Servants of Darkness (Thirteen Creepy Tales) Read online

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  SERVANTS OF DARKNESS

  © 2010 Mark Edward Hall

  Books by Mark Edward Hall

  Apocalypse Island

  The Lost Village

  The Haunting of Sam Cabot

  The Holocaust Opera

  Servants of Darkness

  The Fear

  Mark Edward Hall Library, Vol. 1, (Boxed Set)

  The Hero of Elm Street

  The Immortal Breath of Life

  Haunted Tales

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Visit the author’s website:

  http://www.markedwardhall.com

  Table of Contents

  The Comfort of a Stranger

  BugShot

  New Years Eve

  The Nest

  Darkness

  ROOM 9

  The Kindred

  The Swamp

  The Rain after a Dry Season

  The Manor

  My Leona

  The Immortal Breath of Life

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Present Day

  The Hero of Elm Street

  Servants of Darkness

  The Comfort of a Stranger

  They met at the ruins of Saint Michael’s Cathedral. The city was razing it to make room for a new subway station. The police had roped the area off and posted guards along its perimeter, hoping to keep the curious away. It hadn’t done much good. The news of the crypt’s discovery spread quickly in the neighborhood and there had been an influx of pedestrians throughout the day. Most had gone away disappointed, however. The authorities were adamant in their protection of the site and maddeningly clandestine about what had been discovered there. Rumor was they’d uncovered a strange breed of humanoids, long dead and forgotten, buried beneath the cathedral.

  Danielle knew that such rumors were easily fabricated and just as easily dispelled; nevertheless she had been perversely drawn to the demolition. She’d gone there that evening after reading a short piece in the morning paper. An earlier rain had ceased and the streets were streaked with silvery puddles. It was late October and a cool wet wind blew around her bare legs. She pulled her wool coat around her and stood staring into the ruins shivering. The site was now deserted. There were no guards, and the excavated catacombs all appeared empty. Sadly she had come too late for any sort of glimpse.

  “A pity, don’t you think?”

  She started and whirled. A tall, thin man in a gray overcoat stood beside her at the barricade staring into the empty catacombs. His features were fine, feline, almost feminine, and curiously unlined. If not for the timbre of his voice, and the slight gray stubble on his chin, Danielle would have had trouble identifying him as anything but androgynous.

  He had appeared out of nowhere. Impossible, Danielle knew. She’d simply spaced out again. It was a reasonable diagnosis. Her grief, coupled with the medication, had recently brought on strange blank spaces, long hours of depression, and spats of daydreaming.

  “A pity?” she asked.

  “That we didn’t get to see the strange beings before they carted them all off.” The man smiled.

  “You heard the rumors,” Danielle said.

  “Oh yes. Hard to miss.”

  “And you believed them?”

  “Why does that surprise you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Danielle gave a small, nervous laugh. “No, not really.”

  The man had turned to face her, his hand extended. “Decker,” he said. “John Decker.” His eyes were small and pale, their color indefinable. Danielle took his hand, even though she did not want to. It was cold, as she’d expected.

  “Danielle Gray,” she said, pulling her hand back and tucking it into the sleeve of her overcoat, hoping she could warm it again.

  “Pleasure,” Decker said. “What I meant was—”

  “You believe, right?” Danielle interrupted. “That’s all that counts.” She turned back toward the ruins, as if to dismiss him.

  “I think there are so many things about this life that we don’t yet understand. Don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  “I have my own beliefs.”

  The stranger watched Danielle for a long moment. She could feel his cold, colorless eyes on her.

  “Exactly what were the rumors?” he asked. “Do you know?”

  Danielle shivered hugging her arms to her bosom. “Freaks of some kind. The paper called them humanoids. Supposedly they were all small, like children, and not properly decomposed. Something to do with the lack of oxygen beneath the church.”

  “I see,” said Decker. “Is it possible that they were children?”

  Danielle shrugged. “Their physiology was . . . different.”

  “How so?”

  Danielle turned back to the stranger. “Their faces were distorted in some way . . . I don’t know. Like they were all screaming or something. Whenever things like this happen people make up stories.”

  “So you think it was all a fabrication?”

  Danielle frowned. “The authorities aren’t talking. Do you have business here?”

  “No. Just a curious citizen, like you. These dead . . . humanoids. Where do you suppose they took them?”

  “The morgue, I imagine. Look, I told you, I don’t believe the rumors. And I really have to be going. I’m not sure why I came here.” She turned to leave.

