No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) by Digital Fiction Page A

head as if speaking.
    “Good,
busy, but good.” She’d asked me how my day was. “How is she today?”
     
    Slight
movement of the head; inclining to one side where it bobs, before she
straightens and looks at me with eyes I can’t see.
    “Okay,
I’ll go up and say goodnight.”
    Turning
means I can’t see her head moving anymore; can’t see if she’s speaking. The
words are somewhere, but I don’t know where to look or even if I want to.
    Rachel is
under her covers when I open the door, reading but not really. She’s waiting,
like most nights. She has a hard time sleeping if I’m not back on time. She’s
quite serious for someone her age.
     
    The book’s
out of her hands as soon as I am inside the room, forgotten on the covers
around her legs.
    I see her
face clearly, unlike my wife’s.
    “Dad,” she
says and smiles up at me, but there’s something underneath it. I can see it.
Her eyes follow me as I sit on the edge of her bed.
    If I was
looking, I might have seen more. I ask her what’s wrong.
    “I can’t
sleep, even with the light.” Rachel leans closer, cupping a hand around her
mouth. “Can you look under my bed, please-please-please?” Her usual rapid fire
demand.
    I did. I
looked under the bed because it was the sort of ritual we did, more for
Rachel’s amusement than anything else. We both knew I would never find
anything.
    I saw her,
another Rachel under the bed, staring back at me, eyes wide and shaking despite
the sweat beading her face.
    “Daddy.”
    Her voice is
somewhere between a whisper and a hiss, so I have to duck my head under the bed
to listen. I think I thought I was dreaming.
    “Daddy,
there’s someone on my bed.”
    Something
brushes against the hand still on the covers. It’s wet and warm and sticky, but
somehow brittle underneath. A wash of hot air stirs my hair.
    My mind
spills away like sand, and I run.
    Rachel
stares after me, mouth half open and unbelieving. It’s better to look at her
and not at what’s on the bed.
    My wife is
on her way up the stairs, drawn by the beating of my feet. I open the door and
run onto the path, and even the cool night air isn’t any comfort. Nothing can
be after that.
    “DADDY!”
Rachel screams behind me, but I don’t look back as my feet pound the concrete,
picking up speed all the time.
     
    When
you’re drinking, time becomes compressed. Almost in line with every beer you
have, time starts to pool in around you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop
it. The same is true of dreams, or when your mind suffers a break.
    Drunk, you
can function on autopilot, more or less.
    I opened
my eyes, though they were never closed, and didn’t immediately know where I
was.
    Time
didn’t compress for me. I stepped outside of it, and I haven’t really stepped
back. I think I’d lost time before; I have memories of being a drinker before,
but those memories are even hard to grasp by necessity of the booze. I think
it’s why I was able to ground myself, for however short a time, when I came
back up for air.
    Light from
streetlamps lay on top of the water, like oil on water. Running, but unmoving
with the direction of the current. Tremors twitched up my fingers and along my
hand, but stopped when I looked away from the water. Neon lights dazzled me
from across the street; washed-out promises lighting a strip of bars and clubs.
    I knew
where I was, more or less.
    As I
stepped into the road, a car blasted its horn and swerved to avoid me. I caught
words, sucked away in the backwash of its passing. I didn’t see it because it
wasn’t there before, like I wasn’t all the way back up yet — only breaching the
surface by inches. I was aware enough to know where and when I was; the rest
came back only gradually as I drifted back to the surface of things.
    The door
to one of the bars was open, it being a cool evening. I stepped in, if only for
somewhere to go. I was afraid if I didn’t stop for a second, I’d never find my
way