(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

You asked – we listened. Since so many of you have commented, emailed and tweeted demanding more than one chapter per week, we figured what better time than Halloween to serve up a double dose of Available Darkness? Come back on Saturday for the bonus chapter, which is practically as long as two chapters, so it’s almost like we’re doing three chapters this week!

And all we ask in return is that you help us promote Available Darkness – especially for Halloween weekend, when people might be looking for a good scary read. Please tweet, email, or just tell a friend. And for all you new readers, or shy ones, we’d love to hear what you think. Please leave a comment or email us and let us know what you think.

And lastly, a sneak peek at the book cover below.

Abigail!

John filled the empty room with his hoarse voice but the only thing that returned was the sound of his own dull echo. Where the hell are they?

Pain hammered against his skull as a ravenous feeling of need burned through his entire body. The deep yearning felt somewhere close to hunger, but more insatiable and far less reasonable; clouding the edges of every thought. He HAD to get out now. Had to … feed.

For the second time in as many days, he woke up confined. This time by a jacket rather than a grave. John would have gladly taken the tomb instead.

He writhed and squirmed, trying to free his arms from the goddamned prison of fabric and buckles, but the constant motion only seemed to tangle him further. Panic and rage flooded his senses like a shot of adrenaline as he shook his entire body in a vain attempt at escape.

“Damnit!” he screamed, spittle raining from his mouth.

“What did you do to me?!” he bellowed to the empty rooms, hoping that bastard Larry was within earshot.

He began breathing faster and more shallow as panic needled his brain, whispering that he would die right here in this spot if he did not break free RIGHT NOW.

He shook again, this time kicking his feet into the floor and sending his chair flying back into the wall. His head bounced against the drywall with a dull thud.

“Fuck!” he screamed.

Where were Abigail and Larry? With a flare of anger, John vowed to tear Larry to shreds if he’d done anything to harm the girl. Then, he had an idea – he could try to connect to Abigail. Perhaps if he could concentrate long enough he would be able to sense her, to at least know if she was okay. His mind, however, was a tumultuous mix of panic, pain, and hunger, flashing through each phase with equal intensity, making slow, deliberate thought all but impossible.

He glared up at the monitors, showing the news – still – of him. Isn’t there anything else happening in the fucking world?

Two of the monitors weren’t displaying news. They were closed circuit monitors, one which showed the parking lot of the motel and the other which showed what John presumed to be the rear of the building. From his viewpoint, he could see the entire parking lot. Larry’s van was missing.

It’s okay, they’ll be back … no, they fucking left and you know it … you’re going to die right here. They left you to die. He and Abigail left you alone. To die.

John closed his eyes, trying to shake the anger from his thoughts. It worked, even if only temporarily. He found himself thinking of Hope and the dream, and suddenly, he was awash in the emotions that he woke to, sadness and misery. John could feel tears wanting to burst from his eyes, but his face seemed frozen, taut, like it was going to crack from the pressure building within.

Suddenly, a beeping sound.

John glanced up and the two closed circuit monitors had red bars along the bottom which read “ALERT.”

That’s when John saw four black vans pull into the parking lot. Panic returned to seize control of his senses. He began to writhe again in his jacket in another attempt to squirm free.

____________________

The newspapers were full of people who needed to die; corrupt politicians whose actions indirectly led to the deaths to their constituents, unscrupulous businessmen who took ungodly sums of money while robbing the pensions of their employees, to the hundreds of people who beat, robbed and raped those weaker than themselves.

A world of wolves fat with prey.

Though there was no shortage of people who would enhance the world in their absence, people who deserved a verdict harsher than that which the dubious legal system would impose, there were none which were both local and within easy reach. A shame really, because Larry, now that he had given it some thought, rather liked the idea of vigilantism by vampire. But justice, it seemed, would have to wait. This morning, they might have to be the very wolves who preyed on the weak and innocent.

“I wish I were a vampire,” Abigail said, tossing the paper to the floor, “I would just roam the night, helping people and killing bad guys.”

“That would be cool,” Larry said. “Though I don’t think you’d enjoy the loneliness of such an existence.”

A chorus of beeping abruptly rang through the cabin. The alarm he’d set up at the motel began its cry on his cell phone.

“Shit,” he said, awkwardly scrambling toward the back of the van.

On the monitor, he could see the four vans which had breached the motel’s parking lot.

Abigail was behind him. “What’s happening?”

“John has company,” he said as he bolted back to the front seat and gunned the engine. “We need to get back there now.”

Staring at the monitors, Abigail stumbled forward to the floorboard and rolled into the back of the passenger bucket seat as Larry kicked the van into motion. She sat up, holding tight to the back of the seat.

“Who are they?”

“It’s either the good guys or the bad guys,” Larry said, “my money’s on the bad guys.”

“What do you mean?”

There are two different groups of people who want something John has, Larry explained. Something he doesn’t even know he has.

“What is it?”

“A memory both sides want,” Larry said.

“So why doesn’t he give it to the good guys?”

“Because,” Larry explained in as simple as terms as he could, “the good guys aren’t necessarily the ‘good guys.’ They’re just a little better than the bad guys.” Larry shrugged. “And maybe worse. The bad guys only want the information, but the good guys want to prevent the bad guys from getting it. And the only way to really do that is to kill John.”

Abigail turned back to the monitors and watched as the van doors opened and a small army of men spilled from the aperture with weapons drawn. She cried out.

“They’ve got an army,” she cried out.

“How many are there?”

Abigail counted, “I see 12.”

“Fuck,” Larry cursed as he raced down the highway, hoping he could reach the motel in time.

TO BE CONTINUED… TOMORROW

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

“I asked you to what?” John said, trying to make sense of Larry’s confusing statement.

