FWF Firecracker - the dark hours

When I began writing this snippet a week ago, I imagined something light, with two cute guys meeting and falling in love. There’d be witty exchanges, smiles, and fireworks, both in the sky and between the the characters.

Then the words actually hit the page, and something else came out.

The end result was fun. I’ve decided to continue this story every holiday :)

* * *

The door shut behind Jason with a crunch of a breaking bone. Evening light bled through the door’s glass, casting blue and green shadows over the room. Frowning, Jason turned the light on.

Denied shadows, the house opened up before him. The entry room was small, leading the wall to either the living room or a hall. Down the hall were a set of stairs, the entryway into the dining room and kitchen, a spider infested closet under the stairs, the bathroom, and a door that led into the kitchen.

Jason stepped into the living room. He would’ve liked to do this walk through in daylight, but Fourth of July traffic had argued for otherwise.

Remembering the drive, he shuddered and silently thanked the Flying Spaghetti Monster, patron everything of agnostics, atheists, and people who wanted to annoy their uncle, the former priest.

Jason studied the room. There was an office somewhere, but he couldn’t remember if the door to it was in this room or down the hall. He was more familiar with the upstairs and its labyrinth of rooms. A master bedroom he’d never liked going into because his grandmother had died there, his old room and its window looking out over the neighbor’s small graveyard, his mother’s old room, the room his parents had always assured him wasn’t haunted but wouldn’t go in themselves, and a couple bathrooms. No attic, though he had found a small crawlspace above his room. There’d been books there. His grandfather’s journals . . .

The memories teased him, giving him an image of old leather-bound books and then fading. The books might be real. They might also have been a fancy, something his then twelve-year-old mind created to make his wasted summer in this old house seem more interesting. The house had a secret attic room and it was filled with magic. The neighbor was a monster. Sparklers had the power to keep the formless monsters that lived in shadows at bay. Jason had saved the world.

At least, he’d thought he had.

His parents had paid a small fortune to a therapist for the next two years after that summer. In the end, it was decided that he’d simply daydreamed too much.

It was an embarrassing assessment, but then, it made living with the shadows under the bed easier. He was an imaginative child, they were concerned parents. The two did not always mix.

The air in the living room smelled stale, so Jason circled the room, opening windows.

Cool, evening kissed air snaked into the room. The distant pop of fireworks echoed from down the street, making Jason smile. As a child, he’d barely had the patience to wait for full dark before wanting to set something on fire. It seemed that impatience was eternal.

Air crept through the room, stirring the curtains and dust. His parents had always meant to sell the hundred-and-fifty year old house, but several normal and not at all suspicious deaths over the years had turned the place into a stigmatized property.

Thankfully, the deaths happened around the house and not on the antique furniture, so they’d sold those and funded everything from cruises around the world, to a couple IRAs, and Jason’s college fund. It also meant there were no white-sheeted ghosts to greet Jason in any of the . . .

Through an open door in the corner of the room, Jason saw a sheet draped over a couch.

Jason headed toward it. It seemed he’d found the office.

His steps thumped softly, giving the house a heartbeat. Despite his childhood promise to never return, he’d returned. His reasons were financial; he was a dark fantasy writer. He was doing well, able to keep himself fed and clothed. His studio was charming, his car reliable, but money was forever tight.

The house, for all of the memories it inspired, was in a nice neighborhood. If he lived here, he could build up his savings account. Right now, the poor thing clawed its way into three digits, only to be gutted when emergencies came up.

Inside, the room was a shadow of what it had once been. Beneath white sheets were his father’s desk and chair, as well as a faded black leather couch.

Jason drew the sheets off each of the items and scanned the room. At one time, gold trophies and books competed for space on the shelves. Now, the shelves were gone, the curtains were open, and . . .

The back door was unlocked.

A tremor darted through Jason. No one was there. The house was quiet.

Despite that, the few steps between him and the door were slow. No one was there. Anyone could have been.

Jason turned the lock. Waited. If anyone had come in . . .

Silence.

He was alone.

Jason released a breath. When he’d last spoken to the lawyer, the man had assured him he had locked every door behind him, and that he’d closed the curtains at the back of the house.

At another time, Jason would grant that it was an odd request. Now, when the blue hour was bleeding into night, he wanted doors locked and curtains drawn. When he finally allowed himself to look outside, he wanted it to happen during the daytime, when sunlight made nightmares shrink.

Jason approached the windows. There were six, creating a frame over the pretty yard outside. There were a handful of oaks to the left, a gazebo to the right, and a tall stone fence . . .

At the sight of the fence, Jason stopped. Past it, the top of a stone tower rose into the night.

The house was fairytale beautiful. As an adult, he would call it a Tudor-style manor. As a child, he’d thought it was a castle.

Jason forced himself the last few steps and then yanked the curtain shut. In theory, the fence separated the house from a neighbor’s on the next block. In reality, there was a break in the stones out behind the trees. The crevice was waist high, and when his parents had seen it, they’d shrugged it off. The gate was there; no one was going to trespass.

They’d forgotten they had an imaginative child. To them, the fence was insurmountable. To him, it was the gateway to a castle. Under the cover of night, when the fireworks bathed the sky in flashes of blue and silver, he’d slipped out and . . .

And what?

Jason continued pulling each curtain closed. He had no idea what had actually happened. At the time, he’d thought he’d seen monsters. Dead bodies appeared in the neighborhood; he’d been certain the monsters were responsible. He’d sharpened sticks, tried to use his father’s pottery kiln to melt his grandmother’s silver but only succeeded in creating chaotic lumps that would never fit inside a gun, and got a slingshot.

