Darkness Wakes Read online

  Tall, thin, with short, straight black hair and the beautiful but cold features of a European model. She wore a white top with a long sleeves, black capri pants, and stylish black sandals with thin crisscrossing straps. Aaron noticed she was empty-handed, no purse and certainly no DVD’s to return to Starbrite.

  He considered getting out of the car to say hello, or at least rolling down the window and sticking his head out. Morgan and her husband Phillip lived on the same street as Aaron, and though they were hardly best friends, they knew each other well enough to wave if either was out working in the yard as the other passed. Besides, Morgan was exotic and sexy, almost the polar opposite of his wife, Kristen. Aaron had never made a play for Morgan — masturbatory fantasies excluded, of course — but he loved being near her. He loved inhaling the faint, subtle odor of her perfume, loved watching the way her thin lips moved as she talked (while imaging those lips forming an air-tight seal around his cock). Most of all, he loved the way her large brown eyes focused so intently on whoever she spoke to, as if at that moment he or she was the most important and fascinating person on the planet.

  Just a quick hello, he told himself. So he could look into those eyes, inhale her scent before he had to go home to his wife.

  Forget it, kid. Even if you weren’t a married man, that one’s way out of your league.

  Aaron reached for the door handle, but before he could get out, the Infiniti’s passenger door opened, and a man got out of the car.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. Caroline wasn’t alone; Phillip had come with her. Not that it made any real difference, Aaron supposed. It wasn’t like he intended to hit on her. But now he wouldn’t be able to say hi to Caroline alone; he’d have to talk to Phillip, too. And Phillip’s presence would be a definite buzz-kill in the fantasy department. But then Aaron got his first good look at the man who’d climbed out of the Infiniti and realized that he wasn’t Philip Langdon. In fact, he wasn’t anyone Aaron had ever seen before.

  The man was younger than Caroline by about five years, Aaron guessed, which would put him in his early thirties, maybe late twenties at the youngest. He was thin with curly black hair and a thin mustache. He wore a white shirt with horizontal stripes — blue or purple, it was hard to tell in the fluorescent light — untucked, sleeves down but the cuffs unbuttoned. Long khaki pants and black running shoes completed his outfit. He looked as if he’d dressed for a night of clubbing, but there were no clubs in Ptolemy. There were a few in Ash Creek, but the closest city with any real night life was Cincinnati, about a forty-minute drive away. One thing Aaron was sure of, however: there wasn’t any club in the Valley View Shopping Center. And they obviously weren’t headed for the bar, and they began walking in the opposite direction, toward Starbrite video.

  As they walked, Caroline stepped closer to the young man and put her arm around his trim waist. He gave her a smile and reciprocated by putting his arm over her shoulders.

  I’ll be damned, Aaron thought. She’s cheating on Phillip. He felt a mixture of disappointment, jealousy, and envy that she wasn’t cheating with him.

  He sure as shit wasn’t going to get out and say hi to her now, but he made no move to start his car, either. He didn’t want to draw her attention, for one thing. Though he’d secretly lusted for her in his heart for years, it wasn’t his business who she walked with across a parking lot at midnight. Plus, he didn’t want to embarrass her by letting her know that she’d been caught by one of her neighbors. Not that he’d do anything with the knowledge. He knew Phillip well enough to say hi and bitch about how poorly their lawns were faring this summer, but they were far from friends.

  But there was another reason Aaron just sat there behind the wheel of his Lexus. He wanted to watch and see what Caroline and her stripe-shirted beau did next. Circumstance had made him privy to a secret aspect of Caroline’s life, a hidden intimacy that she’d unknowingly revealed to him, as if she’d been undressing in front of an open window without realizing Aaron was standing on the sidewalk outside, watching. He couldn’t turn away if he wanted to. He had to watch.

