The Darkness Inside
By Jack Harvey
“I don't get why you won't just let me give you the shotgun,” John was saying. “Yesterday was the first time I'd fired one.”
Dennehy was trying to brush him off. Barb could tell.
“Uh, listen son. You're the one who woke up with in your hands so I reckon destiny gave you it for a reason.”
“Listen I don't...”
They then noticed Barb had returned to the room.
“Agent Brown!” Dennehy beamed. “Hows the chair we got for you working out?”
He was referring to the replacement wheelchair she was sitting on. A deputy had ran down from the nearby hospital with it.
“It's a piece of crap to be frank with you Captain,” she said. “What year is this from. 1992?”
Dennehy smiled, but he didn't respond to the criticism. “So! What's our next step?”
Barb sighed. “Well, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but if something odd is going on around here we need to start looking into local legends. Ghost stories, curses. Anything from the town's history that sounds out of the ordinary.”
Dennehy nodded. “Best place to start would be the Elaney household. It's a museum of local history now, used to belong to the town's founder and first mayor. Just follow the main road up. You can't miss it.”
“Will you be joining me Captain?” Barb asked.
“Uhh, I better hold down the fort here,” he said nervously. “Just in case anything urgent comes through.” He glared slyly over at John. “But Mr Hartley here can keep you company.”
“But,” John tried to protest.
“Come on now son. If anything bad happens you've got your gun there.”
John looked like he was going to continue protesting, but just nodded.
“Good,” Dennnehy said, content. “Here's the keys. Curator was one of the first to go missing so it's been locked up since then. Let me know if you find anything.
****
John wheeled Barb up the main street, his shotgun stuffed in a carry-bag on the wheelchair's back.
It was eerily silent, and for the first time since she arrived Barb got a full view of the town as a whole.
“It's odd isn't it,” John said, seemingly sensing her thoughts. “There's something not quite right about the place.”
“It's the buildings,” Barb said. “They look...”
“It's a Georgian design,” John said, butting in. “They're like the buildings from my home town back in the UK. I've got a lot of family in the US, been through a lot of small towns when we visit. Never seen any place have architecture like this. Not outside the cities anyway. And then there's the curve of the main road...”
“It's not just that,” Barb said. “It's something else. Like the whole environment doesn't belong.”
“I know what you mean,” John continued, as he struggled to push her chair over a metal rail that ran through the road. “There's something in the air. The sky. The grass. It doesn't feel... I don't know.”
“It doesn't feel like it fits,” Barb said. “One minute we're in up-state New York, the next, you're here. The two don't quite gel.”
****
It didn't take them long to get to the Elaney house. The place was just slightly separate from the town itself, being at the highest point and surrounded by what would have been private land. It was a grand old house, with a Greek-styled frontage. The gardens looked well kept, and there was an almost relaxing quality about the place.
Barb opened the big oak doors using the old metal keys Dennehy had given her. The door creaked open, and they entered into a darkened foyer.
John hit the light switch, and the foyer was illuminated. The room was filled with cabinets and displays on the town's history. In front of them was a big cardboard cut out of a man titled Hugo Elaney. It was black and white, and too blurred to really make out his features, but he was stocky, that much was obvious.
Barb wheeled herself up to it.
“Hugo Elaney travelled with the pilgrims from old Europe in 1813 and founded Egmontstown in the same year.” Barb read from the plaque below. “Beset by tragedy at every turn, Elaney lost most of his fortune over the following ten years trying to make the town a success, which culminated in the deaths of his wife and daughter, taken by a respiratory disease. Having reached his lowest point, Hugo Elaney immediately turned his fortunes around, making Egmontstown into a thriving farming town. Elaney credited his success in the importation of soil from Europe, that made the ground fertile and caught the attention of new settlers who wanted to share in his success.”
“Died in 1867 of old age,” said John. “After overseeing the revolutionary design of the town's Georgian architecture.” John glanced over at Barb, a grin on his face. “What do you think? He sold his soul to the devil for success?”
“At this point I'd take anything under consideration,” said Barb. “Have a look around, see if anything stands out.”
She glanced over towards the stairs, to see a pair of metal doors next to them.
“At least this place has an elevator.”
John had wandered off to investigate the lower floors, so Barb wheeled herself over and pressed the call button. Immediately the doors swung open to reveal a modern looking interior.
