Short story: The Mark of Darkness.
Author's Note: I found this story while skimming through my Documents on my computer. I wrote this a couple of years ago for a friend for an art project. The request was for me to come up with a very basic, bare-bones story that could be turned into about a six-page comic book. Looking at it again after all this time, I realize it wasn't half bad. It was very bare-bones and vague but the overall effect came out nicely, I thought. So, with a few tweaks to flesh it out a bit more, I present it to you here for your judgement; let me know what you think. Oh, and the parts that you find unexplained are intentionally left that way. This is a story I felt worked as a "draw your own conclusions" because the why isn't really the important thing. All you really need to know is that it takes place in the 1940s.
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The shock of the cold water woke John Calvier up. He opened his eyes to find himself sinking below the surface of the East River. He tried to hold his breath but it was too late, he had gone under too fast, and the water filled his lungs. Fear took control of him, panic following right behind as he thrashed wildly, sure of his doom yet not willing to give up.
As he came to rest on the bottom of the river, his mind seemed to clear and a couple things occurred to him at once: One, he wasn’t dying, in spite of the water that had completely replaced the air in his lungs. Two, his feet were incased in cement and his hands were tied together in front of him.
Now that he was thinking somewhat rationally, he knew why he wasn’t dying, but a new mystery took that one’s place in his mind: How the Hell had he ended up at the bottom of the East River? The last thing he remembered was looking into the artifact thefts for his old high school pal, now a detective for the Harbor City Police, Doug McMillan. Doug had brought him in on the case as a consultant, hoping to use John’s expertise as an archeologist to find out where the stolen artifacts would be sold off. Detective McMillan was sure Boss Baxter, the kingpin of crime in Harbor City was responsible but needed to tie him to the sales in order to make a case.
Deciding to forgo the whys of his situation, he concentrated on figuring out how he was going to get out of it. It was night and he was twenty feet underwater, so visibility was nil.
You know how you can get out of this, Johnny Boy.
The voice spoke up from a dark corner of his mind, faint but still stronger than the last time he’d heard it. Yeah, he knew a way, but the consequences of it were great.
You’re trapped on the bottom of the river, still alive because of me, and you’re still hesitating to use the Mark? That hurts, Johnny, it really does.
Yeah, I’m sure you’re just shattered, huh? Well, it doesn’t seem like I have a whole hell of a lot of options, he replied to the other voice in his mind.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, focusing all of his will within himself… and felt it right away. It coursed through his body; strength, power, but also a cold, almost sick feeling. The darkness - Malikesh, it called itself. If he’d known what it as when he found it in Peru… but it was a part of him, now and, like it or not, it had saved his life.
He felt his mind shift as another consciousness became more prominent.
Inky black lines spider-webbed themselves out of his shirt collar, tracing their way up over his face, covering it in a pattern that looked tribal. More lines crawled out of his sleeves and work their way down his arms and over his hands, forming a solid layer on the backs and around his fingers, forming lethal shapes.
John’s eyes opened and they were black pools, glistening with malice even in the dark of the water. An inhuman grin twisted his features.
That’s more like it.
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Lights blazed in the downstairs windows of the old mansion at the end of Pierson Street. Those passing by on the street couldn’t see past the ten-foot wall that surrounded the place, and even the wrought iron gate barely afforded a glimpse of the large house. Inside, two very different men were in a spacious study, oblivious to the muffled voices that drifted through the closed door from the next room.
Boss Baxter stood behind his desk, looking out the window at the city below, chest out and chin held high, looking for all the world like a king surveying his kingdom. “Relax, Mathew, nobody’s going to find Mr. Calvier. They’ll probably just think he’s off on one of his adventures to some exotic land.”
Lt. Mathew Jaspers sat, fidgeting in a chair facing the desk, staring at Baxter’s back and sweating in spite of the mild temperature in the room.
“What about McMillan? He’s gonna get suspicious. John was doin’ him a favor, checkin’ into you guys. He won’t believe John left him hangin’ like that.”
“Let me worry about McMillan, OK? We’ve got plans to deal with that nosey bastard.”
