Dark Times

© 1999 Peter Crowther
All rights reserved.

"Ralph?"
"Yeah, it's Ralph." Ralph Wilson nodded and switched the phone receiver into his left hand so that he could kill the sound of The Jerry Springer Show on the TV remote with his right, the one that wasn't warped out of shape with the arthritis. "Who's that?"
"Phil." The voice sounded distant, surrounded by static. "Phil Casimeer?"
Ralph held onto the sigh and turned away from the TV and the spectacle of a man wearing earphones trying to stop two grown women fighting only to end up on the receiving end himself. "You at home?"
"Yes."
"You sound funny." He turned to face the TV screen. "Don't tell me you've bought a 'hands-free'?" The idea of Phil Casimeer buying anything that was even vaguely technological seemed ridiculous. The scene on the TV changed from the man with the headphones—who was now standing up and waving his arms for the women to get back—to a shot of the audience who were all on their feet apparently shouting and clapping. Then another cut, this time to Springer himself, looking sincere and holding his mike like it was an oversized ice pop. Thankfully the little mute sign was showing on the screen in the top left corner. The last thing Ralph needed right now was one of Jerry Springer's half-baked philosophies.
"I need you to come over, Ralph," Phil Casimeer croaked.
Now the sigh came. Another of Casimeer's wacky schemes. First the re-arranging of all the furniture—'shen fui', Phil had called it, or something like that—so as to get the best vibes possible for the house. Who the hell ever heard of a house having 'vibes'? Then some much-needed help positioning a series of huge standing stones in a line down the back yard that led down onto the old creek. Near broke Ralph in two and he had all-on stopping Steph from getting right on the phone and giving Phil Casimeer a piece of her mind.
"Okay. When? I have to go to the store first thing, for Steph, but—"
"I need you to come over now, Ralph." This time the croak had turned into a chesty wheeze, like a voice through water.
Ralph turned away from the screen again. Casimeer definitely sounded strange. "Are you sick, Phil? Do you want me to call—
"I'm not sick," the voice said, its tone and volume sinking and rising. "Leastwise, it's nothing that can be cured from the drugstore."
"You are sick. Listen—"
"No, you listen. I'm covering my mouth, that's why I probably sound strange."
"You're covering your mouth?" Ralph switched hands again. "Why you doing that, Phil?" For a second, listening to his own voice, Ralph was reminded of the old Bob Newhart sketch about Walter Raleigh introducing tobacco to civilization. And then you do what, Walt? You set fire to it?
"No time to explain. Come now, Ralph. I'm begging you."
Ralph glanced at the wall clock: 10:40.
"I know it's late," Casimeer whispered, "but I really do mean it. You're the only one I can turn to."
"Won't tomorrow do? Tell me tomorrow will do, Phil."
"Tomorrow won't do, Ralph. Tomorrow will be too late. It has to be now. Tonight."
Another sigh. It was a good thing that Stephanie was staying with her sister over in Bridgeport. At least Ralph wouldn't have to put up with her complaining that he should tell the old coot where to get off.
The thing was, Ralph was almost as old as Phil, both of them having bid a fond but tearful farewell to big seven-oh some years back, and he hadn't the heart to rain on an old friend's parade. But the years had done something strange to Phil—particularly the long years since cancer took his beloved Nancy while she was still in the bloom of life and reaching eagerly for 60 and the prospect of more time with Phil when he retired from the Savings and Loan company down at Kittery.
The long lonely years that followed Nancy's death had made Phil Casimeer introverted and thoughtful, forever locked away in regular consignments of old books he got sent through the mail... books with weird names—sometimes in Latin—and by authors whose names Ralph couldn't even pronounce. There was no way any of these guys ever appeared in the bestseller lists—Ralph had checked once in the Waldenbooks down at the mall where a cheery girl with a huge overbite he just couldn't take his eyes off had looked at him vaguely when he read the names he had hastily scribbled on the back of an envelope once over at Phil's house while Phil was using the john.
But friendship was friendship and you never knew when the time might come that he'd need some help—or just a little companionship (they were none of them getting any younger), which is why Ralph reckoned Phil Casimeer kept on getting him over to his house on these flaky projects.
