Night People

By J.L. Aarne

Are you afraid of the dark?

 

Wyatt Sinclair has been afraid of the dark his whole life because he sees monsters in the shadows. Labeled as crazy, his fear has isolated him from the rest of the world. He lives alone with two cats, works 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at a 24-hour diner, and his best and only friend is his sister.

 

Stranded and in trouble one night, Wyatt encounters Silas Delano, and the carefully crafted world he has been hiding in falls apart. Silas is brave and strong and he's not afraid of the things that live in the dark; they are afraid of him.

 

Wyatt doesn't know how to be like Silas, but a terrible, ancient monster is rising, and it threatens everything and everyone he loves. He can't run away and hide this time. Can he overcome his fears and embrace who he truly is before it's too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.L. Aarne
• Release date: Nov 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386686491

J.L. Aarne

J.L. Aarne currently lives in the Northwest United States. She was born in Washington, but she has moved around a lot and lived in many other places. She has two cats, Jack and Wally, and she is a compulsive collector of notebooks and coffee mugs, which she drinks tea out of. Aarne studied English and literature at the University of New Orleans. Her favorite fictional characters always seem to be the villains. Aarne blogs from time to time at [e-mail] You can also connect with her on Twitter @jl_aarne

Book preview

THE SERPENT’S EYES gleam out of the shadows and the prey comes to it, drawn to its own death, walking gladly into the snake’s jaws. Is it the serpent’s eyes that hypnotize or the promise of wisdom?

In every secret heart there is a question that keeps it beating. The question is different for everyone.

Come a little closer.

Anything worth knowing has a price.

Isn’t the answer to the question worth your life?

Chapter 1

Wyatt hated working overtime, but not for the same reasons that everyone else hated it. He had been working at the Hill Top Truck Stop’s twenty-four-hour diner from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for three years, a schedule which guaranteed (except in the event of a solar eclipse) that he would always be able to get home before full dark, but then if Jimmy was late and Wyatt didn’t get out of there until around 5:00 p.m. that wasn’t necessarily true. Jimmy wasn’t late all the time, but he was late enough that Wyatt had come to dislike him for it. Just before the daylight savings one hour fall back was the worst. Those last few days before people could turn their clocks back, the sky was already grey and purple when he finished cleaning the grill, clocked out at the regular 4 o’clock time and started for his car.

Jimmy was late again, but Wyatt still would have been safe if not for the disabled woman who got in line ahead of him at the grocery store that evening. Wyatt had stopped because he desperately needed cat food and while there he’d grabbed a frozen pizza for dinner. He got into line behind a woman who had a full cart of groceries, but all the other lines were packed with people with equally full carts of groceries. The cashier rang up the woman’s purchases, but when given the total the woman didn’t have enough money. She did not have anyone with her to assist her, so she was struggling to decide what she should do, and the cashier was not being very helpful.

Wyatt glanced anxiously out the glass front of the store and shifted from foot to foot while the cashier did returns on a few things and the sky outside became gradually darker and darker. He could practically see it happening, though he was sure that was something his therapist would tell him was his imagination. She didn’t actually say it that way, that would have been unprofessional of her, but it boiled down to the same thing.

He was watching the light bleed out of the sky and his brief window of opportunity to get home without incident was rapidly closing on him as the woman debated with herself for much too long about whether she needed the Little Debbie cream cheese streusel cakes or the gallon of milk. It seemed like an easy enough choice to him, but he didn’t know her, and she would probably get upset if he offered his opinion about it. Which would only slow things down more.

He looked around to see if another line was moving faster.

Then he looked down into the bottom of his cart at the six cans of cat food and the pizza and tried to decide if he needed any of it. He was completely out of cat food, but was it worth his life?

The cashier gave him a sympathetic look and Wyatt smiled. It felt a little deranged on his face, but she didn’t notice.

He could still see outside, but it was almost dark out there. Everything appeared to be covered in a thin film of black plastic.

Finally, the woman ahead of him made her purchases and a young man with pimples and freckles spread across his face helped her carry it all out. Wyatt pushed his groceries down the moving belt to the register and a moment later they were paid for and he was jogging across the parking lot.

