Disclaimer : All characters, subject matter, content and everything is copyright me, Rakie Keig 2008. I make no apologies for the awfulness of the title.
It was, indeed, a dark and stormy night. As Jeffrey stared out through the dormer window in the attic, he considered all the storms he had seen, and thought of how all the nights he'd known had been, by definition, dark. Yet this was the first in memory that deserved the melodramatic and borderline tautological designation of a dark and stormy night.
Living on the coast brought some strange weather. That particular evening, the black clouds filling the sky were so close and low-lying that they seemed a continuation of the pitch sea. High winds whipped through the tall trees surrounding the farmhouse, producing ominous creaks and groans. Even with the windows shut and bolted, the crashing surf on the rocks two miles distant was a constant roar. It sounded like the world was intent on shaking itself to pieces.
Jeffrey sighed, then started boarding up this last window.
His grandson, Robbie, was helping him, holding the boards in place as Jeffrey drove home the nails. Robbie had grown up fast in the six months since they'd moved to the farm. Before, he had been a gangly teen; now he was practically a grown man.
'There's not enough planks here,' Robbie noted, measuring the remaining space with his hands. 'You want me to fetch you some more woods?'
Jeffrey was aware that his grandson was not treating the situation with the seriousness it deserved. To him it was a game, a diversion. Play along with the senile old man; it might shut him up for a while. No, maybe that was harsh - Robbie wasn't disingenuous enough to think such things. His father, on the other hand...
Of course, if Robbie or anyone else had seen what Jeffrey had seen that evening, then they wouldn't be so cynical. They wouldn't be able to dismiss all this as a fantasy concocted by a disturbed old man who had probably taken too many of the wrong type of pills again. But no, Jeffrey had been the only one to go out to the stable that night, and so only he knew the terrible truth.
Robbie disappeared downstairs and came back a moment later with an inappropriate grin and an armful of "woods". Within ten minutes they had finished blocking up the last window, sealing the house completely.
'That'll keep them out, don't you think?' Robbie smiled. He rapped his knuckles against the wooden boards. 'Not a thing in the worlds could be getting through that.'
Jeffrey set his lips in a tight line and said nothing. Over the wail of the wind and the roar of the ocean he was sure he could still hear the slow, steady flap of leathery wings.
Downstairs, Alan and Elsie, his son and daughter-in-law, were discussing something. Jeffrey could tell by the hissing whispered tones that he was the topic of conversation. Him and his latest "strangeness", as his daughter-in-law was so fond of referring to it. The two of them shut up abruptly as Jeffrey came in.
'I know you won't thank me for it,' Jeffrey said, taking a seat at the large oak table, 'but the house is now secure. There's no way that those things can get inside.'
Alan and Elsie exchanged a look. Elsie folded her arms and turned away; her way of indicating that this was not her argument and she wanted no part of it. Alan sighed and took the seat opposite his father.
'Listen, dad - '
'Could you put the kettle on, son? I've been working hard for a half hour. Think I deserve a break.'
'Dad, I know the weather's bad, and I know you think you saw something outside, but I really think you've over-reacted.'
'You wouldn't be saying that if you'd seen what I'd seen.'
'Well, now, that's the point, isn't it? You won't let me go see this for myself.'
'Too dangerous, lad. Too dangerous.' Jeffrey took out his pipe and began packing the bowl with tobacco. 'They'd tear you apart in a second, they would.'
Robbie perched on the edge of the table. 'Yeah, dad. Grandad tolds us what he'd seens.'
Elsie glared at her son. 'Quit talking like that, you know how annoying it is. And you, don't even think about lighting that foul thing up inside this house.'
Jeffrey shrugged and continued to pack his pipe. 'Well,' he said, 'I can't exactly go outside and smoke it, now can I?' He put the stem in his mouth, but left it unlit for the moment. Not because he was afraid of the young slip of a woman that his son had seen fit to marry; of course not. He just wanted to save the smoke for later.
'You saw a bat,' Elsie told him. When she was irritated, which was often, her American accent became more pronounced. 'Maybe two or three bats, at most. There's a whole nest of them out in the barn, remember? And you've got yourself worked up about it to the point where you think you saw something much worse.'