"Okay," he said. "Do I need to bring anything? Tools, that kind of stuff?"
There was a pause. Ralph guessed Phil was shaking his head. "Just bring your glasses."
"My glasses? I always wear my glasses, Phil, you know that. How'm I supposed to drive over to you if I don't wear—"
"Your reading glasses. Bring your reading glasses."
"Okay," Ralph said, making to hang up. Christ, now Phil wanted someone to read to him.
"Oh, and Ralph?"
"Yeah?"
"Bring some light. Lots of light."
"Light?"
"Yes, flashlights. And bring your Zippo, maybe some matchbooks... maybe even some candles? That kind of thing. And get here as fast as you can. I'll leave you a note."
"A note? Why a note? You going some—"
But the line was dead.
Ralph stared at the TV screen for a couple of minutes without removing the mute. Then he dug some candles out of the cupboard under the kitchen sink—Steph always kept a few tied up in green garden twine, in case there was a power cut—and he brought the big flashlight out of the garage. He hadn't smoked for almost 20 years but the old tin where he used to keep a pack of Marlboro still provided a home for the Zippo Steph had bought him way back when he was still a youngster. He had used the Zippo on and off over the years to light barbecues and to burn the leaves every fall, and he had kept it filled and primed. But even so, he was always amazed when the thing sprang to life each time he pressed it. He lifted the tin to his nose and breathed in the warm and intoxicating smell of tobacco, then closed the tin and dropped the lighter into his pants pocket.
The final thing he almost forgot: his reading glasses. They were lying open on top of an Elmore Leonard paperback beside the easy chair. As he folded them up and slipped them into his shirt pocket, Ralph had an urge just to plop down in the chair and pick up the book. But the urge passed, like all urges pass, given time.
Minutes later—after killing the mute and filling the house with sound again— he was in the old Fairlane that was now more rust than paint and heading down to the old mill road and out towards Phil's house.
The road was empty and quiet, just the way it always was. Nobody used it any more, hadn't done since the Interstate was extended to take the main traffic away from Bridgeport. Now there was only the occasional farm machinery or kids on bikes, and the road was more than ever showing the signs of wear. No, not signs of wear... because there was nothing wearing on it: these were signs of neglect. Like all folks heading for the eighty-mark, Ralph knew all about those signs.
The moon was full and the cloud cover high, with the wind blowing the clouds across the moon and sending rippled shadows scudding like waves across the corn at either side of the road. Ralph watched them breaking against the old fence at the bottom of the steep bank to the left and then building up again on the other side, like they were appearing from beneath the road, rolling away from him into the distance.
He pulled up on the gravel of Phil Casimeer's front sweep at a little before 11, suddenly hoping that Stephanie didn't get it into her head to call him goodnight. She'd wonder where the hell he was. But it was too late to worry about that now.
With the flashlight tucked under his left arm and the candles in his jacket pocket, Ralph scrunched up to Phil's front door and beat it with his hand, calling out, "This is the police, Casimeer. We know you're in there so come out with your hands up."
There was no response.
He waited a minute or two, looking up at the moon and watching his breath cloud out in front of him, then he knocked again. "Phil? It's Ralph."
Still no response.
It was about now, in the cheesy horror movies that Ralph like to watch (much to Steph's despair) on the SciFi channel, that a dog howled somewhere in the distance. But the night stayed quiet. Ominously quiet.
Maybe it's too quiet, a soft but insistent voice whispered in the back of Ralph's head.
Ralph stepped back from the door and looked at the upstairs rooms.
As if on cue, a cloud freed itself from the moon's pull and, in the brief instant before another took its place, moonlight splashed across the front of the house washing over the windows briefly before rolling off to the side and tumbling to the ground where it scurried over to the rickety fence and the long grass that led down to the old creek way down through the woods.
Just for a second or two, Ralph fancied he'd seen someone up at one of the upstairs windows and he'd been about to wave but then, when the cloud covered the moon again, he saw that the window was empty and dark.
