Afraid to move, afraid to cry out, Kevin lies stiff and wide-eyed with his covers pulled up to his chin. He peers into the gloom, convinced something is there, moving in the shadows, watching him. Every night they come, perching at the fringe of the glow from the feeble 25-watt nightlight plugged into his wall. Only that halo holds the monsters at bay.

They inhabit the edges, those places of shadow, neither dark nor light. They are there in the deep corners of the closet, where the weak light from the single bare bulb doesn’t quite reach. They hide under the bed with the dust, sheltered behind the overhanging bedspread that almost touches the floor. The little light on the wall, washing his features with a pale yellow hue, is his only protection.

In an act of bravery equal to that performed by any fabled hero, the boy opens his mouth and calls out, “Mommy!” The things in the shadows rustle silently, as if in fear of that name, and move into the deeper gloom, further out of sight.

Kevin waits as patiently as a small boy can for her to open the door and disperse his tormentors. But as the minutes drag by, he wonders if she has heard him. Maybe she was asleep; maybe he wasn’t loud enough. He tries to muster the courage to yell again, but the fear holds him too tightly in its grip. Perhaps sensing his apprehension, the things in the shadows creep closer to the shores of the jaundiced pool of light.

Kevin opens his mouth, but all that escapes his lips is a nearly inaudible whisper. Sensing their opportunity, the watchers move closer, almost, but not quite, daring to come into the light. And they wait. He can feel them, their hunger almost palpable.

His mind is racing now, any chance of sleep long gone. As his lower lip quivers with terror, his upper lip beads with perspiration. Desperately, he struggles to formulate a plan. He might be fast enough to make it to the light switch. He has done it before; he took them by surprise with his daring that time. Unfortunately, he does not think he will catch them unawares this time.

Maybe a distraction will work. He sits up in his bed, facing the wall opposite the switch. Making sure that everything down to the tips of his toes remains within the protective glow of the nightlight, he carefully dangles his legs over the side of the bed. He can sense them moving, trying to get closer to him. He is aware of their keen anticipation, as if they know something is about to happen. Beneath the bed, he can almost hear the clenching and unclenching of gnarled hands and the clicking of claws.

He must act quickly, without thinking. He does not believe they can read his thoughts, but he is afraid that if he considers what he is doing, his fright will immobilize him. And so, without hesitation, he throws his pillow at the fiends and flings himself in the opposite direction. He deftly rolls off the bed and starts across the room.

He is halfway to the switch when it happens. The nightlight flickers and goes out. Paralyzed by the complete darkness, he collapses to the floor in a quivering heap. Somehow, he finds the strength to scream.

I’d driven the road hundreds of times before, but its beauty never ceased to amaze me. Leaving the city behind, I turned from over-traveled highways to winding country roads. No matter how stressful my job got, the drive to my parents’ home always soothed my soul and put my life back in perspective.

It wasn’t any different tonight. The cool nights and warm days of the previous week had brought autumn in all of her glory. The harsh brightness and sharp angles of the city were replaced by the soft outlines of trees, their branches gently stretching towards the setting sun. A palette of oranges and reds filled my eyes, vibrantly announcing the end of one season and the start of another.

As I drove, the waning sun was replaced by a bright harvest moon. The colors around me paled under its light, filling my vision with shades of gray. Dark shadows danced across the road, and I searched their patterns for creatures of the night. A hint of movement here, a patch of blackness there – the trees seemed alive, but I saw no tell-tale eyes glowing in my headlights. Yet, as I watched, the darkness seemed to grow. I glanced at the moon, expecting to see it covered by clouds. But the sky was clear.

I shook off my growing unease. Too much work and not enough rest were taking their toll. I reached down and turned on the radio, scanning the stations for some music to lift my mood. I saw a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, a huge black shape moving towards the car. I jerked the wheel and heard the screech of my tires as I slid sideways across the road. My brakes locked, and the world slowed as I spun out of control. Shadows flickered over the car until I came to rest at the base of a large tree.

Shaken, I climbed out to assess the damage. One look at the steam rising from beneath my hood convinced me that I wouldn’t be driving anywhere soon. I was pulling out my cell phone when I hear the sharp crack of a twig – then silence.