  As Caroline and her “companion” stepped onto the sidewalk that fronted the strip mall, Aaron saw that they weren’t headed for the video store. Which was good, since the girl inside — perhaps worried by the seeming approach of two last-minute customers — chose that precise moment to turn off the neon sign over Starbrite’s door. But Caroline and Mr. Striped-Shirt moved quickly past the video store, past a row of vending units which contained copies of a free alternative paper, booklets of apartment listings, and the like. Aaron assumed they would continue on past the next shop, I’d Buy That For a Dollar, but they stopped in front of a featureless gray metal door between the freebie vending machines and the dollar store.

  Aaron frowned. He couldn’t remember ever seeing that door before tonight, but he supposed he must have. After all, it wasn’t as if the door had suddenly appeared in the strip mall overnight … He assumed the door led to a storage space or perhaps a maintenance room where the controls for the entire building’s electrical system was housed, and probably the heating and cooling controls, too. There was no neon sign above the door, and no windows on either side. Just plain red brick. But if the door didn’t really lead anywhere — at least anywhere interesting — then why had Caroline and her young lover stopped in front of it?

  Caroline let go of Mr. Striped-Shirt’s waist and reached into her purse. She withdrew a key — not a set of keys, just a single key that wasn’t attached to anything else — and inserted it into the lock above the door’s chrome metal knob. She gave the key a twist, then gripped the knob and turned it.

  The door opened inward.

  Caroline removed the key from the lock and tucked it back into her purse. She then smiled her companion — a somewhat lascivious smile, Aaron thought, one that he wished was directed at him — and gestured for Mr. Striped-Shirt to enter. The man hesitated for a moment, and Aaron began to think that maybe he was going to chicken out. But then he returned Caroline’s smile and stepped inside. Caroline followed, pulling the door closed behind her.

  There was no way Aaron could hear it from where he sat, but he imagined the door shut with a soft metallic click!

  Aaron sat for moment, trying to understand what he’d just witnessed. And then it came to him. Caroline had taken her lover to a sex club. He’d heard of such places, though he’d never visited one himself. Clubs where men and woman, singles and couples would go to indulge in all sorts of sexual behavior — partner swapping, group sex, role-playing, S&M, B&D, and who knew how many other combinations of the alphabet. Such businesses weren’t exactly the kind chambers of commerce lauded on promotional pamphlets and websites, so these clubs often refrained from displaying any outward signs of their existence, preferring to advertise by word of mouth alone. Aaron wondered how many people walked past that door every day without realizing what went on behind it at night? Even the employees of the businesses on either side might not know, depending on how discreet the club’s clientele was. Aaron couldn’t believe it. A sex club, right there in little old Ptolemy, Ohio. And it seemed that Caroline Langdon was a member.

  This cast the situation in a whole new light for Aaron. Maybe Caroline wasn’t cheating on Phillip. Maybe they had an open marriage, maybe they were swingers, maybe Phillip was a member, too. He might already be inside getting it on with someone else. Or maybe waiting for his wife to bring Mr. Striped-Shirt by for a threesome. Aaron pictured Caroline, Phillip, and Mr. Striped-Shirt naked: one of the men lying on the floor, Caroline on top of him, the other on his knees behind her, all three fucking the shit out of each other like rabid weasels. Which would be the back-door man, Aaron wondered. Phillip or Striped-Shirt? Maybe they’d take turns. Pornographic images passed through Aaron’s mind of every possible sex act three people could indulge in — and several impossible ones as well. He felt his penis begin to stiffen, and he was tempted to undo his zipper, free his cock and start stroking, but he was a little old to b
e jacking off in parking lots. Besides, there was no way he was going to get cum-stains on his Lexus’ upholstery.

  Aaron watched the door for several more minutes, but no one came out; and no new cars pulled into the parking lot. Unless he was prepared to sit here for a while — and how would he explain his delay in returning home to his wife? — it looked like the show was over, at least for him. He gave the door one last look and sighed. He was glad someone he knew was having fun tonight, living on the edge, experiencing real passion. All that lay before him was a boring drive home to a wife who was probably already asleep. And even if he woke her up and told her he wanted to make love, she’d say she was too tired, they both had work in the morning. And in the unlikely event that she said yes, the sex would be vanilla at best. Kristen would climax — she almost always did — as would he, but he would barely feel his orgasm. He certainly wouldn’t be satisfied with it. Hell, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever truly been satisfied in any meaningful sense of the word in his entire life.

