It was some time before Lucy and I could summon the courage to leave for Weytonset. The creatures had not returned, and in the midst of this brief respite, my thoughts recoiled at my actions against Old Man Tarky. My weariness gave place to anger, frustration, and denial. I declared a silent ultimatum to God and to the enemy as we traversed the exposed road out of Dennington Cross: kill us and get it over with, or lead us to salvation. I confess to rash bravado on that journey. Petulant and foolish though this attitude was, we reached our neighboring town without incident. At least, I thought we did.
The signpost bearing the town’s name was there to welcome us, and the fog had diminished significantly. On either side of the road the moorland forests rose in dark bushy clumps, and the silence—ever unbearable for its sinister mystery—smothered us. There was still no movement of the cold air. I lowered my lamp, shaking my head at the pitch-black journey ahead. Without the mist there should at least have been some indication of civilization in the form of distant street lamps or perhaps even a farmyard pyre, but there was nothing; visibility was reduced to the vague illusion of memory imprinting its shapes upon my mind’s eye. I did not consider the ravings of Old Man Tarky then. I did not want to.
I looked up. The sky was equally black. Not simply the inky depths one is used to with the advent of a cloudy night and new moon, and not the darkness of closing one’s eyes. This was a devouring absence of light, terrifying to behold in so vast a canopy.
“It isn’t just the sun and moon that have vanished,” I said. “There is not one solitary star in the heavens.”
“Where did they go?” Lucy asked.
“I cannot say, but their disappearance is contrary to all the laws of nature. Stars do not simply go out in such number.”
“So why aren’t they shining? Is that why it is so cold?”
“I don’t know.”
Still clutching my hand, her face ghostlike from the light of my lowered lamp, Lucy stopped. “My mother told me that darkness cannot put out light.”
I crouched to meet Lucy’s gaze. “Does it frighten you?”
She looked up at the missing sky, then back into my eyes. “If you’re not frightened, then I’m not.”
Fear was creeping through me like cancer, and I hoped more than anything she could not see it in my smile. “I’m not frightened.”
“Good,” she said. “Then I think we should forget about it for now and move on, don’t you?”
Her words warmed me and took the falseness from my smile, but it was all I could do to maintain it as I faced the road into Weytonset. Each step into the darkness brought with it another measure of dread. Holding the lamp ahead of us was futile and I felt like a blind man without a stick, bobbing my head this way and that, hoping in vain that a new angle might produce at least some hint of edge or shape in the dark. But there was nothing. The throbbing of my head injury grew, and with its insistence came a welling of exasperation at the thought that our last chance of escape or rescue was being siphoned away into this all-consuming night-world. I could not say if it was the disorientation from the vacuum ahead, or the pain, that was producing nausea, but I was losing my grip on consciousness yet again. I stood still for a moment to fight it.
“Alexander? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve stopped.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
Hearing the tremble in her reply, I chided myself. My answers were curt as I contended with my malady. “I think I should go ahead first. If I encounter something, you may need to run, and I would not want to hinder you.”
“But I want to stay with—”
“You will be staying with me. Just a few steps behind; that’s all.”
She was silent for a moment, and her mouth wrinkled into a pout, but she agreed.
“Here,” I said, handing her the lamp. “You can hold this. It’s useless to me, but you will be able to see me better from behind, and my shadow will provide me with some frame of reference for a few steps ahead at least.”
“Thank you.”
I squeezed her shoulder, then turned to face the dark again. My shadow stretched ahead on the cobbled road and I remained focused on it as I made my way slowly forward.
We carried on in this fashion for near on thirty minutes and I knew that we would be reaching Marigold Farm soon. It was the first residence one encountered on the road to town, and I had spent many a weekend there with my family, enjoying tea with the Wilkinson household. But as I allowed my hope to build at the thought of meeting familiar faces, a peculiarity occurred.
