Lyrical Darkness: 11 dark fiction stories inspired by the music that rocks your soul Read online

  Eric flinched and backed up two steps, and David backed away with him, trying to melt farther back into the trees. He could see that Eric was poised to run. If he broke the spell, if he could force his feet to move, Eric would flee down that path and David would be close behind him. He readied himself, one hand against the solid bole of the tree beside him.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said in high-pitched, tearful tones, filled with anguish and yet unmistakably dead. “Don’t you dare back away from me. You who put me into that water. You who should have been with me there, if you were truly going to leave me.”

  “Emmy, it was an accident… You fell. I couldn’t catch you—”

  “You pushed me away!”

  “You were crazy,” Eric’s reply was little more than a whisper as she came closer and closer to him. “Scratching, hitting…”

  “You hurt me, Eric. You hurt me so badly.” Emmy’s voice was also quieter, but no less hard. “And after I fell, what did you do?”

  “I…I—”

  “What did you do?” she persisted. She was face to face with him now, and David winced against the horror that the face he once loved and cherished had become. She was a mangled nightmare, an eyeless, lipless, twisted visage and the rosy pink of the sun’s last rays somehow made everything worse.

  “I ran,” Eric whispered.

  “You ran,” she said contemptuously. “Didn’t bother to check on me—”

  “I could see you were beyond help. Your neck—”

  “And the lies? Eric, the lies about me going home?”

  “The truth was worse.”

  “How?” Her wail, keen and sepulchral, brought a crawling sensation to the back of David’s neck.

  “Should I have told everyone I never meant to propose to you? Because you were crazy? That you fell to your death because you were a mental mess? Emmy, every day I waited to hear that your body had come back, floated up, whatever. Every day. And it never happened. I would have come forward. I swear it. But I waited.”

  “Instead of going to the police and having them search at the time?”

  Eric grew still. “I was afraid,” he said. “I was just afraid.”

  “I’ll show you fear,” she promised, a hiss from her lipless mouth.

  Then Eric did something unexpected. He dropped to his knees in front of her and gazed up at that terrible, ruined face.

  For just that short moment, David saw the silhouette he had always imagined, backlit in the splendor of sunset, Emmy gazing down at Eric’s upturned face. Except—what was wrong with this picture? The suitor was within an inch of a heart attack and the bride was splendidly dead with shattered bones, crowned with rotting weeds and leaves. The little voice at the back of David’s mind whispered the details deep within and he bit back a panicked, hysterical sob of laughter.

  “I’m sorry, Emily,” Eric said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I accept that apology,” she said after a long pause. And then, “I love you and we were meant to be together. So I’ve come back for you. Come to get you before you make the mistake of choosing another woman.”

  “Emmy—”

  “Shhh.”

  David watched, frozen, as Emmy put her shattered arms around Eric’s neck, cried out when Eric didn’t struggle, didn’t even resist, as she pulled him toward her and down. Eric turned David’s way just once and their eyes met for the smallest fraction of a second, but David would never forget that look: the resignation, the sadness, the doom… He watched, frozen, as Eric and Emmy merged and then… were gone—down into the earth? Melted away? He watched, frozen, long after there was nothing left to see. Then some part of him thought to fumble the small flashlight from his pocket, fingers clumsy and wooden. With caution, he approached the spot where the two had vanished and shone his light upon the ground. Nothing, not even footprints. No, wait. He bent and retrieved a strip of muddy fabric, the floral print of it dull beneath its coating of age and grime. He stared at it for a while and then, as if his brain finally admitted the horror he had just seen, he found himself tearing down the hill, ignoring roots and branches, dumb instinct guiding his every step as he fled to the sanctuary of his car.

  *

  Pounding. Loud, incessant pounding. David rolled over in his bed and groaned. What time was it anyway? He opened one eye and peered at his clock with suspicion. Saturday. After nine. He presumed that was nine AM. The pounding continued.

  He knew it was Maggie. He could tell by the way the door was shaking in its frame. “Hold on,” he mumbled, still trying to wake up. He couldn’t remember how to think. He felt as if something had been holding him underwater, underground. He felt like he hadn’t been breathing for hours.

