Fear in the Dark Read online

  First Edition.

  First printing September 15th 2021

  A special thank you to the very talented, Lydia Jones. Huge thanks for another incredible cover!

  And a special thank you to Angus Macdonald for being the first person to read and edit my novel.

  Fear in the Dark

  Darkness is a place where bad things lurk and fears manifest. Nothing evil ever shows itself in the light.

  Daniel Charles

  Chapter 1

  The unknown was an ominous, fearful place. In the unknown, darkness was a tool for fear and where nightmares breathed. “Why, Kersbrook was a funny ol' town. In the night, an unleashed creature would come to kill, dressed in the costume of it’s victims worst fears. Stay in the light and don’t get a bite.” That would be the most light-hearted and pleasant saying if one could be uttered. But a whole town was kept silent or else the nightmarish creature would turn it’s eye on those who spoke. It will come when the lights turn out. That was why nobody spoke a warning of the rules in town and that was why nobody helped whoever stopped by. Visitors of Kersbrook didn’t know what lurked in the night. The town wasn’t cynical not to spread a warning to those who didn’t know what caged them in. They just cared about their own safety.

  Do not go out at night! Do not go out at night! If they could, the people would sing it loud and clear to passers by. Even a sign would be thoughtful. But people in town lived in fear, terrified of what will come to them.

  For the people who were coming, who had no idea of the consequence of going out into the night, it was a message that would have been most valuable but couldn’t be told. It wasn’t that the people who lived in the town hated newcomers or passer-by’s and kept the advice silent, secret and away from them for being just so. It was the instant cost of one's life to speak directly of the dark plague which lurked when the light of day turned to an eerie, dark night in Kersbrook.

  What could keep a towns silence and cage them in as much to control what they say? Nobody knew because it was a bit of everything. People were scared of the dark force that could become anything — and of their very least desire. Thought of being a dark, demonic creature of such, it manifested into a persons primal fears to kill them. It was scary to think that it was possible that it knew everything about everyone. Some way it did. It snuck into each and every persons world and changed all the locks. There were ways to keep out of it’s danger and the people of Kersbrook usually followed their own guidelines.

  The unwritten rule was that no one could talk about the warnings of going out and wandering the streets when the sun was blacked out. For the cost of a life to whoever dares to speak of it and a target on their back, it was not a risk that anyone was prepared to take to warn somebody of the danger. So all put up and shut up, closing their doors at night and keeping away from the dark of the street.

  “The Nightmare” was the gutter name for the thing which they feared. It was an indirect name and one which skated along the boundaries of danger. It was just about the only way they could mention it’s existence without talking about it. Children were conditioned to not talk about it. Dark clouds purged the town into sinister darkness and Kersbrook never once ever felt like a happy place anymore.

  The people were institutionalised and impounded in a place where there were no gates nor fences, just fear. Just talking about it had painted a target on whoever wished to do so and that rule was not one that anyone in Kersbrook wished to break, no matter who were to come to town, not knowing Kersbrook’s dark secret. It was miserable, daunting and controlling. It was just like a nightmare, but a living one which nobody could ever wake to.

  To know to stay in at night was something that would have helped young and likeable college student, Cam Stratham. When he first drove his car down the eerie and silent streets of Kersbrook, Cam knew something didn’t sit quite right. He felt a little gunshot in his stomach when he peered out his foggy windshield of his beat-up car, looking at the streets and realising that Kersbrook was not like any other town that he had passed through. He was just a visitor, but in one second, as soon as his tyres had reeled their way into Kersbrook, he knew that something was different.

  He knew something was up when he first entered town. The skies were darker, the streets were cracked and there was this bitter taste which seeped into his humming car. That strange feeling came over Cam almost instantly as the tyres of his car turned slowly, slackening to come close to a stop down the lonely street he drove down. Entering such a darkened town had directed Cam to believe he left something... Like all the light and happiness was long gone behind him.

  The town was overcast with a sense of subtle dread and if it wasn’t for the party of his best friend, he would not have become one of Kersbrook's passers-by. Haunting it was, like he had entered the back roads all of a sudden and nothing was alike to how he knew it back home. Nervously, Cam listened to his motor chug. The entire car rocked. Even the motor was timid. He should have known that the town that he had stayed in was in trouble from the very start. Little did he know that something whispered around the streets at night like smoke or a snapping wind. Cam didn’t know what he got himself into. Nobody ever did.

  The town of Kersbrook which rested outside of Orange county was afraid and forced into silence. Suppressed and trapped on the warp of an evil being which hid in the dark of the town, there was nothing else for it but to put up with it and keep silent to stay out of it’s wake. You could get in, but you could never get out so easily without knowing the secret of what moved around the town in the darkened hours.

  It was an indescribable monster and if you talked about it, if you warned an outsider about it, if you stayed out in the dark in which it moves around and preyed in, you would be hunted and killed. There was no way about it but to wait it out until the sun came back up.

