By Jacob Wood
When the Dark was in control, Lester had little idea of his surroundings; could see nothing but shifting shadows. For brief moments at a time he could hear fevered shuffling, the scraping of harsh blades and a horrid stench that came over him in fetid waves. For the first time, though, he could make out the momentary flashes of the Dark’s horrible glassy eyes. At least he thought they were eyes. Everything had eyes. He thought that the Dark could see all — knew it could see all, and there was nothing he could do about it. It was undoubtedly his fault. Always silly Lester’s fault, so the Dark would punish him. Yet it didn’t stop him from trembling on the stone floor, wracked with a fear that he could taste; metallic and warm. Much of the time it was blood bursting from a split in his tongue as his teeth caught it in a hard grimace.
The Dark never said a word, only made horrible noises when it went to work on poor Lester; grunting and groaning like an old machine finally tuning into gear. This time was no different despite him crying for help in the all-consuming shadows.
‘I be good!’ Lester squealed. ‘I swear it I will!’
He thought briefly of his hidden treasure, but the thought quickly scampered away. Thoughts were useless in here and it certainly didn’t stop the Dark from taking the hidden blade of a razor to the under skin of his feet, criss-crossing his supple flesh. He shrieked, as if he were made to walk across a field of shattered glass. Though that might’ve been a mercy.
Nothing could ever stop the Dark.
She always cried when she saw him like this. When Lester came to — he always did — she had her large, warm arms wrapped around him, sobbing. Her face moist and bright red. Then she slid down to his legs.
‘Your poor feet!’ she cried. ‘The Dark does the most terrible things to you, Lester. The most awfully terrible things.’
He moaned a reply. He felt dreamy, like he wasn’t really there, and Lester almost physically swatted the thought out of his head. He had been thinking of The Out There. A place he’d never be able to discover. But the thoughts had come just the same. Dangerous thoughts that the Dark had a knack for hearing.
‘Let me help you, Lessy.’ His mother rose and trudged out into the hallway. Her bare feet slapping on the damp stone until Lester couldn’t hear her anymore. To him, the house was a spiralling maze around its centre; the Black Door. Where the shapeless Dark slept, waiting for Lester to make a wrong move; just one.
His mother was right, after all. The Dark was terrible and did awful things. It always had. But this last time he saw its terrible shimmery eyes staring down at him; into him maybe.
His mother blundered back into the room as if she had been pushed in, carrying with her a fistful of bandages. She plopped herself down at the end of the bed, the springs protesting in vain.
Lester noticed her crying still. ‘It’s okay,’ he lied. ‘Doesn’t hurt bad.’
She shook her head; dark greasy hair swung into her eyes. ‘I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to be a good boy, Lester. Thinking of things you shouldn’t be will do you no good. No good at all.’ She wrapped a bandage around his left foot, the blood soaking into it immediately; blooming, really. It stung a good deal too. The lacerations weren’t deep but there were many. ‘That terrible monster in there will get you good one day if you don’t smarten up. I mean it.’ She wiped her eye. ‘I don’t want to have to drag your body out of there.’
That was the first time Lester wondered what the shapeless Dark was truly capable of. Finally, he said, ‘What is it?’
She finished wrapping his right foot up and said, ‘Remember what I’ve told you about monsters?’
‘Ugly,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ she agreed. ‘You must count yourself lucky that you can’t see the Dark. By its very nature. But the more you keep thinking dangerous things, it’ll keep punishing you, and if it — God forbid — kills you, Lester… it’ll be after me. You don’t want that, do you?’
He shook his head.
‘You’ll protect your mother, won’t you, Lester? You’ll keep me safe? You’ll stay with me. What’s a mother to do without her son?’ She cracked a smile, etched into the pallid flesh of her face. ‘All the other mothers in the world end up lonely and useless when their sons abandon them. You won’t let that happen, will you?’
‘I stay,’ he told her.
She leaned toward him, and Lester felt his heart flutter alive in his chest. He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had kissed him goodnight. But she stopped short, smiled thinly and said, ‘Remember what I always say?’
‘Bad boys get the Dark,’ he replied.