  “David? David, are you up?” Her voice was reaching screech level. The neighbors would love that.

  “What? What the hell, Mags?”

  She pushed her way in as soon as he cracked the door open a fraction. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I wanted to check on you.”

  “Wait, slow down. I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be? What’s the problem?”

  “You didn’t hear? You didn’t see the news?”

  “See what?”

  “Eric LaMark. Your friend, right? The young hot shot on his way to the top of the financial world? He was found dead in his bed this morning.”

  For a second the world went completely dark and David was back on that bluff at sunset, watching as Emmy took Eric into her fleshless arms. “Wait. Wait,” he said, trying to make sense of it. Had he just been dreaming? Had everything been a dream all along? “Eric was found dead in his bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s impossible. I just saw him last night.” He looked at her. “I told you he was supposed to meet Emmy. And he did. I saw him. I saw them.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, David. They found him dead this morning, but they think Eric’s been dead longer than just last night. They think maybe yesterday morning, or even the night before that. There’s no way you could have seen him.” She looked at him, concern in her hazel eyes. “There wasn’t a mark on his body. They won’t know what it was until the autopsy.”

  David stumbled to his sofa and sat down hard. On the coffee table before him he saw a scrap of muddy floral fabric, and choked back the urge to scream aloud. He had been at the bluff. They had all been at the bluff. He could have believed it was a dream but for that horrid strip of her blouse. There was a faint scent of stagnant water and death coming from it. He closed his eyes and wondered if he could ever find a way to forget.

  “Maybe Eric had a heart thing,” Maggie offered.

  “Maybe.” David stared at the coffee table, mouth bitter from the lie he had just uttered. Maybe? No way. He knew what had killed Eric, and no autopsy was going to find that. He would accept Maggie’s suggestion in an attempt to stay sane. A heart thing. Good. Sure. But he would always know differently.

  Eric had a heart thing all right, the kind where someone else stopped it for him. I love you and we were meant to be together, Emmy had declared, twining her rotted arms around her lover’s neck and pulling him down to oblivion, pulling him down to join her. And she had wanted it on record. He put his hands over his face, resigned to the nightmare he now carried.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  Smooth Criminal

  by

  Andrea Jones

  As I run, I hear only my breath—trembling, gasping, panting.

  I rush into blackness.

  When I come back, I hear my own voice shouting.

  “Annie, are you OK? Are you OK, Annie?”

  I pound on her door. I don’t care who hears me this time. “Annie!”

  Past panic, I’m frantic. My heart bashes my ribs. My fists sting from beating on her door. Will she open? Is she able?

  Does she know it’s me?

  I cringe when I hear the sirens yowling. The sound shoots up my spine to hit my brain, like those cheap, cheating carnival games with the bludgeons and bells.
But— finally— the cops are here. Even in this neighborhood, I expected them to show sooner.

  In the dusty dark of the hallway, the orange of sunset seeps under her door. The girl never shuts her blinds. I twist the knob, making sure it’s locked. If my heart beats any harder, I know it’ll explode. Everything I’ve seen and heard, everything I’ve not seen, shrieks in my skull, swelling and swelling, a crescendo of chaos.

  There’s a riff of staccato as the screen door’s ripped from its hinges. The cops come stomping into the building, all jingling and boots. The noises amplify the pain in my head.

  “Up here! It’s Annie. I can’t get her to open up!” As two white officers in black flak jackets converge on the door, I slip to the side. I don’t press my hands to the dirty wall, and I don’t go too far. I need to be the first to see the scene.

  One of the officers towers over me. The corridor constricts. “You’re the one?”

  I stop dead.

  “The one who called it in?” He has a voice like a bullhorn. He punches every syllable, like white cops do.

  I nod. I swallow. His eyes look me up and down, sizing me “down.” I’m puny next to him. I control the urge to smooth my hair.

  “Clear the area.”

  I stand my ground. I’m a little tougher than I look, but my eyes tear up.

  He jerks his jaw toward the wall, and I turn to face it while he pats down my jeans, one-handed. On his other hand, his finger’s on the trigger. I don’t keep my back to him any longer than I have to.