Muting my phone, I quietly stepped back into the trees, merging into their dark shadows. I watched as a man approached my car. Thinking that another driver had stopped to help, I started to move forward when I heard a soft whisper.

“Wait.”

Startled, I paused. Shadows shifted around me and I saw moonlight glint off something in the man’s hand. As he walked in front of the car, I saw the outline of the knife he was holding.

I watched as he silently searched the car, taking my purse and valuables. Once he was out of sight, I reached for my phone. But again I heard the voice.

“Wait.”

I searched the night for the speaker, but saw nothing except blackness. Turning back, I saw the man step again from the trees. Like a hunter stalking his prey, he had been patiently waiting.

For me.

I stayed in the shadows all night, wrapping them around me like a cloak. As they fled before the rising sun, I again reached for my phone. That’s when I noticed the small white stone in the ground next to me.

Emma
Beloved Wife
1748 – 1769

I stayed in the trees until the state police arrived. I watched as they took fingerprints, then made casts of the footprints surrounding the car. They later matched them to prints at a nearby murder scene.

The only footprints in the woods were mine.

I think I’m dying.

Of course they won’t admit it. And when I ask, the faintest of shadows cross their unrealistically cheery faces. So I’ve learned not to ask.

Tonight there will be New Year’s Eve celebrations. But not for me. There’s not much for me to do but lay here in this uncomfortably soft bed. I can hear the anticipation of frivolity in their footsteps outside my door. The light leaking under is broken by the quickness of their pace. Foot shadows.

They’ve lowered my blinds yet the sun still shines through and lands in stripes on the wall. If I wait long enough, these shadows will eventually crawl across my bed, taking on the rumpled texture of the freshly laundered covers.

In grammar school they taught us that the paper shapes we cut out with our blunted scissors were two-dimensional. But that was a lie. Paper has thickness. Not much, but some. Shadows, though, they’re completely flat. I always wanted a flashlight that shone dark, not light. Then I could throw all flat shadows I wanted. But all this abstract thinking makes me sleepy. I slip on my earphones and let myself float on the chords Beethoven wrote two hundred years ago.

I wake up suddenly and can’t hear the music. I flail around, trying to fight off disorientation. Eventually I discover that my earphones have slipped out and have become tangled amongst the shadow-filled covers. My pillow is blocking the music. It’s making a sound shadow.

They hear my rustling and bring me some soup. I obediently sip it by the spoonful, but the cottony dryness in my mouth prevents me from tasting a single drop. Taste shadows.

When they leave, darkness descends. I can hear the parties on the street below. They call it “First Night.” I suppose that if you make it past midnight it really is the first night of the year. But I rarely make it past ten. Eventually fireworks flash through the blinds, illuminating my room in pink and blue stripes.

There’s nothing left for me to do but wait. Wait for the shadows. Sound shadows. Taste shadows. Shadows of life.

Walls coated in the jagged scales of split and peeling paint stretched before Janice. The old house had settled over the years, warping the lines of this decrepit hall into angles that seemed to bend beyond the rational boundaries of normal architecture. Still, these perspective-defying walls stretched into the impenetrable blackness at the corridor’s end. The windows that lined the wall to Janice’s left looked out on the lifeless garden that seemed to soak up and make its own the gray, overcast sky. Two alcoves on the girl’s right sheltered dark wood doors that seemed to shy away from that shadow at the end of the hall.

It wasn’t a shadow, really, hunkered like an over-beaten hound in the hallway’s end. There was nothing merely gloomy or simply dark about it. It was pure blackness, unpolluted by light. It was the opposite of light, not just its absence. As Janice stared into its depths she felt her mind being drawn into it. A tremble went through her tiny frame, the sensation one gets when leaning too far back in a chair. At this the darkness seemed to seethe, pulsing ever so faintly, a muscle of obsidian flexing under a membrane of black.

Janice felt her body fall to the floor, her eyes locked on the shade at the hall’s end. The passage seemed to lengthen eternally long ahead of her and, yet, that blot seemed to draw closer still. To Janice’s horror something within it, or perhaps even the darkness itself, stood. It was hunched, slope-browed and ape-like, knuckles touching the floor, brow grazing the water-stained ceiling. The shape was no more than a notion of ebony on ebony, a silhouette that swallowed the light more completely than the backdrop it stood against.

