Fic: Living Dark
Darkness.
Ocean deep, swallowing every sound until he can't hear the air he knows he is gasping for, his chest heaving, can't even hear the blood pounding through his head as his heart slams against his ribs, hard and fast. He knows he's sitting up in yet another cheap motel bed, snatched violently from sleep by some unknown call but he can't feel the sheets beneath him, can't feel the blankets twist in the hand that is clenched into a tight fist against the mattress behind him, the other hand held before his chest in an instinctive gesture of defence.
He stares into the black, waiting for his eyes to adjust but his heart skips a frantic beat as he realises the darkness isn't clearing, isn't resolving into the monochrome shadows of the motel room. His throat turns painfully dry and he lifts the hand still hovering in front of him to his face, rubs at his eyes hard enough to make a spike of pressure-pain stab into his head but he still can't see anything. His heart fluttering erratically he licks his lips, swallows his pride and turns his head a little.
"Sam?"
He tries to keep the quickening panic out of his voice as he calls for his brother, but then he remembers that the bed next to his is empty, that Sam is fifty miles away, stuck in the next town by the snowstorm that closed in between them as they interviewed the scattered family of the spirit haunting the local library.
"Crap."
He can't keep the unsteady tremor out of his voice, can't stop his breathing from shaking, getting faster until his head spins from the hyperventilation and none of it helps; he still can't see through the void in front of him that just seems to devour sight and sound, even his own cursing seems muted. He rubs his fingers across his lips again, lets them part behind his chilled touch, feeling the cold air draw across his tongue as he tries to calm his breathing, tries to slow the thoughts slamming from one side of his skull to the other.
Then he hears it.
Thought stops, breathing slows, even his heart beat drops, a lie of instant calm forced onto his body and mind by the elusive snatch of sound.
Claws, little claws, scratching at the thin carpet.
He listens, strains his eyes until they ache, and it comes again, louder, closer, and he recognises it. A snatched, burning breath, loud in the quiet startles him before he realises from the ache in his chest that it's his own breathing and that the other sounds have stilled.
But he still can't see anything.
A tentative scritch over by the far wall brings his head snapping blindly round, a curious and entirely unafraid coarse squeak starts a wordless yell bubbling up in his throat, unstoppable even if he'd wanted to and he shouts into the dark, furious and afraid on a level he can't control.
This time the silence is so total it smothers the room with a tangible presence, crawling over his skin and the fear strikes deeper into him. They haven't gone. He knows they're there, that his cry has only made him the focus of uncounted pairs of beady eyes, watching him from the edges of the room, creeping slowly closer to the bed.
He barely even realises he's pushed himself back against the headboard, kneeling, his left shoulder and upper arm pressed against the wall above, curling his bare toes into the sheets in helpless anticipation of their touch, his t-shirt and shorts scant protection against their claws.
He still can't see.
The silence drags on, growing heavier and heavier, crushing him as he waits, trembling in the dark.
Then something brushes across his left bicep where it's flattened against the thin, flaking plaster.
He throws himself away, so fast the tendons in his neck groan with the pressure of keeping his head attached to his shoulders and he ends up crouched in the middle of the bed, balanced on the balls of his feet, sinking into the blankets and mattress, left hand tented across the rumpled wool, keeping him more-or-less steady as he lifts his right hand to his arm.
His fingers come away clean, only the faintest of stings on skin taut over tense muscles giving any indication that anything ever touched his arm.
A grin spreads his lips, a slightly hysterical chuckle building in his chest as he imagines the sight of the great and powerful hunter, hiding from phantom rats and the dark in the middle of the bed.
But he's still faintly, ridiculously glad that they asked for a room with double size beds.
And he still can't see.
His smirk withers away, the soft echoes of his quiet laugh distorted into cruel mockery that blends with the scratching from the floor and the chittering from the walls. It builds, a new pressure in the dark, the sense of things watching him, slipping closer through the shadows, the tangible beat of seconds ticking past.