He passed a pickup truck and something in the deep shadows beneath it slithered near the darkness by his feet. He picked his feet up and ran.

Where’s the fire, kid? asked an old man going toward the store as Wyatt dashed by him.

I’m sorry, Wyatt called back to him as he reached his car and fumbled to unlock the door. I’m really sorry, sir. I just... there’s no time. Darkness is falling.

Uh huh, the old man said, eyebrows lifted. He walked on to the store muttering to himself.

Hellooo? called a soft, sweet voice from somewhere behind Wyatt.

He ignored it and pretended not to hear, the fine hair at the back of his neck on end, goosebumps crawling over his skin. He got the car door open, fell inside, slammed it closed and locked it.

There was a creature, vaguely human in form, walking along the side of the road as Wyatt stopped at a red light. He couldn’t tell if the figure was male or female, though it wore what appeared to be an old faded and spotty sundress and sandals. Strange attire for someone to wear in the first days of November. The bottom of the sundress was stained red like it had been dipped in blood. The hair on the thing’s head was white and wispy, long to the shoulders. When it turned its head to watch Wyatt, he felt like screaming. Its face was an empty hole, a shell like an egg with the insides scooped out, but some of it still dripped down the creature’s boney pale chin. Inside the wide-open maw of its face was black emptiness. Sucking blackness like the center of a dead star.

Wyatt bit back a scream and stepped on the gas. As the headlights of his car swept over it, the thing in the bloody sundress melted away and disappeared.

He drove directly home and did everything he could to keep his eyes on the road. If he kept his gaze straight ahead, looked at the center line and focused there, he wouldn’t have to see the things in the darkness pushing at the skin of the world. He didn’t see the black-eyed hitch hikers, the tiny imps with razor sharp claws clinging to the swaying branches of willow trees, the men with blank stares and stag’s antlers scraping the sky strolling along the white line. He absolutely did not see these things or anything else. He stared at the road before him and pictured himself parking his car in the parking space outside of his apartment, which would of course be well-lit. Then he imagined himself running like hell to the door, unlocking it, opening it and closing it behind himself, shutting out the things that slithered, creeped and whispered in the night.

He imagined the cute faces of his two little cats and the bright overhead light in his living room. And his kitchen. And the hallway. And the bathroom. And the bedroom.

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye and he shook his head and kept his attention on the road ahead.

A tiny pointed finger tapped on the windshield and Wyatt couldn’t help it, he looked. The tiny finger belonged to a small, dark thing, an odd combination of squirrel, spider monkey and bat. It had needle sharp teeth which it bared at him in a grin, face pressed close to the glass, and narrow, intelligent eyes. It was rather cute, but then it attacked the glass and there was a high crystal screech as its claws scrabbled to dig through the windshield.

Wyatt turned the windshield wipers on. That only angered the little beast more and it ripped the rubber blade right off one of the wipers before vaulting into the sky, taking it with it.

The streetlights were on in the parking lot of his building when he got there, but the light outside of his apartment had burned out. Wyatt cursed, but not too much; he had a flashlight beneath his seat.

There were living shadow things capering over the walls outside his door as he approached, but Wyatt swept the flashlight over them and they fled. He knew they weren’t real, but knowing they weren’t real didn’t make them any less awful. In all likelihood, everything he believed he saw was some combination of things that would make sense if only he could pick them apart and find the components. Like the shadows; he was almost positive he had figured out their origin.

Peter Pan.

In the cartoon, Peter Pan was a playful boy who never wanted to grow up. In the book, he was still playful, but he was a much more sinister character. As a child, Wyatt had liked the book, especially the way his mother read it to him and did all the voices, but it had scared him, too.

Sometimes when he forgot to tell himself he was crazy and imagining it all, it was hard for him to ignore them and believe they weren’t real. He heard them, he saw them, he had even watched them react to things he said over the years, so who had the right to say they weren’t real? When he thought about it like that, he knew the Peter Pan theory was utter bullshit.

He didn’t allow himself to think like that much anymore if he could help it. Dr. Graham was helping him with that a lot and one of the things she insisted on was that he form a clear idea of what was real and what was not real. The shadows were not real.