Janice thought to call out for help, or in fear, but felt her voice would drown in the roar of silent terror screaming in her ears. Something about the form shifted, as a pane of glass being lowered before it, no actual movement, but a difference in its position no less. Something about it calmed Janice against her every instinct and will. Lips quivering, she answered the unasked question.

“Yes.”

The form moved for the prone child, dragging the inky blackness with it, filling the hall and obscuring every feature it passed. The shadows in the doorways were bright as brilliant sunlight before being consumed by the miasma filling the passage. The darkness, the primal shape, fell over the girl and burst. It dissolved like a cloud of smoke breaking on the wind. Every bit of the tangible void drained into the girl’s dilated eyes, her body quaking as this entity infested her.

“Janice?” a voice called from the room the girl had first emerged from, “How do you like the house?” The girl opened her eyes and her pupils, black as holes in the fabric of existence, constricted down in the brilliance of the hallway’s gloom. She spoke.

“I like it, mother. We should stay here forever.”

Blackout; there’s nothing worse. From the looks of it the whole city is dark. So, here I sit, 3AM and not a wink of sleep have I managed. A power outage makes you think. It puts you on edge. It makes you realize that all of those old childhood fears that you thought you had left behind long ago are really just a 60-watt light bulb away.

What was that noise? I flip the light switch yet again. Ridiculous how quickly I forget that it won’t do anything. You’d think that I would prepare for these things. Buy a candle, how hard is that? But the only light I have is the faint blue glow of my cell phone, and naturally the battery has one bar left.

How am I ever going to get to sleep? If I could fall asleep right now I'd get four hours in before work. Never gonna happen though. No television. Can’t sleep without the TV. There are too many sounds in the city. Who knows what’s going on out there? Who wants to know?

There’s that noise again. Trying not to hear it only makes it louder. Even during a blackout, there’s always so much noise in the city: cars, voices occasionally…but there are no voices tonight. No cars either come to think of it; just that noise. What in the world is that noise?

I’d go pull back the curtains and take a look outside if I weren’t afraid that I might actually see something. Better to be afraid of something I’m imagining than something that actually exists. What am I even talking about? I’m out of my mind. I have to get to sleep.

There it is again.

I’ve had it. This is silly. I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m going to the window. Showdown: the noise and me.

It keeps getting louder. I keep moving. This is definitely the longest it has ever taken me to reach the other side of my shoebox-of-an-apartment.

Louder.

Deafening.

It’s almost blinding; the noise. It’s a struggle against all of my senses to reach for the curtain, but in a final, furious strike against sight and sound I yank open the drapes.

Silence.

Of course, silence. I haven’t slept in twenty hours and my mind is playing tricks on me. There’s nothing out there; nothing but the street and the buildings. Quite a relief to look outside actually. Even if it is mostly black, I can still make out the familiar edges and curves of my city.

There’s nothing out there but the shadows. Except-

Oh God now I see it. And worse yet it sees me. My eyes are frozen as I stumble backwards to my nightstand and fumble through the remotes and magazines until I find my phone and flip it open. A flash of blue light and then back to total darkness.

Nothing left but me, the shadows, and whatever it is that hides within them.

Tick.

Matt risked a look around the pile of rusting machine parts, keeping one hand on his weapon. He’s probably between me and the door, he thought. I wonder if he knows where I am. A bullet whined past his ear and he ducked back into shelter. Yep.

He checked his watch and loosened his tie, feeling the necklace beneath his shirt. Okay. Think. I’ve got seven minutes to get upstairs. If the door is thirty feet away and there are one hundred places to hide in this basement, then Gordon could be . . . anywhere. He looked toward the door again. Starlight shafted down through the open windows, barely making a dent in the deep, angled shadows that filled the basement. Discarded equipment stood side-by-side with first-rate ordinance, turning the cellar into a low-ceilinged labyrinth. Upstairs liked it that way: they kept their storerooms hard to get into and even harder to get out of.

Tick.