He swallows nervously, he's never been so vulnerable before and the feeling isn't one he's enjoying at all - his fingers are literally itching for a weapon and he can feel his heartbeat ratcheting up a notch every time his skin twitches away from the touch he's sure is just about to land.
Then his eyes dart to where he knows his pillow is and the knife that lies snug beneath it.
He pauses for a second, reaches out one hand only to snatch it back as something chrrs at him from above. It's a sound he's heard a billion times but in the dark the cricket buzz is a threatening saw dragged across his nerves and he curls in on himself, waiting for them to descend, arms folded over his head, one hand spread down the bumps of his spine, clutching at the back of the neck of his t-shirt.
They never come.
Slowly, in the hot, close space between his arms and his knees he listens, counts to fifty, forces himself to count it again, timing his breaths to the slow, steady beat in his mind.
At three hundred, he stops, lifts his head a fraction, spine tight and ready to run, to fight. He pauses, waits, tentatively uncurls and slowly, so slowly, stretches out one hand again, so close to the blankets he can feel the lingering heat of his body in the wool. His breath catches once as his fingers brush against the pillow, slip beneath it, as softly as a lovers caress, the tip of one nail tapping against the hilt of his knife.
In that fraction of time before his fingers close around it, in the space between his still-wildly pounding heart beats, he suddenly realises two things.
One; that he can see something, only just, something drab and dead, untouched by the neon riot dimly visible through the window, as if seen through a thick London smog.
Two; that he would really rather not have seen it at all.
Even as his brain processes the mass of shifting, living shadows that cover the walls and the floor and the ceiling his body screams commands and he lunges forward, his hand snapping closed around the familiar, smooth grip, worn by his touch over the decades. The instant he grabs the knife that dark mass rattles at him, growling with claw and carapace and fury and it surges, a slow ripple that he can track, bulging up and racing towards him.
He has time to see one more thing; at the window that shines like a too-distant, out of reach beacon light, a pair of hands pressed against the glass above the greenish damp stain that looks enough like their home state of Kansas to make both brothers grin a little when they'd first seen it, two days before.
Then they're on him, swarming up over the edge of the bed, down from the walls, whiskers and antennae and feelers and fur tickling before their teeth and claws nip at him, mandibles tearing at his skin, tiny little pinpricks repeated a million times over, stings and bites and scratches throbbing and burning and he yells, flails around himself, barely remembering to turn the knife in his hand away in time to avoid cutting his own throat as he scrabbles at them, clamping his mouth shut as he feels them creep over his jaw.
He squeezes his eyes shut, hating the dark but the sight of an alien face rearing up millimetres in front of his pupil is more than he can bear. They crawl under his shirt, over his skin, a heavy weight pushing him, dragging him down even as he feels the mattress creak and sink under the mass of them, the knife spinning through the air to thud into the floor, a small, furry body twitching on the blade. His fingernails, short as they are, tear furrows in his skin as he claws at them, flinging handfuls of hard, squirming things away but it's never enough, there are always more waiting their turn and he can't stop himself falling back into the hollow they've made in the mattress, buried in them, deafened by their chittering, rustling thunder as they crawl under his shirt, under his skin, into his nose and ears, forcing his lips open and finding their way inside him until he retches, chokes and flings himself up, all direction lost, caring about nothing but getting away.
He lands on all fours on the floor, winded by the hard jolt but spitting and shaking himself like a dog, brittle bones and exoskeletons shattering under him as he pushes himself up, shards slicing into his bare feet as he scrambles over the thick new carpet to the door, relying on his memory to find it and dodge the low counter that separates the beds from the rest of the room, eyes still shut tight, hands scrabbling at his face, at his body, scraping them away from his arms and chest, leaving raw, torn skin behind.