Come to think of it, the whole house was dark. But then hadn't Phil asked him to bring candles and a flashlight? Sure, that's what was wrong: a power cut.
He turned to the window to his left—the living room window, as he recalled—and, sweeping the flashlight over it, Ralph thought he had seen, just for a moment, a darkness loom up against the glass and then fall back when the beam hit it. Why was Phil making out he wasn't home when he'd asked him to come all the way over? Didn't make sense.
But what had he said about the note? That didn't make a whole lot of sense either.
You know what? the secret voice whispered in the back of Ralph's head. Maybe you'll go in there and find the old fart hanging from one of the upstairs beams like an early Christmas decoration. Maybe that's what he meant about the note.
Ralph wanted to tell the voice that Phil Casimeer was not an old fart but he knew it wasn't worth the effort. They were all old farts on this bus. The trouble was Ralph didn't know where this bus was going.
He felt the tell-tale rumble from his guts that signified he needed to go sit on the john for a half-hour and read a magazine. But he couldn't do that. He couldn't go and leave Phil.
He reached for the door handle and turned it. The door wasn't locked.
It drifted open with just the hint of a squeak, gathering momentum at a certain point until it banged against the stop behind it.
Ralph stayed where he was and played the flashlight beam down the dark hall, over the carpet and the old bureau stuffed full of papers, until it came to rest on the kitchen door. The door was closed.
He moved the beam back down the other side of the hall, across the door to the living room on the left—also closed—and then over to the staircase. Nothing. Nothing unusual, but nothing usual, either.
He lifted the flashlight so that the beam traveled up the stairs, sliding stealthily up the wall away from the banister, as though the light felt just like Ralph... needing to set against something solid, keeping a watch upward at all times in case...
Ralph frowned. In case what? What was he expecting, for crissakes?
How about in case one of those decomposing ghoul-things from the old comicbooks leans over the top rail dropping pieces of moldy flesh on any surprise visitors? the secret voice said, a smile playing on the words.
The beam had reached that point on the staircase where the stairs curved around to the left up to the landing.
"Phil? You up there? It's Ralph."
Silence.
Then, when the beam was right at the top of the first flight, Ralph saw the vaguest flicker of movement caught in the glare. He squinted, jiggling the flashlight side to side and straining to make out what it was, but still didn't move across the threshold.
Then he saw it. It was smoke: not a lot—in fact, it appeared to be just one wafting trail of thick dark vapor—but it was smoke. What else could it be?
"Jesus Christ," Ralph muttered. He rushed into the house and started up the stairs, keeping the beam trained ahead of him.
Halfway up, he slowed down, heart beating in his chest. And then he stopped. The smoke didn't seem like any smoke like he had ever seen before—or, at least, it wasn't behaving like any smoke he had seen before.
The single tendril of this particular smoke was snaking toward the shuddering light-splash on the wall at the head of the first flight as though it was alive, creeping along to the edge of the splash like it was testing it... a smoke-child dipping its toe into the ocean of light before making the Big Dash Out Into The Waves Of Shimmering Brightness.
Keeping his eyes on it—and leaning on the banister to keep his hand still and the flashlight beam steady—Ralph shouted up to the floor above. "Phil? I'm here on the stairs—you okay?"
The smoke reached the light, seemed to touch the periphery of the splash of brightness, and then pulled back, curling up on itself like a plant frond that had touched a flame. Looking down, Ralph saw another one snaking along the carpet on the top of the first riser moving to the left, moving stealthily like a rear guard making a pincer operation, moving around behind the enemy's flank while one of its number kept the enemy occupied elsewhere.
"Phil, this is the damnedest—"
He watched the same thing happen with this second shoot. It touched the circle of light and pulled back, curling around and settling down on the top stair.
"Phil, if you can hear me, shout. If you can't speak, then just ... just thump the floor, or make a noise or something."
The second tendril was moving toward Ralph, slithering along the carpet and edging its way over the edge of the top stair down towards the next.
"Phil, there's smoke out here."
Think again, buddy boy, the secret voice said. If that's smoke, then I'm the King of Siam.