Lester knew his thoughts were dangerous and that the Dark could sometimes hear them. This worried him, but he couldn’t control it much of the time. His mother always said: Ideas are dangerous. They’re not to be reasoned with, but to be killed. Ran down and slaughtered.
Inside was always a little lighter during the day. Lester came to realise that all the cracks in the stone — most of them small — added up to a fair amount of grey light. It was night that grew almost too dark to see anything. Much like beyond the Black Door.
Lester’s world amounted to nothing more than his small room with a filthy bucket in the corner, the hallway and three mysterious doors, two of which — at either ends of the hallway — he had never seen beyond; had never dared try them.
During most days, his mother would remain in her room to get her rest, until of course she needed him to bathe her with a washcloth and a rock of soap. But that never happened in her room. She would sit at the end of his bed — her clothes discarded — with a fresh bucket of water between her knees, as Lester got to work scrubbing her head to toe. Her room was entirely off limits. So that left him to wander the sodden halls where his dangerous thoughts bloomed, much too close to the Dark.
Lester poked his head out into the wide expanse of the hallway. He glanced to the right where only a pool of shadow and the faint outline of his mother’s door stared back. Then he looked off to the left.
No sign of his mother. That much was good he thought, and then scolded himself for thinking such a thing.
He padded into the hallway and down to the left. He cringed at the rasping that followed him. ‘Shush Scrape!’ he said. ‘Not now.’ He moved slower; more carefully.
There in the corner low to the floor where one stone wall met the other, was a sliver of white light penetrating in. The Out There.
Lester sat in the corner; knees brought up to his chest. He looked about the hallway once more; empty. He rummaged around the corner on the floor where dirt, dust and grime — among other things — had built up a substantial amount. Enough to hide his treasure.
He pushed away a topping of withered leaves to reveal a stick; a good one. It was about as long as his own arm, and he had begun weeks ago to sharpen its knobbed end against the stone wall, scraping it back and forth. And he did that now, working it over. It wasn’t all that sharp yet, but a pointed tip had revealed itself over time.
Lester knew he had to be prepared for the Dark next time. He only had to glance down at the bloodied bandages wrapped around his feet to know that next time would be worse. Much worse. But in all his years being punished by the Dark, having a razor taken to the bottoms of his feet seemed like a step in a direction where there would be no return. It had been worse than having the fingernails of his two index fingers plucked out of their beds, worse than being beat senseless with some blunt instrument that turned his mind into a soupy mess and left him with a headache so fierce he vomited for three days afterwards. Worse than having some kind of coarse rope wrapped around his neck so tight he thought his eyes would pop out of his head like grapes. Worse than almost being drowned; submerged in the coldest water he had ever felt, expecting it to be completely bottomless, where he would drift down forever. Worse than the time where he was sure there was someone else in there with him, not the Dark itself but… someone.
He distracted himself now with sharpening his stick, he only needed a little more time before it became really sharp. Maybe sharp enough to hurt somebody. Then Lester thought of his mother and how he needed to take care of her. She needed him, he knew that much. If he was going to defeat the Dark, they would escape together, without having to worry about it anymore. They would be free.
After some more time sharpening his stick, and some sweat bulging on his forehead, he thought it was sharp enough. He poked its tip into his calf, hard. He twisted it a little and sure enough, a teardrop of blood swelled and slithered down into the bandage at his foot.
Then he got to wondering how a stick got inside at all. A stick the colour of bone, no less.
Lester got to wondering of doors and what they hide behind them. His bedroom didn’t have a door; only a rectangular entryway, but there were three other doors, all of which held something on the other side that he had never seen. Perhaps for the better.
Sitting in his treasure spot, he could actually see The Out There through the crack in the wall. It seemed an odd, almost magical place. There were critters that flittered crazily about the trees. They were small and intensely vibrant; they twittered and tweeted. Lester liked them. They weren’t scary or dangerous. They were living in The Out There. They were free.
With his stick stowed away — for the most part — in the left hip pocket of his frayed shorts, Lester stepped over to the door nearest to his treasure spot. He had never worked up the courage to try the brass doorknob. In fear the Black Door behind him would crash open and the Dark would come bounding out in a vaporous cloud of hate and gnashing of unseen teeth, until of course, he felt them sink into his flesh.
