Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (9 page)

"Me neither. What do you--?"

"I'm sorry, Fletcher. You know, about what I said before,” he said with an honesty on his face I’d never seen before. “I didn't know what happened to you two years ago, or where it happened. There weren’t no boat like I said out there."

I was so surprised by his confession I just nodded at him.

"You youngsters, many of you just don't listen to the old folks like me. You all just think we should be pushed out of the service. Sometimes, when a young one like Jason comes along, we like to give them a little to shake a bit. If they believe in the warnings we give them maybe we stay longer."

Before I could say anything Jason came running over to us.

"It been all quiet out there for some time now, Trevor," he said. "Is the storm over?"

"I don't know, boy."

Steven joined us. "It should be all right," he said.

"Despite what I just told you," Trevor said, turning to me. "I did see something out there. Some sort of trouble. I don't like it."

"It did get quiet all of a sudden," I agreed as I stood.

As he unlocked the heavy wooden door and walked out into the darkness, we all knew instantly that something was wrong. There was no light to be seen in any direction except for the thin light that came from the door behind him. He walked further away and disappeared into shadow.

Jason started out of the lighthouse, to follow after Trevor,
Steven and I
barred him at the doorway.

"Stay put," Steven said.

"Why? What be wrong out there?"

"Trevor," I called out the door without stepping into the dark. "Trevor, where are you?"

"There's something out there and it's got Trevor," Jason yelled.

Steven denied it but I heard the doubt in his voice.

I wondered if Jason would get it but I was afraid of something. I didn’t know what it was made it. I saw on his face that Steven sensed it too and we pushed Jason back and closed the door.

"Lock it," I said starting to breath heavy.

"Trevor took the key with him," Steven gasped.

"Dammit," I scowled as he flipped the latch over but I knew it wouldn’t hold anything back.

There was a creak from the door,
and it bowed
slightly as if something had leaned against it outside. We tossed ourselves at the door and tried to barricade it with our bodies. Jason howled as the fear finally reached him and ran up the stairs in panic.

"Jason get down here! Damn you!” I yelled as loud as I could.

"Not too many places for him to go," Steven said. "This is the only way out."

Something very strong was leaning against the door and it was harder to keep it closed.

"Get the flares out of the cabinet," I said.

"What?"

"The flares! Get 'em! Whoever is out there will be in here sooner or later and Trevor's pistols are too far away," I said as cold sweat ran down my face.

“
It is getting harder to breath," Steven gasped.

I’m not sure if he said anything after that, or even if I said anything, but I know he caught the look on my face and followed my gaze. From a cracked window high in the wall, covering it like a vine, darkness had entered the room.
It was black
, pure darkness, and it ran in several long, thin streams from the window in each direction.

"Get the flares," I mumbled without looking at him.

"You cannot push on this door alone, Fletcher; it's too strong for that."

"Look up there. Look through the window and look what's coming in. That's what's pushing against that door." I didn’t understand it but I knew in my soul I was right.

A stream of darkness had crossed most of the room and was breaking up above the door to the stairway, forming an arch around it. A large cabinet that sat near the window was completely covered by darkness and was lost in shadow. Nothing could be seen where it had stood.

"Let's go," I said after forcing myself to swallow.

"What? Where to?"

"I can still see the light from the stairs so I'd bet it's safe up there, for awhile at least."

"The lantern room," Steven cried. "We can call for help from up there by sending up an emergency flare. Are you ready?"

I nodded and together we ran for the stairs, ducking under the arch of darkness as we passed beneath it. I glanced back through the arch very quickly and saw that the door had opened just barely.

We ran as fast as we could, sometimes jumping two stairs at a time, until we reached the lantern room

“
Where the hell is Jason?” Steven asked but I think he knew what had happened.

We both turned to go back down into the crew room to find Jason when a bone chilling scream from below told us what had happened. We both shook our heads and slammed the door closed behind us. We locked it even though we doubted it mattered.

We relieved to see that the lamp was still projecting. It was rotating steadily, but its light only reached a few dozen meters from the catwalk and faded away
. It wasn’t a cloud, and it wasn’t fog;
it was empty darkness. By the time we got to the catwalk it was even closer. There should have been light coming from someplace; shadows on the rocks, a reflection on the water, maybe even a small light from the coast. There was nothing. Only a few feet of the exterior wall of the lighthouse could be seen below us.

Steven grabbed a flare from the emergency cabinet near the door, placed it on the muzzle of the flare pistol, and fired it from the catwalk. We both felt our hearts skip a few beats as it was swallowed.

"Trevor was right! Trevor was right and he didn't even know it," I said as a strange calmness fell over me. I stopped breathing heavily and wiped the sweat away. I couldn’t explain it but I was no longer afraid.

Steven called to me and together we ran back into the lantern room. Darkness was growing into the room between the cracks in the wooden floor
. Barely stepping over it we came to a halt, but a stream separated us
. Steven was just inside the room and I was trapped on the catwalk outside.

"Wherever it is that
we're going Fletcher
, good luck!" Steven said and I thought how his American accent sounded rather
pleasant
.