Ralph trained the flashlight down onto the smoke and watched it shrivel up on itself and pull back, first onto the top stair and then back up the few stairs to the left, out of sight.
"Well, whatever it is, it doesn't like the light," Ralph muttered.
He shone the beam back on the facing wall and was dismayed to see that there were more tendrils now: they had sneaked out while the beam was elsewhere and were slithering across the empty wall like clinging vines. Some were even extending themselves, moving completely away from the wall and through the open air, moving...
Toward him.
Ralph took a couple of steps back down the stairs, keeping the beam splayed in front of him. Then he thought of Phil. He was up there—somewhere—and Ralph couldn't just go off and leave him. After all, old farts had to stick together. And whatever it was—the smoke stuff—it didn't like the light.
"Okay," Ralph announced, an edge to his voice. "I'm coming up."
Holding the flashlight in his good right hand, Ralph started up the stairs, waving at the smoke with his left. When his hand touched it—and it did touch it—Ralph thought for a second that he could actually feel the smoke. He watched it bend around his hand, pulled with the momentum of his arm like a ribbon, following the sweep but not breaking. He jerked his hand back and shone the flashlight beam on it. There was nothing to see.
But he wasn't about to swing his hand at the stuff again. It had felt... felt wrong, somehow.
He was at the turn now. Six more stairs lay between him and the landing. He held onto the banister, shining the flashlight onto the smoke and shaking his head in wonder as he watched it pull away from the light.
The remaining stairs he took carefully, pausing on each one, until he stood on the landing.
All of the upstairs doors were open except one.
As far as Ralph could recall, that was Phil's bedroom. The one he used to share with Nancy when she was still alive.
"Phil?"
The call was half-hearted now. Ralph no longer expected to get an answer. Which might have been fine if this was daylight and he'd just called around to chew the fat for a while but half-expecting Phil to be out taking one of his constitutional walks. But it wasn't daylight—in fact, there wasn't any light at all—and Ralph knew damned well that Phil was in here somewhere. And he knew Phil should be able to hear his calls. He may be an old fart but he wasn't a deaf old fart.
Then he saw the paper.
At first, it was just a splash of whiteness on the carpet, caught in the flashlight's beam. But then he saw what it was: two or maybe three sheets of paper half-sticking out from beneath the closed door.
And there was something else protruding from beneath that door.
The smoke was pulsing out in a thick slice, curling up into the air and snaking every which way like a lace curtain, its fronds interweaving and separating.
Ralph shone the light at the smoke and smiled as it pulled back in on itself. He half fancied he could hear muted sighs of pain, which was ridiculous: who ever heard of smoke that felt pain?
He shuffled along the landing until he was in front of the door and reached down for the papers. As he expected, there was writing on them. He pulled his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and changed them with his regular pair. Then he looked at the writing. The first words were:
Ralph: careful when you open the door.
Ralph continued to read.
This isn't easy. I haven't much time. I'm keeping it in here with me but it'll get out. Keeping the door closed will slow it down. It doesn't like the light but it can absorb it. Use the candles.
Ralph frowned. The words were getting harder to read. He swept the flashlight around him and saw that the smoke had been taking advantage of his preoccupation with the note. It was all around him now, brushing his face like spiderweb. He held the beam on it, watching the stuff frizzle back away from him. But the beam seemed dimmer than it had been.
Ralph turned it on himself and stared into the bulb. It was growing fainter, even though he knew he'd changed the batteries only last week.
It doesn't like the light but it can absorb it, the small voice in Ralph's head whispered, repeating Phil's words from the note. Use the candles.
Ralph pulled one of the candles from his jacket pocket and held the Zippo to it. The flame against the waxed wick crackled and then took. He looked around on the floor for something to stand the candle in and saw a pile of books. He halved the pile and set the candle between the two smaller piles, feeling a little more comfortable as he watched it flicker.
