Darkness Watching

Chapter One: Doomsday

DARKNESS WATCHING

by

Emma L. Adams

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,

As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames

No light; but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe….

Milton, Paradise Lost, The First Book, 61-64

Chapter One

Doomsday

The demons first appeared on the day everyone said the world would end. Maybe someone meant that to be ironic. Perhaps.

I never found out.

***

"Hey, Ash, you know there's supposed to be a zombie apocalypse today?" My best friend Cara gestured towards a clove of garlic she'd pinned to her jacket, hoping it would fend off potential supernatural threats. I decided not to mention it would only help with vampires, not zombies. Besides, I doubted a single clove of garlic would be much help in surviving the End of Days.

I had my own demons to contend with.

As people sloped into the assembly hall for the annual Careers Talk, I skimmed through my notes yet again, hoping in vain something would stick. For me, Doomsday was a more fitting title for the following day, the day of my interview at my top-choice university. Hell would be a better fate.

"Come on, Cara," I said. “How many times is the world supposed to have ended now?"

"I'm not taking any chances," said Cara, pointing at her headband that was threaded with garlic and perched on top of her purple-highlighted hair.

"You'll have a nightmare getting the smell out," I told her. "Aren't you supposed to be going out tonight?"

"Some guys like the smell of garlic," said Cara, although she looked doubtful. “Hmm. Maybe it's a bit much."

"Well, it better not be Armageddon, seeing as it's my interview tomorrow," I said. "Not to mention we're in a careers assembly."

Cara laughed. "I don't know why I bothered coming, anyway. I've heard all this before." She leaned back in her seat, hands clasped behind her head.

"Yeah," I said. "Besides, if we're going to die, I'd rather not be in this hellhole when it happens."

"You know, Ash," said Cara, squinting at me—the fluorescent lights in the hall gleamed far too bright for a Monday morning—"you look like a walking zombie. When did you last get a decent night's sleep?"

"Define 'decent?’" I said, a touch too flippantly.

"More than an hour. And not in the middle of school."

Guilty.

Her dark eyes—outlined in purple, in blatant defiance of the school's no-makeup rule—saw past my carefully constructed mask.

I blinked at her concerned face. "Um… a couple of days ago? I can't sleep, or I forget everything I know about Milton."

"Jesus, girl." Cara shook her head. "Who gives a crap about Milton, really? You're going way over the top about this."

“Hello?” I said, indicating the garlic-headband.

Cara swatted at me with a rolled-up brochure for Edinburgh University, her top university of choice – which had offered her a place that morning.