Dark Things

Part 1

Chapter 1

Throughout the few months preceding the events in Chicago—you know the ones—various missing persons cases were opened, but none closed. Pictures were printed on milk cartons, leads were found (and lost), pointless clues were discovered where no information was to be found. Nothing of any use was discovered; or meant to be. More people—children, women, men—were taken. However, their exodus of society was executed weeks apart, so there was no way of suspecting that they were connected in any way.

No, the only connection was in molecular structure of the victims’ bodies. And mankind hadn’t begun to learn the most intimate secrets that the human body kept so jealously.

All of this, of course, has a point. Its point is to lead up to this: our story.

On the fifth floor of a run-down apartment building in Northern Chicago, a girl sat on a stool in her room. Her elbow pressed against her knee as she slumped over, resting her head on her fist in a futile attempt at gaining some rest during her timeout. Her eyes fluttered to a close; her arm slipped and she fell forward, off her seat. Her hands leapt forward and snatched death grips on the metal banisters of her bed, by which she was able to support herself and sit back on the stool. She sighed, and tried her best to keep awake. At the age of twelve, she thought herself to be too mature for such things as timeouts. She was stuck here, nevertheless.

She thumb-wrestled with herself, counted how many toes and fingers she had, attempted to braid her long, brunette hair, and was on the verge of going over her multiplication tables due to boredom when a loud rattling came from the other room. “Dad?” she asked. Nothing but another rattle came to answer. “Did you forget to bring your key to the store?” Again, she was answered by merely another rattle. Assuming it was her father at the door rattling the doorknob, the girl stayed where she was. She knew this trick. Her father would pretend to need help getting in when she was in a timeout, and she would stand up, let him in, and receive a good scolding. No, she would not be fooled.

“Dad, if you need help getting in, and you won’t hold it against me, shake the knob three times,” she replied cleverly; or at least she thought so. One rattle. Another. And a third. Three distinct shakes of the doorknob were made, alerting the girl that it was, in fact, her father. Satisfied, she stood up and straightened out her faded blue jeans and brushed off her dusty t-shirt and strode out of her room and into the family room slash kitchen, passing by the window. She gazed out into the city, only lit by streetlights and the occasional neon sign. The district she lived in was not known for its commercial…specialty, for lack of a better word at hand, so there were not many stores advertising their wares in flashy ways. That night, no light from the moon shone down on the city. The moon was in that time of its monthly cycle known as the New Moon.

Shivering—she still feared the dark—she turned away from the window and continued to the front door. “I swear, Dad, this happens too much,” she said partly to herself. “We need to get you a pack of Sticky Notes or something, because-…” At the moment she opened the door, someone from behind her reached forward and wrapped his arm around her, and clasped clammy hands over her mouth. At first she was in shock, too frightened to be afraid—pardon the contradiction—but she glimpsed the thing she had opened the door to, and lost all control of her motor functions. Her mouth was wide open, screeching, despite the hands, and her legs were flipping about wildly. She nearly fainted from the sight of it.

The door had swung open to reveal a humpbacked creature, with a face covered in what appeared to be boils. Its skin was a sickly pallid color, and its eyes were black as tar. Its arms reached down to the floor, like an ape’s, and had long, gnarled fingers attached. The rest of its body was just as bad: horrid, pale boils, a twisted smile with grimy, chipped teeth, and a long, crooked nose, and ear holes at the sides of its head. It was standing naked in the dark hallway; normally a light would’ve been on, but the flickering bulbs had all been shattered and discarded.

The person behind her—or perhaps one of those things, she thought—dragged her along back to her room. It picked her up as if lifting a rather large doll, and laid her out on the bed, holding her arms together—with the same arms as the other creature, because, indeed, the two were a pair—with one arm as it tied her legs together with twine it had found in a drawer. The other one shut the door quietly and fiddled with the locks and bolts then stepped into the girl’s room. Her legs were tied, as were her arms. The second creature was about to place a cloth in her mouth to gag her, but found it was not necessary, as she had finished her faint. The first one, the door one, retrieved a syringe from somewhere on its person, flicked it once with its fingernail and tested it once. A strange, silver liquid swam about inside of it, and seemed to consume whatever light hit it. The creature then tied a blue rubber band around one of her arms and flicked her skin to flesh out a vein. It placed the tip of the needle against her skin, pushed slightly, broke skin, and pumped the liquid into her body. The creatures then untied her, tucked her into bed, and placed a band-aide over the pinprick of a scar left from the experience, and left, leaving no trace they had been there. She would wake up in an hour, and remember nothing except that she had had a nightmare about monsters. Just like all the others who had gone missing. Just like all the others who would never be found.