  “You were searching for something,” the stranger said, freezing Danielle in her tracks. She reluctantly turned back to him. His colorless eyes held hers.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Something . . . terrible has happened, some catastrophe. And you were hoping to find answers here.”

  Danielle gave a short nervous little laugh. “That’s ridiculous . . .”

  “Is it?”

  Danielle lowered her head. “I haven’t been well.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Her eyes were drawn back to his. “I don’t know who you are.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Since the deaths and the recent breakdown she’d been staying at the boarding house for the elderly in Jackson Heights. She worked in the kitchen there twenty hours a week to cover the rent and she got her meals free. It was a room, a place to lay her head down and hang her clo
thes until she could get back on her feet. Nothing more. These days her expectations were low.

  She’d surprised herself by telling the stranger to come later. She knew that most of the other residents—all of them elderly—turned in early. She’d told him to be discreet, that a few of the more restless had taken to wandering the corridors in the night and she wasn’t sure how they’d react if they saw a strange man. She told him she’d be waiting at the back door. She paced restlessly, smoking a cigarette, wondering if he’d come, decidedly edgy with anticipation. At quarter past ten there came a soft knock. She opened it and let him in.

  They’d gone immediately to her room and had made love. Or rather the stranger had. Danielle had felt nothing. His body, pressed against hers, was cold. Like embracing an emptiness. When he was done he rolled off her. She lay on her back for a long time, silently staring up at the ceiling. After a while she reached for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside stand, tapped one into her hand, placed it between her lips, and lit it with a plastic lighter. She inhaled deeply letting the smoke trickle slowly from her nostrils. The encounter had been her first in more than a year. After what had happened she’d been unsure if she could ever have sex again. She looked over at the stranger. Even though she felt no sexual attraction, something about his soft, almost feminine features and his coldness attracted her.

  “Was it all right?” he asked her.

  “It was okay,” she admitted, wondering if he would take offense at her candor.

  The stranger frowned. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “I’m just curious, you understand.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just to see if I could. It’s been a while.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re hurt.”

  “No.”

  She took one last drag on her cigarette and stabbed it out in the ashtray. She rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow facing him. “How about you? Did you enjoy it?”

  “Yes, Danielle,” he replied. “I enjoyed it very much.”

  Danielle stared into his colorless eyes, blank and featureless. She was shivering. “Back at the ruins,” she said. “You mentioned some catastrophe. You said that I’d gone there in search of answers.”

  “Ah.” Decker nodded sagely.

  “How did you know that?”

  “It was a lonely place. You were alone. What other conclusion might I have drawn?”

  She stared at him. “No. It was more than that. Somehow you knew.”

  He was staring at her breasts as if he was trying to read something from them. Feeling self conscious she pulled the sheet up to cover herself.

  “You’ve had children,” Decker said.

  “It’s that obvious, huh?”

  “A woman’s breasts tell a lot about her. How many?”

  “Three,” she said, and began to weep.

  “That’s what you were doing at the cathedral ruins,” Decker said. “Searching for your lost children.”

  Danielle stared at Decker in awe. How could he know such a thing? How could a complete stranger know the secret heart of another? He was right, of course, but until this very moment even Danielle had been unaware of why she’d been drawn to those ruins. What could that place possibly tell her about her children? Decker shifted his weight and the sheet fell away from his body. He was white and thin, androgynous. His ribs shown through stretched skin. His shrunken penis and miniscule sack lay limp against the paleness of his flesh.

  “How did they die, Danielle?”

  “I left them at home with a babysitter to go out for the evening. There was a . . . fire. It was nobody’s fault. Something to do with the wiring. The babysitter had fallen asleep.”

  “You say it was nobody’s fault, yet you blame yourself?”

  Danielle nodded, unable to reply. Tears coursed down her cheeks. She wondered where they were coming from. She thought she’d lost the capacity to shed them.

  Decker looked at her with concern. “It must have been a very traumatic experience.”

  “Yes. Yes it was.”

  “Please, tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I don’t really know many of the details. The entire episode is rather sketchy in my mind. They tell me I had some sort of breakdown. It took me months to convalesce. Upon my release I was handed an urn of ashes. I was told that the fire burned with such intensity that individual bodies were unidentifiable. The ashes of what I was told were my babies are buried in a single grave in the old Cross Cemetery at Arlington Heights. I go there as often as I can and put flowers on it.”

