Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (14 page)

Darcy grunted. Well, that explained the accent.

“What you doing down here in Missouri? Family? Or you got a
diesel parked out back?”

At this Brad began to giggle, his entire body vibrating along with
the sound. It set Darcy’s hair to standing on the back of her
neck, and that was when he pulled out the gun and placed it atop the
hardwood table.

“No diesel,” Brad said as Darcy took a step back. “Just
a truck.”

“Not much cash, mister,” Darcy said, forcing herself to
remain calm despite the pounding of blood in her ears. “I
suggest you put that thing away before Bob sees it.”

Brad spun it twice, reminding her of some sick game of spin the
bottle. Then he grabbed it and set it beside him on the seat, between
him and the window.

“Think your boss’ll mind if we have a chat?” Brad
said, nodding toward the chair opposite him. “Least until the
food’s ready?”

Darcy swallowed.

“Sure. If that’s what you want.”

She removed her apron and folded it upon her lap as she sat down,
mostly to have something to do. Brad didn’t seem to be looking
at her, and he didn’t seem particularly dangerous. Other than
the gun, of course.

“Don’t mean to scare you,” he said, scratching at
the stubble on his neck. “Could have asked, didn’t have
to … shit. Sorry. Been up for two days, maybe three? Just
driving. Don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I need to
talk. Need to have someone listen. Just don’t want to die
alone.”

The gun plus the comment clicked things into place. A calm sort of
horror settled over her as she realized the man was preparing to end
his life right in front of her. She wondered what it’d look
like. Would she see his brains splatter out across the back of his
seat and onto the windows? An absurd giggle bubbled in her chest as
she wondered how much Windex it’d take to get them clean again.

Assuming he didn’t take her with him, of course.

“You don’t need to do this,” Darcy said, carefully
watching his reaction. Didn’t want to push him too far or upset
him. The last thing she needed was to piss off a suicidal man running
on no sleep.

“This? What is
this
? I’m not doing anything. We’re
just talking.”

His harsh tone was enough to catch Bob’s attention, and she saw
him peering through the window from the kitchen.

“Food’s up,” he called out to her. Darcy looked to
Brad, and she slowly started to rise.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Lasted this long. I think I
got time.”

She went behind the counter and accepted the plate Bob held out to
her.

“Everything okay?” he asked, keeping his voice low. There
was no humor in it like before. Darcy hesitated only a moment, and
she looked back at her customer. So far he hadn’t threatened
her, and seemed more distraught than anything. But if Bob found out
he had a gun, she didn’t trust his reaction. It was a gamble
she hated making, but she trusted herself to get through the night
without incident far more than her temperamental boss.

“Fine,” she said, praying she was right. “Just
fine. He’s a little worked up is all.”

She brought the plate over and set it down on the table. The way he
stared at her, she knew he expected her to stay. Sliding back into
the seat, she sat up straight and tried to pretend Brad was one of
her sons. She’d talked her two boys out of some pretty stupid
stuff before. Maybe she could do the same with a stranger.

Brad picked up half the sandwich and began wolfing it down. Darcy
could hardly believe it, and looked out the window to the parking lot
to avoid the sight. She’d seen hungry people come in before,
but Brad ate like a man who hadn’t had a scrap of food for
days. Outside, she saw an old Ford parked near a street lamp,
presumably Brad’s. As she stared, something flickered across
the light, a shadow far too large to be an owl or a bat. The truck
rocked side to side before the light blacked out completely.

“What’s going on, Brad?” Darcy asked, shifting her
attention back to her customer. A chill seeped into her bones, and
she felt painfully aware there was something more to Brad than she
understood.

Brad sniffed. He finished swallowing the first half of the sandwich
while picking up the second.

“This is good,” he said, and he laughed. He rubbed his
knuckles across his eyes, and she realized he was starting to cry.
“Damn good. The rest of the diners here in Missouri like this?”

“I can’t say. Bob’s a good cook, but we’re
hardly special.”