“You came to me two months back, begging me to wipe your memory and bury you alive. You said ‘they’ had found you and that you needed to protect someone.”

John’s mind was still a blank slate.

“I don’t get it, how does burying me protect someone? Who was I running from and who was I trying to protect?” An idea flashed through his mind, the woman in the memory delivered by Abigail, but John didn’t want to give Larry any information which could compromise him, or Hope, wherever she was. If she were in fact safe.

“You didn’t say who,” Larry said, “but you did say the only way you could make sure they couldn’t read your mind was if it was wiped clean. And that involved a spell and for you to die … well, temporarily, anyway.”

Larry looked at John, then shook his head and grabbed the other chair. He sat, rolled closer and leaned forward to explain.

“You’re not a human, John. You’re from another dimension, one that was once connected to our own. Think of it as an Earth Two,” Larry said, making a globe with his hands, “except this Earth is called Otherworld, or properly, orbis alia, a place where stuff like vampires and fairies and all sorts of other crazy shit isn’t the stuff of fairy-tales.  Over there, it’s all real.”

John stared at Larry, trying to determine if he was insane or just fucking with him. Given all that had happened tonight, John supposed anything was possible. But fairies?

“You are a feeder, you need to feed off the life force of others in order to live. It’s a lot like the whole ‘vampire thing’ – you suck the life from people and can die if exposed to sunlight. You’re also close to immortal, meaning you age super slowly, though don’t ask me how old you are, because you’ve never told me. Well, you were immortal, I should say. Then two years ago, you found a solution, to become human, for lack of a better word.”

“You mean, I wasn’t a feeder anymore?”

“No,” through hundreds of hours of meditation, spells and rituals, you’d suppressed it. You were able to live just like anyone else, go outside during the day, you were even able to touch people without killing them.”

John looked at his hands and realized how quickly he’d felt the weight of his curse and how he longed to lose his deadly touch.

“And you were the happiest I’d ever seen you,” Larry continued, “even though you’d gotten sick a few times and could feel the effects of aging. You said it was all worth it.”

She must be special, John thought.

“How did we meet?” John asked.

“I was a P.I. and we met about four years back when you needed me to look into a … personal matter. Soon enough, you hired me on full-time to take care of various things and help you get out of all the jams your condition sometimes got you into. In return, you taught me some magick from time to time.”

“Which is why you’re immune to my touch?” John asked.

“Not exactly,” Larry said, “it’s a long story, but suffice it to say, I’m the only one who is immune. So, anyway, two months ago you came to me in a panic. You were a lot more secretive than usual, didn’t want me to know what was going on, saying it could put me in danger.”

“I need to know everything you know,” John said.

Larry leaned forward, the smile gone from his face and his cheeks.

“There are some things you told me not to tell you, no matter how much you begged or threatened. Otherwise, you said, things could get dangerous for everyone. Hope you understand.”

John glared.

“You have to trust me,” Larry said, “or at least trust yourself.”

“Can you tell me who is after me?” John asked, “because I don’t think I was able to…”

Suddenly, John heard footsteps approaching in the next room.

Larry leaped from his seat and grabbed the gun from his waistband with surprising agility, especially for a fat guy. He ran into the room, gun drawn. As John followed, he saw the target – Abigail, standing in room, confused, eyes wide as Larry descended on her with his gun.

“No,” John screamed. He meant to scream, ‘she’s with me’, but all that came out was an incoherent yelp, his mouth betraying his brain. He reached out desperately to grab Larry’s shoulder and pull him back, but Larry was too far ahead, gun drawing down on Abigail too quickly for him to do anything but be a helpless witness.

A sharp pain shot through John’s brain, spine, and then his extended arm as a bolt of blinding energy shot forth from his hand and slammed Larry forward with the force of  a powerful ocean wave.

Larry flew forward, scrambling to the ground as his gun fell on the floor in front of Abigail. She quickly grabbed it and handed it to John, who was shaking, frightened and on his knees, suddenly exhausted.

Larry sat up, rubbing his head, “what the hell?”

John aimed the gun at Larry, finger tight on the trigger, the gun a bit wobbly in his hand, “She’s with me.”

Larry looked at him, then up for a moment, “Ah, she’s the girl on the TV, the one you kidnapped.”

“Woah,” Abigail said to John as she stepped cautiously towards him, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

John looked up and smiled at her, “yeah, me either.”

Then John noticed that the gun, still trained on Larry, was shaking violently in his hand.

“Dude, you might want to sit down,” Larry said as he started to come towards John.

“Wha?” John said before the world spun black and fell in around him.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Be sure to check out our new feature, Author’s Notes in the comments section following each chapter. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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3. Available Darkness: Chapter 26 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller...

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

John stared at the dingy hotel room, framed in front of the old van like a perfectly preserved artifact from an abandoned Hollywood set. Though all the rooms were boarded up, John was sure he sensed movement from somewhere toward the back of the hotel.

He wasn’t sure how he knew someone was in the room, either an extrasensory gift included with his curse, or skin on the bones of a hunch. In any event, he was learning to trust his instincts, for they were significantly more aware than the rest of him felt.

“I want you to wait here,” he told Abigail.

They were parked across the street, in front of a run down strip mall whose only remaining tenant still barely in business was a lone stalwart of a dying grocery store chain.

“No way,” Abigail shook her head.

John stared at her for maybe a second, “Listen,” he said, “I don’t know what’s waiting for me in there and I couldn’t live with myself if something bad happened to you because of me.”

“I don’t…” she began.

“You take these keys,” he interrupted, “If I don’t come out or you hear something awful, drive away. Just keep driving until you find a cop or a busy place where you can call for cops. Just tell them everything that happened, no lies. You will be safe.”