As Barb entered the elevator, she suddenly wondered what would happen if it got stuck. Would time work differently inside? Would John wander around for an eternity thinking her gone?
She pressed the button to take her up a floor.
The upper floor had apparently been kept closer to it's original design. Decorated with period furniture and signs explaining why they would have been in fashion at the time. On the wall, Barb noticed an arrow that said 'Elaney's Study.' She followed it.
A plaque on the wall informed Barb that the study had been preserved perfectly since Elaney's death. Since he had no heirs the house was inherited by the town council, but Elaney had commanded such respect that they refused to move anything from the room.
Barb judged that must have made things easier when it was converted into a museum.
She wheeled herself in and had a look around the room. It looked similar to most studies at the time, except in one regard. There were two large shelves over by a desk that held multiple glass jars filled with soil. They were each labelled with dates.
“One of Hugo Elaney's great passions was the study of soil and earth,” she read. “Over his lifetime Elaney imported several hundred tonnes of soil to Egmontstown from all over the world, but mostly Europe. While mineral and agriculture experts agree that there would have been no great benefit to using imported soil for cultivation, they can't deny that Elaney's success stemmed from his interest in the earth.”
Barb wheeled herself over to the desk. On it was a book of records. Next to it were a laminated collection of letters that Elaney had sent to workers tasked to deal with retrieving the soil.
Mr Erickson. It has come to my attention that you and your men have been taking a broad interpretation of my orders regarding the security of our soil shipments. Let me be blunt, my orders were that the soil was to be secured in containers air tight. No amount of soil, not a handful, not a thimble full, is to be misplaced during transit. Should these orders not be followed I will have no choice but to take capital measures to discipline you and your men. If you feel you cannot meet these responsibilities then I will find men who can.
H.E 1821
Barb looked back at the soil samples. There was something unnerving about the way they were displayed on the wall. Almost revered. The shelves were lovingly decorated with ivy leaf patterns carved into them, and the jars themselves looked to have been made from some of the thickest glass, though time was fogging them up a little.
She wheeled herself closer to take a look.
Just soil, or so it appeared. She could only get close to the lower of the two shelves, so she tapped the nearest jar. 1825. Yes, just soil. She tapped the next one. 1821.
She heard a sound from behind her.
Looking over her shoulder. She saw that a book had fallen off a shelf and landed on the floor. Odd. They didn't look loose.
Barb looked over at the jars. On the higher shelf there was one dated 1818. She lifted herself from the chair, but she couldn't quite reach. Barb pulled out her revolver, and could just about touch it with the barrel. Carefully, she tapped the jar.
The lights flickered.
“Agent Brown,” came a shout from below. It was John. “I think I've found something.”
Barb took one more curious look at the jar before she wheeled herself out of the study and back to the elevator.
John was waiting for her once she had reached the ground floor.
“Come over here. Take a look at this.”
He wheeled her near to the back of the building, which had been opened up and converted into a section about the two world wars. In front of her was a plaque detailing 'The famine of 1918.'
“Take a look at this,” he repeated. “It says that most of the town's men had gone away fighting in World War One, so the place was practically a ghost town for a few years,”
Barb glanced over at him.
“No pun intended,” he smiled. “But it says that when the men returned from the war there was so little food to go around that most of them starved to death. Says the population dropped by seventy percent. Took them until the sixties to really recover.”
“Pretty tragic,” Barb said. “But what's that got to do with our situation now?”
“Look at the date,” John said. “That's nearly one hundred years ago to the day. It's the anniversary of the famine this year. What if it wasn't a famine? What if that's just what people said because nobody would believe the real explanation?”
“You think what's happening now also happened back then?” Barb asked, rubbing her chin. “Wait a minute!” Barb said, banging a fist on an arm rest.
“What it it?” John asked.
“Hugo Eleney supposedly arrived in 1813. Ten years later is when he lost his wife and kid.”
“1818,” John nodded. “One hundred years before the famine.
“And two hundred years before what's happening now.” Barb spun herself around. “John we need to get back to the station. I think Hugo Elaney did something. I don't know if it was a deal with the devil or something way beyond that, but we need to start formulating a plan, and it starts with Dennehy.”
****
“I don't know,” said Dennehy wearily. “The famine was pretty well documented. It was tragic but nothing weird like this.”
“Look, we're reaching here,” said Barb. “But right now it's the best lead we've got.”