  He started his Lexus, got so far as putting the car in drive, and then a little voice whispered in his mind.

  Why don’t you go see if the door’s still unlocked, kid? Maybe it is, maybe you can open it, and go in. Maybe you can join in with Caroline, Phillip, and Striped-Shirt, make the threesome a foursome. After all, she’s got three holes to fill, right? A pause. That is, if you got the stones.

  Aaron gazed through his windshield at the gray metal door. He sat there, staring at it for almost a full minute before putting the Lexus back in park, turning the engine off, and getting out of the car.

  As he walked across the parking lot, he became aware of his pulse pounding in his ears, felt a line of sweat trickling from his right armpit and down his side. His footsteps seemed muffled, as if the black asphalt was somehow absorbing the sound of his passage. He experienced a crawly-tickly feeling on the back of his neck, and he quickly glanced around to see if anyone was watching him, just as he had watched Caroline a few moments earlier. He saw no one, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being watched. Anyone could be out there in the darkness, watching hidden and unseen. Wouldn’t it be ironic if a friend or neighbor was watching him, someone who’d report back to Kristen that her husband had been seen approaching the notorious Valley View Shopping Center sex club. He wondered how Kristen would react to such news. It would almost be worth getting caught just to see the expression on her face as she learned her husband — good-old reliable, dependable Aaron — had taken himself a little walk on the wild side. Would she be horrified? Dismayed? Unbelieving? Or would she be surprised and perhaps even a little intrigued by the revelation that her husband of nearly twenty years had a hidden dark side?

  The feeling of being watched didn’t go away, but he forced himself to ignore it. Even if someone was watching, what were the odds that they’d recognize him?

  You recognized Caroline.

  That was different. She was a neighbor, and he’d secretly had the hots for her for years. Most of his other neighbors were either couples with very young children or old folks on the verge of moving to assisted-living facilities. None of them likely to be here at this hour. He supposed one of his clients might be out and about this late, but a vet wasn’t like an MD. People didn’t see him the same way, didn’t really see him at all sometimes. They were usually too worried about little Puffball’s fleas or lack of appetite. To most of his clients, he was just the guy that wrote prescriptions for their pets.

  He reached the sidewalk and stepped up onto it, then walked over to the gray metal door that Caroline had unlocked for her stripe-shirted friend. He stopped two feet from the door and examined it. Its gray paint flaked around the edges, revealing reddish-brown scales of rust beneath. The surface was otherwise smooth and featureless, save for where someone — some teenager who fancied himself a daring wit, Aaron guessed — had tried to carve the word fuck onto the door using a pocket knife, or perhaps the tip of a car key. But either the kid was a lousy speller or, more likely, had been interrupted during his act of minor vandalism, for the last letter wasn’t quite complete, looking more like an L than a K, making Fucl.

  “Fuckle,” Aaron whispered, the word sounding at once silly and sinister at it spilled past his lips.

  He stepped closer to the door until he stood only inches from its surface, Fucl almost even with the tip of his nose. He turned his right ear toward the door and listened. He didn’t know what he hoped to hear. Music, conversation, laughter, moaning and groaning, the wet smack of sweat-slathered bodies pounding against each other … But he heard nothing. He was tempted to put his ear to the door. Metal conducted vibrations well, didn’t it? He’d be bound to hear something. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Maybe because it seemed too juvenile, or maybe because he could just see someone inside opening the door while he stood there, throwing him off balance and causing him to fall inward flat on his face, like some hapless sitcom character. He had more dignity than that. Not that there was all that much dignity in sneaking up to the door of a sex club after seeing your neighbor go inside with her lover, but hey, a guy’s gotta have some standards, low as they might be.