She began to protest, but stopped just before his finger hit his lips.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

She nodded, eyes welling up with tears.

Rather than saying anything, he opened the car door and stepped into the night to meet his destiny.
________________

Baldwin was still having difficulty filtering the information that Bob had just thrown in his lap. Prior to tonight‘s events, prior to seeing the folder with the old photos, Baldwin wouldn’t have bought any of this. He was a man of logic not given to thoughts of supernatural explanations.

Bob explained that the feeders seemed to derive their energy through contact, which left their victims burned to a crisp. A few key government agencies knew of the creatures’ existence, though no official paperwork has ever documented anything beyond the photos Bob was holding onto. Until a few years ago, the parasites, as Bob referred to them, flew mostly under the radar. They were mostly remembered in the talk of urban legends and drunken ramblings, nothing which threatened to expose them to the public at large.

“Look, there’s a lot of shit out there that we can’t explain,” Bob said, “For the most part, we live with it. Let things lie. And that was the case with these feeders. Yes, we knew about them, but they kept to themselves and didn’t leave many messes for us to clean up. But then they either got careless or cocky.”

Once the corpses started piling up in public places, the Omega team began seriously investigating the creatures and destroying any evidence which might get people talking. Which was why Bob was all the more pissed to see footage of one of the creatures all over the news tonight.

“So this guy I’m chasing – he’s a feeder?” Baldwin asked, still uncomfortable using jargon that belonged in a tattered paperback horror novel or low budget flick for teens.

“Yes,” Bob said.

“Who is he?”

Bob took a moment, as if still uncertain how much to tell Baldwin.

“His name is John Sullivan, or at least that’s the name we know him by. He’s a lot older than he appears and has killed scores of people we know of and likely many we don’t.”

“Yes,” Bob said, carrying the bottle of vodka to a chair opposite Baldwin.

“Why is he killing, or feeding from these people? And why my wife? Why send letters, taunting me?”

“He’s not just a feeder,” Bob explained, “he is part of a cell that is looking to bring this arm of the agency down.”

“A cell of feeders? They’re organized? How many of these fuckers are we talking about?”

Bob explained that the agency had no idea how many there were beyond the handful that it tracked and kept tabs on. When asked why the agency didn‘t just kill them, Bob explained that it was more important for the agency to infiltrate the group and locate the head.

“Is Sullivan the head?”

“No, he’s more like the enforcer, doing the dirty work for people higher up the chain than himself.”

Something wasn’t adding up for Baldwin. Why did the vampires have it out for the Feds? Other than the obvious reasons, of course. And why would they target his wife? Something was off and Baldwin’s instincts weren’t going to let him leave until he had amply probed for better answers.

Bob told him to hold on, disappeared for a moment into a side room, then returned holding a small black velvet bag. He handed it to Baldwin.

The bag was light, two items shifting inside it as Baldwin pulled the black drawstring. Inside were two circular stones, a deep shade of crimson. He touched one and a slight spark shot from the rock to his hand causing him to jump in his seat and drop the stone back into the sack.

“What are these?”

“Those are artifacts and the very reason the feeders are coming for us.”

_____________________

John stood outside the boarded up door of the hotel room. Only when he drew closer could he see that the boards were on a hinge, easily pulled back to reveal a door behind. From the other end, John could hear the faint sound of an old Seinfeld episode. He smiled for a moment with the recognition of a memory from his past. A moment later, a man’s laughter from the room cut John’s smile short.

He glanced back at the car, saw Abigail’s head peeking over the dashboard, watching him intently. He smiled then knocked on the door.

John wondered, not for the first time, if he was making a mistake. What if the person waiting for him was the very person who left him buried alive? John tried to ignore the nagging doubt and continue to trust his instincts.

The TV clicked off and silence waited on the other side of the door. Perhaps the person wasn’t sure if they imagined the knock. John knocked again, this time louder.

“Who is it?” the guy asked. John could hear the caution, and perhaps fear, wavering in the guy’s voice.

“It’s John.”

From the other end, John heard several thumps, the crash of aluminum cans, some more thumps and then the door opened. A short young man with wild brown hair, thick black framed glasses and a huge beer gut greeted John. He wore blue boxers and a faded black TOOL shirt.

This is my destiny? John thought.

“Well, holy shit,” the man said, his eyes wide joined by a smile even wider, “John!” he said as he opened his arms to embrace him.

John tried to step back but hedged a second too long.

The man squeezed John like an old pillow, but didn’t burst into flames!

John was baffled, but allowed the stranger to continue with the hug that felt like it was falling into forever. There was something deep in the embrace; the sort of affection you save for long lost friends, lovers or family members.

“You sure as hell took long enough,” the guy whistled, “Shit!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

We’ll be fielding any comments or questions you have in the comments section, so stop by. We’d love to hear what you think. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

Abigail lifted her head and opened her lids to a swath of angry shadows and blood-red blur.

She was sitting upright in a chair, arms fastened behind her and thick cord chewing at her ankles. Somewhere above her, soft cinnamon lights cast the dark room in a sinister blush. She saw the hazy image of someone sitting directly in front of her, also bound.

She pretended not to notice the other person, while slowly attempting to calculate her surroundings before her captors grew wise to her awareness; a lesson well learned during her time in the monster‘s closet. Her new cage was small; the only sticks of furniture being two chairs so old, Abigail could clearly see the paint peeling even in the shadows.

A dull ache shivered through her shoulders, hands and ankles from whatever had been used to bind her. Only once her mind’s fog had started its recession did she realize the other prisoner was her own reflection in a large mirror that ran up and down the length of the wall. In the reflection, she saw another smaller mirrored window and a door with no knob on the wall behind her. Just a deadbolt.

