[Dark Kitten]

Synopsis: A young woman is haunted by her past and needs release.

Author's Note: This story is based on a dream my boyfriend had that was especially vivid and clear in his mind when he woke up.

Darkness


"Just please be there when I do it. I would be too scared to do it alone."

Her eyes shone with earnest and she really did look frightened to me. I knew what she had been going through the last few months and she looked terrible for it. Her normally beautiful face was haggard and drawn into a deep scowl and the long hair that she normally kept so neat was carelessly pulled into a tight ponytail with straggling pieces drifting across her face. Her lips looked cracked and her skin was pale as porcelain. The worst was her eyes; the bright cobalt of her eyes was faded to more of a steel grey, and they seemed to see without really seeing anything.

She wasn't eating or sleeping enough and when she did sleep she dreamt awful things that woke her instantly in tears and chills. I had been trying my best to help her and I even made her go to the doctor but nothing was helping and the doctor had given up and suggested a psychiatrist. She refused to go. She was haunted with past experiences; her childhood had been one of fear and destitution rather than of love and happiness. I knew her past had been horrible for her, and I was beginning to think that it had finally gotten the best of her. She certainly looked bested as she stood in front of me begging me to help her with what she seemed to think might be able to cure her once and for all.

I thought it was a silly idea at first, I didn't believe in the occult and that's what I considered this to be. I agreed to meet her at her old house; she said it would work best there because the house held so many of her bad memories. I parked my car in front and walked up onto the front porch, carefully avoiding the obviously rotten boards. When I opened the door my first thought was that I had arrived before her because the house was still and dark.

Then I heard the scraping across the floor, a sound like an ancient door groaning in protest at being opened after many years. I quickly trotted up the two flights of stairs, stopping at the top landing for only a second to get my bearing as to which direction the noise was coming from. Turning to the right and moving a few feet down the hall I pushed open a door and found what looked to be an old bedroom. Before I could get a better look, however, she grunted at me to close the door and as I did so the room was quickly incased in darkness. She had been pushing an old metal frame bed across the room, and now had it situated directly under the room's dirty, one and only window. She sat quietly on it, holding a black sheet.

"Tack this up over the window." She said it so quietly I wasn't sure I heard her.

Then she looked up, repeated herself and held the sheet towards me. I walked across the room hesitantly because, though it was only a small room, I couldn't see anything between me and her. I managed to make it to the bed without tripping and I gently took the sheet from her hands which, once released, immediately dropped with a loud smack back onto her thighs. I climbed onto the bed and stood behind her. Taking the tacks she handed up, I pushed the corners of the sheet into the corners of the window, sealing the darkness into the room.

I quickly realized that the sheet wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole window and there was a strip of light that still entered from outside. Carefully stepping back off the bed I saw her lean over to the floor and pick up something.

She cradled the black candle in her arms for a few seconds looking almost amusingly like a small girl playing with a doll. Then she pushed herself over onto one hip and stuck her hand into her pocket, pulling out a book of matches. She snapped one off and pulled it between the two sides of cardboard as she pinched in with her thumb and forefinger. It instantly flared up with a snap and a hiss then settled into a steady burning. She shifted the candle into one hand and the match into the other and then touched the latter to the first. It took a little coaxing but the candle caught the flame and she waved the match to put it out, dropping it mindlessly onto the floor. I thought about mentioning the fire hazard but then thought better of it just before it came out of my mouth.

She had been sitting there staring into the candle for so long that I thought she had fallen asleep with her eyes open when suddenly she started and let out a small moan. She once again reached to the floor, this time bringing up four pairs of handcuffs; I didn't ask where she had gotten them from. She clicked first one pair onto her ankles and then the other onto her wrists, making sure they were tight as could be and pulling to ensure her hands couldn't slip out. Then she swung her legs up onto the bed and stretched out like she was lying down to sleep. She wordlessly held the other pairs of handcuffs out to me and I linked the middle of the pair joining her wrists to a steel rail of the bed's headboard. I did the same with the other pair, securing her ankles to the footboard. When I finished and stepped back she gave a few experimental tugs to make certain everything was snug and secure. When she first told me about what she planned on doing she had said that chaining herself down was necessary to her safety and mine. I didn't believe that she would hurt me, she never had before, but here in this room I began to believe that anything could happen.

The candle sat on the floor beside the bed where she had set it when she began putting on the restraints. It was the only light in the room but at the same time it seemed to do no more then cast enough light to see the flame itself. You couldn't see it on the walls, the bed, her body... nothing. Besides that there was only a tiny amount of light coming in from the window. The strip of light from the window was now laying diagonally across her face, highlighting her right eye, the tip of her nose and the left side of her mouth. The absolute darkness that shrouded the rest of the room was like no darkness I had ever experienced before. The room was completely black, the kind of black that's very unnatural; I felt like it was eating at my skin, or maybe my very life. It was so pure, so black, and so evil.