Dennehy sighed. “Well I guess this is why I asked the FBI to send you. What do you need?”
“Do you folks here have a forensics lab? Somewhere you can analyse tissue samples? Gun discharges? Things like that?”
“We have a lab, yeah. It's up at the hospital though. This building was too old to accommodate anything like that.”
“Great,” said Barb. “Here's what I want you to do. I want you to gather up some soil from one of the nearby fields. Preferably the one that those creatures are buried under.”
Dennehy winced.
“You only need a clod,” Barb reassured him. “A handful.”
“Okay,” Dennehy said, writing it down.
“I want you to send the soil to the lab and test it for anything weird. Put it under a microscope. Break it down into a solution. Whatever it is those egg heads do to find out what's in it.”
“Okay,” Dennehy repeated.
“While you're at it I want them to take a cutting from the metal of John's gun, and do the same for that.”
“What?” John said, a little put out.
“There's something special about that shotgun John. Best that we take a look at it just in case. It'll only be a sliver. You won't even notice.”
“Alright then,” Dennehy said, nodding to a deputy who was standing by the door. “You get all that son?”
“Yes sir,” the deputy said professionally, reaching, over-familiarly, for John's gun.
John kept his grip.
“Oh, so you want to keep your hands on the gun now Mr Hartley? Is that it?” Dennehy complained.
Feeling a little embarrassed, John let go, and the deputy exited the room.
“Alright,” Dennehy said. “What else?”
“That's all for now,” Barb replied, as she wheeled herself to the door.
“That's it?” Dennehy said, insulted. “Take a look at a gun and some dirt?”
“It's all we can do before we can plan our next move,” she said. “Right now I'm going to call in for the night, since, apparently I haven't slept for two weeks. I suggest you all do too.”
****
The guest house was old but at least it was clean. The room was decorated in the style of the late eighteen-hundreds or possibly early nineteen-hundreds, with floral affectations on everything. For all that was on her mind though, Barb didn't really pay much attention to her surroundings, she really was as tired as she'd implied. It didn't take her long to drift off.
The moment Barb noticed that she was standing on her own two feet was the moment she knew she was dreaming.
She looked down. It was a long time since she got to see herself from this perspective. She lifted one leg, put it down. Then lifted the other. She began to walk. Even though she had spent years in the chair, she found no difficulty in it.
She would have smiled, if the moment hadn't felt so manipulative.
The sky was clear, and the stars and moon clearly illuminated the area around her. She was standing in a field not too different from the one she had been accosted in on her way back from the school, but from what she could tell this was a different one.
The soil had all been neatly ploughed, just like all the other fields, and the lights of the town could be seen in the distance.
Just a short walk ahead of her was a large oak tree. It stood alone on this field, away from a small wooded area that was at the other far end.
Barb began to walk towards the tree, trying not to take joy from the fact that she was experiencing walking for the first time in years. It should have been a joyous moment, even for just a dream, but there was a bad feeling at the bottom of her stomach. A feeling of dread.
Standing by the tree was a silhouette. A shadow. It was hard to describe. It looked human, but it was made of a pure absence of light. Just like the darkness in the lane she had seen earlier. No features could be made out, no emotion ascribed.
The silhouette suddenly began to move towards her.
Barb tried to take a step back, but her feet wouldn't move.
The silhouette quickly rose from the ground, hovering, it's arms spread out as it began to glide towards her. In turn, Barb felt her feet begin to drag along the ground, as a force began to pull her towards the silhouette. Before long, she too had been raised from the ground, and began to glide through the air.
Suddenly she was face to face with the darkness. It was no more clear from this distance, just a direct, black void. Her ears tingled, as though sharp vibrations were puncturing her eardrums. Then the vibrations became louder, and louder.
Her eyes were locked on to the darkness. Barb couldn't close them or turn away no matter how hard she tried, and they began to water. The vibrations had gotten even stronger now, as they began to morph into a scream. An unnatural, unearthly scream, like the sound of tearing metal or rupturing glass.
As the scream grew louder, Barb threw her head back, but her eyes remained where they were. Her surroundings were gone. The tree, the field, the night sky, the use of her legs, she'd forgotten about all of it. Now, only two things existed, the darkness, and the scream.
Then she woke.
Daylight was shining though the cracks in the curtains.
Jack Harvey 2018
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