Darkness falls, p.6
Darkness Falls, page 6
“—Tyler! Tyler, stop!”
The words sliced into his fevered brain like a shiv sliding between two rib bones. For a moment he thought he had imagined them and began reaching for the door again and again the words rang out from behind him, sounding weak and far away, nearly drowned out by the roar of the raging fire. “Tyler Beckman, you get your ass off that porch and get down here right now.”
Debra? Was that Debra’s voice? Why would she be here, why would she come anywhere near him after the way he had treated her? He turned slowly, feeling his hair beginning to curl and singe from the intense heat as glowing red embers fell all around him from the porch ceiling. The flames moaned and sang, whipped into a frenzy by the winds, which unbelievably seemed to be increasing in velocity.
And she was there.
Debra Gilbert stood at the end of the driveway, her car slewed across the road where she had screeched to a stop at the sight of the burning house, the driver’s side door thrown open, her eyes wide and terrified; even from this distance and in his agony Tyler could see her beautiful eyes.
“I need to . . .” Tyler began and realized he was whispering. He began walking toward her, reaching the top porch step and starting down the stairs, and she began to run across the front yard directly toward him, toward the burning house, toward disaster.
“No!” he shouted, raising his hand like some crazed traffic cop. “Stay away; you’ll be burned to death, just stay away!”
“Then you get away from the house, too. Get away from it, Tyler, and I’ll stay away, too, and we can figure this all out together.”
Tyler nodded. “I will,” he said, and realized he was whispering again. “I will. As soon as I rescue my book.” And he turned his back on Debra and again reached for the door, this time pulling it open by the glowing-hot knob, and he was right, the scorched skin sloughed right off his palm and he didn’t even notice, and then he was inside the burning structure and the sound of the fire was so loud he could barely hear Debra’s anguished screams; they were muffled and fuzzy and somehow dream-like. Tyler found the sound oddly comforting.
He raced up the stairs three at a time, smelling his own scorched hair, feeling his skin begin to burn. He struggled to breathe, gasping for what little oxygen the crackling blaze wasn’t already greedily consuming. Top of the stairs, two steps to the left, another left turn, going by feel and instinct more than sight because the roiling, poisonous cloud of black smoke was so thick he couldn’t even see his own hands in front of his face, Tyler staggered into his office, wondering dimly whether his goddamned cardboard boxes had shifted positions again on the floor.
He paused in the doorway at the sound of window glass shattering. The fire must have burned right through the window frame, causing the four-by-six inch panes of glass to fall and shatter, joining the slivers of Joshua Newton’s bedroom window on his floor. Outside, the sound of Deb’s screaming instantly became loud and clear. Tyler hoped she hadn’t called 911 because if the Darkness Falls volunteer fire department arrived too soon it was possible they might actually manage to save part of the house.
He took a step into his office and the screaming somehow began to diffuse, becoming less urgent, less focused, as his manuscript called to him. Two steps and he could barely hear Deb, concentrating as he was on the book that when finished would restore him to his place atop the literary universe. Three steps and Debra no longer existed; her anguished cries just a memory, and a foggy one at that, as he lost himself in the rapture-like state that this room engendered in him every time he entered.
A sense of calm descended over him like a comfortable blanket and he walked slowly to his chair, sitting down, not reacting to the burning in his legs, and opening his laptop. The case felt sticky and buttery, the plastic beginning to melt. He didn’t care. The superheated air in the room was stifling, making it even harder to breathe than it had been coming up the stairs, but the computer whirred and clicked and started up and when it did Tyler began typing, once again lost in his work.
He had to finish his novel. This was the book that would put him back on the map.
About The Author
Allan Leverone is a three-time Derringer Award Finalist for excellence in short mystery fiction as well as a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee. His dark short fiction has appeared in Shroud Magazine, Dark Valentine, Twisted Dreams, House of Horror and Morpheus Tales Magazine, as well as many others, and his debut novel, a thriller titled Final Vector, was released by Medallion Press in February, 2011.
A member of the International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society and the New England Horror Writers, Allan lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire with his wife, three children, one beautiful granddaughter and a cat who has used up eight lives. Learn more at www.allanleverone.com.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
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About The Author
Allan Leverone, Darkness Falls