Just then, the lights went out, plunging the entire house into darkness.
“What the Hell?” Baxter growled.
He heard a commotion from the other room and could just picture his associates stumbling around in the dark.
“Pauly!” he yelled.
A second later there was a crash, followed by a lot of cursing. Finally, the door to the study opened and Boss Baxter could barely make out his nephew in the light coming in through the window.
“Yeah, Uncle Sal?”
“Why are the lights out?” Baxter asked in a quiet and deadly tone.
Pauly seemed to ponder that for a couple moments, before replying. “Um, I’m not sure?” making it a question.
“Get sure. Find out what the fuck happened to my lights. Now.”
“Sure thing, Uncle Sal.” And with that, Pauly left, closing the door behind him.
A couple seconds later, there was another crash and more cursing. Baxter closed his eyes and shook his head.
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Pauly had managed to find a candlestick complete with candle, lit it with his Zippo and was now navigating the hallways of the Baxter mansion, looking for the fuse box. He rounded a corner - and nearly ran into Frank, one of his uncle’s lackeys.
Frank was 6’7” and built like a circus strongman. And in the dark he looked like the Beast From Beyond. Pauly let out a decidedly unmanly shriek.
Frank merely scowled at the younger man, annoyed by the loud noise. Pauly quickly recovered, realizing who it was, and stood there trying to catch his breath.
“G-geeze, Frank! Nearly gave me a fuckin’ heart-attack!”
Frank just continued to scowl, an expression that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his features for as long as Pauly had known him.
“I don’t suppose you know what happened to the lights, huh?” Pauly asked.
“No,” was the simple response that rumbled out of Frank, who then continued on his way to wherever he’d been heading.
“Gee, thanks for the help, ya damn gorilla,” Pauly muttered at the retreating back.
But as he resumed his search, he had to wonder how the big man seemed to be moving about so easily without any light. Maybe Frank really was the Creature From Beyond.
Pauly had barely gotten more than a few feet back on course when he heard a very strange and unsettling noise behind him in the direction Frank had been heading. The noise had been a wet crunching sound, with a surprised and pained gasp that stopped instantly and was followed by a loud thump.
Pauly froze, his heart doing a jackrabbit drumbeat in his chest. He tried to calm down as he forced himself to turn around to find the source of that horrifying noise, his hand inching to his pistol in its shoulder holster.
“Frank?” he called out, trying to sound normal, casual, but it came out as a harsh whisper.
The light from the candle wasn’t strong enough for him to see more than a few feet down the hall. He wanted to call out again, but a sharp fear had taken hold of him. He was suddenly sure that something very bad was waiting in the dark, just beyond the small circle of light.
For a moment he was too scared to move, but a voice spoke up in his mind: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Pauly! You’re a Baxter, you don’t fear anything or anyone! They fear you! Now, pull your pistol and find out what the fuck that noise was!
It was his uncle’s voice, and he had long ago learned that when his uncle spoke, even if it was just his imagined version of the man, you listened! Swallowing hard, he did just that. Pistol in hand, he started back down the hallway where Frank had gone.
The hallway was illuminated inch by inch as he walked along it, so he saw the feet before he saw the rest of the body. Frank lay there, dead, face down on the carpet, an uneven circle of crimson soaking the expensive material under him.
Deep in his mind, Pauly pondered how it was that someone had taken the mountain of a man out with what appeared to be extreme ease. The rest of his mind was working overtime trying to think what his next move should be.
“Aren’t you going to cry for poor Frank?”
Pauly’s heart stopped beating for a second, his blood ran cold. That voice… oh, Dear God, that voice! It sounded like something out of the deepest, darkest pit of Hell. And not only had he heard it with his ears, but it had been like it had also spoken in his mind.
“C’mon, Pauly, have a heart.”
Something red and glistening flew out of the dark and fell to the floor at his feet with a sickening splat. Pauly didn’t have to look closely to know what it was. Losing all sense of control, he started shooting in the direction Frank’s heart had been thrown from.