'It wasn't a bat, no sir. You think I wouldn't know a bat if it swooped down at me? This was bigger than any bat you've ever seen - bigger than those fruit bats you see on the telly. Three times as big. And they were white; pale as things that live under rocks.'
'Wow.' Robbie's eyes lit up. He was not yet old enough to have lost his child-like fascination with the unknown. 'Is that for really what you saw?'
'You saw a bat,' Elsie repeated. 'For God's sake, Alan, tell him.'
'Dad, you saw a bat. There's nothing around here like what you're describing. Unless it was a bird. You think it might've been a seagull?' Alan looked up at his wife, seeming to seek confirmation that this was a valid possibility. 'A seagull that had got disorientated by the storm, maybe? It could've been injured or frightened, and you could've startled it when you went out to the stables...'
Jeffrey felt like shaking his head in contempt, but he kept his peace. Ever since they'd moved out to the coast, his son had been treating him more and more like a doddering and slightly embarrassing old relative. It was obvious that Elsie was behind this change. The damned woman had swept in just as fast as a storm off the sea, coming into his son's life while the poor boy was still in grieving for his first wife. Then she'd insisted that they sell up the town house and move out here to the desolate end of nowhere - on little more than a whim! She had driven past the farmhouse one day and spotted the name of the place - New Jersey Farm - and had thought it so quaint and ironic, given that she'd been born in the original New Jersey, that she'd pestered Alan into buying it. The one good thing was that Jeffrey had been able to move into the adjoining cottage, on the excuse that he wanted someone to look after him in his advancing years.
'Listen,' Jeffrey said then. 'I'll only tell you this one more time. I know exactly what I saw, and it wasn't no bat or no injured seagull. It was something unnatural. Something you or me have never seen before. And I'll tell you something else - ' He pointed with the stem of his pipe for added emphasis. ' - I know where they came from. It's that ship; the one that washed up on the rocks two days ago.'
Alan and Elsie threw up their arms in identical gestures of frustration. He said, 'Dad, I don't see why you're so hung up on that wreck - ', and she said, 'It was a goddamn oil tanker! Why exactly would that have anything to do with - ?', and he said, 'It's just a boat that veered off course and hit the rocks, dad. It happens a lot along this stretch of coast, you know how often that sort of thing - ', and Jeffrey sat back in his chair and let them talk themselves out.
When they were done, he sucked air through his pipe and let it out as a sigh. 'I don't understand why you two can't see this,' he said. 'That ship washed up two days ago - didn't crash, didn't run aground - because there was no one on board. I saw it hit the rocks and I've been watching it ever since. There weren't any lights on board when it hit, and it was drifting, not sailing. And since it speared itself down in that cove, not a single living person has left the ship. If there'd been anyone on board, they would've either tried to get out or would've sent up some kind of distress flare. Have either of you seen any search and rescue teams coming to check it out? No. That's because no one knows it's there because no one's reported it. I bet we're the only people within ten miles that know about it.'
Alan folded his hands on the table and looked at him with the same expression that doctors and professors had perfected throughout history. 'Dad - ' he started to say, then broke off.
They all heard it. A skittering, flapping noise, like something large fluttering against the kitchen window. A chittering sound, as of tiny claws against glass. Then it was gone.
Elsie's face had paled; her eyes widened. She looked like a woman who had just discovered that, contrary to all evidence, she could be wrong about something. 'That was a bat. Right? A bat.'
No one replied, because at that moment they heard more wingbeats. And not just at the kitchen window; from all around the house. At the windows and the doors, the skittering and chittering of unseen things clawing and scratching and demanding entrance.
'What is it?' Elsie whispered, drawing Alan to her. 'What's going on out there?'
Jeffrey struck a match and lit his pipe, figuring correctly that Elsie's attention was elsewhere. 'It's those creatures,' he told them. 'Just like I told you. Just like I said. They don't look like bats, no sir. They've got these pale, translucent wings, big enough to wrap right round a man's torso, and their bodies are all fat and bloated like maggots. You better hope you never see their faces. Like nightmares, I tell you. Big, blinded, milk-coloured eyes the size of saucers. And teeth. I didn't tell you about the teeth.'