Lester slowly raised his hand to the doorknob, conscious of his own hot breath tunnelling up his throat. His hand landed upon its icy surface and some kind of thrill shuttled through him. He twisted the knob, and it started to give when a voice erupted so suddenly behind him it turned his bowels to a shivery sack of water.
He turned back toward the shadow at the end of the hall and was suddenly sure it was the Dark, though he had never heard it utter a word before. This voice sounded small and tinny; faraway even. It certainly didn’t sound like his mother. It was a man’s voice. Not unlike his older brother Dennis who went away a long time ago.
Lester inexplicably limped toward the sound. Making sure to stick close to the stone wall as he passed the Black Door. He eventually came to the other door, the voice louder now. His mother’s door.
‘Muh?’ Lester said, his voice shaky; uncertain. ‘All right?’
No answer but the muffled voice droning on: ‘—this is for you nineties babies. It’s a stone cold classic for getting you up when you’re down. To find the light when you’re in the dark. When you feel locked away and— well, you get the idea. This is Hanson with—’
Lester’s heart thundered in his chest. He had no idea what the voice was talking about. It didn’t belong here. He found his hand reaching for the doorknob and hesitated — for just a moment — then twisted it and let the door swing wide open.
His mother’s room was empty, though that wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t in here, but the room was far from empty. Lester’s eyes widened at the sight of the soft carpeted flooring, a bed sat in the corner with a mountain of pillows and blankets. On a round table there were crinkled packets of Smiths — whatever they were — and half empty bottles of something called Pepsi. The voice came from a small grey device sitting on the table with a metal stick protruding out of it.
And in the corner of the room an awful monster stared right back at Lester, and he gasped, jerked away. But the monster replicated his exact movement. It seemed to be trapped within a tall rectangular frame. It disturbed him on a deeper level than he had ever felt before, like it had somehow displaced something true within him and made it inexplicably false; unknown. The ugly thing staring at Lester looked swollen, its head had a large protruding lump that came to a hardened point, like a bone that grew all wrong. It was discoloured. Its jaw was crooked and its teeth were set at all the wrong angles. Its lips were too drawn back, revealing grey, spotted gums. One eye was bigger than the other, the socket looked puffy and full of crusted gunk. The monster’s skin was sallow and scarred with white lumpy ridges. And eventually Lester’s gaze wandered down, where it too had bloodied bandages wrapped around its feet.
‘Ugly,’ Lester said and felt tears burn in his eyes.
In that moment, Lester couldn’t work out why he felt rage and sadness at the same time, as if both conflicted inside him, sparking a war of contradiction within.
‘I am monster,’ he heard himself say.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ his mother roared behind him.
Lester stumbled back into the hallway, fumbling over words and ended up making some useless noise. He was told to never open doors: The Dark knows when you do and the Dark will get you. The Dark doesn’t like people who sneak about poking their noses in places they don’t belong. Now his mother loomed large, fiendish with her eyes blazing, feet planted wide and her black oversized shirt hanging limply over her bullish frame.
‘You shouldn’t go sneaking around into other people’s business, Lester,’ she said. Her tone was deep and full of something he had known all too well: hate. Pure and simple. With what stood opposite him trapped in the frame, he suddenly understood what she saw. Maybe that was why the Dark punished him.
She shook her head, side to side went the lanky hair, and when her eyes fixed upon him again they were empty of hate, instead replaced with a kind of sadness. ‘My poor Lester will never learn!’ she declared. ‘Why won’t you learn? God help me! Bad boys must be punished!’ She had those familiar tears in her eyes now. She lunged forward, latched onto his wrist and dragged him up the hall.
Lester yelped and dug his feet into the ground, one of the sodden bandages snagged on an upturned corner of stone and unravelled completely.
‘Don’t fight your mother, Lessy! It makes the Dark angrier!’ They reached the Black Door and she pushed him ahead of her. ‘What do I keep telling you? The Dark hates disobedient boys!’
Lester was really crying now, tears tracked down his scarred cheeks to the flat of his chin. He was painfully aware of how he looked, and he would’ve given anything to sit in his treasure spot, looking into The Out There at the pretty little critters in the trees.