Turning back to the papers, Ralph read:
It's black magic, Ralph. Real black magic. I was trying to get to talk to Nancy. Trying everything. I went one step too far. it's just blackness. And I've
He turned to the next page.
set it free. I've released a blackness into the world and I can't stop it. What you have to do is find something in the book that says how to send it back. I tried to find something but I couldn't see. It was coming out of my eyes, my nose, my mouth—it was coming out of everywhere, Ralph. God knows but I'm sorry.
Ralph looked up at the closed door. "Phil? Can you hear me?"
He leaned towards the door, resting his head against the wood. Was that movement he could hear? A kind of frantic rustling?
He looked back at the paper, turned to the next sheet.
You have to stop the blackness. It'll take all the light everywhere and make everything just darkness. Its using me to get out. But more than that, there are things inside it. I haven't seen them but I've heard them. I cant write more hope this makes some kind of sense dont forget to be careful when you open the door—use the boo
The writing ended. Phil Casimeer's usually careful hand had turned, in the space of just three pages, into an uneven scrawl that eventually came to an end in the middle of a word.
Ralph glanced down at the candle. Two strands of smoke had curled themselves around the base and were already snaking their way to the flickering wick. He shone the flashlight on the door and saw—in a beam that was definitely weakening --
It's being absorbed, the secret voice confided quietly
-- the smoke still swirling out from the narrow gap beneath the wood. He took a deep breath, ignoring the growing need to empty his bowels, and reached forward for the door handle. He turned it, slowly, and pushed the door open.
The room beyond looked like it was on fire although flames were nowhere to be seen. The black smoke was everywhere, but here near the door it was patchy, swirling and somehow incomplete.
At the rear of the room it was solid. More than that, it seemed to be moving.
All of the smoke—even this smoke—was doing smoky movements... movements that, it could be argued, were merely reactions to air currents. But the solid thick denseness of the smoke banked up at the back of the room—through which Ralph could see absolutely no trace of anything familiar—was another story. This smoke was moving in an altogether different way: it was moving the way a sack moves when there's something in there
... there are things inside it, Phil's letter had said
that wants to get out.
Ralph looked down and saw a smoke-shrouded shape on the floor to his left. This was where the smoke was coming from, buffeting out in thick clouds that swirled immediately around themselves as though excited to be free. Ralph shone the weakening flashlight beam at the shape and, just for an instant, saw a bare foot twitching before a thick gasp of smoke pushed from beneath the trouser cuff above the ankle and spiraled up into the air.
"Phil?"
He didn't really expect an answer. He was just pleased to hear a voice... even though it was his own.
Waving the smoke out of the way, Ralph knelt down beside his friend.
Phil Casimeer's eyes were still open but they were not seeing anything. Thin tendrils of blackness were twirling out of the sockets around the eyes themselves to meet up with similar emissions from Phil's nostrils and his open mouth. The entire body was shaking as though on a continuous electrical charge, causing the smoke trails to shudder as they came out into the air.
Ralph reached out a hand and felt Casimeer's wrist for a pulse. There wasn't one. He was pleased, in a way. He could not have borne the realization that Phil was still somehow alive. He looked down the full length of the quivering body and saw black ribbons wafting into the air from his friend's open fly and from beneath each trouser cuff. He could guess which orifices they were using.
Even seventy-four years' experience had not prepared Ralph Wilson for what he saw now. Ralph didn't think any amount of experience could prepare someone for this.
He looked around in desperation, wondering what he should do now.
The wall of smoke at the rear of the bedroom was making tearing noises, the bulges on its surface growing more pronounced.
He glanced back at the door and saw the candle he had left out on the landing flickering, close to being extinguished by the smoke halo that had surrounded the flame, dancing and swirling.
Ralph sat down next to Phil Casimeer and shone the flashlight.
Everywhere was Nancy, he now saw.
Laid out on the floor behind the door were various items of women's clothing—Ralph didn't doubt they were Nancy's, hoarded by her husband that she may wear them once more.
Propped up by the skirting board alongside the clothes were photographs: some featured Phil—albeit a Phil Casimeer of varying age—and one or two (Ralph saw with a twinge of sadness more profound than any he had felt before) even featured Ralph himself. But every single one featured Nancy Casimeer, always smiling, always loving.