Alan had crept to the window, peering out through a crack between the boards. 'What in the name of God are they?' he breathed. 'I can't see them, it's too dark. What the hell could make that sort of noise?'
'Whatever they are, they came out of that ship.' Jeffrey sent small puffs of smoke towards the ceiling. 'I guarantee it. In point of fact, I thought that I saw something this morning, before the storm came down so bad. Like a cloud of white specks, billowing out of the cracked hull. I figure that they've been living in there, in the hold of the ship. When it crashed, I guess it must've woken them up.'
Robbie shuddered. 'Did they really eated the pony?'
Elsie's head whipped round. 'What?'
'Aye, they did.' Jeffrey met her round-eyed stare and shrugged. 'Sorry, dear, I didn't want to scare you. Figured it would maybe be better if I told you later. But yes, that little pony you kept in the stable? I'm afraid they ate him.'
'They... what? What are you saying? What happened to Muffin?'
Jeffrey sighed and looked away. He decided he'd been right to withhold the grisly details from his daughter-in-law. Despite the tough exterior that she presented to the world, her interior was as fragile and easily broken as any other. He wondered how she would've reacted if she had been the one to discover the remains of the pony; if the pale, nightmarish creatures had gone after her; if she had had to confront those blinded faces and those terrible, unnatural jaws... Jeffrey shuddered at the memory. If Elsie had seen those things, she would've come back in here screaming and crying and demanding that Alan take immediate action, and Jeffrey was damned certain that no one would have questioned her word or suggested that maybe she'd mixed up her medication that morning.
Robbie was still perched on the edge of the table, his head cocked as he listened to the alien noises outside. However scared his father and stepmother were, the young boy seemed unconcerned. Possibly he was taking his lead from his grandfather, who was sure that the windows were all sealed, and that the family was as safe as they could be. 'Like moths,' Robbie said. 'Attracted to the lights.'
Jeffrey nodded. 'That sounds right to me. They'll have been living in darkness inside that ship for God knows how long. They didn't emerge until nighttime. I'll bet that they've come here because it's the nearest light-source.' He rubbed his face thoughtfully. 'It's a shame that the old lighthouse isn't in use anymore. If it was, the creatures would probably have taken themselves off there instead.'
The skittering noise outside changed, became louder. It was only when the family heard the splintering of wood that they realised what was happening. The creatures were chewing on the window frames in an effort to get inside the house.
Elsie started screaming, loud and hysterical and constant. Alan tried without success to calm her, stroking her hair and making reassuring noises. Robbie caught his grandad's gaze and they exchanged a rolling of eyes.
'I wonder if - ' Alan started to say, but his thought went uncompleted. A tinkling noise caught his attention, like small stones falling onto a hard surface. Somewhere close by. Somewhere inside the room.
As one, all four of the family turned to look at the fireplace.
It was an original feature of the house; red brick and patterned ceramic tiles, long ago scrubbed of any disfiguring trace of soot. The grate had been removed, and in the space left behind, Elsie had artfully arranged a tableau of driftwood and attractive debris collected from the nearby shoreline. The chimney above, however, had never been boarded up. As the family stared, tiny flakes of stone dropped down and bounced off the tiles of the hearth.
Jeffrey shoved his chair back and stood up. Everyone else seemed paralysed, staring at the fireplace as if unable to comprehend what was about to happen. Even when they heard the skittering, fluttering sound of something large and insectile worming its way through the narrow crawlspace, no one else moved.
A quick sweep of the kitchen revealed plenty of potential weapons. Jeffrey plumped for a large, cast iron skillet that had been used once and then set aside in the "decorative but damned awkward to use" section of the kitchen. He gave it an experimental heft.
From the chimney came a sound like a badly folded canvas tent being forced into a too-cramped space. More chunks of stone and soot-coated debris rained down into the fireplace, the thing in the chimney rattling angrily at its confinement.