Of course, that then left him with another dilemma. If the shadows weren’t real, if none of the other impossible things he saw were real either, then he was crazy, no question about it. He had been crazy most of his life though, since before he could even string words together into coherent sentences. Admitting it just made it official.

His two cats, Benson and Hedges, met Wyatt just inside the door. They immediately began meowing to be fed and tangled themselves around his ankles until he was in danger of falling or stomping on them.

Before he took the groceries into the kitchen, Wyatt went through the house and turned on all the lights. The cats followed him from room to room, meowing pitifully. When he reached the kitchen, they ran ahead of him and went to their bowls.

Yes, yes, I know, Wyatt said.

He opened a can of cat food and divided it between them then he put the pizza in the oven while they ate. They plowed through the food like they hadn’t eaten in days. Benson had a little bit of ground meat hanging from one of his long eye whiskers. A quarter of Hedges’s food had ended up on the linoleum floor around her bowl.

Wyatt watched them for a second before he walked back through the apartment to the windows and checked all the curtains to make sure they were closed. The darkness, in his experience, was sneaky and insidious. The light pushed it away, but lights always burned out and the dark was always there waiting. He had to be vigilant against it because that way lay madness.

He turned on the television and sat down to watch the local news while he waited for his pizza. When it was done, he ate two slices and fell asleep on the sofa watching a boring comedy movie from the ‘90s.

He came awake with a jerk when his phone rang on the coffee table. It was his mother, which was odd because he looked at the clock on the wall and it was after midnight.

Mom? he said when he answered it. Are you okay? What’s wrong?

Wyatt, honey. It’s your father, his mother said. He... They think he’s had a stroke. They’re taking him to the emergency room.

She sounded like she was a harsh word away from crying, but she was trying to be strong and mostly she managed it. If Wyatt hadn’t known his mother as well as he did, he might not have realized at all how upset she was.

Is he going to be okay? he asked.

They think so. I’m leaving to go there now. I just wanted to call you and your sister and let you know. You know... in case.

Wait, Mom. Which hospital? Wyatt asked, catching her before she hung up.

Oh, no, you don’t have to do that, honey. It’s really very late. I know how you... are. It’s fine. There isn’t anything you can do.

I don’t care. Just tell me, Wyatt said.

She told him the hospital before she hung up.

Wyatt looked around his nice, safe, well-lit apartment and frowned. There was no question he was going over to the hospital to see his father. He had to go, but he hadn’t been outside when it was past midnight in more years than he cared to think about.

Oh, man, he muttered under his breath. He got his keys but stood by the door and didn’t open it. Oh, man. Okay, I can do this. You can do this, Wyatt. It’s like thirty, maybe thirty-five feet to your car.

Talking to himself was also crazy, but most people did it.

I could just call the hospital and find—No. No, I can’t do that. What if he dies?

Hedges made a soft chirruping sound.

You’re right, he’s not going to die, Wyatt said. He’s a stubborn old man. He’s going to be fine.

Benson sat and began washing himself while he purred.

Okay, I’m going, Wyatt said. He pulled the curtains back from the window by the door and peered out. It looked clear, but he knew it wasn’t.

Shit, shit, shit, he hissed, holding the doorknob. "You can do this. I can do this."

He opened the door and stood there, part of him expecting the dark world outside to rush toward him with freakish hands outstretched. Instead, nothing at all happened. It was dark outside, and he saw the stars, faint and nearly blotted out so close to the city lights. None of the shadows moved, but the hair still prickled to attention along his arms and the back of his neck.

Wyatt locked the door then hurried down the walkway to his car, casting frightened glances around as he went, expecting something to manifest itself and scare the holy hell out of him at any moment.

He didn’t always see the night creatures. Sometimes they hid, sometimes they had better things to do, but they were drawn to Wyatt. Except that was one of the things he was supposed to know was not real, and Dr. Graham would look him in the eye and tell him to think about what he was saying if such a thing were to leave his mouth while in her presence. Think about what you just said, Mr. Sinclair and then tell me if you actually believe that.