Steven tried to jump across the stream and onto the catwalk but in doing so he slipped into a shadow, and tripped over something in the darkness. He
rolled over the edge of the catwalk, and was gone.

“
Same to you, my friend," I said softly, looking down.

The darkness swirled onto the catwalk and I backed to the rail. It halted near my feet. Its flow had changed. It had risen inside the lantern room and was now nearly up to the wick. The darkness encircled the lamp and poured into
the device
drowning it. The lamp went dead.

Darkness.

Silence.

Darkness.

FREAK TOWN

by

Jeffrey Hale

Chapter 1

There was no place quite like Stone Creek. Nestled in the rolling hills of southwest Colorado, the town was virtually untouched by the hands of time. Sure, there were computers and incandescent light bulbs and all forms of modern technology, but the heart of the town was unchanged. It was a tight-knit community, where everybody knew everybody and everybody knew everybody else’s business—without snooping through the mail. A town where everything was black and white, right and wrong, and Missus Cleaver sat on the porch and said hello to passersby.

At least, that was Roger Smith’s opinion. He’d worked at the
Stone Creek Tribune
since the day he turned fourteen, ferrying newspapers through town for ten cents an hour. But that had been back in 1966, a time remembered by foggy memories and even foggier photographs. He was almost fifty-five years old now, and a lot had changed since 1966. Printing presses had evolved, delivery methods had become more sophisticated, and staff had fluctuated, but Roger had always been there to see it through.

Now he was head editor, investigative journalist, and senior copyist for the
Tribune
. The only thing he didn’t do was make his own coffee. That was Mary Anne’s job, his secretary of fifteen years. She did all the paperwork and logistics he didn’t have time for.

Without her, the
Tribune
was doomed to fail. She’d helped bring it out of financial limbo several times already, and Roger had no doubt she would save it several times more. That is, until he decided to set his pen aside and submerse himself in the emphatic tide of retirement.

Roger shuffled across his little office and gazed outside, raising the blinds so beams of fresh, morning sunlight could dance across his face. He loved feeling the newborn sun on his skin. It sent shivers down his spine; gave him new life and lifted his spirits. Like a tonic from the gods. Little did he know that, one day, the sun would turn to poison in his veins.

“
Good morning, Mr. Smith. I have the results from last week’s election.”

Roger turned around slowly, unwilling to take his eyes off the serene Colorado countryside. He was enchanted by the rippling cornfields and cloudless blue skies, and figured he would continue to be awed by the view until his dying day.

“
Good morning Mary. Have you looked outside this morning?”

“
Yes. It’s very peaceful. I haven’t seen a day this beautiful for a long time.”

“
That’s what I mean. Do you think it’s
too
peaceful?”

Mary Anne strode across the room and glanced out the window. Her wavy brown hair bobbed as she walked, falling gently around her shoulders. How Roger wanted to bury his face in that hair and drown in her feminine charms. She stopped beside him, barely a foot away, and touched the windowpane with her carefully manicured fingertips. He could smell her now, the perfume that lingered across her lustrous soft skin. But he knew that he could never indulge in such carnal desires. It would mean the end of their professional relationship.

After a moment she looked up. “How can a day be too peaceful?”

“
I don’t know,” Roger said simply. “I just feel it in my bones. Like something bad is going to happen. But I don’t know what. It’s like the calm before the storm.”

“
Well then, you must be psychic,” Mary Anne smiled. “Something bad did happen. You know that mayoral candidate you didn’t like? Ignacio Salvador? He won the election—by a landslide, too. I have the figures right here.”

Roger frowned. He’d been afraid this would happen.

Ignacio Salvador was a fat cat from the big city, a man with more inspiration and less leadership capability. He wanted to take Stone Creek and modernize it, turn it into another Denver. His campaign slogan was: “Thinking of tomorrow…today!” with an exclamation point at the end to catch the voter’s eye and show he meant business.

Maybe all that slick big-city talk had won over the little-city votes at the election booth, but it didn’t fool Roger. He could smell a con artist from a mile away. He knew that once Salvador had milked Stone Creek for all it was worth, the dirty politician would skip town and start looking for the next little town he could ruin.

It had happened before, and if Roger wasn’t careful it would happen again. He needed to expose the conman before it was too late. That was his duty as the town’s editor, journalist and copyist. The townspeople looked to him to keep them informed.

Mary Anne dropped a sheet of paper on his desk, and retreated toward the door. Her intoxicating fragrance retreated with her, and Roger was left all alone. But he didn’t mind. He was used to being alone. Ever since his second wife, Ruth, had left him last summer, he’d been alone a lot. With the exception of his cat, Whiskers, of course.

Roger took a big gulp of coffee and settled behind his desk. It was cold now, and the coffee grains tasted bitter on his tongue, but he drank it anyway. He was one of those caffeine junkies he’d condemned so many times in the
Tribune,
the kind of person who didn’t drink coffee because of the taste, but because of the caffeine high it attained. A guy could have worse addictions, he thought.