“No, we’re not. We’re not special at all, none of
us. We live in a sick, cruel world, Darcy. But at least it’s
something we can live with, right? Long as we don’t know how
awful it really is out there, long as we can keep our eyes shut tight
enough, we can keep on going.”

He held the second half up, and she could tell he was hungry, but
something made him shake his head and put it down.

“Have you ever seen something,” he asked her, “seen
something you wished you could go back in time so that you never,
ever saw it in the first place? You know what I mean when I say
that?”

A buried pain throbbed in her chest, and she nodded. “I found
my husband in bed after his heart attack,” she said. “I
couldn’t sleep for weeks without seeing his face frozen like
that.”

She left out how still he’d been, as if her beloved husband of
thirty years had been replaced with a doll, or a plastic mannequin
like they used in malls. She left out the clamminess of his touch,
how his body had fought against her desperate attempts to hold him
against her, clutching his lifeless, shit-stained heap against her
breast as she sobbed. But she could tell Brad saw it in her eyes, and
he nodded.

“You know,” he said, pushing away the plate. “But
you don’t know. None of us do. There’s things we aren’t
supposed to see, Darcy. Things we can’t know. Can’t
acknowledge.”

“You just need a good night’s sleep,” Darcy said,
trying to push away the cruel memories of her husband. “Come
morning, I promise you’ll see things differently.”

Brad chuckled, and as he did a second street light went dark, a
shower of sparks falling below it to the concrete. Darcy turned to
look, seeing it from the corner of her eye, but Brad grabbed her
wrist, startling her.

“Don’t,” he said. His bloodshot eyes stared into
hers, and he slowly shook his head. “Don’t you look.”

“What if I do?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“Then you’ll be like me. I looked, and now I’m
dead. Been driving three days straight, pissing in bottles and living
off whatever junk I could buy at gas stations. But it’s been
too long, Darcy, too damn long. I can’t live like this. Only
question is how I let it all end.”

He was insane. He had to be insane.

From outside they heard a crash. Brad’s grip on her wrist
tightened. He stared in her eyes, the force of will in them keeping
her attention fixed solely on him.

“You don’t want to see it,” he said. “Pull
away the veil, and there’s nothing but teeth. Stare at the
floor, you hear me? At the floor.”

She kept looking at him even as he raised his gun. Even as the sound
of cracking concrete reached her ears.

“At the floor, goddamn it!”

The window shattered, a great force slamming against the outside of
the diner. Bricks flew inward, the table heaved onto its side. Darcy
screamed as she fell, her body rolling along the tile, then screamed
again when her shoulder struck the legs of a chair, putting a halt to
her momentum. Amid the clatter came a deep roar, as if from the belly
of a great engine. A gun fired once, twice, then ceased. The primal
part of her wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and cower while waiting
for some sign of safety, but instead she looked up even as blood
dripped down her face from a cut along her forehead she didn’t
remember getting. She had to see. She had to know.

It was just a fleeting image, a sliver of time, and her eyes could
not register exactly what she saw. There were arms, muscle, and
folded extremities that her mind told her were wings. Above all there
were teeth, so many teeth, and blood-soaked claws. A glint of blue
flashed in her direction, and she flung herself to the ground when
she realized they were eyes. A deep cry tore out of her throat. Her
body shook and her bladder let go.

Through it all, Brad screamed and screamed.

And then it was gone, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in the wall
of the diner. From the kitchen Bob flung open the door and rushed to
her side. She was crying as his large hands wrapped around her,
helping her to her feet.

I saw nothing,
she told herself, over and over again, finally
understanding what it was that had tormented Brad’s final days.
I saw nothing, nothing, I saw nothing, and you didn’t see
me.

But those blue eyes had seen, they’d looked right into her and
scorched the recesses of her mind.

“It’s all right, we’re all right,” Bob said,
holding her against him as she sobbed. He patted her back like she
was an upset child, and for some reason that infuriated her enough to
fight down her terror. Slipping free of his grasp, she looked at the
devastation while wiping her face with her sleeve.

Bob crossed his arms, uncrossed them, then gestured to the hole.