Wyatt always told her no when she asked him to do things like that. No, he did not actually believe that they were drawn to him because they were not real. Wyatt wasn’t stupid, he knew the correct answer to a question like that.

He didn’t see much in the shadows on the way to the hospital. The way was well-lit by streetlights, but there wasn’t anything out there. That should have made him glad, but it didn’t. The darkness wasn’t empty, though it liked to pretend to be and people liked to pretend they believed such nonsense. Still, sometimes the things that lived in the dark paid no attention to him. Sometimes he could go nearly an entire night without encountering one. That was how it was as he drove out to the hospital.

Hospitals were very well-lit places. They had long florescent lights that could reach into every dark crevice and expose it. Wyatt liked hospitals for that reason, though he hated everything else about them.

He asked at the desk for his father’s room number and was directed to the ICU where Aaron Sinclair lay stretched out on a bed wearing a pale green night gown. Beside him sat Wyatt’s mother, Lorrie. She was holding her husband’s hand and she had been crying. Wyatt’s elder sister, Kat, sat in a chair across from their mother, anxiously bouncing her knee.

Hey, Wyatt said as he walked into the room.

Oh, my god, what are you doing here? Kat asked. She got up and walked over to hug him. I can’t believe you came. You had to go outside at night. How was that?

Not... that bad, Wyatt said.

Really?

I didn’t see anything. I’m fine. How’s Dad?

A sad and clumsy change of topic, but he’s fine.

He doesn’t look fine, Wyatt said, looking at their father beneath the hospital blankets. He looked smaller than usual, thinner, wasted.

Hey, Mom, Wyatt said and went to stand beside her.

The doctors say he’s going to make a full recovery, Lorrie said, stroking her husband’s limp hand. He looks so awful though. It scared me to death when it happened.

He’s going to be okay, Wyatt said. He had no idea if it was true, but she was scared and he wanted it to be true. He’ll be fine. They know what they’re doing.

I hope so, Lorrie said. She looked up at Wyatt standing beside her and smiled. Then she realized what she was seeing and her eyes widened. Wyatt, I told you not to come. You didn’t have to.

"I know, Mom, but I did have to, he said. Don’t worry, I’m fine."

Are you sure? she asked.

He could practically see his mother and his sister sizing him up, evaluating whether or not this was a good thing or a bad thing. Was it a good sign that he had forced himself outside against his fears and inclinations or would it set him back some? Was this the precursor to a string of bad days? They always hoped that it was good, that it signified progress, that he was getting better. They had also learned the hard way not to get their hopes up.

While they were still watching him, Wyatt leaned toward his father and looked at his face. Aaron looked pale, almost like a figure sculpted from wax. His chest only rose and fell minutely, his eyes moved beneath his lids and he held onto the edge of the bed like he was afraid of falling.

I was scared, Wyatt admitted. That phone call scared me.

More than the dark? Kat asked.

He nodded.

Kat sat down with him and their mother on Wyatt’s other side and took his hand. He squeezed her fingers and they looked at their father lying there seeming small and frail in his white hospital bed. There were shadows in the hospital. There was light from the lamps around them but farther from the center of the room, in the corners and crevices, it was dark. Wyatt watched for little things flitting through the deepest shadows and, not for the first time, wished he could be normal like everyone else. He wasn’t so sure the things he saw in the dark were hallucinations, but even if they were real, he would have given just about anything not to see them.

A shadow crept up the dark wall outside his father’s room and disappeared and Wyatt pretended not to see it. Outside, the darkness pressed against the window glass seeking entry. He caught himself watching it; looking at the faintly orange glow of the parking lot lights coming through them, casting slats of light through the open blinds. The orange light made the shadow creatures outside appear sickly.

You’re seeing them right now, aren’t you? Kat asked him.

Shh, it doesn’t matter, Wyatt said.

Wyatt.

Yes. I see them now. I always see them.

Kat swallowed thickly against the press of tears in the back of her throat and nodded. She leaned over and rested her head on Wyatt’s shoulder. You know, you’re the bravest person I know, she said softly.

Wyatt let out a startled burst of laughter. I’m not, he said. "I’m scared of everything."

I know, Kat said.