A pop rang out, making Jason jump.

He laughed, and then headed out for the living room. He’d forgotten about the fireworks.

Thankfully, the rest of the world hadn’t. It was dark; a chaos of light would now erupt over the downtown area. Vibrant greens and golds would shimmer and dance, each burst growing larger and larger until–

Cool fingers slid around his forearms, stopping him.

“Mr. Williams?” he asked. It couldn’t be the lawyer, the lawyer was supposed to be with his family downtown, but still Jason wondered. Hoped.

Breath teased Jason’s neck, his ear.

“No,” a man whispered.

Jason’s breath caught. That voice. He knew that voice. It had belonged to one of the monsters.

No.

That time hadn’t been real. He’d imagined . . .

He wasn’t imagining now.

A sigh crept down his neck, teasing him.

“I’ve waited for you.”

The voice stabbed Jason, making him tremble. Memoires teased him, just out of reach. He remembered . . . something. Sneaking through the broken gate between the houses’ yards. Making his way through a cluster of oak. Approaching the golden glow of a large window. Looking inside and seeing . . .

Two dozen costumed figures moving in a dance. They turned and pivoted, leaving their shadows to catch up.

“You’re real,” Jason whispered.

Laughter tumbled over him.

“As are you,” the monster–Thayer–said.

Jason slowly slid a hand into his coat pocket. He’d dialed numbers when he was half asleep. If he could dial nine-one-one now, and just started screaming, maybe someone would trace the call and–

Cool fingers slipped past his. It pushed his hand away from his phone and held it.

Beside his fingers, something crunched, and then the hard edges of his phone bit his skin.

Jason tore his hand out. Flying Spaghetti Monster, the guy just broke his Blackberry. Oh–

Cool fingers caught his wrist. Sharp claws lightly caressed his skin.

“Sshhh,” Thayer said. “No need bring anyone else into this.”

“You killed people.”

“You never proved that.”

Something popped outside.

The sharp sound jerked the figure behind him, loosening his grip.

Jason threw himself forward, breaking free.

The steps to the door were a mile. He’d just grabbed the knob when something–someone–grabbed his shoulder.

Jason twisted the knob, his body, and then he was breaking free of his coat and running out the door.

He ran toward his car, hands patting his pockets. His keys. Flying Spaghetti Monster, his keys–

Left pocket.

Jason yanked them out and stabbed his key fob. Ahead, his car lights winked at him.

“Can I help you?”

The calm voice caught Jason, making him stumble into his car. He turned and found a handsome man in a dark trench coat standing beside his trunk. Behind him, a large green circle trembled in the sky. It shimmered into gold and then faded.

Jason looked at the man, back at the house, and then laughed. Thayer hadn’t followed him.

“Sir?” the man asked.

“Do you have a phone?” Jason asked.

The man reached into his coat. “Do you need Triple A?”

“No. Call the police. There’s–” No one would believe him. “–something behind the house. A trespasser.”

The man withdrew two shapes. One was a phone; the other a wallet.

“Detective Seth Larsen. I’ve lived across the street for the last year and the only one who’s ever gone in there was a lawyer.”

“Jason Cavernaugh. The lawyer gave me the keys last week.” Larsen . . . Larsen . . . he was familiar.

Something popped, and then red stars exploded across the sky. The color was so bright. It reminded Jason of blood.

The man stepped up to him. His eyes were odd, one blue, one green, and then memory clicked; Jason had met him before. Larsen had just joined the force when the murders started. Jason had babbling to him once about vampires.

Inside, Jason winced. It’d almost been fifteen years. Maybe the man wouldn’t remember.

Larsen frowned. “Jason Cavernaugh.”

Fuck. The man remembered.

Larsen slipped his wallet and phone back into his coat.

“There’s something–someone in there,” Jason said.

“Really.”

“Yes!”

Larsen studied the house. “My first partner disappeared investigating something for you.” He turned and looked at Jason. “We found a hand two months after you left. A hand.”

The monsters had eaten the rest. Jason had tried to tell them but no one believed him. Hell, that poor dead man hadn’t.

“Here’s my theory,” Larsen said. “There was a serial killer in the area. You saw him do something. He saw you. Maybe molested you.”

Flying Spaghetti Monster. “He did not.”

“I’m sure you’d like to believe that. He did something, though. Whatever it was, it had you seeing things in the dark.”

“There were things in the dark.” They had teeth and claws and–

“Let me guess. They had tentacles. Something pleasantly eldritch and phallic shaped. Look, that shit messed you up and I feel for you, but we never found some of the missing people. Get yourself some therapy and when you can talk and make sense, call me. You call the station at any time screaming about monsters, though, and I’ll haul your ass into observation so fast you won’t have time to say boogeyman.”

Jason watched him leave.

Then, he yanked open his car door and got in. He slammed the door shut, frowned, and then considered and decided against screaming.

It would feel good to cause a disturbance that Larsen couldn’t punish, but the act would accomplish nothing. The officer would still think he was suffering from some kind of abuse inspired fantasy and if pressed he might decide to drag him off to a hospital now.

Blue exploded into the sky, followed by red, then white, then gold. They were beautiful. And loud. If he screamed, no one would hear him.

Jason started the car. As a kid, no one had believed he’d seen monsters. Ironic that now people were willing to believe he had, provided that the things that went bump in the night were human.

An insult to injury thought; Jason couldn’t believe he’d wanted to argue about that. No officer, the monster never touched me back then. It waited until I was an adult before considering it.

Written by Luisa Prieto

Dark fantasy writer by day, dark fantasy writer by night. I'm charmingly dull that way ;)
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