A prisoner once again.

The last thing Abigail remembered was the van door sliding open. Immediately before that, the thing she would never forget, the deputy’s head blown clean from his shoulders. She remembered looking down and watching in horror as his blood stained both her arms and the front of her jacket. The jacket was now missing. She was in the tee shirt and pajama bottoms she’d been wearing, with the stench of sweat and blood coating her like dry mud.

Abigail struggled to loosen her binds, but her muscles spasmed in painful protest. She wiggled her toes against a cold floor which had neither tile or carpet, dressed instead in the slightly powdery feel of unfinished concrete. Using her toes, she found just enough leverage to rock her seat. The chair screeched, and she was certain whoever was watching her, probably from the other side of the mirror, had captured the sound.

She looked directly into the mirror and smiled. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked in a voice that wore an unwavering veneer of false courage.

Silence met her facade.

A sudden fear rippled through her body as Abigail wondered which would be the worse fate, to be left alone in a room to die or held prisoner by the men who stole her. She had only seconds to stew in the alternatives before the telltale sound of keys jingled against the silence from the other side of the door.

The lock clicked and the door swung open.

A bald man wearing nothing but black materialized in the reflection. He appeared to be in his late 30’s, but truth is always more difficult in the dark. His face harbored no color and his cheeks were sallow. Two black pits bounced against the mirror toward Abigail from the grey pools sunken in the man’s face. He smiled, perhaps the creepiest smile she’d ever seen, a near impossible blue ribbon considering her past.

The man in black disappeared from the doorway for a moment before Abigail heard a long, drawn scraping sound coming up the hall.

scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape

What the?

She watched the mirror, her heart beating loud enough to echo as she tried to imagine the source of the din.

scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape

The man reappeared, dragging a heavy looking black wood chair slowly and deliberately behind him, his eyes never leaving her reflection; the crooked smile never leaving his face.

scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape

“Hello,” he said, his voice smooth and almost soothing, a well rehearsed repose that only added to the menace.

The scraping grew louder as he circled her with the chair before coming to rest just a few feet in front of her. He yanked the chair up, surprisingly quick and Abigail flinched. His smile widened.

He then slammed the chair down with a loud thud which echoed off the walls. The chair back faced her. the man sat down, also facing her, legs straddling the seat back and arms draped almost lazily off the back of the chair, his fingers dangling just inches from her chest.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, “I said, ‘hello.’”

“Hello,” she said, her bravery evaporated.

Abigail’s heartbeat seemed to carry the decibels of thunder in the confinement of their narrow space. Somehow, the man not only seemed to notice her quickened pulse, but appeared to take great pleasure as well.

“And what is your name, sweetie?”

She saw no sense in lying, so told him in a whisper. He extended his fingers, gesturing a hand shake before pulling them back, as if he had absentmindedly forgotten that she was bound.

“My name is Jacob,” he said, “and I’d like to ask you some questions about the man you were with.”

Abigail hesitated then said, “What man?”

Jacob — if that was indeed his name — cocked his head to the side. The same smile that had haunted his face a moment before returned, though wider and this time more terrifying.

“Listen, Abigail,” he said from behind his teeth, “I am going to ask you some questions and it would be in your best interests to simply tell the truth.”

She stared at him, silent. She wasn’t trying to be defiant, but rather trying to buy time while she thought of how she would answer his questions about her angel.

Jacob leaned in to Abigail until his fingers were a mere inch from her face. A blue spark shot from his skin to hers and she jumped back with a squeal.

Vampire!

He pulled his hand back, tilted his head slightly and furrowed his brow.

“Oh, I’m quite sorry,” he said, wearing sincerity like an ornament, “I really didn’t mean to do that.”

He stood up, then faced away from her and into the mirror, where his eyes met Abigail’s in an embrace she couldn’t break.

“You see, sometimes I forget…” he trailed off for a moment, lost in thought, “I certainly don’t wish you any harm. You are only a child, after all. A poor innocent child caught up in something far beyond her understanding.”

The sincerity on his face seemed to deepen alongside Abigail’s confusion. She began to wonder if maybe this man could help John. Perhaps the two of them were friends?

“Unfortunately,” Jacob said, still staring in the mirror, “my friend here doesn’t have the same compunctions about children.”

A sound snapped the unsteady quiet behind her and Abigail watched in horror as something unthinkable suddenly writhed through the door; something so wretched it devoured the image of the deputy’s head exploding.

An almost skeletal woman entered the room, nude and hairless, her skin almost featureless, save for a nearly translucent membrane of skin that glistened in the glow of amber light. She looked, in a word, undone. Her breasts were two small sacks with nipples absent. Her face wore the landscape of a nightmare, lacking eyes, ears or even a mouth, constantly changing as bones or something shifted beneath the skin as if in a blind attempt at completing its form.

And the sound, the crunching of bones beneath the monster’s flesh, reached into Abigail’s gut and twisted like a blade.

The minion moved slowly, long, skeletal fingers, without nails, reaching out to feel its way around. At first it felt the doorway and then reached out, into the room, as it stepped forward with trepidation. Its footfalls slapped like wet fish against the floor as it moved forward. As the creature’s impossibly long fingers felt blindly around the room, Abigail spun her head back, eyes dilated in trembling terror.

“No, don’t let it touch me!” she whimpered, struggling to break free her binds at the demon’s approach.

Jacob held up a hand, almost casually, and the creature recoiled, its limbs flying over its face like a scolded child, or misused animal. An unholy shriek filled the room, though the thing had no mouth. Abigail was pretty certain the shrieking was not something she heard with hear ears, but rather her mind.