So this had been Phil's plan all along: to bring his wife back, somehow. To defy the very laws of nature by employing some fabled dark forces
Very dark, indeed, the secret voice trilled with amusement. Just look around you... yes, very dark indeed
to wrest her back from the grave.
Then he saw, amidst the clothes and the photographs—and even a hairbrush that clearly still contained long strands of hair that Phil would have given his right arm for even thirty years ago—was a book.
But this was no mere page-turner purchased from the mall or rescued from the twirling metal racks in the airport. This book was the granddaddy of all books everywhere and anytime ... the book that Mickey Mouse used to animate the brooms and mops, the towering tome into which the birth of the entire galaxy was recorded even as it was happening, a book whose cloth covers were fashioned out of cosmic debris and star matter, whose vellum pages were strained from the blood of gods and the breath of night. And this was the book from which Phil Casimeer had called forth darkness to the Earth.
The book that
use the book
Ralph Wilson must somehow employ to send it back.
Ignoring the gathering smoke and the rending noises from the black wall at the rear of the room—whose boundary was inching its way closer to the door onto the landing—Ralph scurried awkwardly across to the clothes and the photographs. And to the book, which lay open in a fashion that was as menacing as it was inviting.
He propped the flashlight against a framed photograph of Phil and Nancy on a beach—the pair of them smiling at some long-forgotten passer-by whose services they had begged to record the moment for posterity—and twisted the book around.
The text was small and, even with his reading glasses, difficult to decipher. The thick margin at either side of the page contained scribbled notes in a variety of hands. Previous owners, Ralph thought—and, just for a second, he wondered what had become of them.
None of it meant anything to him.
He flicked the pages, first backward and then forward, searching for some clue ... some helpful key or advice for the casual browser. But there was nothing, or at least nothing that seemed to make any sense.
The sound of movement from behind him sent Ralph pitching headlong into the neatly arrayed clothes, and he braced himself for something taking hold of him from behind. When nothing happened, he turned around, his face still resting against one of Nancy Casimeer's sweaters, and saw, through the thickening darkness now barely relieved by the flashlight, Phil's body being pulled into the wall-bank that had now reached over his friend's feet.
The entire process took little more than a few seconds, and then the body was gone.
use the book
"How?" Ralph shouted at the black wall, its protuberances thrusting out like the sun's promontories before settling once more into the maelstrom of encroaching darkness. "How do I use the book?"
Ralph tried to convince himself that the sounds coming from behind the black screen did not remind him of animals eating.
He pulled himself to his knees and stared once more at the open pages. What did Phil have in mind? He must have had a plan.
Ralph replayed the phone conversation—suddenly unable to believe that it had taken place little more than an hour ago—in an effort to get a clue. But the clue, when it came, did not come from Phil Casimeer: it came from Bob Newhart.
And then you do what, Walt? You set fire to it?
And then the flashlight went out.
The sudden plunge into darkness both froze Ralph and propelled him into action.
He reached into his pocket and removed the Zippo that Stephanie had bought him. Trying not to fumble—and desperately trying not to imagine the slowly advancing wall of darkness and the things that lay behind it (and which even now might be escaping from, now that all trace of light had disappeared from the room)—he slipped off the base and, reaching out blindly so that he knew the exact location of the book, inserted his thumb-nail into the screw that allowed gas to be inserted.
Hey, that thing has been in your dope tin for more than five Presidential terms, amigo, the secret voice whispered. Why not just pull down your pants, stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass adios.
"I filled it," Ralph muttered to himself. "Filled it only last year."
Last year? the voice said. You sure about that? You mess up on so many things, don'tcha, Ralphi e... like looking everywhere for your reading glasses when they're stuck up on your fool head. Maybe this is another like that. Maybe the best thing is just to curl up. You're tired, finished ... like the goddamn Zippo.You feel like a sleep, don'tcha? All old farts gotta get their rest, and you got a long one coming u up ... you and the 'rest' of humanity.
"Come on, loosen!" Ralph shouted, pleased once more to hear his voice.
Something brushed against his face and, though only for a second, Ralph relaxed his sphincter. The warm wetness in the seat of his pants felt good.