“What the
fuck?
”

“What else could it be?” Bob told the police officer as
they stood outside the diner. “I’m telling you, some
crazy yokel ran their damn semi right into the side of my diner.”

The officer was an old man, George Webb, and had been the sole
policeman for the small town for a good ten years. He looked at Bob
and scratched the back of his head.

“Might need to call up Springfield if that’s the case.
You say he hit your customer, correct? Do you think it was
intentional?”

Darcy hunched beside the squad car, holding a rag against her
forehead. She wore a towel around her waist, the best Bob could think
of to hide the fact she’d pissed herself. It took all her
willpower to keep her eyes level, to keep from searching the roof of
the diner or the tops of the many trees along the edges of the road.
Bob waved a hand her direction.

“You’ll have to ask her. She saw it all. I didn’t.”

George and Bob turned her way, and Darcy shivered. Three pairs of
eyes looked at her then, she knew somehow. Three, not two.

“I … I guess it was a semi,” she said. She’d
raised two boys. She was a terrific liar. “I blacked out when
it hit, though, so I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.
Was so quick and loud, I just thank God I’m alive.”

She’d thank God to be alive, yes, thank Him for hiding such
things from her, but she sure as shit wasn’t going to thank Him
for creating it in the first place. George frowned, clearly
disappointed.

“Listen,” she said. “It’s late. Will it be
all right if I head on home?”

“Sure thing, Darcy,” George told her. “I’ll
swing by tomorrow and see if you remember anything else.”

“We’ll be here,” Bob said. “Lot of cleaning
up to do. Hell, you think insurance will cover a semi-truck through
the wall?”

“Oh, and Darcy,” George said. “If you get any
terrible headaches, make sure you go to the hospital. Probably should
anyway with a cut like that.”

“No insurance,” Darcy said. “And I’ve made do
with worse.”

Darcy went into the diner and grabbed her purse from behind the
counter. Slinging it over her shoulder, she dug out the keys, then,
putting on a straight face, walked to her car. Her every action felt
like an act, a determined façade to show she’d seen
nothing, learned nothing, remembered only the lie she’d spoken.

Sitting down in the driver’s seat, she adjusted the rearview
mirror. As she did she caught that same fleck of blue glinting in the
moonlight from atop the row of apartments behind the diner. Her heart
skipped a beat, and then the blue blinked away. Turning the key, she
flung the car into reverse and backed out of the parking lot. Putting
it into gear, she pulled out onto the highway, her foot pushing
harder and harder on the gas the further she got from the diner.

Darcy drove, a shadow in her rearview mirror blotting out the stars
as it followed after.

The tide propelled the dinghy through turbulent waters beneath
starlit darkness—up and over one wave, and then dropping it
into the next valley. Lying within the small rower huddled two men,
shivering in wet clothes. A puddle sloshed from one end inside the
boat to the other in whatever direction the waves moved it. Like the
little pool inside the boat, both men were prisoners to the sea’s
bitter whims.

Terror tainted the whisper of one of the men, “Is it gone?”

Too frightened to speak, the other only shook his head. At any
moment, death could come for them. It had to know they were there—the beast
couldn’t have just let them go. Both men huddled
together to keep warm, and to comfort each other like children waking
from bad dreams. A predator hunted out there ... somewhere ...

It was springtime in Hundested, Denmark. Eight-hundred and nineteen
years have passed since the death of the Christian’s Lord. His
name means nothing to the Vikings, for in these lands, Odin is the
god almighty.

It may be spring, but snow dotted the north end of the surrounding
hills and mountains, and ice lingered in the shadows of the wide and
powerful oaks. At first dawn, frost glazed the grasses of the meadows
and pastures. By mid-morning, the crystals had vanished, but a chill
clung to the air. It was not cold enough to frost anyone’s
breath, but enough to require a thick cloak for comfort.

For the hardy men and women of the fishing town known as Hundested,
winter’s darkness has passed. Farmers had begun to till the
cold soil. Sailors and merchants followed the old trade routes, and
the warriors prepared for renewed raiding against the cities beyond
Scandinavia now that the weather permitted.