“Go!” he commanded and the shrieking stopped instantly.

The creature retreated, its hands finding the doorway before leaving the room.

Abigail was still shaking and shame flushed her face as she realized she had pissed herself.

Jacob smiled.

“Remember now,” his smile lit the room. “No lies.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

We’ll be fielding any comments or questions you have in the comments section, so stop by. We’d love to hear what you think. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

Something was wrong. The gallon of ice water that had settled at the top of John’s shoulders was now sliding down his spine and speaking of Abigail’s trouble.

He bolted upright in the bed and glanced at the clock on the cable box – 6:51 p.m. – and then at the curtains. His toes curled into the carpet as he made three long strides toward the shrouded wall. He wanted to part the curtains and take a peek outside, but a sudden fear grabbed his hand and held it. The sun was low in the sky, but still there, and John could feel its deadly light holding him prisoner in the hotel room. Another 10 minutes at least.

A current rippled through his body and caused the hair on his arms to stand up and wave like wheat in the wind. He paced the floor, repeating his whisper to no one.

The girl is safe — this is all in your mind.

A seam in his subconscious, barely tethered to begin with, suddenly split and spilled a swift shimmer of images. John caught a glimpse of a rearview mirror, a cop car with spinning red and blue lights and a the edged shadow of a looming nightmare.

Fuck.

The image evaporated almost as quickly as it came, and John tried to comfort himself with the thought that it was just fear holding court in his head, mocking him like the final rays of the sun outside. If he could only ignore it a little while longer, he would be rewarded with Abigail walking through the door. Any minute now, he almost allowed himself to believe.

As if to punish hope for daring to show its face, John was slapped with another flash, just as quick and twice as painful. He saw Abigail’s hand push open the door of the old sedan before she stepped onto the road.

The image turned to gauze, then faded to black.

John frantically circled the room as though his body was an antenna seeking for the connection he had with the girl. Logic told him he was simply imagining things. Then again, logic had spiraled down the drain along with his sanity the moment he woke in a coffin.

What he was seeing was real.

He closed his eyes, trying to coax another image into view, but nothing would color the sudden hollow of his mind. If there was a way to control this, whatever this was, he was operating without a manual.

“Damn it,” he snarled in a voice several octaves deeper than it had been earlier in the evening. The new timbre surprised him, as though a stranger’s voice had been driven from the depths of his throat.

Another flash and he found himself again looking through Abigail’s eyes and up at the cop.

The image quickly turned to vapor.

Shit.

John double checked the bags sitting at the foot of the door. Everything was packed and good to go. He glanced at the curtains again, tried to summon the courage to pull them aside, then shuddered with the thought that it would probably be easier to part the sea.

Something inside him whispered, you’ll burn just like they did.

Another flash. Abigail was looking around at the traffic, quietly frantic. So many people staring at her. John was swimming inside her emotions, feeling her longing to just disappear. He caught another brief glimpse of the cop before the image vanished, replaced by the sight of his hand curling tightly into the thick hotel curtains.

Fuck it.

He tugged the curtains aside, no more than a couple of inches, and his world exploded in a helix of fire and agony.

John launched back, hitting the far wall, causing a tacky hotel room framed piece to fall onto him. The left side of his face matched the inferno erupting across the sudden cinder of his left arm. His mouth opened impossibly wide to unleash the ear-splitting shriek of a banshee. His body writhed beneath the frame, wracked in torment for what seemed an eternity. He focused on the only thing he could see from where he was — a cracked electrical outlet — clutching it as an anchor to keep him rooted in this world and to prevent him from blacking out again.

Abigail needed him.

He held tight as the intense pain started to recede. However, he still felt as if he’d been hit by a truck — a truck on fire — and could only lay on the floor. He thought of Abigail again, her wide eyes, and felt a pang in his heart. That she should suffer so much in her short life enraged him. He shrugged the framed art aside and sat up.

The curtains had fallen back closed, returning the room to the safety of darkness.

The sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeated his nostrils and stirred a surprising growl in his stomach despite knowing the scent was of his own body roasting. His left arm was the color of charred brick, raw with blood and torn skin, but still functioning.

He dreaded seeing his face.

John pulled himself up against the wall and slowly made his way to the bathroom mirror. The left side of his face was the snapshot of a monster. Not as bad as his arm, but horribly mottled; his left eye crusted shut and throbbing beneath the thin mangled membrane of remaining flesh.

The mirror disappeared in another flash, replaced with Abigail’s vision. She was still with the cop, the two of them now talking. An approaching van had grabbed her attention. Oh Christ – in the window! A masked man with a gun appeared in slow motion.

The image disappeared alongside all lucidity.

A preternatural quiet suffocated the room suppressing all but the mingling sounds of John’s shallow breaths and pounding heart. He searched the mirror for a way to save the girl, afraid if he did not act quickly, the next image would be from inside her closed eyelids.

The silence of dusk was shattered by a gunshot that was half in his mind and half an echo in the distance.

“Nooooo!”

John screamed, instinct and rage seizing control of his limbs and driving him into spontaneous motion.

Though every move seemed to rip his wounded flesh even more, he swallowed the pain and scanned the room. He grabbed the blanket on Abigail’s bed and wrapped it around his body in one quick sweep. He lurched forward and also grabbed two pillow cases, then ran towards the door, stuffed one case inside the other and pulled them over his head.

“I’m coming, Abigail,” he said, hoping that whatever connection there was between them carried the message to her.

He breathed in deeply before opening the door to abandon the safe harbor of the hotel in a deadly swap for the savagery of the awaiting sunlight.