Matt shifted position; he’d been squatting in the darkness behind the crate for more than ten minutes, waiting for a chance to run. He checked his pistol again: two rounds left. Not good.

A quick grey movement to his left caught the corner of his eye. Across the room—there—behind that pile of junk—Now! Matt broke cover and sprinted for the door.

Gordon’s lead pipe caught him square across the chest and sent him flying. His gun skittered across the floor and stopped around four feet out of reach from where he slid down the wall, knocked breathless.

Gordon poked his head around a crate of ammunition. “Good morning, sunshine!” he sang, and fired. Matt heaved himself up and dove for his gun, dodging the shot that pocked the wall where his head had been.

Matt’s hand landed on his revolver right before Gordon’s shoe landed on his hand. “Now now, mustn't play with guns!" he cackled. "Besides, you don't want my fluids on you, do you?"

Tick.

Matt looked up over his shoulder, refusing to let go. Gordon stood over him, eerily backlit by the long, narrow windows. His eyes glinted in the darkness. “Come on, let it go,” he growled, and pressed down on Matt’s hand.

Matt felt his knuckles grind against the cold concrete floor. “Why, so you can kill me like you killed the others?”

Gordon grabbed his collar, pulled him up and slammed him into the wall. “What do you care?” he snarled, his sharp teeth shining in a rare spot of light. “Once the clock upstairs hits midnight we’re all as good as dead anyway.” His finger hooked the thin gold chain that ran around Matt's neck. Slowly he drew it out and stared at the tiny gold cross that winked and shimmered in the silver dimness. "I knew it," he whispered. "That's why you're not afraid."

Matt cocked his revolver. "I've got to get upstairs and stop the weapon, Gordon. The whole city'll be infected if I don't."

Gordon dropped the necklace and pressed the muzzle of his gun up under Matt’s chin. His eye twitched. “I don’t care!” he screamed. “If I go down, everybody goes down! I never killed anybody!” He threw Matt to the ground and stepped back, shaking and crying. Starlight ran along the edge of his semi-automatic. “I didn’t kill them,” he said, and laughed. “They killed themselves. We all did. And you can't stop it.” He took another step back, letting his demons swallow him.

“Sorry, partner.” Matt stood up and aimed at the darkness that was Gordon. His hand trembled. “I'm gonna miss you.”

Tick.

Jess traced his finger along the mortar separating the stone blocks. A contractor by trade, his trained eye told him this three foot section was not part of the wall’s original construction. Even in the poor light he could distinguish the slight color variation and workmanship that was a departure from the majority of the stonework in this room. His heart raced. Could this wall conceal the evidence of murder?

Standing within the sterile white sphere of light emanating from a Coleman lantern, Jess further examined the crypt wall. A sharp, black shadow stretched from his body and disappeared into the gloom beyond the lantern’s glow. He had read about this chamber many times in recent days. He believed it to be the crypt described in Poe’s tale of Montresor's revenge against his insulter, through the lure of a fictitious cask of wine.

Jess always believed the story of Fortunato’s entombment to be the imaginative musings of a mind that quite possibly was teetering on the verge of insanity itself. However, His latest renovation job -- an Italian mansion belonging to a wealthy Milanese entrepreneur – revealed evidence to challenge that belief. Examining the estate, Jess stumbled upon a hidden attic niche which contained a worn, wooden box. Within the box he discovered letters and documents, both in Italian and English, that not only hinted at the truthfulness of Poe's horrific tale, but even suggested the deed may have been committed under this very residence.

Reacquainted with the story through it's purchase at a local bookstore, Jess armed himself with the lantern, claw hammer and an iron wedge and entered the cavernous Montresor crypt. Turning a corner, his breath escaped him. Large, skeletal apparitions lined the walls. A second look, however, revealed them for what they truly were -- exaggerated shadows created by the lantern's light falling upon the bones of the dead. As the tale suggested, the dead must have been laid out in the open, flesh decaying to leave behind only bones.

He continued along the dark, damp catacombs, accompanied by grotesque, shadowy forms created by the lantern’s flickering light. Every detail matched the story, right down to the spidery veins of white nitre that lined the walls and ceiling. Eventually, Jess passed through a carved archway, entering a large open room with no exits. It was here he hoped to find the truth.