  The noise level rises as Annie’s shabby batch of neighbors collect to gabble in the hallway.

  “…some guy in a ski mask…”

  “Those gang-bangers, runnin’ in this ’hood. You oughtta lock ’em up!”

  After a hard stare, the cops ignore the residents. All authority, they hunker down and aim their weapons at her door. The shorter one raises his boot. “Police!” The door gives way with a squeal of old wood, an echo of what’s in my head. Nobody moves as it swings to slam against the wall.

  “Sweet Jesus.” It’s Miz Tabitha, the old lady next door, adding a soft note to the discord in my brain. “An’ on a Sunday, too.” She’s missing her walking stick, so she totters in front of me on her swollen ankles, clutching my elbow to peer in at Annie’s kitchen. Like me, she got a grip that’s tighter than you expect. I have to see the apartment my own self, so I shake her off.

  The room looks just as bad as I imagined it. A chilly wind smacks me in the face, and I know that the back window, the one in Annie’s bedroom, is broken. Minutes before, I heard the glass shatter. My nerves shattered with it.

  “Ma’am!” bawls the Bullhorn. “Police officers! We’re coming in.”

  I am right on their big fat heels. I don’t trust these pigs not to spoil the scene.

  We jerk to a stop and stare around. Annie’s kitchen table is overturned. It’s flipped right over, smashed a hole in the yellow-painted plaster. It’s undressed, the tablecloth heaped on the floor. I see the sugar bowl in shards on the linoleum, her china tea pot— the one from her gramma, all pink and white and innocent— is lying in a pool of its own innards. The two chairs sit gawking, like it’s all too much for their spindly minds to grasp.

  But where is Annie?

  “Annie!” I holler, “Are you OK?” My voice bounces off the kitchen tile, then dies on the rug leading to her bedroom.

  The cops’ eyes dart around, looking for the perp. I guess by now it’s obvious even to them that some thug attacked her. I knew it all along. A with-it woman like Annie doesn’t just start screaming. And a neat freak doesn’t throw furniture ’round. Takes a slob like me to mess up a woman’s kitchen. I feel sorry, now, ’bout the few times ever I lost patience with her.

  More cops bound up, flipping notebooks and herding the neighbors toward the lawn. “Let’s move it along, people. Names, please.” I turn my back on the naked table, and shut the door for quiet. I touch the lock, but I don’t twist it. My head still rings with screams. I want reassurance. I want to hear it in Annie’s voice— if she can talk.

  The cops don’t stomp now. They creep. At the bathroom door, one turns sharply. It smells like Bon Ami in there, and mildew. He snaps on the switch. The bulb flickers to life, illuminating the rust stains in the sink. Annie’s make-up waits on the edge, lined up and ready. She only ever spends money on her looks. The cop noses his gun in the shower, crinkling the curtain, then he turns toward the bedroom again. As soon as they enter, I stumble in behind them. I picture it before I see it.

  Bloodstains, on the carpet. Little drops, dark, and wetter ones that get bigger.

  Annie isn’t where I expect, on the rumpled-up bed. She lies on her side, one hand on a dresser handle, the other clutching her face. From the nappy trail on the carpet, it looks like she crawled there. It’s cold, and I see goose bumps on her arm, each one standing out like the skin of a basketball.

  I see the blood. Welts, all over her, but I don’t see the wound. Her fine, lady’s legs poke out beneath her blue silk robe. I blink and look again. The robe isn’t blue any more. In some spots, it’s purple. It matches the side of Annie’s face.

  “Annie!” I run to her and fall to my knees. They slide a bit on the blood.

  “Step back, sir. This is a crime scene.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” I grab onto Annie. Her flesh is cold, but alive. “Where’s that ambulance?”

  The Bullhorn makes a half attempt to pull me away, then shakes his head. This kind of neighborhood, who gives a rat’s ass about procedure? He snatches a radio from his belt. While he makes noises into it, letting its static charge the room, I rub her arms to warm her. It’s hard to miss the welts, and I wonder, does she feel the hurt? I kiss the damage on her face. No make-up’s going to fix that.