He waved his arm aggressively and shouted, "Get away!"
Whatever it was moved off, twisting itself into the darkness that surrounded it.
Suddenly, the moon shone through the bedroom window, bathing the entire room in light even though more than half of the window's area had been taken over by the black wall. But now Ralph saw, just before another cloud obscured the room, one of the protuberances in the side of the black bank had stretched itself fully out. It had looked like one of the hand contortions his father had used to make shadow-beak shapes against the night-light to scare the impossibly young Ralph Wilson. And it had seemed to be searching the room, looking for something, suddenly pulling back in the sudden brightness.
Now what could it be looking for? the secret voice in Ralph's head mused.
Ralph turned his back to the wall, paradoxically comforted by the return to darkness, and concentrated on the Zippo's screw. It came free just as he realized that if the hand-beak thing had been pulling back when the moon shone into the room then it was probably out again now that it was dark. Or maybe it would wait a while ... hold off until the black bank completely obscured the window ... or maybe yet again it was right behind him—right now!—snaking up to his neck, opening those beaky jaws....
He turned the screw frantically with his thumb-nail, not daring to look around.
Something across the room fell over with a clunk.
The screw from the Zippo fell to the floor with a tiny clatter.
Ralph reached out for the book and upturned the Zippo over it, reassured by the smell of lighter fluid.
Something was scraping behind him, moving across the floor.
Another clunk.
Ralph leaned down over the book, hardly daring to breathe, and felt the pages. They felt wet. He dabbed a finger in the wetness and brought it up to his nose. Yes!
He held the Zippo against the wetness and flicked the flint-wheel.
There was a tiny spark on the second flick but then nothing.
He gave up after about a dozen attempts and reached into his jacket pocket for the matchbook.
A sound that was a cross between the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movies and the volcano in Dante's Peak rent the room and shook the glass in the windows.
Ralph figured that the hand-beak thing was now fully out. He had been feeling the swirling fronds of smoke against his face and in his hair for some time now and he guessed that the black wall pretty much now filled the entire room. He tried to pull himself into a ball, tucking his knees up under his chest and wincing at the sharp arthritic pain, and pulled one of the matches free from the book.
He felt again for the wet patch, found it, and struck the match.
It lit the first time.
He dropped it on the wet patch.
The match went out.
Another clatter from behind him prefaced another glass-shaking roar.
The second match would not light and Ralph tossed it to the side of the book, and pulled another one free.
The door banged—either it banged open or it banged shut: it hardly seemed to matter.
Ralph struck the third match and it lit. He cupped it in his hand and leaned down to the book's pages, sniffing for the smell of lighter fluid. When he found it, he lowered the match carefully and stroked the wet patch. It lit.
Then it burst into flames, the sound like music to Ralph's ears.
He felt something cold on his neck, like a breeze from an open window, and he rolled to the side, knocking over some of the carefully set-out framed photographs. Whatever it had been swung over where he had been crouched, touched the rising flames from the book, and pulled back.
Ralph had barely seen it, his hand up in front of his face as a means of protection.
The book was crackling, burning brighter than any simple few drops of lighter fluid had any right to burn, but Ralph wasn't complaining. The pages lifted one by one into the growing blaze, curling over and igniting so that another might take its place.
Moonlight flooded the room.
Ralph blinked and then blinked again.
The room was empty.
The darkness was gone.
Ralph pulled himself into a sitting position and waited, watching the pages burn.
Eventually, the carpet alongside the book was burning.
Ralph got to his feet and staggered out onto the landing. There had been no sign of Phil Casimeer amidst the wreckage of his friend's bedroom.
Minutes later, as he slumped back into the old Fairlane, wincing at the squashing feeling between his legs, Ralph looked back at the house. The glow in the bedroom would take a while before it caught fully, but he didn't think there was any chance of it going out.
At least that made him feel good.
The clock in the car registered 12.40.
It would probably too late to call Stephanie at her sister's when he got home. But Ralph didn't think that mattered. Better late than never. And that was something that Ralph just didn't want to think about.

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