One pace from the door he reaches out for the handle, cries out as his hands sink into a yielding mass, never finding the wood or the metal, erupting into pain as if he's just plunged them into a raging furnace. There's nothing to catch himself against as he tries to check his headlong rush for the door and he knows that if he runs into that thick, deep pool of tiny bodies he'll never be found. His spine crackles loudly enough to be heard over their din as he twists frantically, ribs popping and grinding together as he arches his body, tries to turn and somehow shifts his momentum enough that his shoulder plunges deep into the hideously full space where the door should have been, glances off the frame even as the pain ignites in his skin and the impact throws him away, sends him staggering back into the room, arms windmilling as he flails desperately for balance.
He opens one eye a fraction, squints out at the nightmare that had been his room as he dodges, sways from them as they jump up at him, batting away the ones that drop from the ceiling and when he sees the window, the world beyond still lost in that unnatural haze, two hands fogging the glass above the water stain that looks like Kansas he doesn't hesitate. Whoever - or whatever - those hands belong to they're either a help or the cause of this so he dashes forward, feeling the soles of his feet bleed and burn with every step and not caring. The glass is clear and he catches himself against it as his legs finally weaken and he stumbles the last few steps. His hands smack against the glass, directly over those other hands and he suddenly realises that they're small, tiny, a baby's hands, completely hidden by his own. An instant of paternal instinct, burned into him long ago drives him to lean into the glass, press his forehead against it, looking down into the night outside, looking for the infant and he crouches a little, the sweat and blood from his brow smearing a broad trail down the glass until his head is level with his hands and theirs, between them.
They stand there, the children, silent in the dark and the rain that never touches them, blind eyes following every sound, every move he makes as his breath catches in his throat. In a lifetime of fighting the things that hide in the dark, he's never been so utterly, gut-wrenchingly terrified but he can't pull his hands away from the glass. He strains, muscles cording across his back as he groans with the effort and all they do is watch him. He shakes his head, blind, mute denial all the defiance he has left. The youngest of them steps closer to the window, lifts the baby in his arms higher, her tiny hands pressing against the glass until cracks race from her fingers, a web of brittle fragility nipping at his fingers, drawing fine traceries of blood that run through the tangle as it spreads with a sound like glaciers calving.
The glass begins to groan, bowing up under his hands, the cracks spreading, the dark outside climbing the wall, the window and all he can do is watch as they worm their way into the cracks, the children gone, swallowed by the living, seething dark that slithers around his hands, swarming onto his back, through his hair. He cries out again, a broken whimper as he lets go and falls away, nowhere to turn, no way to fight them and he curls into a ball, buries his head against his chest and they cover him, bear him down into the darkness again, smothering him, filling him, devouring him from the inside out and he can feel every bite they take, every bit of his sanity they consume ravenously until there's nothing left but a hollow, empty shell, filled to the brim with the living dark.
And then he wakes up, sits up whip-lash fast, staring at the black as it slowly resolves into the monochrome of the motel room, his heart slamming against his ribs as he fights to pull air into his chest, sweat burning his eyes, knuckles aching fiercely from the grip he's slowly throttling the blankets in his fists with. He stares around him wildly, taking in the empty walls, bare except for the faded hideous floral print on the yellowed wallpaper, the thin carpet the same dull, reddish brown mottled with old mud stains. His vision swims, the lingering terror of the nightmare disorienting him and for a long moment he can't work out why he isn't curled on the floor beneath a low mound of rats and insects as they devour him, then the door lock clicks.
His hand darts underneath his pillow, finds nothing but he doesn't notice as his brother walks in, flicks on the light as Sam sees he's awake, shaking snow from his long hair with a wry, tired grin and a low murmured, "Hey man. Sorry, didn't mean to wake you. Snow let up enough for the 'plows to get through so I …"
Sam's voice fades away, lost in the roaring in his ears and he doesn't answer, can't answer as a barbed, iron vise closes around his chest, squeezes tight, a fist forcing its way past his tongue, locking the breath that wants to scream free of his lungs in his throat and the darkness creeps in around the edges of his eyes again because there on the window next to the door, above the greenish damp stain that looks like Kansas are two tiny handprints, surrounded by a web of cracks that runs red in the light.