Laying down his tools, Jess removed the human remains that lined the far wall and quickly located the mismatched section. Using the hammer’s claw, he scraped at the mortar between two bricks, approximately four feet from the floor. He traced around the rectangle, mortar falling away in a coarse dust. Furrowing as deep as the claw would allow, he switched to the wedge. At first, he used it in a digging manner similar to the claw. Gradually, though, he began to interject a prying motion along with the scraping. After thirty minutes the block began to wiggle. Alternately, Jess shoved, hammered and pried until he succeeded in pushing the block into the wall, leaving a dark, gaping hole.

The next two bricks gave him less trouble, their hold weakened by the removal of the first. Jess surveyed the two foot opening, blackness oozing from the cavity to invade the white lantern light. What lie beyond, he wondered. Was it simply another tunnel? Or some long forgotten cache of valuables? Or, would he truly find the skeletal remains of a man entombed against his will.

Picking up the lantern, Jess drew a deep breath and peered anxiously into the shadowy opening.

There was laughter in the night, laughter which woke Tyler from a peaceful sleep.

His room was dark save for the dim moonlight spilling in through the window, elongating the shadows of his toys and distorting them into wicked and terrifying shapes; perversions of the innocent playthings they represented. He sat upright in his bed for a long while, staring into the darkness and listening for the laughter which had suddenly ceased. Had he imagined it? Perhaps the eerily innocent laughter was a remnant of his dream; one of those horrible dream moments that lingers on in consciousness as though it were a part of the real world.

Just as he began to dismiss the disturbance for a lingering fragment of his dreams, he heard it again; an eerie and childlike giggle coming from just outside his room.

He stifled the urge to call out for his mother in an effort to avoid directing the laughing demon's attention to him. Their laughter continued and drew nearer; ever nearer. His door began to swing slowly open, creaking loudly as it swung inward, the sound reminiscent of one of the scary movie his father had permitted him to watch a few nights ago.

Petrified and sitting upright in his bed; holding his blanket up to his mouth, little Tyler could only watch, terrified,as the shadows slid into his room across the floor.

The moonlight shining in from his window glinted off his wide, terror filled eyes as he stared in horror at the elongating shadows which climbed his wall.

They were almost shapeless, almost human, two glowing yellow eyes staring at Tyler. The boy couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that those eyes were doing more than just looking at him, they were looking through him, sizing up the worth of his soul. The eyes were hungry, and he was certain that he was to be the meal.

The presence of the evil things alone frightened the child, but it was the desperate, longing hunger in those yellow eyes that unnerved him most. He shook and shivered as the shadows drew near, a slight cry escaping his trembling lips.

The shadows laughed again, the jovial glee within the laugh making them all the more terrible.

Tyler screamed as they descended upon him.

I stood at the edge, peering into the gloom ahead, and in that moment I hated Robert Williams, Jr. He had neatly trapped me between shadows and a dark place. In front of me loomed the fearsome depths of the Copse, but even as I shivered in the August sunshine I could feel the dark waves of peer pressure rolling in from Robert's gang of sycophants behind me.

***

Robert Williams, Jr. - the grown-ups all called him "little Bobby Bill," which he hated - was the boy we all wanted to be like. He was the center of society at Westwood Junior Academy, which meant that if he didn't like you, then nobody else liked you either. Most of my time at Westwood I spent trying to get Robert Williams, Jr. - and everybody else - to like me.

***

The Copse was a wide, shallow valley at the end of the town, on the other side of the railroad tracks. When I was there, it was filled with a forest of some odd kind of pine tree. The trees grew so close together that sunlight never shone in those woods, and they were armored with strange, silver-colored bark that glimmered like knives in the darkness. Rumor had it that something evil lived in the Copse. The grown-ups would laugh any time one of us kids asked about it, but I noticed that they never answered our questions and they always shifted the conversation on to a lighter topic. They also told us to stay on the town side of the tracks, away from the Copse.

