Hunted by Darkness

The Darkness in the Shadows

Gabriel

The pain shot through his hand and reverberated to his elbow, bones vibrating inside his flesh. It’s what he imagined it would feel like to punch a glacier. Cold, hard, bone-breaking. And it probably had had the same effect. Alex stood, his head to the side as if he had just been slapped by a twelve-year-old. He laughed as he faced them again; his hand still firmly clamped on Sarah’s arm.

‘Let her go.’

‘Don’t think so, mate. Find your own girl; this one is mine.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Sarah struggled again to pull her hand out of his grasp.

Alex snapped her towards him, and Gabriel heard him whisper into her ear.

‘Be a good little girl and shut up while I get this sorted.’

He then pulled her to the side, and he squared up to Gabriel. The redhead towered over him by a full head and yet he hadn’t been able to floor him. Even by the simple laws of physics, he should at least have stumbled a couple of steps. His hand pulsed with heat and pain. If he tried again, he might break it, and that’s assuming he hadn’t broken it yet.

‘What is it with you that you’re always in my way?’ he asked.

‘It’s probably because you’ve always been an asshole,’ he grunted. ‘I just can’t help myself.’

Alex looked confused. To think he used to be his friend. What was this thing he had with Sarah now? He had never mentioned, even in the passing, that he was interested in her. It was unlikely he would have told him though. No matter how close you are with your mates, you don’t tell them you like their girlfriends. Still, he had never caught him looking at her, and he had had his own girlfriend anyway.

A veil of paralysed blankness settled on the man’s face.

‘Are you going to make me repeat myself?’ he asked, with more confidence than he felt.

‘It’s ok,’ Sarah came between them, a frown on her face. Alex didn’t budge. ‘He’s only taking me home, i-it’ll be ok.’

She pressed a hand onto his chest, pushing him gently. He could feel her warmth through the fabric of his t-shirt and, a tingling on his skin. And it wasn’t just because she was touching him. There was something there, something he had felt before. It had been months ago, now, but he remembered that feeling. As her hand rested on him, a current flowed through them, an energy he had only felt that one time, where he had lost her.

Alex seemed to come back to life, it had only been a second, but it had felt like an hour. He snapped her back, pulling her behind him like a rag doll.

‘What the f**k are you doing?’ he turned to her now, his face contorted in a growl. ‘Do you want to go with this guy? Let him grope you? Is that what you want?’

Gabriel grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around, his fingers digging into the guy’s body.

‘Let her go!’ but his voice didn’t sound like his voice. It was still there, clear, but there was also a murmur running under it. It was a whisper but more than just air and letters. It was a beat, a wave of energy, and it hit Alex square. His pupils dilated, and he stumbled. His face contorted in a struggle now. His arm was both letting her go and pulling her back, not sure what to do.

‘Let her go!’ he tried again.

His face squeezed itself in dozens of deep wrinkles, with a grunt, he let go of her hand. Sarah looked at both of them, eyes wide. He felt the urge to grab her and take her away, but he didn’t want to manhandle her like Alex had done. This was so out of character for him. He had never seen him speak like that to anybody before.

‘Are you ok?’ he asked Sarah instead.

She nodded, rubbing her wrist.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he yelled. Alex was still a step back, unsure of what had happened, his face halfway between growl and surprise.

Out of the shadows on his left, a girl came out. He had been so focused on Alex and Sarah he hadn’t even seen there was somebody else there. Mary stood a few steps away.

‘What’s wrong with your brother?’ he asked, not caring if Sarah heard him or not.

‘How do you know he’s my brother?’ as soon as the words came out of her mouth, all colour drained from her skin.

‘What do you…’

Her eyes darted down. She closed her hands into fists.

‘Mary, what’s my name?’ he asked.

But she didn’t answer. He took a step towards her, but she was panicking.

‘Mary…’

‘Do you know her?’ Sarah asked.

But there was no time to answer. Before he could do anything about it, both Alex and Mary fell to the floor, their limbs at weird angles.

********* 

Sarah

There was no time to ask questions or be confused, even if the questions and confusions remained in the back of her mind like parasytes. The two dropping bodies of her - what? Friends? - had taken precedence over any issues she might have had with Gabriel’s very strange behaviour. Did he know them?

It didn’t matter; a mass of blackness was concentrating in front of her very eyes. What had been a slight chill at first now became the stabbing of ice knives that she had felt the last time, before she ended in Southwater. She stepped back instinctively as the shadows grew and towered over them.

‘What the hell…?’

But Sarah didn’t let him finish. She grabbed him by the arm.

‘Run,’ she gasped.

Gabriel hesitated, but he must have felt the same crushing of the lungs she was experiencing because he followed and they both ran as fast as they could. Sarah didn’t dare look behind her, but she didn’t need to, she could feel them. It wasn’t only the drop in temperature; it was the prickly sensation on the back of her neck, the shaking of every one of her bones, the thickness of the air around her. It wasn’t as bad as last time, though; the sky was still above them, and the pavement was still under their feet, slapped by their shoes with every stride they took.

The darkness was behind her, getting closer. She ran, conscious Gabriel was behind her, and with no idea where she was going.