"I think Dad might be the bravest person I know," Wyatt said.

Their mother smiled, and Kat smiled, too, but she said, He’s the second bravest person I know.

Chapter 2

Wyatt went home that night, for once more afraid for his father than he was of the dark. He still dashed to his door with a flashlight, but he had left all the lights in the house on when he left, so it was bright and safe. He took a shower and thought about his mother all alone at the hospital with his father, who slept the sleep of the righteously sedated. Then he went to bed and couldn’t sleep himself. He tossed and turned and got up to check the house at least ten times, but it was still the middle of the night and he couldn’t sleep.

Wyatt had always been like that. As an infant, he had screamed more than other children screamed when left in the cradle at night, then he would be tired all day. He was a night person, his mother used to say, because her son would sleep all day and stay up right to sunrise. The irony of him being such a person was not lost on Wyatt; a night person who was afraid of the dark.

As a child, he hadn’t known to be afraid of all the things he saw. All he knew was that the gnomes and sprites liked to play with him and there was a monster in his closet and another one beneath the bed, but his parents couldn’t see any of them. The monster in the closet eventually went away, but the one under his bed never did. Its name was Thorn, which was a pretty badass name for a creature whose worst fear was being exiled into the word outside of the space beneath Wyatt’s bed. When he was little, Thorn had scared him, but he had outgrown that fear. Wyatt and Thorn hadn’t always talked much, but they had an understanding.

That night as he lay there sleepless in bed with the cats balled up and purring beside him thinking about his father, he wondered if they hadn’t all downplayed it for him. If it wasn’t worse than everyone let on because Wyatt was so unstable and delicate. Aaron and Wyatt were not exceptionally close, not the way Aaron and Kat were, and he often got the impression that his father didn’t know what to think of him, that he confused him and made him sad, but he had never doubted that Aaron loved him. He couldn’t imagine what he’d do if his father died.

If he died alone in a hospital bed in the dark.

Wyatt shuddered and rolled over onto his stomach, balling the pillow up in the crook of his elbow. His other hand was over the edge of the mattress. After a long time trying to forget about it and go to sleep, Wyatt thought about all the things he wished he could say to his father. He muttered in soft whispers under his breath, rehearsing a conversation that would never take place, not even if Aaron made a full recovery.

When he felt a hand touch his fingers, Wyatt didn’t jerk away. He put his hand down farther over the edge of the bed and Thorn took his hand and held it. Wyatt didn’t know what the monster living beneath his bed looked like, but the skin of his palm was soft and warm, and it wasn’t the first time he had sensed Wyatt’s mood and offered him comfort. For all he knew, Thorn looked like a ten-foot-long centipede. Oddly, he didn’t find the possibility disturbing or disgusting. Sometimes the things in the dark, even the monsters, weren’t that bad. He had learned that a long time ago, but it was hard to tell the difference between a bad one and a nice one and they didn’t write instruction manuals for Wyatt’s condition. He didn’t think there were other people with his condition, or at least he had never met one.

He had once known a man named Jared who had a very peculiar, intimate relationship with his neighbor’s horse, a stallion named Satan. Jared had started many conversations in the waiting room of Dr. Graham’s office with, This one time when I was fucking Satan... It led to some awkward moments. If Jared had really been having an affair with a monster he thought was the devil, he and Wyatt might have had more to talk about, but Jared knew very well that Satan was just a horse. Wyatt had been glad when Dr. Graham told Jared that she couldn’t see him anymore.

The things that lived in the dark were a lot like people though. Some of them were good, some of them were bad, most of them just wanted to be left alone. The trouble was knowing which one was which so you didn’t get your face unexpectedly chewed off.

Thorn was one of the good ones.

I’m sorry you’re sad, Thorn told him.

My dad’s sick, Wyatt said.

Thorn didn’t answer him, but he squeezed Wyatt’s fingers.

You’re a good friend, Wyatt said. It was a strange thing to say to a creature that was probably a figment of his imagination. You’re one of the nicest monsters I know.

Yes, I often think the same thing about you, Thorn said in his soft, far away voice.