‘Bad boys get the Dark!’ she shrieked and warm sour spittle flew from her mouth. She pulled open the Black Door.
Lester brought his hands up to his face instinctively, shielding himself from the Dark that would surely drag him inside its terrible mouth. Instead, after he lowered his hands, his mother was gone and with some grey light from the hallway, he could see into the room where the Dark had tormented him for the first time. It was nothing more than a circular room with splotches of blood staining most of the stone. There was a table at the far wall and even from here, he could make out the grim blades, but what caught his eye most was the pile of sticks in the corner, as if discarded. Sticks the colour of bone.
And without any such warning his mother appeared before him, large and wide and threatening. This time she wore black goggles that hid her eyes behind a shimmery glass that made Lester’s breath harden to a rotten lump in his throat.
‘Bad boys get the Dark!’
Lester’s world splintered apart then, fell to jagged fragments that would do no good if he tried to pick them up.
His mother thundered into the hall with hands that he could now see, and he bolted up the hallway, Scrape following feverishly at his heel. His mother got her foot caught up and it sent her crashing to the stone floor. She let out a wail through gritted teeth.
Lester reached the door and twisted the knob — too quickly — and his hand slipped over it instead. He tried again and felt it give. He pulled the door open and burst into The Out There. Blinded by harsh white light, he ran on, the ground turning from hard stone to damp soil and grass, soft and not at all dangerous.
But when his vision began to clear and the harshness died away, he could make sense of the trees with their abundant canopies of leaves and branches that stitched a new world above him. With the vibrant critters that twittered. The ones he liked to watch. Then freedom was stolen from him again as he came to a shuddering halt and went sprawling to the dirt.
Scrape hadn’t let go. ‘Not now, Scrape!’ he screeched. ‘Please!’
Scrape had been chained to his ankle for as long as he could remember. Scrape followed him around, never complained and never hurt little Lester. Not ever.
‘You’re chained up you little shit for brains,’ his mother spat, standing in the door. ‘Think you can just run away like that, I’ll show you… the Dark will show you just what punishment it can give out. You disobedient little shit. How dare you!’
She grabbed a handful of the rusted chain and pulled.
Lester kicked and clawed at the ground, ripping up clumps of soil. ‘No! No!’
‘Come to the Dark, Lester. The Dark will treat you just right. You’ll get exactly what you deserve, just like Dennis did. You try to run, you try to speak… the Dark will snuff you out like a pathetic little candle.’ Her face reddened and grew slick with sweat. ‘You can’t leave your mother all alone. Not now. Not ever.’
With one last tug, Lester was brought almost all the way back to the door and with it, hope receded.
His mother loomed over him with a sneer carved into the abundant flesh of her face. ‘I told you, Lester,’ she began. ‘Bad boys get the—’
His mother was far too late in turning away — goggles or no — Lester’s stick splintered right through the shimmery glass, and with his fist closed tight around it, he buried it into his mother’s left eye. Her shriek was somehow amplified in The Out There, or more like The Out Here now. Her wailing died suddenly when he twisted it a little harder and got through the first barrier of pulpy resistance with a splintering wet crick! Warm blood filled the goggles and poured out over the stick and down Lester’s arm. It stunk of something hard and metallic, but he didn’t let go. Wanted to be sure of it. Now more than half of the stick had disappeared into her head, like a magic trick.
Then she tipped forward, her mouth hung open in a silent, final scream of pain — her Dark mouth. Lester rolled out of the way. The ground shook when she landed face first in the dirt, sending the stick further into her skull, really making sure of it now. The blood gurgled and foamed out of the goggles, pooling beneath her head.
Lester laid on his back to catch his out-of-control breath. One of the little critters landed deftly on the dirt beside him. It was a sleek blue with a hooked beak, and black-bead eyes. It looked at him inquisitively, but it didn’t hurt him, didn’t say a bad word. It was free, after all. Instead, it pecked at the blood seeping from his mother’s skull and poked around in the nest of her matted hair.
And Lester, for the first time, looked ahead into the bush where a patch of sunlight lay, as the Dark shrivelled up pathetically beside him.
Image: MontyLov / Unsplash
*This was originally published in the ‘Tertangala: Horror Issue’ (2023)