TO BE CONTINUED…

We’ll be fielding any comments or questions you have in the comments section, so stop by. We’d love to hear what you think. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror story co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

Street lights blurred by the car’s window as the man without a name raced the retreating moon.

He was in frantic search for a hotel far enough from the murder scene to make the mallet in his mind cease its pounding. He’d driven about 40 frenzied miles North before finally spotting an aging Motel Eight, squat and half forgotten off the highway. A flickering neon light announced “VA  ANCY”.

The shrubbery surrounding the motel looked as though it had enjoyed jurisdiction for at least the last half year; the kind of place where attention to detail was not a priority. It was the perfect spot for a man with no legal identification to lay low until nightfall.

Abigail had fallen asleep in the back seat, covered by a tattered pink blanket she had brought along with her. The man thought how normal she appeared all curled up in slumber, as though she hadn’t been brushed by tragedy beyond reason.

The fat man at the desk barely glanced over his early edition of the Sports page long enough to take the amnesiac’s $40 in exchange for a sticky key ring, its faded blue label peeling with the number 7.

“Thanks,” the amnesiac said.

“Yeah,” the fat man said, “the pleasure was all mine.”

The amnesiac drew an empty breath, figuring the less banter the better just a beat before his planned response slipped from his lips.

The room was exactly as squalid as he expected. Though at the moment, the door may as well have been opened by his personal butler.

Abigail found one of the two beds, laid down and grabbed the TV remote, and clicked on, casting the room in a soft blue glow.

The man half expected to see a news report of the murder, but as Abigail flipped channels, he saw nothing other than bad early morning programming. Perhaps fortune had decided to throw him a bone, and the bodies had yet to be found.

He peered outside one last time at the vacant parking lot and then drew the curtains closed. They were the standard thick motel room variety one usually found in these places. Funny, the man mused, how he knew such trivial things, but couldn’t recall the essential details of his life.

He wasn’t sure how amnesia worked, though he seemed to recall in old movies, or perhaps cartoons or fables, the cure was often found in a bonk on the head. Perhaps, he would look for a rubber mallet in a day or two.

The curtains seized his attention again. He wondered if they were thick enough to keep the room dark and just how much sunlight could he be exposed to? Instincts, or perhaps some buried memory, indicated the curtains would be enough — he had only to avoid direct sunlight.

Vampire.

The word echoed in his mind from some unknown source. He felt the word like an old nickname, though he didn’t seem to have a lust for blood or the fangs he typically associated with the legends. There again, that funny sort of trivia… or experience. He swallowed the bile that rose with the thought. He considered the moniker a bit longer.

Vampire seemed somewhat incorrect, but not altogether wrong.

Whatever he was, he was not human — not all of him anyway.

He went into the bathroom — no windows. Bad, if he needed to make a quick exit with the girl, but perhaps a good place to go if the sunlight managed to seep through the curtains.

He stepped from the bathroom and noticed that Abigail’s eyes were already closed as she lay on top of the comforter.

He knew he needed sleep but his mind was racing. He was eager to unravel the enigma of his tangled identity, both the facade and the horror hiding underneath.

He lay on his bed, fully dressed in the dead man’s clothes he’d taken, and closed his eyes.

“Do you believe in God?” the girl asked.

He looked over at her. Her eyelids were still shut, but he could tell the child hiding behind them was awaiting an answer.

“What?” He wondered if he heard the question correctly.

“Do you believe in God?”

“I don’t know,” he said, though a sudden roll in his gut said no. “I don’t think I do. But, I don‘t know anything before a few hours ago.”

When the girl failed to ask what he meant, it occurred to the amnesiac for the first time that she hadn’t raised a single question about his past, or lack of, though he had mentioned his missing memory at least twice. He considered asking her why, but she opened her mouth before he could open his.

“I don’t think there is a God. I mean, if there was, why would he allow my parents to die? Or send me to an uncle who sold me to those… people,” she said this last word only after a pause, “I don’t believe God would allow such… things.”

They sat in silence for a while as his mind flashed on her memories, which he witnessed during their brief embrace. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“They were religious, you know?”

“Who,” he asked. “The… people?”

“Yeah, he used to force me to read The Bible every morning. Said I was infected by the devil because I made him lust after me. It was my fault. I wasn‘t godly enough.”

Again, the man didn’t know what to say. He looked over at the girl. Her eyes were still closed, though he could see her cheeks were wet with tears.

Finally, the man found words.

“You know he was full of shit, right?”

The girl laughed, just slightly, and wiped at her nose. For the second time in an hour, he found himself wanting to hug her tightly.

“Yeah,” she said, “besides, if I were the devil, I would have killed him a long time ago.”

Further silence filled the room until she decided to shatter it.

“But you took care of that for me. You, the angel who doesn’t believe in God.”

He gave vent to a dry crackling laugh and the sound threw an alien echo against the darkened walls of the old hotel room. Their laughter mingled for a moment, and he discovered that he liked the sound of her giggle, hoarse, but pleasant. Exactly like a child’s laugh should be.

“I’m not an angel,” he said.

“I know, I saw.”

“The bodies?” he asked.

“No, when we touched. I saw in your head.”

The man shot up from the mattress as though it carried a current. Abigail flinched as her eyes flicked open, still wet with tears.

She had SEEN inside his mind, just as he had seen inside hers.  How much had she seen? Had she unraveled the mysteries lost in the fog of his missing memory?

He did his best to control his mounting excitement. He didn’t want to scare her. He grabbed the edge of his mattress tight; a silent gesture promising he wouldn’t leap from the bed. She relaxed and then rose to ninety degrees. Their eyes met.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“I couldn’t make it all out,” she said, “but you were afraid of something. Very afraid.”

“Was it the coffin I was buried in?”

