The Deep Hours of the Night Read online

  The Deep Hours of the Night and Other Stories

  Jonathan Schlosser

  Contents

  The Deep Hours of the Night

  Originally published in Red Blood, Black Sky.

  The Train

  Previously unpublished.

  To Bury the Dead

  Originally published in the Tainted Horror Anthology.

  The Work of Clocks

  Originally published in House of Horror.

  The Lighthouse on Torch Lake

  Originally published in The Willows.

  Candles

  Originally published in Necrography.

  Sarah

  Originally published in Arkham Tales.

  Shards of Glass

  Originally published in Art and Prose Magazine.

  Goat Island

  Originally published in Sonar4.

  Necessary Death

  Originally published in The Monsters Next Door and For the Love of Monsters.

  Genesis 6

  Originally published in Alien Skin.

  Crashing Stolen Cars

  Originally published by Dunesteef Audio Fiction.

  The Deep Hours of the Night

  I can’t sleep. I haven’t been able to sleep in the last fifty-six hours, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Not as long as Scott is around. Scott and his lies and his talk of faces, faces of people who weren’t dead three days ago, but who are now.

  I walk across the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water. The faucet sputters at first, then catches, like a lawn mower with dirty spark plugs. I wonder how a faucet can do that, but decide I don’t care and walk back to the window. The street outside is dark save for the moonlight, as it has been for every one of my fifty-six hours of wakefulness, and there are no cars going by. Not now that Scott has had his fun.

  “Do you like it, David?” He’s at my elbow, just like that, with no warning.

  This time I don’t even jump. I take a sip of the water, which tastes like rust. “Love it like I loved my own mother, Scott. You know that.”

  Scott chuckles, and then he’s at my other elbow. “Don’t be sarcastic with me or I’ll tear out your throat.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “That so?”

  “You know it, Buckaroo.”

  He calls me that when he thinks he’s being friendly. I don’t have the slightest clue why, nor do I want to. “Wouldn’t matter if you did, Scott, so just forget it. The only reason you’re even here is because you can’t kill me, and you don’t know why. So drop the act.”

  Scott grimaces and looks at the floor. His red eyes seem to dim a bit; but then, I’m not looking directly at him. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him at first – the black, chapped skin that makes him look like he just walked out of a forest fire, the thin strands of hair that remind me of my grandfather just before he died. I’ve become very used to that over the last two and a half days, but somehow I still find his eyes unnerving. They remind me of coals in a dying campfire, after the guitar and marshmallows have been put away and it’s almost time to break out the bourbon and the ghost stories.

  I take another drink and continue to watch the street. Trees wave in the breeze, still alive for now even without the sun. I watch a small bird dart off of a branch, turn a circle, and drop back into its nest as if it has no idea where it should go or what it should be doing. I can sympathize. It has to be hungry, but it isn’t sure when or how it should eat in the constant night.

  That’s one other thing I’m not, besides tired: hungry. I’ve eaten a frozen pizza just to while away the time, but I never felt as if I needed it.

  Scott grunts and folds his arms. “You’re remarkable. Most people would have tried to kill themselves by now.”

  I flip my wrist over, showing him the angry lacerations. Six of them in all, running straight for the first few and then getting jagged and haphazard as I found they had no effect. And, to make matters extraordinarily worse, that they didn’t hurt.

  I touch them. They still don’t.

  “When did you do that?” Scott – why he chose that name for himself, I will never know – runs a claw across the cuts, then licks his talons. “I must not have been paying attention.”

  “It was near the beginning, when you were killing the McMasters.” My neighbors’ bodies are visible across the street, lined up in their lawn as if they are for sale at some twisted roadside market.

  “Ah; we hadn’t met yet.”

  “Not in life, anyway.”

  “True.” Scott taps a talon against his chin. “At least that’s a plus you can take from all this, David. You won’t have the dreams anymore. I know how you hated those.”

  He’s right; I hated the dreams. I could remember soaking my bed many times as a child, and waking up with an iron cage of terror crushing my chest. The bowel-related accidents ceased as I got older, but the dreams didn’t. And the fear felt as fresh the last time I slept as it did the first time I experienced it.

  I look sideways at him. “I think I prefer nightmares about demons to the real thing. Maybe it’s just me.”

  “Technically, it has to be just you. You’re the only one left.” Scott laughs, waving a hand out at the dark, silent neighborhood. “But I see your point. I guess I’m not much of a conversationalist, am I? You have to realize I haven’t had much practice.”

  “You didn’t join any of the fraternities, huh?”

  “The Pit isn’t exactly like that, David. It’s more…secluded. I know there are others there, but there’s no point in talking to them. They don’t need anything from me; I don’t need anything from them. Conversation is more or less a human invention.”

  “So what about the humans there?”

  “The ones who are already dead?” Scott purses his thin lips; one cracks but doesn’t bleed. “They make a lot of noise, but none of it’s coherent. Some of them pray, as if they don’t realize they’re past that point, and some just scream. It’s entertainment, but it’s rather one-way.”