***

My big mouth had gotten me in trouble before, and it was responsible for the quandary I was in now. Robert Williams, Jr. had been holding forth about how a gang of serial killers was at large in the Copse, and I had said something about how there couldn't possibly be a whole gang of them in there, since being serial killers, they would have serially killed each other off.

"Are you arguing with me, Jenkins?" Robert Williams, Jr. asked.

"No," I said.

"Yes you are. You don't think a gang of serial killers lives in the Copse? Prove it!"

While I was trying to think of a face-saving response, Robert Williams, Jr. slid the knife in.

"Tell you what, Jenkins. You can be in my gang if you go into the Copse and come back out alive."

***

There was no backing out, so I stepped uneasily across the threshold between sunlight and treedark. A few paces in was all it took to cut me off from the muted jeering of Robert Williams, Jr.'s gang, and at that moment I wondered why I was so desperate to join them. I walked a bit further and jumped when something crackled behind a tree a few yards away. I looked towards the sound, and as I turned my head I saw out of the corner of my eye something moving in the opposite direction. On the ground beside the tree I found a freshly-crushed beer can. I pocketed the can as a trophy, and made good my escape from the Copse.

***

I strode back into the beautiful sunlight with my head high, and the beer can hidden in my pocket.

"No serial killers in sight," I said.

"Then the Copse is ours!" yelled Robert Williams, Jr., and emboldened by my success, he marched into the dark trees himself.

His entourage was trying to decide whether it was supposed to follow him when a loud crash echoed from the Copse, and little Bobby Bill screamed.

Fingers of ice cut across my face. I awoke disoriented but alert, my face damp. My eyes opened and snapped shut quickly in fear, before I realized the object that flew out of the darkness at me was only the tent flap.

The wind gusted and pelted me with rain water as the flap danced in increasing frenzy. Its green color washed out in the darkness. I lay on my cot near the opening, my tent full of young campers.

I turned, looking at my wards and ascertained that all lay slumbering quietly, their fears put to bed as sleep overcame them each in turn. Earlier tales of ghostly visits left me feeling nervous and on edge. The sky overcast, as seen peeking through the thrashing trees that circled us, their tall whipping tops clearly viewed against the oddly lit night sky. Clouds roiled past in dark waves, the boiling sea of turbulence above us was oblivious to those in my care, but not to me.

I lay watchful and alert, sleep now eons away. I could not recapture the feelings I had earlier of my love of nature and the beauty that thrives and grows while we sleep and play around it.

I heard no sounds except the pounding rain, and the creak of limbs as they soaked in the thunderous shower that would not cease. The water streamed past in funneled out tunnels created by many passing feet. The paths now muddy and treacherous to navigate. Leaves trampled by the rain and small feet, flitted up in the fierce wind and smacked unwary travelers.

The dim light cast down from the skies threw all below the trees into shadow, the swaying tops and long trunks stretching beyond their true forms. They swayed and creaked and dipped under the assault of wind and rain.

My eyes searched each shadow looking for its creator, my ears ringing with the wind and the cracks of aged lumber breaking from the strain, as I hunted for the flickering shadow that did not fit in with nature. The shadow that spoke of quickness and agility, that moved against the wind and rain, and that I had barely glimpsed with my peripheral vision.

My head still, my eyes wildly searching. My heartbeat quickening, a drop of sweat dripped from my temple, I felt its hot trail as it dipped into my ear and swirled around its conch-like contours. I longed to still its passage with a swipe of my nightshirt, but dared not move. It itched and distracted me, my mind shifting focus, and again my peripheral vision caught movement as quick and agile as a panther on a stalk for its lonely, wounded prey.

A stir behind me. I turned sharply to find its source, afraid the rear of the tent had been used as entrance. I had forgotten about the rear flaps of the tent, as I had contemplated the forest without from the assured safety of my cot. A fool to have forgotten, to have blissfully felt myself safe as my charges slept, as I held sentry over their sleeping forms.

The inside of the tent shown faintly green; the children had brought glow sticks and one hung by each cot.

A figure loomed large against the back of the tent, its crouched countenance giving me pause as it slowly stretched its body, and arched upwards.

It stood in the center of the tent, its ears touching the tip of the support, its muzzle tinted green, the saliva that dripped down glistened in the eery light.