Alan started to say something, probably to insist inanely that it was most definitely just a bat, when the thing squeezed itself through the tightest part of the chimney and dropped into the hearth.
They were given a brief moment in which to stare uncomprehendingly at the hideous alien thing that had birthed itself into their kitchen, and then it unfurled its battered, soot-coated wings, shook itself like a dog, and launched itself into the air.
Elsie screamed at a pitch that could have shattered glass. She dived under the table. The winged creature swooped past her, taking with it a clawful of blonde hair. Its wax-paper wings were too big for it to turn in the confined space, and at its apex it clipped one of the overhead lighting fixtures. As it struggled to right itself in the air, Jeffrey swung the heavy iron skillet at it.
His aim was off. The skillet struck the creature's body with only a glancing blow, knocking it off course but not out of the air. The creature immediately veered around and dived at Jeffrey's head. Its vicious jaws, filled with serrated and double-rowed teeth, snapped open and shut as it emitted a high-pitched chitterous sound.
Jeffrey swung again, managing to deflect the vast insect. It wheeled in the air, misjudging the size of the room again and careering into the wall. Before it could recover, Robbie smacked at it with a steak-sized metal spatula.
The blow shattered its right wing. Unable to fly straight, the creature crashed to the ground, its remaining wing beating a tattoo against the hardwood floor. Its huge, multifaceted eyes seemed to bug out even further from its deformed carapace.
Robbie beat it with the spatula until the head was a pulped ruin.
Jeffrey spun around, realising that more of the creatures were forcing their way down the chimney. He thought immediately of starting a fire but had to discard the idea since there was no flammable material to hand, save for the scant few pieces of driftwood. Instead he grabbed up a wooden side table, knocking over a vase of dried flowers and a bowl of pot pourri, and wedged the whole thing into the open hearth. It was a near perfect fit, the tabletop effectively sealing up the underneath opening of the chimney. Jeffrey jammed the table in firmly, kicking the legs so that they hooked in behind the face of the fireplace.
Something dropped onto the table from above. Claws scrabbled at its surface, but the other creatures were unable to squeeze past it into the kitchen.
Jeffrey wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Behind him, Robbie was talking excitedly and using a word that sounded like "poned" a lot. With only a cursory check to make sure his son and daughter-in-law were unharmed, Jeffrey went to find his pipe, which he'd dropped at some point during the scuffle.
Once it was safely retrieved and relit, he sat back down at the table. Elsie was speaking fast, her eyes almost circular and her voice reaching pitches that only dogs could hear. Alan was restraining Robbie from poking at the dead creature with his spatula.
'I think,' Jeffrey said, in his slow, deliberate way, 'that we should think about turning off the lights in here.'
No one argued with him. Together, he and Robbie went from room to room, turning out all of the lights. They left his parents in the dark kitchen, since they seemed quite happy to stand there and ask each other over and over what was going on and what the hell those things outside could possibly be.
'If the lights is out, you thinks they'll go away?' Robbie asked as they went up to the attic room.
'It depends, I suppose. We don't really know much about these creatures, now do we? Maybe they'll go elsewhere, maybe they won't. The amount of noise that your stepmother's making, I wouldn't bet on them going quietly back into the night.'
A pounding on the stairs announced that the grown-ups were rejoining them. 'What're you doing up here?' Alan asked. 'We should stay together! What'll happen if those things get through the windows?'
'They won't get through.'
'Yeah,' Robbie said, 'we covered the windows with woods.'
Alan pinched the bridge of his nose as if fighting back a migraine. Behind him, Elsie was making hysterical sobbing noises. 'They've broken the glass in the front room window,' Alan told them. 'It's only a matter of time before they break the rest. And they're still coming, even with the lights off!'
