Touching Darkness

No one would ever know he’d just given up.

Rex rose slowly to his feet and peered out the kitchen window. The backyard seemed empty except for its usual heap of junked car parts. But movement caught Rex’s eye. His old tire swing gently swayed from side to side.

They were back there too.

Another knock came at the door. Impatient now.

Rex lifted the telephone from the receiver and held it to his ear. The little shell of plastic was utterly silent; like the streetlight, they’d taken out the phone line.

He crouched again, remembering all the times he’d had to escape his father’s wrath, all the tricks he’d known before the accident. There’d been a way out onto the roof through his bedroom window, but it was blocked now by bookcases. The hiding place under the kitchen sink was still there, but four years’ growing had left him too big to fit.

Then Rex remembered the crawl space under the house, where his dog Magnetosphere had always slunk away to be cool in summer and finally to die. The thought of the damp, cold space made Rex’s skin crawl. And how could he get down there, anyway? He’d have to find a way outside first.

Then he recalled the bathroom window.

Rex had often retreated to the bathroom when his father started to get a head of steam up. It was the only room in the house with a lock on the door, and the window was just the right size for a kid to crawl through. But that was four years ago. Rex wondered if he could still fit.

Would his attackers have stationed someone in the narrow side yard? There was no side door, and no other windows faced that way.

He stood, fighting memories of childhood fears. It was his only chance. And Rex was too old to still be spooked by his father’s lies: he knew damn well that under the house was not where spiders came from.

Rex’s steps were no longer quiet. His boots clumped down the hall to the bathroom and set the boards to creaking. When he’d reached the silence of the tile floor, he paused to listen again. The knocking had stopped.

Then the sound of rattling metal reached his ears from the living room. The doorknob was being jimmied or picked. The sound set his teeth on edge, and Rex almost wished they would simply burst through the door instead of taking their time.

Of course, they had surrounded him, cut him off from any help. Why should they rush?

He unlocked the bathroom window and slowly pushed it open, straining to keep it silent. Shrunken by the autumn cold, the wood slid easily. With one foot on the toilet, Rex pushed himself up and stuck his head out.

The narrow stretch of side yard was empty. The darkling groupies had covered the front and back, not expecting Rex to go under the house. Rex heard the panting of the Guddersons’ dog next door, and smiled. Of course the trespassers would give the mean old rottweiler a wide berth. The animal was always listening for any reason to start up a righteous barking.

He pushed himself farther out and found that his shoulders passed through the window diagonally. If they fit, surely the rest of him would make it? The image of being stuck halfway filled his mind, but Rex shook it out of his head.

He pulled himself in and lifted the backpack through, dropping it softly to the grass. Then, with both feet up on the toilet and his hands on the windowsill, Rex paused…

The dominoes, the lore signs he’d stolen from Darkling Manor—he hadn’t thought of any reason to bring them tonight, so they were sitting on his desk, ready for the taking. Even if he got away, the darkling groupies would recover them. They’d have the symbol for the flame-bringer again, and they’d be able to go after Jessica. She’d always been their real target, after all.

He stood there for another few seconds, trying to hear past the mutterings of the TV. Were they inside yet? Was there time to go back and get the dominoes? The bathroom was next to his room; it wouldn’t take thirty seconds.

Rex sighed. He couldn’t endanger Jessica to save himself. He lowered one foot and then the other softly to the floor.

Out in the dark hall again, he saw nothing. But his father made a soft sound, one he knew from years of interpreting the old man’s grunts and moans: confusion over an unfamiliar face. They were inside.

Rex took the few steps to his room, wincing at the soft thud of his boots against the floor. He scooped up the darkling dominoes from his desk, then paused again. Lying on the desk was Spontaneously Machiavellian Deceitfulness, a letter opener that Melissa had given to him a month ago. As a daylight weapon, it was useless. But if he was captured tonight, it might serve to carry a message…

He grasped the opener and pressed the cool against his forehead, focusing all his terror and anxiety into it. He imagined himself stripped and mutilated, his flesh melded with a darkling’s, his mind enslaved to help is enemies.

Then he placed the blade’s point against the soft wood of the desk and pushed as hard as he could until it stuck upright, quivering like a shot arrow when he pulled his hand away.

A noise came from the living room, a muffled protest from his father. Rex swallowed. They wouldn’t do anything to the old man, would they? Of course, they didn’t know how drugged up he was, how unlikely to raise any sort of alarm.

Rex closed his mind to any thought of his father. If restraining the old bastard was keeping them busy for a few extra moments, so be it.

He slipped out of his room and took two steps down the hall. One stride from the bathroom, his boot co

“Brrrrp?”

Rex halted at the bathroom door. “Dag, shhh,” he whispered.

A footstep sounded behind him, from the far end of the dark hall. Rex didn’t turn. With the window open to moonlight, he knew he was silhouetted against the bathroom door.

“Rex Greene?” a voice called.

The time for silence was over.

He stepped inside and slammed the bathroom door, locked it, then jumped up onto the toilet and threw himself into the window’s maw.

Halfway through Rex reached a sickening point of equilibrium, his front and back halves balanced, the windowsill digging into his belly, blood rushing to his head as he teetered forward. The moment stretched out, unresolved by gravity… His hips were caught.

Then Rex realized: his shoulders had barely fit through diagonally, but now his body was square across the window. He tried to twist himself, to rotate the forty-five degrees he’d need to squeeze on through, but his struggles dislodged the loose window sash, which fell closed, wedging him in even tighter.

A muffled crash reached his ears—the bathroom door bursting in. His attackers had also dispensed with silence.

Rex felt a firm hand grasp his ankle and flailed with his feet while his fingers clawed for purchase at the house’s aluminum siding. One boot co

The ground was rushing up at him…

“Uh

Then a voice cried from the window, “He’s in the side yard! This way!”

They couldn’t fit through the window, but they could see him. They would watch him crawl under the house. But maybe it would take too long to drag him out, especially if the whole neighborhood had woken up…

He lashed out with his boots at the fence between his house and the Guddersons’, beating the wood like a drum only inches from the rottweiler’s head. Vicious barking started instantly, as if the animal had been waiting all night for an excuse to start howling.