The cobbles of the road ahead were gone and there was only blackened dirt. It was impossible to see what was on the ground. Though the lamp still illuminated the next few yards ahead, the darkness seemed to engulf first the shadow of my head, then—as I edged forward—the shoulders. Farther still, the light stopped at my shadow’s waist and for the first time I began to see something other than the lamplight or my shadow on the ground.
There were soft, blurred shapes, like pale rods of light, where the top of my shadow should have been. Believing it to be a visual disturbance brought on by my head trauma, I focused on this mirage for almost a full minute, blinking and rubbing my eyes, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. The shapes seemed distant, luminous.
“Stay there,” I told Lucy, and I edged still farther forward. More lit pillars came into view, and now my shadow had vanished from the knees up. Still I could make no sense of what I was seeing. And then, all at once, the completely obscure became the completely obvious as I tried to place my foot where the darkness swallowed my shadow. My shoe found empty space and I slipped, scraping my calves as I skidded down an almost vertical stony bank. Panicking, I arched my back and tried to arrest my descent with my elbows. I twisted around quickly to grasp the edge, and with stone ripping my fingernails, I barely managed to stop. My arms quivered as I pulled myself up, and my eyes drew level with the ledge so that I was able to peep over it.
Lucy screamed. She dropped the lamp, about to come for me, but I shouted for her to stay where she was.
Then came a vision to burn such a scar upon my soul that I knew I would never recover. A second of time passed like an eternity as the dropped lamp revealed one of the skeletal creatures moving to intercept Lucy. It was wreathed in coils of luminous mist as it came to a stop directly behind her, and for the first time, I could see the face of my enemy clearly, if it could be called a face. Hairless and wet like a mask of oily wax, the bone-white skin rippled into folded layers to form a featureless visage over horizontal ribs of coppery bone. It had no discernible mouth, but a triangle of holes in the center broke the layered pattern. I perceived the two lower holes to be eyes, but only by the way in which a speck of pale light moved within each. I had the impression it was watching me, taunting me as it loomed over Lucy. I could not immediately decide what the third hole located above the eyes might be, but as I watched with growing horror, it widened, forcing back the metallic bones with the sound of tearing pulp.
Lucy screamed again as she turned to see it, and I could do nothing. The hole was now a salivating tunnel of convulsing flesh, wide jaws engorged with sharp, coppery teeth.
With my fingers clawing for a better handhold and my stomach in my mouth, I kicked into the void below me. My muscles burned as I held my weight against the precipice, and my fingertips began to slip from the crumbling ledge. Instinctively, I glanced over my shoulder to see where I might fall, but there was no sign of an end to the drop. Again I saw the blurred pillars scattered in the darkness, but I did not have time to observe any more than that. They were not the visual aberrations I first thought but real objects. I used every last morsel of strength to haul myself up to reach Lucy.
While two lives hung in the balance, so too did the budding seed of my new but fragile faith. Though it may frustrate you to hear about the conditions of my belief in the midst of such desperation, I must assure you that it is a necessary component to my account, for without it, I would not have been able to pass this message on. When I first saw the church, it inspired me, and I realize now it was the extreme fear that motivated me to grasp for faith. But seeing inside almost destroyed that faith before it had chance to take root, and now, in a moment of dire need, the fate of that tiny seed depended entirely on the outcome of my prayer. I cried out to God to save us both, much as I did before in the alley.
My desperation brought me the strength to climb, but by the time I had pushed myself onto my chest, panting and wailing, Lucy was already in the clutches of the creature. I saw her face. Indescribable terror was visible only for a heartbeat before a splash of blood erupted, and then the beast dragged her out of the light. I leapt to my feet and ran screaming into the dark, following the sounds of her shrieks, resorting once again to maniacal prayer as my limbs began to fail me.
With her screams fading to the harrowing sounds of expiry, the trail was lost, and utter black surrounded me. I collapsed to the ground and, with all hope gone, wept into the dirt.