  This malevolent terror which crusades the town at night is manipulative, it can drive you to insanity and worst of all, it turns into its victims most primal fear once it strikes at whoever it manages to capture off guard when they’re on the streets at night.

  This, creature could never come out during the light of day, like it would melt from it’s existence or something if it were to. An outsider whom did not know or could not be told about the towns primal rules was usually a victim to the seductive, manipulative and luring mischief which killed in the dark.

  It will mask into your deepest fears but at first, it will lure you with a safe and happy figment whilst hiding its true self to get you close to it. Like a rattlesnakes tail, luring it’s prey to the rocks, it firstly seems inviting. Then, the merge of a devilish and alienist creature hides behind its clever and deceptive facade. It snares whoever it can in the dark with its vicious claws and savage teeth. For the ones who wander the streets at night and do not know about it, are best not to warn. If the creature is robbed of a feast, then it will turn to the one that is responsible in warning those not to go out.

  The very few that were able to escape it made themselves swear to never speak of it.

  Remaining secluded, tormented by the haunting horrors left behind from their survival, that’s how it was for Jake Truman.

  He once was a man about the town who was cautious but barely scared of what lingered in the dark. As a senior folk, the town who knew him mostly called him Mr. Truman.

  He was once one of the busiest men in Kersbrook, he owned his own mechanics and fixed up the cars of the town. Now a crippled, terror-riddled old man, those days were in the past. Once a strong built and a wise-wielded man, now was a man whom was virtually strapped down to a lifetime of serenity in his own blurry and unhinged mind to what he had seen.

  He sat down in a chair for most of the day in his hospital
room, looking out of the window of the second levelled building, letting the sun course through the window and touching his skin as he basked in his weary age.

  The Graceworth’s home was where he spent all his days in a deep insanity in which he may never emerge from. He sat in his stain-printed chair, nervously thinking and containing the secrets that people only guessed at. It was something that he saw, something that he could only picture in his mind for the rest of his declining days. It stayed framed in his mind to turn him ill and distorted by the distasteful creature that he once came across and lived to survive, but to be left to trouble him to the deep pit of insanity.

  Fearing in his own mind, he may never climb out of the trouble that taunted his every waking moment. Every day he lived a nightmare which stuck in his own mind. He could not get out as the thing he feared never left, but stayed with him for good.

  He rather wished he would just be cut free from his hell that he had to face. If he weren’t strapped and bounded to his chair, he might have escaped his own torture by now.

  For the way he acted, for the way he spoke and the way he looked in thought, he was labelled insane, or shell shocked by most about the town by now. They would be right if insane changed it’s meaning to terrified to death. For now, he was left restrained like a toddler in his high chair, making him look even more insane then what people first thought.

  The nurses who looked after him barely wanted to go near him as quite frankly – he scared them a little.

  Mr. Truman was a war veteran, and some chose to believe that the war had turned him into the timid man that remained. Most had seen him that way, but many had known exactly what had happened to the man who spent most of his days sitting in the light of the sun.

  For the rest of the town’s scared and frail population, they knew not to ask, but to keep quiet in fear that death would come for them.

  The people were safe in their homes and by a bright light, but anywhere that became dark was a passageway for it to pass.

  The brightness of a light or the summon of morning day light was the only thing that could keep the creature away. The only way the it could not get to you was if you had some form of a light to stop it. Lamp posts were pinned upon the footpaths of every street and torches were a necessity for all. Many of times, once warnings of the creature were spoken aloud to loved ones, the town had discovered a slaughter or two in ones home.

  If you were to know about this monstrosity, the first thing to think of would be to get yourself out of the town. But it did not matter, it followed you wherever you went.

  It had a source of evil magic about it that a simple escape could not allude the blood thirsty creature. There was no escape.

  The town was merely waking up to discover the news of the latest murder of one of the towns long-stayed residents. Again, it happened to yet another sweet and loving member of the community. Mr. Timms was the last victim to have been clawed to death like an eagle ripping the head of a mouse clean off from it’s body.

  The examinations had discovered that the scratches upon his wrenched stomach belonged to some form of vicious creature. What was also shown was the wounds of something else much fiercer that began to eat his flesh. The gashes and teeth marks in his skin and inside of his stomach could only be described as the result of a brutal, unnatural attack. But many knew that behind those deep, caving wounds that it was the works of the “Nightmare”.

  Three days before Cam drove into town, the “Nightmare” struck yet another. On that day, the law were stunned from what carnage they had come to see in the Timms residence.

  It was quite an unusually drizzly day in the end of the season of Summer. The clouds rumbled up above to fill the sky with darkness. Rain poured down and thunder roared to the crack of lightning. The rain beat down so hard that it was enough to destroy plants in the soil of the back gardens of people’s homes.

  Never had the town of Kersbrook had seen such horrid weather during this time of year, yet it was only suitable for what had happened.