  I walk over to the kitchen table and sit down. The house around me even seems to be falling apart, though I know it has been like this since I bought it. Yellow paint flakes from the walls, coming off in small pieces – like dandruff from an infected scalp – and in long runs. Three of the four lights on the chandelier actually work, and they flicker with effort. Green mold spreads from the corners and decay eats away at the floorboards.

  I used to care, but that seems pointless now.

  Scott hops up on the table, crouching. “We have a problem, you and me.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “So what do we do about this?”

  “How should I know?” I empty the water glass and toss it across the room; it explodes against the far wall and glass showers to the floor. I consider leaping onto it, rubbing my face against the pieces until they tear my skin into hundreds of strips. Until my eyes pop and run down my face. Then I could pick up a few of the larger pieces and shove them through my empty sockets and into my brain. But I fight the idea off, knowing even that wouldn’t do any good. Like it or not, I am what I am.

  Scott grins. “Try it, though. It might feel good.”

  I think about punching him in the chest hard enough to knock him from the table, then grabbing one of the long knives on the kitchen counter and running it between his ribs.

  “Afraid you’re not thinking grand enough, David.” Scott touches his side. “It would take more than that to kill me. More than anything you’ve got here, in fact. Much more.” He reaches out with a talon and lifts my chin so that our eyes meet – my blue against his blazing red. “I have a solution for you. It hasn’t changed.”

  He’s offered it befo
re. I told him, in language that would have made my dead mother blush, what he could do with his offer. He laughed, said it would stand for as long as I needed, and didn’t mention it again.

  “Choose, David.”

  Not for the first time, I feel a pressure behind my eyes. I wipe the first escaping tears away and glare at him. “This isn’t fair. I was never warned. I was never told I would have to make this choice.”

  “But it’s upon you now. So you must.”

  He has a point, whether I want to hear it or not. I stand, shoving my chair back hard enough that it tips over and pressing my palms against the table. “Can I try, one more time? Will you at least give me that?”

  “False hope is nothing but a broken crutch, David.”

  “I don’t care. I need this.” I press my teeth together, catching the end of my tongue. I can feel the flesh part, the same way I can feel my hair move when I shake my head: without any pain at all. I don’t taste blood.

  “Fine. But this time I’ll watch. Not like there’s anything else left to do.”

  I grunt and walk to the bookshelf near the window. I run my eyes over titles that I’ve seen hundreds, even thousands of times. I’ve read them all at least once, save for the last book. That one I started and never finished, though I wish now that I had. I pull it out, feeling the soft leather between my fingers and letting my gaze linger on the little golden cross on the spine.

  Walking back to the table, I flip the book open. Second Kings. I thumb through and realize that I’m hesitating. I know what I want is at the back of the book; I could have opened there to start. But a cold sweat beads on my forehead as my heartbeat increases, and I take my time, flipping one page at a time until I get to the beginning of the end.

  Scott steps off the table and sits in the chair opposite me, still grinning.

  I begin to read, slowly at first but gaining speed as I go. Jars, Seals, Trumpets. Beasts and prostitutes. It’s all here just as I remember it from the last time I tried to read through, a little over an hour ago. I scan the words again, looking for the loophole, the catch. Anything to show me that my predicament is not what it seems. To show me that I just have to do one thing, one little thing, and I’ll be off. Soaring away, hopefully, but out of this everlasting existence regardless.

  And, just like the last time, I find nothing. My heart actually slows as I reach the end, the very end, and realize I’m not there. I’m not mentioned – not by name or by generalization. Nothing about me, David Anders of Harrison, Michigan, stands out on the page. David Anders who doesn’t think he can stand to spend eternity alone in a world of rotting corpses.

  I swallow and let the book fall slowly back on the table.

  Scott leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Satisfied, David?”

  “Hardly.”

  “But at least resigned?”

  I swallow again; my throat feels like grains of sand have been glued to the edges, and from the way my head is spinning I guess that whoever did it used modeling glue. Every time I put together a plastic plane or car or whatever I got dizzy and stumbled out of the room with a headache to rival a hangover.

  Scott shakes his head, clicking his forked tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Face it, Buckaroo, you’ve been left. The sheep were sorted from the goats and you were forgotten. Neglected. Left to rot after your God had everyone he wanted safely tucked away. The good are wearing their crowns and the rest…well, you saw. They were left to be slaughtered. But not you, David. You got neither.”

  “It’s impossible, though.” I run a hand through my hair. “Impossible.”

  “But here we are.”

  Again, he has a point. I swear under my breath. “So you can’t take me, you son of a bitch? Like you took the rest?”

  “It doesn’t look that way.” Scott leans back. “As you’ve noticed, you can’t die. You don’t need food, sleep, or anything else now that your world has ended. So, technically speaking, I’m not even sure you’re alive. And from the dreams, I wonder if you ever were.”

  I snort; a bit of snot actually blasts down onto my lower lip, and I wipe it away with the back of my hand. “Of course I was. I was born in Gaviston, at the hospital.”

  “Oh, I know. I know all about you. I was the one in those dreams, after all.” He stands, stretching. “But maybe you were a mistake, David. Life had to be breathed into Adam, after all. My guess is that you somehow missed that breath. Or maybe got half of it – enough to make you seem alive, to grow, but not enough to truly make you mortal. And it’s just been a matter of time until it caught up with you.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I can’t be. I don’t even have the capacity to be sane, as you understand it.”

