Stuff of Nightmares: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

That was the Deal

The Dark One (Nyhterides Writing Prompt)

I remember the night Tony and two of his buddies vanished. It was Canada Day. We'd all been celebrating with a huge BBQ. Friends and families ate, drank, and ran around with sparklers in their hands until it was darker than dark.

Tony, Eddie, and Reese had taken off on their bikes to seek adventure as twelve-year-olds do. I wanted to go with them, ride free with my older brother and his friends, but my dad held me back, laughed, and told me my little legs would not reach the pedals just yet.

I cried as I watched them ride off.

They never came back home.

We searched for months; everybody did. The boys' faces were plastered on posters and on the news from British Columbia to Newfoundland. No one was ever found: no bikes, no shoes, and no bodies of little boys rotting away.

Twenty years passed.

I am now twenty-four. I still live in my parents' old pace. They both passed. Both riddled with guilt of never finding Tony and the others. It took me a long time to bury the sorrow brought on by my brother the day he disappeared.

Then one day a knock came at my door. A twelve-year-old Tony, missing for twenty years, bolted into the house and slammed the door behind him with such might the windows shook. He looked up at me with feral eyes and I let out a mighty scream.

It was as though time had stood still for him. Where time had touched us it had not him. He fell into my arms, his clothes were ratty, his skin covered in dirt, and he smelt like blood and the ground before it rains. Canine teeth protruded; his nails had grown long.

"She's coming, Cameron," he whispered in a voice as gravelly and old as a ninety-year-old smoker's. He grabbed me tight, urgency in his tone. "We need to—" Wild eyes darted around the room. "—run. Fast. She's coming..."

What I saw terrified me. My brother, once full of life, looked skeletal. Tony looked like some mad, savage Peter Pan, a boy that had not grown up.

His words frightened me more than his ghastly look. Who? I wanted to ask. Who is coming?

He grabbed my face and pulled me close to his until we were inches apart. Dirt was etched in his pores, on the liens on his face, and his irises were rimmed red. As if he had heard my thoughts, my brother replied, "The Dark One."

****

How...?

I didn't know what to do. Tony didn't say much after the garbled warning and instead withdrew into this pale, shuddering shell. I didn't think it appropriate to keep pushing in, especially as it'd been so long since I saw him. I led him to the sofa in the living room with the fire. His stumbling gait was like an old man's, his joints stiff and his muscles wasted. It took him forever to relax enough to sit; he was so agitated. The light from the fire threw his shadow onto the walls. Almost without thinking, I darted up to his room and yanked the blanket off his bed to take downstairs. The room hadn't been touched since he left. My parents never went in since the day he vanished. The door was never locked, but nobody touched it and kept well clear even when passing it in the corridor. I opened the window, releasing the decades of stagnant air, throwing moonlight onto the mouldy carpet.

Dust had settled over his action figures, ones I would have killed for as a kid, with their shiny armour and changeable heads. A few of the posters of his favourite movies as a kid had fallen off the wall and lay in a limp pile on the wooden floor. I remembered looking at them with resentment back then because I had begged for the same, but my parents said we could share – what point was there in purchasing duplicates? He made me share my stuff, but Tony never let me share his. He was eight years older and yet he never acted like a caring older brother who would look out for me. No, I was his punch bag and a source of ridicule, but I looked up to him. Back then, I needed him more than he needed me.