  Aaron looked down at the door knob. He’d noticed earlier that it was chrome, but what he hadn’t been able to see from behind the wheel of his Lexus was that half of the metal was faded, exactly where a person’s hand would grasp it. This knob had been here for a long time and had seen a lot of use.

  This is stupid. Even if it’s unlocked, what are you going to do? Walk in and shout, “Here’s my dick, where’s the party?” It’s one thing to fantasize about stuff like that, kid, but it’s another thing to do ahead and actually do it.

  He looked again at the door knob, noted how it seemed to glow bluish-white in the reflected glow of the parking lot lights. A color like that made him think it would be cold to the touch — damned cold.

  He almost turned around and walked back toward his Lexus, but he didn’t. Instead, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the knob, steeling himself against the anticipated sensation of cold. But the metal wasn’t even cool. It was warm, moist, and despite being molded from metal, almost pliant. It reminded Aaron of shaking hands with a fat, sweaty person, a sensation he found far from pleasant. But he didn’t let go, even when he thought he felt the knob shift in his grip slightly, as if it were trying to get comfortable. Without squeezing any harder — primarily because he didn’t want to, was afraid that the knob might explode in his hand like a rotten tomato — Aaron turned it. Despite its worn exterior, the knob turned smoothly, as if recently oiled. He imagined the knob turning all the way, the door opening wide to reveal whatever secrets lay behind it. But the knob barely turned at all before stopping with a soft click. It was locked.

  Of course it is, Aaron thought, remembering Caroline’s key. This club was Members Only, it appeared. He thought of Striped-Shirt then. Okay, Members and Guests Only.

  So, what are you going to do now? You can’t just stand here like an idiot and wait for someone to come out.

  Aaron supposed that there really wasn’t much else he could do, not unless he chose to know. And how lame would that be?

  Hi, sorry to bother you, but I happened to notice my neighbor come in here with a young lover a little while ago. Would it be okay if I come in — just for a little while — and watch her get the shit fucked out of her? I promise to be quiet and not bother anyone.

  Extremely lame.

  It seemed his walk on the wild side had been more of a stroll, and it had come to an end. With nothing else to do, and beginning to feel like a prize asshole for standing here in front of a locked door, he turned away from the gray door with the word Fucl scratched into the metal door and began heading into the parking lot.

  Somewhere out in the night’s darkness, a pair of eyes watched Aaron get into his Lexus, shut the door, start the engine, and flip on the headlights. These eyes continued to watch as Aaron put the car in gear and pulled out of his space. Since the parking lot was almos
t completely empty, Aaron was able to pull his car forward instead of backing up. The owner of the eyes thought Aaron would whip his Lexus around and squeal his tires as he accelerated toward the shopping center’s exit, using his car as an outlet for the emotions that had built up as he’d stood in front of the entrance to Penumbra. But Aaron drove slowly and calmly toward the exit, stopping and even activating his turn signal before pulling out onto the road. Even then he didn’t gun the engine, just continued driving slowly, doing at least five miles per hour less than the speed limit.

  The watcher narrowed his eyes. Interesting. Most people couldn’t contain their emotions after being so close to Penumbra and being denied entrance, even if they didn’t know what went on behind its steel door. Especially if they didn’t know. But the owner of the Lexus had maintained control. He would bear continued watching. Who knows? He might prove useful in the war to come.

  The watcher started his blue Volkswagen bug — robin’s egg blue, though it looked bone-white in the fluorescent wash of the parking lot lights. He turned on his headlights, and followed after Aaron, dome light flickering erratically, nervously rubbing the uneven stubble atop his shaved head and muttering softly to himself as he drove.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Saturday afternoon in early September, a glorious time that’s not quite summer but not yet fall. Warm and sunny, but not hot and sweltering. A touch of coolness in the breeze, but not even a hint of winter’s coming chill. A good time being out in the backyard with your dad, playing catch.