Illuminate by Rob

The torchlight flickers and dims.  Its feeble yellow glow doesn't reach the corners of the room -- it's barely enough to illuminate the faces around me; instead their features ebb and flow, shadows eating their expressions.

Sarah hasn't made a sound in twenty minutes, not since Adam.  She just follows us when we move and waits silently when we stop.

Joe isn't much better.  Back at the start he had been ready to fight: collecting things to use as weapons, chasing the noises instead of fleeing them.  But now he sits in that dusty old arm chair, his withered arms clutching the book to his chest.  I can hear his whisper as he rocks back and forth "It can't see us in the light.  It can't see us in the light.  It can't see us in the light."

It's too much.  I hear myself snap "Oh for god's sake shut up!"  It seems harsh to my ears, but no doubt I have my reasons.

The truth is I'm not in much of a better state.  Anger and fear boil acid in my chest, eating me from the inside, I swallow it down and lose a little more of myself.  "I'm sorry," I whisper, but neither the outburst nor the apology touches Joe.

"It can't see us in the light."

I keep quiet, but my hands tighten on the torch until my fingers hurt.  The only torch left now.  I need to be careful, but it won't last forever.  I need to decide.  Leave it with them to keep them safe, and chances are I will be dead before I can find a way out, but if I stay here with it, we are all dead.  Or I can take it myself -- I would move faster without them, and with the torch my odds of escape will increase.  

I can't look at them, Sarah and Joe, I can't bear to see their faces, catch their uncomprehending eyes as I slowly persuade myself to let them die.  I am a bastard.  I wonder what expression I am wearing as my decision seals their fate.

I listen, trying to tune out Joe's cant, the sound of my breathing, the hammering of my heart.  I haven't heard the noises for a while, but I am not reassured.  Adam had said "I think it's gone" and then those hands had closed around his throat in the dark, choking the life from him, timed as some macabre irony.  I have many reasons to hate the thing killing us, but whatever it is I think I hate its twisted sense of humour worst of all.

I take a step, and Sarah takes one with me.  “No, Sarah, stay here with Joe.  Stay here Sarah.  I’m just going for a quick look round.”  I hear my voice, I barely recognise it.  Cold and flat.  Joe pauses his recitation to look at me, his expression unreadable in the half light.  “A quick look round,” I repeat.

The darkness swallows them as I move into the corridor.

Silence.  Silence apart from my breathing, apart from my footsteps, slow and cautious.  I pause, swinging the torch, my view of the world confined to its beam.  I catch glimpses of broken tiles and peeling paint, shabby disrepair and neglect.

I feel a pressure on my shoulders, I know it’s not real, that it is only my imagination, but knowing that doesn’t stop the press of some unknown and imagined gaze.  I take a step forwards along the corridor, driven by that imaginary force, it pushes me again, and I take another step, another, imaginary hands grab for me, I feel their cold fingertips graze my spine, but not find purchase.  

I quicken my pace, a stumbling jog, but those hands remain, always inches behind, grasping and grabbing.  Faster.

The torch beam swings wildly as I run, I see flashes of the world around me, blurring, flickering.  A strobe of glimpses.

And then my flight ends, a tumble of legs and arms, sprawling forward.  Teeth snap shut on my tongue, I taste blood.  I clatter and bounce, sliding down the corridor, grazing and tearing skin.  The torch flies from my grip, its light vanishes, smashed or just lost, it’s irrelevant.  It’s gone.

I lie in the dark, and my mind goes away.

* * *

Fists pummel me, a rain of blows against my chest, my hands are holding someone back, trying to keep them away from me.  I feel hot fevered flesh beneath my fingers.  I don’t know what’s happening.  Is it real, is it imagined, is this it?  I tighten my grip twisting, pushing, trying to control the blows, keep them away from me.

I am standing, I realise.  I should run again.  I should just let go and get away.  But my hands tighten and squeeze again instead.  The fists against my chest are weaker.

What is happening?  I don’t understand.

I want to let go, but I can’t.  Flesh and sinew squeeze in my grip, my thumbs press against what I realise is a throat.  I feel the sob strangled in my grip.

What?

“You cannot see us in the light!” shouts Joe and flicks on a torch.  Where he found it I don’t know, but my body reacts, flinching away from the light.

I look down and see Sarah gasping, trying to breathe as I strangle her.  Her skin is pale and grey, almost papery around my hands, and the effect seems to be spreading, she is withering away as I watch.

I try to speak, I want to ask what is happening, but my voice says “You should have killed me Joe, you should have killed me.”  My voice, yet not.  Not my words, not my sentiment.  “This time the light is not enough.”

“You cannot see us in the light.” Joe shouts again, but it is useless.  Sarah falls lifeless from my grasp, a pale grey husk.

I feel my face set itself in a horrible smile, and I scrabble at the inside of my brain.  The light, why isn’t it working, why isn’t it stopping me?  I am too strong now, so strong I am too weak to stop myself.

“Lights out Joe,” my throat rasps, but inside I’m screaming.