber stick, small, thicker than modern matches, and the match head was a quarter the length of the matchstick itself.

Freddy struck it against the strike pad. It lit up, maybe a little

too

well. He held it steady and moved toward the lamps on the end table. The wicks lit as easily as the match, and there was light.

This is too easy.

Freddy shook his head, and answered his thoughts aloud. "No, this is coincidence.

Enough

already, with the magical thinking."

Freddy was grateful to the silence that greeted him.

He lit the second lamp, the wall sconces and some candles he found in the next room. The manor was now, at least, no longer under threat of darkness.

Thunder rumbled aggressively, and rain began as though cued by nature itself to set the tone. Freddy shrugged it off.

After an hour, between the upstairs, and down, the house glowed warmly with a life seeming all its own.

Freddy made his way into the master bedroom, and sat carefully on the large bed in its center. It was soft, and not at all dusty as everything else had been. The bed was made. He could rest for a moment.

Only a moment.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Freddy sat up, eyes wides, adrenaline coursing through him, scattering his bearings if only for a moment.

No

, it had not been a dream.

Freddy sat up, posturing himself on his elbows. The room seemed excruciatingly bright for simple lamplight. He rolled his head first to the left, and then the right. He was under the covers, the rain outside pelting the manor, and windows heavily.

The room was surprisingly warm.

Freddy groaned, rubbing his forehead for a moment, and then massages his face. How long had he been out?

A blur of movement caused him to double take, the motion something between an invisible shadow, like those cast from heatwaves, or fumes. Freddy shook his head, but saw nothing more, though he felt something akin to an impression, or the impression of a sound.

The impression of a

giggle

. Not some kindergarten squeal of joy, or excitement. It was less a sound, than a feeling, the thrill you feel when you hear the musical laughter of a loved one.

...without the sound of their musical laughter.

_ _ _ _ _ _