“No, it was before that. And there was something else, a woman, a woman you loved very much. You were holding hands with her at the beach. You told her you would never forget this moment.”

He stared at the girl, helpless, desperately wanting to draw deeper from her well; a lost soul trying to mine meaning from the maundering of a fortune teller. He could remember nothing, let alone a woman he loved.

“She loves you too,” the girl said, her toes now grazing the carpet between their beds.

Her footfall sent a current into the air that escalated between them, fusing their attraction like ore to magnet. Everything slowed, the light of the TV flickered as each frame seemed to pause slightly before lurching forward like a warped record spinning slowly.

The amnesiac had no hope of stopping whatever was about to happen.

The girl moved forward, her bare foot inching closer to his scuffed leather boot. He looked up and saw her eyes staring straight at him, not through him, as she slowly raised her hands and reached towards his face.

He tried to pull away, but was paralyzed by the same unseen force which was controlling the girl’s movements.

The air pulsated in nearly visible waves of energy. He felt the rhythm writhe through his skin and then burrow deep into his marrow. The girl held out her hand, palm open, fingers splayed just inches from his face. Blue arcs of spider web thin threads of light danced at the tips of her fingers like icy fire that illuminated her face in a ghostly glow.

His body shook, his heart pounded and he wanted to cry “no“, but nothing other than a cold gasp could escape the narrowing prison of his throat.

Her hand inched closer to his face as sparks jumped from her fingers to the tiny hairs on his cheek. Any second now, he feared, they would be locked in that deadly embrace until he robbed her of every ounce of her life, helplessly feeding on her like a parasite until she was nothing more than an empty, smoldering husk.

His eyes were saucers as her palm moved impossibly close to his face, suddenly just centimeters from his forehead.

The pounding pulsed louder in his ears, in his head, in his soul as the girl’s palm suddenly seemed to shoot forward a surge of arctic energy, sharp as a dagger and straight into his head, freezing him instantly.

His vision went black, replaced a half second later with a slow to focus image. He was standing on a beach, staring at his love. Instantly, a flood of tears surged forth and he yelped, “Oh my God”.

His hand reached out to touch the memory, but couldn’t. His body was frozen.

He started at her. Christ, she was like a painting. Emerald eyes, dark auburn hair, lips that curled ever so slightly into a wry smile that was as familiar as it was heart melting.

“Hope,” he called out in the duality of now and then.

She moved closer, whispered in his ear, “Promise, you’ll remember this day always?”

“Always,” he said, as he glanced around, soaking in the image. The setting sun, the cool ocean breeze whipping through her hair. The soft feel of her hands in his. He wanted to die right there in that moment just so he could experience it for an eternity.

She looked at him with that smile, those eyes, and spoke again.

“Don’t say it unless you mean it, John.”

John!

The man’s eyes shot open and the bright sun over the horizon blinked away. Heaven was replaced by the darkened reality of the claustrophobic hotel room. He stared at Abigail, who stood before him, her hands now dangling at her side. She seemed unharmed by the exchange.

“Did you see?” she asked, now crying openly.

“Yes,” John cried too. “Thank you.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

We’ll be fielding any comments or questions you have in the comments section, so stop by. We’d love to hear what you think. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

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Hi, it’s David Wright here with the introduction duties. When I was a kid in the late 1970’s, there was this show I loved on TV called Cliffhangers. Each hour-long episode featured three or four stories that unfolded over the course of the TV season. One story was about an underground futuristic city and another was a vampire story. Each mini episode within the hour left you hanging until next week, hence the title, Cliffhangers.

Every week, I grabbed some cookies and milk and curled up in my bed with the lights turned out, waiting for the next exciting installments. This show in a word, rocked my striped tube socks!

The show didn’t even last a season, as I recall, and I was pretty sad when it ended without resolving the cliffhangers!

But it had a lasting impact on me. I LOVED the feeling of building suspense and leaving people hanging and wanting more. In high school, I started writing short stories which I passed to a few classmates. I’m sure the stories were pretty bad, but they were good enough to get the desired reaction. People who normally didn’t talk to me were suddenly coming around and asking for the next installment of whatever story I was writing at the time. It was an amazing feeling!

Now that I have a slightly wider audience, and I’m a more capable writer, I want to recreate the magic which left me spellbound as a child.

I’d been sitting on this story, Available Darkness, for a long time when I met Sean Platt. I love his writing style. I decided to re-write a few chapters of my long stagnant story and send them his way to see what he could do with them. He turned my stale prose into magic. We began passing the text back and forth, each of us adding some ingredients to create what we have here.

This experiment in presenting serialized fiction on the web embraces both the spirit of collaboration that makes the Collective Inkwell and the spirit of creativity-driven community we are fostering here.

We hope you enjoy this story as it unfolds over the course of the next several Fridays. Please leave feedback, help spread the word on your blog and Twitter, etc…  Go grab some cookies and milk and get enjoy the first installment of Serial and Milk : Available Darkness.

Prologue

The memory rose like a bubble in the darkness.

He was a child, not yet in school, when he first learned of monsters.

He was lying in bed, pillow clutched over his head, trying to drown out the muffled sounds of his parents fighting downstairs. His father was drunk. Again. The threat of violence was palpable in the air, alive like electric currents, causing his hairs to stand on end.

It wouldn’t be long now before the sounds of screaming were replaced by cries and the sickening sound of flesh pounding flesh. Perhaps his father’s blood lust would be sated. Or, perhaps the boy’s door would burst open and the battle continued on the second floor.

He prayed in vain to a God he long ago stopped believing in. A child should not have to lose faith so early in life.

Please, stop him.

Suddenly the house was quiet. That meant one of two things. Either his prayer was answered or, more likely, the monster was coming for him.