‘Did you drive?’ she asked, out of breath already.

‘No.’

No means of a fast escape. She wasn’t even sure if they could hide. There was nothing to say they couldn’t feel her presence the way she was able to feel them now. But she didn’t even know where they had come from, all she knew is that Alex and Mary had fainted and they had appeared. Or were they dead? Had these things killed them trying to get at her? It was strange, however, that last time she had seen something like these shadows, Alex had been there too.

They kept running, but Sarah knew it was pointless, she could feel the cold under her feet, and they would soon be trapped in that bubble of death. The stink of rot was becoming suffocating, and she gagged, tasting bile at the back of her throat.

They crossed the road into a park. The dirt on the path crunched under their feet. She ran farther into the trees, everything getting darker. Was it only because the lights were dimmer here?

A new sort of cold made her shiver. She turned around and was faced with a wall of glistening darkness. Gabriel was gone. She gasped his name. Where was he? Had he ran in another direction, left her at the mercy of that thing? Something in the depth of her stomach told her that wasn’t it, yet she didn’t know him.

Her heart hurt in terror. All she wanted to do was keep running and never look back, never see that thing again, hide under a rock, a safe rock. And at the same time, somehow, that felt wrong.

Would he stop running to help her? The question popped into her head, uninvited. She had the answer in less than a second. The truth was, it didn’t matter what he would do. It mattered what her actions would be.

She searched her pockets for the necklace Essie had given her, the crystal prism hanging from the piece of leather. Pressing it into her palm, she stopped running and turned around. The blackness was there, the Old One, like Essie called it. It dripped and drooled thick clogs of black glistening goo, tentacles advancing, belly dragging on the floor. It stood still for a split second and stared at her with invisible eyes. Sarah’s breath froze in her chest. Her eyes filled with tears that became ice as soon as they touched her cheek. She swept them off her face with the back of a trembling hand and lifted the crystal towards the thing. It hesitated, but not for long. It kept coming. She held the crystal higher, but nothing happened. She wasn’t quite sure what she had expected. She didn’t know how Essie had stopped the beast but, when she had given her the crystal, she had assumed it was somehow related. It was meant to protect her, after all.

The thing towered over her, higher above her head. The lights around her dimmed further, and the smell was getting sharp, becoming fumes. Her eyes watered, tears freezing on her skin, but she was grateful that, in her panic, all she could manage was very shallow breaths. It saved her from tasting the now visible fumes rising from the thing.

The glutinous bodies were starting to surround her, tentacles writhing on the floor like a nest of serpents. The lights were slowly disappearing. Her thoughts were slowing down, and it became harder to move. It was the same thing than last time. She was pressing the crystal so hard her palm hurt, panic making her hands shake. And yet, there it was, the beating of her heart. She could feel it clearly, stronger and steadier than before. She concentrated on it.

Running seemed the only option, yet she knew it was too late for that, and she still felt it would be wrong to leave Gabriel behind, even if she didn’t know if he was still alive.

Her heartbeat was the only thing that kept her standing on her feet as the darkness surrounded her. Her heart was constant and spread a wave of heat with every pulse. It ran from her chest to the tips of her fingers, the sole of her feet. Every time the muscle contracted, she felt it fill her. Soon this energy took all of her attention. It didn’t stop at her feet or her hands, after all, but it continued, connected to… something, but came back, like a circle. It left her body and came back from somewhere, bigger, larger than her, larger than the ground under her feet or the sky above her head. It was more than her blood, it was a sort of energy, and it was powerful. It made her forget her fear, and she was able to breathe for the first time. The smell, although still there, didn’t bother her so much anymore. All that mattered was that wave. Once she could breathe, she knew she could slow down her heart. And once she did that, she felt the wave become more vigorous. It became malleable, capable of following her instructions, her will.

Forgetting where she was or why, all she knew was that she wanted more of that warmth, more of that calm, so she stopped the cycle. The wave came into her body but didn’t leave, not yet. She felt a sense of urgency too. The blackness was about to close around her. If it did, she feared she would lose that connection. The energy nestled inside her warmed every one of her cells. It made her aware of everything around her. Under the ground, under her feet, the bugs that dug their lives without ever seeing the light, the roots that spread from the trees she couldn’t see anymore, the sleeping birds and critters in those trees, she could feel it all. Everything was connected to her, even the things that were not alive. She could feel, even if weaker, the stones on the ground or the bricks around the park, the benches, the fountains. What she couldn’t feel was the blackness. Whatever that darkness was, it felt like a gap, an enormous whole in the wave, in the cycle. Except for that one floating speck inside it. A feeble beating energy, buried deep into the sludge. There was something alive in there, and she was still connected to it.

Her body felt tight with energy. When the first tentacle touched her, it burnt like a hot iron, making her scream and pull her arm out. The tentacle had wrapped itself around her wrist, though. With a scream, her fear returned, and the energy she had greedily gathered tried to escape. She felt some of it return to the cycle with a pulse, but where the pulse touched the thing, before rejoining the universe, the black body melted into the dark blood she had seen last time. She tried to release more energy, but she wasn’t sure how to do it. It took a few tries before she felt another pulse of force abandon her body. The tentacles that were approaching her melted into the ground, but it didn’t stop it. The gooey arms kept growing back and coming for her. She had to let it all out at once if she had any chance to get out of this one and save Gabriel. Every second that passed it became harder to feel him; he didn’t have much time.