  Dark, stormy and rainy was the voice of the community of Kersbrook, so it seemed. The streets were overflowing with water and draining down the side gutters. The patters and chugs echoed along the silent streets.

  The water rushed down the gutters, burping and lapping down the storm drain, depositing deep down the underground tunnel networks. Over the weather, the rattling of chunks on the street got caught in the drift. The reckoning of the sudden storm destroyed the streets. Garbage, bark, leaves and even errant bones from outdoor barbeque grills flowed down from the road and clogged the stream of water which flushed down the storm drain.

  The thunderclouds and the heavy rain seeped into all the dark corners of the town, drenching everything, immersing plants, rooftops and roads in a teary, wet patter. No other street in the small town of Kersbrook was quite busier than Mitchem street.

  Usually it was the quietest of all streets. It was somewhat tucked away. Graceworth’s hospital and the local school was far towards the other end of town. On this day, it was different.. At the end of Mitchem street, where the rain bucketed down so hard to make the street look eerie in its thunderous darkness, it was particularly busy for the first time.

  The street was swarmed with black sedans and an emergency vehicle that was parked out of the front of the Timms residency.

  From down the end of the street, one could hear the echoes of a dampened cry which whimpered with the spats of the rain tapping the road.

  A woman cried, covered her mouth and wiped her tears on her fading pink dressing gown as she watched on from underneath the porch of a drenched house.

  Men in hazmat-like white uniforms had passed in and out of her open front door. Some were already bloodied from investigating. Law enforcers and investigators in suits carrying briefcases hung around like cats waiting to be fed. Like all times, they were scared of what they had stumbled into, but they were never shocked to repetition. Nothing seemed like it could get the better of someone once it had been seen before. But in Kersbrook, the body of a murdered victims nothing short of gruelling.

  The woman watched under her tear-soaked eyes as two men carried Mr Timms out of the house on a stretcher on wheels – Another victim to the count. His body was covered by a navy-blue cover as he was carried off the porch and down the centre pavement where both the pavement and the overgrown grass in were sopping wet.

  The man under the rain-proof sheet had went by the name of Mr. Timms. His lifeless body was carried on a wheeled stretcher and was heading for the emergency car parked on the curb out front of the house.

  The clouds rumbled and the skies continued to throw down rain and boom its thunder, setting the scene on Mitchem street. It certainly caught up with the tears of the middled age woman whom watched her dead father being wheeled down the centre footpath and into the back of the emergency car. She couldn’t imagine something so terrible ever happening, but seeing his body in that body bag made it real.

  That was the end of Mr. Timms, the daughter would have never thought that such a dark day could have brought with it such a terrible death that she had to wake up to.

  She wiped the tears which streamed down her cheeks again, watching the body being lodged into the back of the emergency van.

  The navy-blue sheets which covered him were blood-soaked in a venomous black which had turned that colour under the navy sheet. The two men who carried him could barely look down to notice it, they did not want to. The sight would have made their stomachs churn, but it was even worse from within the destroyed room that Mr. Timms was found in the early hours of the morning.

  The woman continued to sob as authorities and investigators ravaged the home in which the murder was committed. She had been told to stay out in the chilly morning air so that they could perform their ritual of gathering evidence. Eventually, the two men returned to the car, which took off from the curb into the gloomy morning.

  The woman felt helpless. All the blood draine
d from her body and she was as white as a sheet. She had spilled most of her emotions too, looking like an empty suit, but frail to pump out another load of emotion.

  There was nothing she could say nor was there anything she could do but watch her departed father being driven off to the coroner’s office. Mitchem street was filled with parked cars, some black and some a deep brown – all were coated in rain droplets and their tyres looked as if they had just been glazed in a wax.

  Investigators were still coming up the path with utensils and equipment to help their investigation.

  Some men were dressed in blue overalls and health masks to gather evidence. They carried bags which weighed down their arms to almost touch the ground. A sound radio from a car which had just parked up in a free space was the loudest sound to challenge the heavy rain and thunderclouds. The woman watched through her wet eyes as a cat leaped up onto the porch rest.

  A man wearing a black hat, a brown trench coat and with largely framed glasses stepped out of a car that only just arrived. He began walking across the grass to reach the centre footpath. From a first glance, before poison himself from what he had heard on the telephone, he glared up at the saddened woman and her defensive cat. Upon his face was a greeting smile which he tried to comfort the woman who stared at him as he walked down the path with his swaying brief case. The smart-dressed man reached the white steps of the porch, his hands slithered up on the wet rail as he stepped up then slowly erasing his smile from his face.

  ‘Good morning, Madam. By the amount of cars that are parked at the front of your home I am correct to believe that this is the Timm’s residence.’ The woman tilted her head and corrected the wet strands of hair which fell down her forehead.

  ‘Was the Timms residence, sir. But you are correct to be believing that it was his in the recent past,’ she answered in a soppy voice.