The boy pulled the pillow from his head and strained to hear the sounds of footfalls on stairs. He closed his eyes tightly and braced for what was to come. He would pretend to sleep. Sometimes it even worked.

He heard the door creak behind him and tried to camouflage his shortness of breath. Real sleepers breathe deep and heavily. He wouldn’t fool the monster with his rapid breathing. He concentrated and made an effort to slow his breath as best he could.

Light washed the wall in front of him and he heard the door close softly. He waited to hear retreating footsteps, but heard nothing. He was certain the monster was in the room with him. Waiting. He could feel his father’s hateful eyes on him.

He wasn’t sure how long he feigned sleep, but it seemed to be forever. Suddenly, he heard his father’s voice downstairs, followed by his mother’s crying out.

Surprised, the boy figured he must have fallen asleep and missed his father leaving the room. Yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t alone. He slowly turned over, pretending to still be asleep. He waited a moment and then risked opening his eyes.

And then he saw the shadow in the corner of his room. A shadow that was not a shadow, but not quite a man.

The boy screamed.

The bubble rose and broke as it crashed into the surface…

Chapter One

The man woke amidst the black, breath barely budging from the shallow prison of his angry lungs.  He tried to inhale but only doubled back into a rasping, retching pile of sod and vomit.  He attempted to lift his leaden head, but could raise it barely an inch. Gravity seemed to crush him from all sides; his arms, he realized with a horrifying dread, were fixed against his sides as though shackled.

His mind scrambled to pull sense from his surroundings.  A horribly long minute later, he realized he was captive in a box.  Buried alive and left to rot beneath the crumbling earth.

I’m not dead, his mind started to scream.

His mouth would only make sounds that refused to render into words.  Nothing but a raspy gasp and a rolling tumble of soil and spit fell from his lips.

Panic set deep and his whispering breath climbed further toward a pant, echoing against the narrow walls of his tomb, keeping time with his furiously pounding heart.

What happened? Why am I buried?

His voice found its way through the suffocation and he heard his own whimpering cries of  “no,no,no” as he tried to shake life into his limbs. The voice was not his own, but that of a frightened child. No, a frightened animal.

His body bristled from a billion pins and needles, impeding his thought and dulling his motion.  With a strength he didn’t know he had, behind a panic that could only be borne beneath the bilious earth, he shoved his forearms madly against the cap of the casket. With a reluctant snap, the nail wormed its way through the wood and the lid of his prison shifted a quarter of an inch.

He clawed, scraped, and pushed at the darkness above him with blunt, awkward blows, blotting the bulkhead with blood he could not see but could smell. He desperately fought his way upwards, using first his arms and then his knees, finally his head; anything to give him leverage. And then his arms shot forward, no longer meeting resistance as the lid lifted and fell to the earth beside him with a thick, muffled thud.

The moon mocked his confusion. He collapsed into the cold dirt, sucking crisp air into his stale lungs in bottomless mouthfuls, then exhaling the old wind in hot gusts of steam which evaporated into the frigid air of midnight.

His body tensed from the nearby sound of movement and he pulled himself upright to peer through the darkness.

He was in the midst of thick woods.  Tree branches pierced the gloaming like ink stained daggers, barely illuminated by the pale silver moon. Shivering, he finally registered his bloodied bare arms and chest. All he wore were jeans, blood soaked jeans.

He would have screamed for help, but something – he wasn’t quite sure what – stopped him cold.

He pulled himself from the casket, his numb foot sinking into the cold soil.  Beside him lay a hole, five feet deep and wide enough to swallow both he and the casket whole. A shovel bulged from a mound of dirt; an invitation for whoever had started digging to come back and finish the job.

Jesus Christ, he thought, I was drugged, kidnapped, and Lord knows what else.

Another sound of movement. A branch breaking.

He realized with a horrible certainty that whatever psycho had dropped him in the dirt, was not yet gone. Not yet done.

He glanced again at the shovel and swallowed.

He forced his body into an awkward sprint, legs wobbly as he stumbled blindly into the night.

Just run.

He prayed not to run into whatever monster brought him here to die.

to be continued…

Read the rest of the chapters as they are posted each Friday. Links to each chapter can be found here.

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Remember when you were little and you used to go to the movies, you would pay ten cents for your ticket and a nickel for your popcorn, then amble in, find your seat and watch the exciting adventures play out from the week before?

No? Wrong decade, huh?

Well, coming up in the wrong decade didn’t stop George Lucas when he took the serial aesthetic and threw it on the big screen in 1977, and that first success flowed straight into another when he teamed up with Spielberg a few years later to pour some more serial with Indiana Jones.

Serialized fiction is wonderful. Today, some of our favorite TV shows are fine examples of exactly that. Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Dexter, The Shield, Veronica Mars, the The Wire and (drool) LOST. There’s something about ending on a cliffhanger and starting with a bang that rolls our blood to a boil.

When we were designing the Inkwell, we knew for certain that we wanted to play with some fiction, and this old school format that’s been around since The Illiad and The Odyssey seemed to be the perfect mechanism. Now that I’m a writer I know just what to do.

Next week, and every Friday thereafter, the Inkwell will publish a fresh installment of a serialized story. Our first installment is a horror tale that’s been buzzing in David Wright’s brain for more than two decades. It was gathering dust when he decided to pitch it to me for fun to see what I could do with it.

The collaborative effort of both of our voices have jolted this monster to life and we can’t wait to unleash it on the world. We’ll talk a bit about the story behind the story next Thursday as an appetizer.

Make sure to subscribe by email or RSS so you don’t miss a single adventure!

Question: What is your favorite example of serialized fiction and why?

See you Monday.

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