  Holding her head to my chest, I find the source of the blood. A sticky red mess on her scalp identifies it. Now her blood’s all over me. It’s under my nails. My prints are everywhere. My brain still pounds in my skull.

  “OK, son,” the shorter cop says. “Move aside now.” He’s down on one knee, his holster creaks, he smells like coffee. He feels for Annie’s pulse, pulls her lid to open one of her eyes. It rolls to look at him, a gorgeous gold-flecked brown, then turns toward me. I wait.

  Will she know it’s me?

  He lets her eye close.

  The cop lays her back down. He gets up with a grunt, and searches around for the weapon. With blotches like Annie got, I know it’s a cane. He wades toward the window through junk that spilled from the bed stand, kicking a pile of paperbacks aside. Glass snaps under his boot, and he stops. He stretches his neck, squinting out the broken pane at the parking lot, half a story below. He rests his fists on his hips. “Goddamn hoodlums.” When he turns around, his billy club bangs against the bureau. The soft wood dimples. It matches the mark of another blow. One I heard earlier.

  I’m back on my knees, howling along with my brain, “Doggone it, baby, wake up!” The room’s getting darker. Shadows in the corners. Shadows, looking bad, on her face.

  “Doggone it, Annie!”

  She whimpers. Her moan only rolls in my head, like a marble in a spray-paint can, scrambling with all the other sounds.

  I sniffle, try not to cry.

  Mascara bleeds down her cheek. She turns her head. Her eyes open, then they widen.

  She knows me.

  “Annie— are you OK?” I wipe my nose on my sleeve. “Won’t you tell us that you’re OK?”

  “I don’t know…” It’s a whisper. It doesn’t hurt my head.

  “Who came in here, to your apartment?”

  “I don’t know…” Such a faint, soft voice. The pain in my cranium shrinks.

  “And the bloodstains, on the carpet? Who came here?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Who? Who?” I want to shake her.

  “I…know.”

  A scream explodes in my head. I grab at my skull, and the agony escapes through my throat. “Ow-
ww!”

  The Bullhorn butts in, “Ma’am, it’s over now. We’ll get you to a doctor.”

  Annie stares at him, then turns her gaze upward, toward me. Her slick, lipsticked mouth opens to speak.

  “Annie,” I shake my aching head. “Don’t—”

  Her bloody hand finds mine. It’s slippery, but I squeeze it, tight, like I’ll never let her go. I see her wince, but then, like a miracle, the girl tries to smile at me.

  The shrieks are fading from my brain. They are morphing now…into laughter.

  I’m grinning back at her. O-K! My heartbeat calms.

  She didn’t know me.

  She doesn’t know. Me.

  It was me.

  I’m giddy, like a criminal let outta lockup.

  Below the broken window, the ambulance burns rubber as it plunges into the parking lot. Throbs of red whirl around the room. The siren blares in crescendo, then cuts off, like a victim. Like Annie. It dies, in a last, short whine.

  The sun goes, too. Only that mechanical crimson blazes now, off the ambulance. If Annie ever shut her blinds, now would be the time.

  The Bullhorn shuffles up. His puffy pink hand pats my shoulder. “Sorry, son. We gotta move ’er.”

  I sniff, but I can hear my own thoughts again. Taking care to use my un-bloody hand, I smooth my hair. I’m a little tougher than I look.

  “Doggone.”

  I breathe, in relief.

  Doggone!

  I’m OK, Annie.

  Annie…

  I’m OK.

  Satisfaction

  by

  David McAfee

  March 31

  His hands shook as he ran them under the steaming hot water. The fear was gone, replaced by amazement. Not at what he had done, as might be expected. He was amazed it had taken him so long to do it. He should have done this years ago. Years! He had expected to feel many things after his first time: guilt, fear, even shame, but not euphoria. That was unexpected.

  But euphoric was the only word that would fit. His heart had yet to slow to a normal rate, and the pain in his head was gone, finally. Had he found the cure for his migraines? It sure seemed like it. Not a day too soon, either.