  “I see,” said Decker. “You’ll have to take me there sometime, show me.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “I like places of death,” he said. “I always have. Cemeteries have their own kind of charm, don’t you think? Some of the finest properties have been used to bury the dead. Tombs, mausoleums, some of the most superb architecture. That says something about man’s reverence for the lost.”

  Danielle did not know how to reply. She wasn’t sure she shared the stranger’s enthusiasm for death.

  “What were you doing the night your children died, Danielle?”

  “I told you, I was out for the evening.”

  Decker nodded. “Yes, that’s right, you did. But what were you doing?”

  Danielle stared at Decker for a long moment, understanding somehow that he already knew the answer to his own question. “Who are you, Mr. Decker?”

  “Please, call me John. Now that we’re intimate . . . well . . . I think it would be appropriate. Don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “I think you are, Danielle. Come now, confessions can sometimes be good for the soul.” The stranger smiled, and for the first time Danielle got a good look at his teeth. They seemed very small, like those in the mouth of a fish. Danielle was suddenly repulsed.

  “I’ve done enough confessing for one night,” Danielle said, getting out of bed. “I don’t think I’m up for any more. Please, I’d like you to leave now.”

  The stranger got out of bed and dressed in silence. Danielle, the sheet still wrapped around her, watched him. After he left she felt sick, and ran into the bathroom to throw up.

  It began to rain lightly again before dawn. Unable to sleep, Danielle got out of bed, dressed and went outside.

  She drifted uneasily along the rain-slicked sidewalks, depressed by the drab storefronts and apartment blocks that flanked the street. All the buildings seemed empty, windows blanked out against dark, silent rooms. As dawn rose, cold white light engulfed the city, washing away all other colors.

  Danielle was mildly surprised to find herself back at the ruins of St. Michael’s. She’d had no real destination in mind when she’d left her room. Nothing had changed here, she saw. The workmen had not yet returned. The catacombs were still empty.

  Danielle closed her eyes and remembered walking aimlessly away from the police station the morning after her children had perished. The city had been hidden under a soft veil of mist. Much like today. She’d gone to the park and had sat on a bench wet with dew, feeling the rain run through her hair and down her cheeks like tears. She’d never felt so vacant. She’d left the bench and had walked into the deepest part of the park. Glistening leaves left wet smears on her skin as she wandered aimlessly through the undergrowth. The silence was like the city holding its breath. Everything seemed empty, nothing alive. She came to a small lake and began walking into it, feeling nothing, wondering how long it would take for them to find her body.

  She’d come awake in a hospital. A passer-by had found her floating and had saved her life. Months of therapy and rehabilitation followed.

  In time she’d been informed that she was healing well and could return to a normal life whenever she felt capable. A normal life? That was a laugh. How could anything about her life ever again be normal?

  Turning her attention back to the ruins she decided to duck under the rope and go in for a closer inspection
of the empty catacombs. The mist had begun to abate and she knew that at any moment workmen would begin arriving and her chance would be missed. There was something else here besides her. An emptiness that felt somehow alive. She could sense it. Behind her . . . or just ahead. She couldn’t quite see it but she knew that it was here, nevertheless. Danielle stood gazing into the empty crypts, concentrating, aching, knowing.

  “You feel them, don’t you, Danielle?”

  Danielle was not surprised at the sound of the stranger’s voice. She supposed that some part of her had been expecting him to show up.

  “What am I supposed to be . . . feeling?”

  “Something,” said the stranger. “Anything. It’s been so long since you’ve allowed yourself to feel.”

  Danielle turned to the stranger. “What’s going on? How do you know what I feel or don’t feel? Who are you?”

  “You came here in search of answers,” Decker replied. “I’m just trying to offer a little comfort.” He raised his arm and pointed into the ruins. “They’re here, you know. You just have to go in and find them.”

  Danielle shook her head, backing away. “No!” she said. “You’re crazy.”

  “Are you absolutely sure that everything happened the way you think it happened, Danielle?”

  Danielle turned and hurried away from the stranger, not looking back, but she heard his laughter, like the sound of breaking glass.

  She’d made it only halfway down the block before curiosity got hold of her and she stopped and glanced back. The stranger was still standing in the midst of the ruins staring at something she couldn’t see. She tried to see the expression on his face. She thought for a moment that he was still laughing, but the city had come to life and with its noise she could not tell. Everything seemed so twisted, so uncertain.

  She looked at her watch, surprised to see that she was late for work. What the hell would she tell them? Oh bullshit! Who cared what they did. They could fire her, kick her out. She hated the place anyway.