More tentacles reached her as she prepared to release everything she had accumulated. The pain went through her like arrows of burning ice, but she needed to concentrate. Gabriel felt farther away by the second. She had to do it now, or she would pass out. With a last effort, her head hurting from concentration, tentacles running around her throat and waist, and a scream in her lungs, she let it all out.

She wasn’t prepared for that feeling. Any fainting sensation disappeared as the energy exploded out of her body. It was climactic, her eyes were wide open, and she saw the world around her in a way she had never seen it before. She could see the force leaving her body. The energy that circled, she could see its paths around her, reappearing as the darkness melted in a loud, shrieking yell. The sludge melted almost instantaneously and left the air clean of impurity. The energy shone white and gold and silver around her. She could see it linking every cell of her body, every grain of dirt on the floor, every particle of the grass, and every cell of Gabriel, who was lying on the floor, a good twenty meters from her.

She didn’t want to take her eyes off the waving wisps of light and warmth in which the world bathed right now, but she knew he needed her. She blinked, willing herself back to the real world, the crystal still in her hand. It was hard to open her fingers, closed tight and stiff, as if they had become stone. As she opened them, drops of blood trickled down her wrist. She had pressed it so hard into her hand she had hurt herself.

The Old One would not bother them that night anymore, though she didn’t know where that certainty came from. Kneeling next to Gabriel, she brushed the hair off his forehead with the tips of her fingers. His skin felt icy, but she knew he was alive, she could feel his energy connected to her as strongly as she could feel her own heartbeat.

His face was dotted with drops of cold sweat, and there were long slithery marks where the tentacles had touched him. She felt the same mark on her arm with the tips of her fingers. It felt rough and dry, as if burnt but it didn’t hurt, so at least she knew he wasn’t in pain.

His breathing was steady, no different than if he was asleep. She called out his name and tried shaking him. It took even a few gentle slaps to get him to open his eyes. They opened like heavy shutters, but not much. A groan came out of his lips when he tried to speak but no distinct words, nothing that she could make out. He moved his fingers feebly, and his muscles tensed under his clothes, but nothing else moved. Asking him to stand up was out of the question, and leaving him on the floor seemed like a terrible idea. Her phone was far away, with her jacket and Gabriel seemed to have left his things behind too. She did check his pockets, but there was nothing there except what felt like some coins.

‘Well, I’m afraid we’re on our own,’ she said to nobody, because there was no chance of anybody passing by at that time of night. Yet they couldn’t stay there and wait till morning. She clapped her hands on her thighs and stood up. Standing at his head, she pushed her hands under his arms and tried to lift his upper body into a sitting position. Gabriel groaned as his head bent backwards, no tension in any of his muscles. He weighed a ton, and that was just half of his body. There was no way she could drag him to the bench. As she pushed his upper body, his head tilted and fell forward, his chin touching his chest, his arms hanging at his sides, elbows poking in all directions like a broken doll. The bench wasn’t that far, she told herself, maybe, if she really tried, with the adrenaline still flooding her veins, she could manage. She also still felt that strange energy, now back in its cycle, in and out of her body. As she had time to breathe now, the questions piled in her head like unwanted mail, too much of it and not the right time to look at it.

The one question that seemed more pressing now was if she could use it now to help Gabriel.

She did try to close the doors of her body and gather the energy like she had done before, but it seemed that without the convincing pressure of pain and probable death, the feat was much less straightforward. She could feel it inside her, and she managed to retain some of it but nowhere near as much as only a few minutes ago.

Still, once inside her, she was fully aware of it. It formed a nucleus in her stomach, that was the best way to describe it. She took her time to get accustomed to it, to feel its movement and pattern. Only after a few minutes did she attempt to control it. Maybe, she could let the wave out downward while holding Gabriel under his arms, acting as a propulsion engine. She almost laughed at herself, but she was alone in the park and, well, it was worth trying. The amount of energy was much smaller, though and she was afraid she would waste it. Something in her body wanted to hold onto it indefinitely. Her body and her mind seemed to be fighting for control of this power until, eventually, it seemed to find a compromise. The nucleus moved and spread through her legs. She could feel it infiltrating her muscles. Where before she had barely been able to lift his upper body, she was now capable of lifting his bottom off the ground and pulling him towards the bench. She rushed, afraid it wouldn’t last, and pulled him up onto the cracked wood with her. He lied against her for a few seconds until she managed to push him to the side where he sat, a soft groan on his lips. She let all the tension go with a deep breath, her muscles relaxing. At least they were off the floor.

In the shadows under the trees, the leaves peacefully rustling over their heads, the questions exploded in her head. What had happened? Why were they coming for her? Why had Alex and Mary been there both times she had seen these monsters?

And how did Gabriel know Alex and Mary?

She looked at him, wisps of his red hair falling over his forehead. He was going to have some questions to answer, she thought. If he woke up, that is.