'You worry yourself too much, son.' Jeffrey settled himself down on the ancient, floral patterned sofa that had been left by the previous owners and was too large to get down the staircase. 'I should've thought to block up the chimney sooner, you've got me there. But rest assured, I've taken more precautions than just barring up the windows. And even if I hadn't, we'd be safe in here. Those creatures won't be able to bite through the planks; their jaws are hinged wrong.' He held up his hands in front of his face, demonstrating the unnatural way that the creatures worked their mouthparts. 'See? No use for biting flat objects. Curved objects, sure - like an arm or a shoulder or a face - ' He chomped his pretend-mandibles at Robbie, making the young lad laugh.
'Dad, please. You're not helping.' Alan was having to comfort Elsie, who had burst into fresh tears. 'It's bad enough that we're trapped in here with those things outside; we don't need you acting crazy as well - wait, what do you mean, "other precautions"?'
'Well, now. You remember the creature that attacked me when I went outside to feed Muffin? The one that you insisted was a bat? Well, when it tried to take a bite out of me, do you really think that I stood still and let it do so? No sir, I fought right back. I got it on the ground and I stomped on it. Those big white bodies pop like - Robbie, what're those pastry and cream things you like?'
'Cream horns.'
'Yeah, just like those. Squish! And the pastry bursts and the cream splurts out.'
Elsie turned away with a wail.
'Anyway,' Jeffrey ploughed on, 'I kicked the damn thing into the corner, but it was still kicking and flapping. Their wings look like nothing, like tissue paper, but they've got some weight to them. Tough, like leather. And then I saw all the other ones, all clustered around on the corpse of that poor pony. If I'd stuck around for much longer I'd have ended up the same way. So I got out of there - but before I did, I took a moment to knock open the door of the wood stove and stoke it the hell up.'
He paused for dramatic effect, and to relight his pipe. The silence was filled by the scratching, chewing noise of the creatures outside.
'I always said, didn't I, that that thing was a fire hazard?' Jeffrey smiled. 'Such a pointless thing to have, a little wood burning stove just to keep the stables heated. With all that wood and hay lying around, it would've taken just one little spark to set fire to the whole thing, and then what would you have had? Fricasseed pony, that's what. Anyway, that'll be working to our advantage now.'
Alan moved to the window, attempting to peek out between the boards. He flinched away as something pale and bloated slapped against the glass. He stepped back, wiping his face with a shaking hand. 'You set fire to the stables?' he asked. 'To our stables?'
'I put the stables in a position to catch fire, yes.'
With the lights out, it was possible to discern a faint orange glow coming from somewhere outside. The skritching noise at the windows diminished, then stopped altogether, to be replaced with a renewed flapping of leathery wings.
'Dad.' Alan sat down in a badly repaired wicker chair. He face was a white blur in the darkness. 'I appreciate that you thought you were doing the right thing, but do you realise that the spare propane tanks are stored right behind there? If the stables catch fire - '
Jeffrey smiled and was about to answer, when the gas-filled tanks outside answered for him.
In the morning, when they dared to venture outside, the family found the stable as little more than a blackened crater in the ground. Scattered around it, to a distance of up to a hundred feet, were several dozen bloated albino corpses, most of them torn and broken by the force of the explosion. Alan found one body that was almost intact and dragged it to the side. All the other corpses they collected up into a pile and set fire to.
When Elsie demanded to know why he'd saved one body, Alan shrugged and said simply, 'Proof.'
Miraculously, the house had suffered only superficial damage. The extension had collapsed in on itself - 'I told you it was shoddy workmanship,' was Jeffrey's comment - and the glass had been blown out of all the windows, as well as from the conservatory at the rear. But the family was alive, and unharmed.
Jeffrey wandered to the wall at the far end of the garden, which afforded a clear view down towards the cove where the ship had been wrecked. The storm had all but blown itself out by that point, leaving the wind gusting fitfully and forming tiny white caplets on the choppy waves of the bay. The ship looked silent and unoccupied, but Jeffrey knew better.
'What do you reckon, lad?' he said when Robbie came over to see what he was doing. 'Later this afternoon, do you fancy coming on a walk with me? We can go down to that ship and see how many of those sightless monsters survived.'
Robbie grinned and nodded. 'Sounds good, grandpa. I'll fetch you more fires.'
Jeffrey returned the smile, placing an affectionate arm around the young boy's shoulders.