Wyatt fell asleep and when he woke up in the morning, he was alone and no one was holding his hand. He knew Thorn wasn’t really gone, but he wouldn’t see or hear from him again until the sun went down. Perhaps not even then. He was a solitary, reclusive creature.

Wyatt dragged himself out of bed and into the shower. He got dressed and ready for work in his usual slow, half-asleep funk then drove to the Hill Top Diner.

Charlie, one of the guys who worked the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, was cleaning up when Wyatt got there. Charlie was a big guy in his forties, he had type two diabetes and longish slate grey hair topped by male-pattern baldness. His skin and hair always looked oily and Wyatt would have blamed that on Charlie standing over the grill or huge vats of boiling oil all night, except Wyatt didn’t have bad skin and he did the same thing.

Hey, Charlie, Wyatt said, tying an apron around his waist.

Charlie barely glanced up from tying off the top of a garbage bag and just grunted at him by way of greeting. Heather called in. She might be a bit late, he said. Then he hefted the garbage bag and carried it out back.

Fantastic, Wyatt said under his breath.

Heather worked in the kitchen with him through the lunch rush and Wyatt depended on her when things got really busy. However, she was not very dependable, she was late an average of twice a week. Occasionally she didn’t show up at all and he didn’t know how she hadn’t been fired, but she had been working there almost as long as Wyatt himself.

If she was only a little late though it would be okay.

Wyatt got to work and he almost managed to forget about his problems. He wasn’t completely awake yet and coffee didn’t help much. He functioned better at night, he just did, but living in the daylight was the only way he could hope to cling to even a scrap of his sanity. It was some kind of wicked joke that he seemed to have been born that way and cursed to live in terror of the dark. Consequently, he was like a zombie when he first got to work. People had told him that he would get used to it eventually, that his body and mind would reprogram themselves and he would be a genuine day person. He was still waiting for that to happen.

He filled orders on autopilot. He wasn’t a bad cook, but it was all pretty much the same, day in, day out. Omelet with mushrooms and swiss, no peppers, no meat. Sausage, ham or bacon and eggs fried over easy. Hash browns, sausage, eggs scrambled. Oatmeal. As it drew closer to lunch, there was a switchover from eggs and bacon to ham and cheese on rye. Grilled cheese sandwich with tomato basil soup. Chicken strip basket with onion rings. Double bacon cheese burger with beer batter fries.

People came in and ordered, the waitresses gave him the orders, sometimes lingering a second or two to flirt, but most of them had learned by now that it was useless. He liked men, when he noticed, which wasn’t that often.

He took his own lunch break after 1:00 p.m. when things slowed down, and sat at the counter near the back, listening to people talk, watching the waitresses pass back and forth carrying food on trays to waiting people. A little kid at a booth toward the front was turned around in his seat watching Wyatt, his index finger up his nose.

A man dressed all in black walked into the diner, looked around briefly, then walked over to the counter and sat down on a barstool across and slightly down from Wyatt. What’s good here? he asked, picking up a menu.

Wyatt was eating a sandwich he had made at home out of leftover chicken. He shrugged. It’s all okay, he said.

The man in black smiled, scanning the menu. He was older, but sexy in a lanky, lazy cat sort of way. There was a mole beside his nose, a dimple when he smiled, and his dark eyes kept darting away from the menu to scan the room before going back to it. It was strange behavior, but maybe the guy was waiting for someone, or he had some sort of PTSD. Wyatt had read that it could make a person hyperaware of their surroundings, even such mundane surroundings as the diner.

Wyatt watched him a minute longer before he popped the last of his sandwich into his mouth and went back to work.

The man ordered a Reuben sandwich with coffee. He ate it in ten minutes, paid and left.

My cousin Matt used to eat like that, Heather remarked as the guy was leaving.

Wyatt was clearing away the dishes. What do you mean?

Heather didn’t usually have much to say to Wyatt. No more than Charlie did. Heather was a tall girl with broad shoulders and blond hair that she cut boyishly short. She was a lesbian and since Wyatt liked men he figured that was why they didn’t ever have much to talk about. Charlie was just an asshole.

"Fast, kind of hunched over his plate like he thinks someone’s going to take it from him, eyes all