Darkest Eyes, Brightest Light

A Story by Peter Schal

A boy, escaping from his abusive step-parent, encounters something more dangerous than his drunken stepfather...

The park was closed, but he went in anyway. Running, there was no time to stop, his tears blurred his vision, but he found his way through the darkness. He leaped over the iron fence, climbing up to the top and scraping his leg on the spike, but he didn’t notice. There was already too much pain, and he wanted more than ever to escape from it. So he found solace in the park, gliding restlessly on the silent swings. He never should have gone home. From the moment he laid eyes on his semester rank card, he knew that they would be upset. Especially Seth, the stepfather of every child’s nightmare; he was the one to be afraid of. Now, sitting on the swing set, tears drifting from his already sore eyes, he imagined that life without living with Seth would be grandiose; in fact, he worshipped the idea.

It was dark, no doubt. The sky had a menacing, overcast look attached to it, void of any moonlight; he imagined that there wasn’t any moonlight, and he found it rather odd that the arc-sodium light fixtures dotting the sloping road up to the entrance of the park weren’t turned on. He found it even more awkward when the tungsten-halogen lights inside the park didn’t switch on like they were supposed to. He shivered at the thought, but as he vehemently massaged his arms, he realized that a cool wind had picked up, and enveloped itself around his bare torso. Stupid, he thought to himself. When he escaped through the window on the second floor of his home---Seth’s home, correction---he hadn’t had the thought to bring a fresh undershirt. He had been too distraught, too let down, to even notice. Now, as he sat on the cold rubber of the swing’s flexible seat, the thick steel chains scraping his skin as he tilted to and fro, he wished for a shirt, maybe some shorts, to cover his skinny body, to conceal the boxer shorts which were his only source of warmth. Stupid, he thought again, and a fresh set of tears escaped from his eyes.

There was a growing tingling sensation now, in his left leg near his crotch. He could feel it, like something trying to creep under his skin, and he thoughtlessly scratched at it. Realization came to him when his fingers dug at a long, crooked bulge, and when he slid his finger up alongside it, it burned like a hot coal and he sucked in a sharp breath, wincing as the burn climaxed and then almost instantly subsided. Blood poisoning, he thought, momentarily panicking. The iron spike his leg dragged against in his haste to escape his misfortune must have been rusty, or at least covered in some type of contagion. But he wasn’t running a fever, he didn’t have constant chills (only by the wind, he concluded) and he didn’t think that he was overly exhausted due to prostration. So he might be safe. The tickling sensation didn’t rise to a burning desire to constantly scratch at due to inflammation, so he considered himself lucky for the time being. He resisted scratching at the wound in hopes that it might scab over.

He was unaware of the time, and, burdened with two, actually thee dilemmas that refused to go away, he was almost considering leaving the park and heading somewhere, anywhere except his former family, to sleep. But where? As he contemplated his situations, he absent-mindedly looked about his surroundings, and something caught his attention. He strained his eyes harder to adjust to the dim atmosphere, trying to make out the figure in the distance. At least he thought it was a figure; a woman, he guessed, the long hair swishing about a dead give-away. As he squinted against the semi-darkness, he noticed the woman-figure shift from her position leaning on the jungle gym, and stride gracefully across the park, apparently to meet him. His heart froze for a second as the realization set in; it thudded like a hammer against a war-drum, thumping a rhythmic pattern against his chest. He didn’t know whether he should sit still and face this stranger or get up like a coward and run screaming into the night. He sucked in a deep breath and decided to stick to his spot; he’d done enough running and he was in no way up to running away like a six-year-old. The figure closed in on him, taking long, elegant strides, and he watched in stupefied amazement at the grace with which the figure seemed to possess. Instead of standing in front of him and asking stupid questions like any normal stranger was apt to do, he was surprised when the woman-figure sat down next to him on the swing-set seat. He looked at the woman, recovering from his stupor, squinting his eyes to make out the face of the person who had so casually strolled up to him and sat down beside him like an old friend. Before he could make out any facial contours, however, the woman spoke up. “Your name’s Carson, right?” He was struck off-guard. How did this person know his name? “Uhm…yes?” he said. The woman nodded slightly. He still couldn’t find her face in the darkness, although her hair was adequately visible. “I knew it was you. Jackson thought otherwise, though. We made a bet that I couldn’t locate you well enough in the semi-darkness, but I proved him wrong, now didn’t I? He owes me one.” She chuckled, apparently pleased with herself. Carson sat motionless, his mouth hung slightly ajar, not understanding anything. “Oh! Pardon my rambling. I swear it will be the death of me one day. I’m Chris.” The woman named Chris outstretched her hand, and Carson reluctantly took it. It was gentle and dry, yet somehow slippery. He let go and Chris shifted in the seat, now, Carson believed, staring out into the gloom. “How---how did you know my name?” Carson asked, unbelieving of this stranger’s knowledge. Chris turned back to gaze at Carson. If he didn’t know any better, he might have thought she was smiling. “Oh, we know lots of things, believe it or not. More than you guys will ever know, that’s for sure.” She chuckled again, and now it was Carson’s turn to glance out into the night, more out of embarrassment. He didn’t know why he felt embarrassed; maybe it was shyness getting the best of him. “Hey, you ran away from home right? Family trouble?” Chris’s tone was sweet and knowing. Carson only shrugged. “You should know that, since you guys seem to be so smart.” For a split second Carson thought that that was a little too harsh, and he was about to regret saying it when Chris burst out into a fit of laughter. Carson looked at her, surprised, as she clutched her sides and tried to re-compose herself. “Wow, Carson,” she managed to say, her braying suppressed to a bout of giggles. “You cease to amaze me.” Carson only looked down at his feet, this time wholly embarrassed. “Oh crap!” she said at once. She leaped up from her spot and stood in front of Carson now. He tried to see past the blackness obscuring her face, but to no avail. “We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry up! Jackson has promised a big surprise for you, Carse.” She seized his hand and proceeded to pull him up and away from his spot of solace. “Wait! What do you mean a surprise? What about my family? What about my mom?” As Chris swiftly pulled him from his swing and into the dim surroundings, she turned her obscured face toward him, her voice no longer sweet and feminine; it was now a low growl. “They’ve already been taken care of, you little brat! Now hurry up and quit complaining!” She tugged harder on his hand, and the tickling pain in his left leg suddenly grew to a wild burn as he was hastily dragged away from his safe zone. Now, he realized dreadfully, he was no longer safe. He was about to protest again when suddenly the soft earth beneath him vanished and he was instead running on hard asphalt, supposedly the basketball courts . And then, before he could think coherently for a mere moment, a white, extremely painful brilliance suddenly flooded the park and he was momentarily blinded. Before he knew it, he had stopped running. There was a whispery gust of wind all about him now, and, as he opened his eyes to adjust to this new light, the stranger’s hand, Chris’s hand, tightened around his. He looked up into her face. It was no longer obscured by darkness. Instead it was a black, shapeless thing, the eyes two huge, brooding spheres and the mouth a cavernous hole full of curving, six-inch long fangs and what seemed to be a snake-like, spinach-green tongue lolling in and out, slobbering an inky viscous liquid. It dribbled down onto the concrete, where it smoked and sent up toxic-smelling fumes. Suddenly Carson was paralyzed, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything but stare into the gruesome face of this thing. And then there was a feathery lifting sensation, and he was floating up, up into the light, up into whatever caused the whispering breezes and the brilliant light. Chris stayed behind, and as Carson’s conscious drifted away from him, the last slow, feminine words he ever heard again were, “Surprise, surprise, Carson-baby. Surprise, surprise, surprise.“