  I hesitate before asking the next question, the one he’s been waiting for. Though I’m sure he hears me thinking it, mulling it over, he keeps his mouth shut. I do see his lips quiver as the grin spreads, and I decide I’ve procrastinated enough. “How do I do it?”

  Scott spreads his arms wide. He’s smiling so broadly it looks like it will split his face. “It’s simple, David. Just say you want it, and mean it. It’s a lot like your religion, really, except this time you’ll get results. That much I promise you.”

  So there it is.

  I stand, my heart racing again. I let my eyes wander around the kitchen, from the peeling paint to the shards of glass on the floor, and finally to the window. I can still see the McMasters, their bodies like black shadows against the gray lawn. Moonlight touches their pale skin, and I realize I could have done it. I could have killed them – would have if it would have saved me from this solitary life. I turn back to Scott and nod.

  “I want it.”

  The change feels as if my skin is being ripped off, stripped away like the runs of paint on the walls. My headache dissipates, but what replaces it is something akin to a charge of electricity funneled directly into my head. My back arches as the muscles spasm, and a scream tears through my lips. Scott’s laughter, joyous laughter, echoes all around me. The pain shoots for a crescendo, like I’m being roasted alive in a pit of molten tar, and then cuts off as abruptly as if a switch has been flipped.

  Everything is the same. I gasp, sucking in huge gulps of air as Scott walks around the table to pat me on the back. The cold night air feels like pure bliss – and yet, at the same time, I find I desire the pain. I want it back. Or, if not that, to inflict as much as I can.

  “Welcome.” Scott runs his talons along the nape of my neck. “I think you’ll find you enjoy it.”

  I raise a hand to shove him away, and freeze. My fingers are gone, as is the pale white skin that used to cover them. Instead, my hand ends in five hooked talons two inches longer than my fingers have ever been. The skin is black and chapped, as if I just walked out of a forest fire.

  “My Master wants to meet you,” Scott says, “And we shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

  The Train

  1

  We came across the crashed train in the night, a hulking, smoldering ruin like a huge backbone stretching across the desert. It was a freight, a long line of black, steel-ribbed cars with flames licking at its surfaces and twisted metal lying all around. The train had buckled and the cars near the middle were all bunched together, smashed into each other with doors hanging open on runners. The engine was overturned farther up, and we could see that it was burning brighter than the rest, but it was a long way off and the horses were too skittish to get closer.

  Alan slid out of the saddle and stood in the dark sand. Watching. Not saying a word, but his hand was on his revolver and I knew it wasn’t good. You could taste it in the air. Not just the foul, bitter taste of the smoke, but something else as well. Something like copper or bronze or maybe even garlic.

  Rachel leaned over toward me, but her eyes were on Alan. “What is this?”

  I shrugged, realizing now that my hand was on my gun as well. “Maybe the freight from Kansas City,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t
. “Or St. Louis.”

  “Without any markings?”

  She was right, of course. There was nothing on the sides of the cars, no white letters depicting the company’s name, no graffiti. They were just black, solid black that almost blended into the night. If we’d have been a bit farther north, we never would have seen it.

  Alan looked up. “Be quiet,” he said. His bandana was red, around his neck, but the rest of him disappeared save for the whites of his eyes.

  And I was quiet.

  We sat and watched and waited. I didn’t know what for, but if Alan said we should, then we should. He’d saved us more times than I could count, and it wasn’t time to start crossing him. But, knowing this or not, a part of me wanted to. A part of me wanted to walk down into the burning boxcars and see what was there. The pull was so strong it was almost physical, and I could see that Rachel felt it too. I imagined that Alan did, though nothing like that would ever show on his face. And the horses, of course, were terrified.

  “Get down,” Alan said. He motioned to me, and I saw that his gun was in his hand.

  I did, but Rachel was faster. She dropped out of the saddle without a sound and was at Alan's side, her bandana tugging in the breeze. Her face was beautiful, backlit with orange from the flames, and she tipped her face up to Alan with her lips slightly parted. I didn’t know if it was awe or adoration, but I’d seen it before.

  Alan didn’t notice. “This isn’t the Kansas City,” he said, “or the St. Louis. This is nothing. This is a train that shouldn’t be here.”

  I frowned. “How can you know that? Maybe it’s just unmarked.”

  “No. It’s unmarked because it belongs to no one. No one around here, anyway.” The way he said it was sharp, hard, final. No argument would work, and I knew it.

  So I said: “Then what is it?”

  I wanted Alan to tell me. I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time and I hate to now, but, considering what happened, it seems only fair. Considering how horrible that night was, how I still have nightmares so stark and real that I wake up drenched in sweat and shivering all at the same time. It’s only fair to say that I wanted Alan to give me a solid answer, to tell me what it was, to settle the matter. Because as much as I felt pulled toward that train, I also felt afraid of it. Terrified. Like a man walking to the gallows or falling on a stick of dynamite. Like it was a storm just waiting to break.