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Boss Baxter was starting to lose patience. Looking out the window, he could see the other homes on his street had lights, so the problem had to be with his own electrical system. Yet for some damn reason, the trained monkey he called his nephew had not fixed the problem or returned to report that it was a problem beyond his abilities. Which could be something as simple as needing to replace a fuse.
Candlelight flickered under the door from the study. Muffled talking and the occasional laugh drifted through the thick wood as his men continued their evening’s indulgence.
He was about to go chase down Pauly himself when the gunfire started. Two rounds, then it stopped. And the screaming started, but that too quickly stopped, with a suddenness that gave a sense of brutal finality. Both sounds had come from the other end of the house.
I’m under attack! Some ballsy bastard thinks he can take me on? Baxter thought as he strode to a cabinet to the right of his desk.
“W-what was that? What’s going on?” Jaspers bolted out of his chair, pulling out his revolver.
“What’s it sound like, you idiot?” Baxter spat out. “Someone’s making a play for my turf!”
Baxter locked the round magazine into the Tommy Gun and was walking toward the door to the study when another scream rang out… this time from the next room. Yelling and gunfire followed as the screams died just as quickly as the first had.
Baxter inched back away from the door, gripping the Tommy in his hands, knuckles white. Come one, you sonsofbitches, come and get me!
Suddenly the door burst open and before they could think, Baxter and Lt. Jaspers both started shooting… and killed a very terrified-looking Hendricks. As Baxter’s right-hand man dropped to the ground in a bloody mess, the two shooters were too stunned to notice the dark figure crawl through the top of the doorway, upside down on the ceiling like a monstrous spider.
Baxter recovered quickly, swinging his machine gun up to cover the open doorway and the impenetrable darkness beyond. No candles burned in the study now.
He shot off another burst of rounds into the shadows. “Come on! I’m right here! What’re you waiting for!” he screamed.
“GLACKTHHH!!!”
Baxter whipped around at the tortuous sound that had exploded out of Jaspers who was standing on the edge of the dim light that shone through the window. The cop’s pistol dropped to the floor as his body went ridged, then contorted painfully backwards, his eyes impossibly wide, a strangled gurgle issued from his mouth. Then, there was a loud, wet, ripping, crunching sound and Jaspers collapsed to the floor, into the rectangle of light.
His back was torn open down the center.
Baxter, frozen in place with fear and shock, stared at the gruesome sight before him.
“Gee, how spineless can you get?”
The mob boss eyes seemed to look up on their own accord, all the while his mind screaming at him not to look, that whatever it was that voice belonged to was a far worse sight than poor old Jaspers. But his body betrayed him and he looked up anyway, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. His machine gun dangled from his right hand, forgotten.
A figure stepped out of the shadows and into the light of the window, a red and white snake clutched in its left hand. No, not a snake…
Oh, God, Dear God, don’t make me look at it!
But Baxter knew what it was, and there was no escaping that knowledge.
Jaspers’ spine dangled carelessly from the black hand of the creature. The nightmarish thing almost looked human but for the black spider-web lines on its arms and face; the hands, almost all black, had spiky protrusions on the knuckles and sharp, talon-like claws tipping the fingers.
But it was the eyes that were the most terrifying. Baxter found his own eyes being drawn to them and he fought it with every bit of will-power he had in him, because he knew that to look into those eyes meant going insane. Those eyes promised an eternity of mind-shattering torment.
And even in the midst of the terror that had taken over his mind, some part of him recognized the face of the creature.
John Calvier.
“Oh, good, you recognize me. Or, rather, this body. Which brings me to the point I want to discuss with you, B. You see, this body, who you call John Francis Calvier… Oops! Shh, don’t tell him I told you his middle name!” The thing grinned, making it even more terrifying. “Anyway, like I was saying, Johnny Boy’s body belongs to me! So, when you assholes decided to dunk him in the East River, you were messing with my property! And that is why all you skinbags have to die.”
It dropped Jaspers’ spine and advanced on Baxter.
“Just thought you should know.”
A wind had picked up outside, a storm approaching off the shore. Baxter’s screams were never heard.
THE END.