She rolled her head then to face me and after staring directly into my eyes for a few moments she transferred her gaze to the candle on the floor.

"Once this candle goes out," she whispered, but loudly enough that I heard clearly what she was saying, "I could be anyone, or anything inside me." With that said the candle began to flicker as if on cue.

Once, maybe twice, it jumped and then it went out completely. I just stood there watching, not knowing what I was expecting but waiting for something to happen. At first I thought nothing had changed but then I began to feel the presence in the room. The black that was so still and heavy in the room before gained a shifting quality. A kind of movement that you sensed was there but your eyes couldn't quite pick out. I thought I felt a touch on my neck but when I spun around there was nothing. I frantically searched the darkness for some
explanation of what I had felt but could gain nothing from it; it held its secrets close.

Just then I heard the bed start to creak and squeal behind me, the handcuffs' chains rattling and clinging against the rails. I turned back to her, trying to ignore the eerie feeling of the thing behind me; trying to beat down the childish fears that were rising within me. The shadowy outline of her body was moving back and forth and she was letting out tiny groans with each turn. It started as an almost gentle motion, but then in mere seconds she began to thrash about so hard I was terrified she would break her arms and legs which were still held solidly into place by the chains. Her quiet groaning turned to all-out bloodcurdling screams, the kind of screams that once heard never really stop echoing in your head, even long after they have stopped. She slammed violently in the bed, twisting and turning and wrenching at the restraints that held her. Without thinking I jumped onto the bed, straddling her and was almost thrown off in the process. I grabbed her arms just below the wrists trying to keep her from cutting herself, all the while calling her name. I leaned into her, trying to get the shaking to stop and I felt her body convulse towards me as if she were attacking me. Her teeth grazed my shoulder as I barely managed to pull away just before she bit me, I refused to let go of her arms though, despite her constant pleas of "let go".

Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. She stopped moving altogether but glancing down at her showed she was very much conscious; her eyes were wide open and she was staring at me. In her current position the strip of light once again crossed her face and as her lips moved I could see very little of the rest of her face as it was once again shrouded in that damned darkness. She looked as if she was trying with all her being to tell me something, I concentrated on the wordless motions of her mouth but I had no understanding of the message. Her eyes slowly closed and her lips stopped moving, I felt a wave of panic leap through my body and I whispered her name. Her eyes snapped open and my first feeling of relief was soon brought to an abrupt halt when she spoke.

"She's not in there anymore."

The voice was hers but at the same time it was nothing like her voice. The eye that I could see highlighted by the window was one of stone and depth and pure evil. This wasn't the woman I loved anymore. I was held, rooted in fear and confusion as the eye searched my face, I had no doubt that It could see in this darkness. I thought it may try to attack me again but there was nothing I could do, I was held in its gaze just as tightly as it was held to the bed. The eye's probing plunged into what felt like my very soul, leaving my whole body cold and shivering, but still I couldn't move. I felt raped, tormented and wickedly ravaged; the abuse I felt flooding into me was like nothing I had ever imagined. When at last I could stand it no more, I flung myself off of it and fell screaming and crying to the floor. The only words I could think to utter were "Stop, please no more."

It laughed and replied, "That's what she said. You are just like her; weak and stupid."

I knew then that this thing had been living inside her for a very long time, tormenting her, abusing her, just like she had been abused as a child. It had created inside her its own private darkness just like the one in this room. I doubted now that there had been much of her left even before this ritual, she was more of a hollowed out shell, possessed and controlled by the creature of pain inside. The candle ritual was supposed to free the demons inside her and get rid of them, she had said, but I think now that she knew what would really happen. I think she was giving up, that she didn't want to struggle against it anymore, a kind of mental suicide. She let the creature take her over and finally devour her completely so her pain would stop at last.

I scrambled to my feet and backed out the door, my eyes never leaving the creature on the bed. It continued to stare silently back at me until I broke away and stumbled, half running and half falling, down the stairs. When I hit the bottom landing I stopped in my tracks, the haunting sound of her laughter filled my ears. It was a joyous laughing; there was no trace of hurt or fear. I closed my eyes and listened, as if trying to breath in that last little bit of her, to take it and keep it with me forever. As it faded away I once again began to walk toward the front door, this time with a new found sense of calm.

The last sound I heard come from that house was the rattling of chains drifting from a blacked-out window on the second floor and this was cut off by the closing of my car's door.