After Darkness Falls: Volume One Part 7

"Albert,"

"Well now isn't that a coincidence, my name's Alberto but everyone around here calls me Al, or Big Al. I think that this town's got enough Al's already, don't you?"

"S-S-Sure," Albert stammered, eager to get gone as he squeezed his way out of the door.

He was back in his car as fast as his feet would take him. His heart was pounding hard through fear and his stomach was in knots over his cowardice. He wished that he had the strength to march back into the diner and start kicking some a.s.s, but he barely had enough to turn the ignition key.

He was about a half mile out of town when the sign caught his eye. It was just a small hand painted sign that read "Yard Sale". There was a long table set up by the side of the road and several cars had pulled up to take a look. There were all sorts of colorful offerings on show and several pieces glinted under the late afternoon sun. The item that had caught his eye was an old antique looking typewriter. He, like most people, had often thought that he had a novel in him if not for the commitment of time that writing would require. But now he was jobless and homeless with nothing but time on his hands. The idea of writing on a piece of history itself such as the typewriter seemed far more enticing than sitting in front of a blinking, bleeping soulless plastic computer.

He pulled over up onto a gra.s.s verge and got out of the car, all churning thoughts of lost manhood temporarily forgotten.

The table was a smorgasbord of strange and unusual objects. The faces of the browsing were rapt with excitement and pleasure. The odd thing was that everyone seemed to be preoccupied with a different and innocuous item.

"Can I help you?" A wheezy voice asked him from nowhere.

He looked down to see a small old woman. Her face was creased and lined with what looked like a thousand lifetimes of experience and all of them hard.

"I was interested in the typewriter," he said as he ran his fingers over the dull charcoal keys. The machine was black and looked solid and heavy and the letters were dulled and worn with age. He stood there and wondered about the fingers that must have flown across the keys and what tales they must have spun. His gaze was transfixed by the gleaming black metal and he felt an instant connection. He could hear the thundering clacks of a thousand words on sultry nights beneath moonless skies.

"We've been waiting for you," the old woman rasped.

Albert turned back to face her and was shocked to find her gone. He stared around wide-eyed looking for her but he was alone.

"Sorry, dropped my pen," she said standing up again from behind the table. "Donald," she called over Albert's shoulder. "We've been waiting for you, what time do you call this?" She said tapping her wrist.w.a.tch. "That was.h.i.+ng machine is not going to fix itself," she snapped.

Albert turned to see a boiler suited repairman walk sheepishly by.

The old woman shook her head, "If you want something done right, do it yourself," she said shaking her head. "Now did you want the typewriter or not? I'll be butchered if I'm going to lug the d.a.m.n thing back in the house again."

"How much did you want for it?" Albert asked feeling foolish at his active imagination.

"You know it's magical," she said enigmatically.

"Really?" Albert bit.

"No doofus, it's a typewriter, give me twenty and it's yours," she said flapping her hand irritably.

"Deal," Albert replied reaching into his pocket feeling dumber than ever.

Once the typewriter was safely secured on his front seat he started to head out of town when he suddenly wondered where he was heading to. The early evening dusk was falling and he felt the sudden tiring of a long day.

He drove up the road for no more than a few minutes when he spotted a turnoff sign to the "Happy Camper Summer Lodges". He was sure that it wasn't the B&B that Susie the waitress had recommended, but he was too tired to start hunting for alterative accommodation.

He pulled in and along the long dusty drive towards a collection of wooden cabins. The summer season was in her last death throes and he was reasonably confident of finding an empty room.

He stopped outside the main office building; a man popped out from inside before he had even come to a halt.

"h.e.l.lo there," the man said waving as he bounded down the steps from the second floor office.

Albert was barely out of the car before his hand was being pumped vigorously. "h.e.l.lo," he managed as his hand began to ache from the enthusiastic welcome.

"Is it a room that you'd be after?" The man asked a little hopefully with a slight accent tw.a.n.g.

"Have you got one available?" Albert asked.

The man's smile faltered on his face as though he was trying to decide if Albert was being sarcastic or not. "We've got plenty," he said a little sadly. "Business ain't what it used to be, not since they built the new highway."

"I guess that you can't stand in the way of progress," Albert commiserated. "Everything changes when you least expect it."

"Ain't that the truth. I'm Ferris by the way," the man said offering his hand again.

"Albert," he replied, grabbing a bag out of the car for fear of another rigorous handshake that he could ill afford.

"You a writer Albert?" Ferris asked looked at the typewriter on the front seat.

"Yes," Albert answered, wanting it to be true.

"What is it that you write?"

"New futures," Albert replied. "A whole new future."

A few hours later Albert was sitting in his cabin; the rooms were laid out into an open plan kitchen and lounge with a decent sized bedroom and bathroom off to the side. The wooden log walls smelled a little damp and fusty as though the cabin had been dormant for a long time.

The typewriter that had once gleamed with new possibilities now sat mockingly on the small table. A litter of discarded and crumpled sheets of paper that Ferris had been kind enough to provide for him were strewn about the floor. Apparently writing was a far more difficult undertaking than Albert had envisaged. His hopes of finding a hidden talent and natural apt.i.tude for the craft had failed to materialize. He had no prose on which to dine and no story with which to share.

Ferris had been kind enough to restock the mini bar which Albert was now in the process of emptying. He wasn't much of a drinker by nature and the tiny bottles had already gone quickly to his head. The recriminations and years of swallowed feelings were churning around in his stomach producing a toxic c.o.c.ktail. His anger was finally beginning to surface over his treatment from his wife and his boss. It wasn't fair; he was a nice guy who had never looked to hurt anyone. He was a firm believer that if you put positive energy out into the world then good things happened to good people. And yet here he was pus.h.i.+ng 40 with his life's belongings in the back of a U-Haul trailer. No wife, no family, no job, no nothing.

The more he drank the more he thought and the more he thought the more he drank. At some point during the evening he started to write.

The morning sun was s.h.i.+ning through the cabin window with the promise of a new day when the phone's incessant buzzing woke him from a troubled sleep.

The cell phone was on the bedside table and his hand scrambled around clumsily for it. He cracked his eyes open a touch and instantly regretted it. His head throbbed monstrously and he instantly wondered just why people would put themselves through this kind of wakeup call on a regular basis.

He knocked the phone onto the floor and had to lean over to find it. His stomach contents sloshed around dangerously and he fought to keep them down. He picked the phone up and heaved himself back into bed. He wasn't surprised to find himself fully clothed and on top of the covers.

The phone's display was showing that there were several messages, both text and answer machine from colleagues at his old job looking to spread juicy gossip and from the couple of friends that he had managed to make. He began to read through the written ones with increasing shock and disbelief. He switched to the answer phone and his eyes grew wider. He sat bolt upright in the cabin bed ignoring the roll of nausea. At some point last night his ex-wife and ex-boss had been taking a stroll alongside the ocean when they had been attacked. Apparently something had a.s.saulted them on the beach and then dragged them into the ocean, never to be seen again. The police had found b.l.o.o.d.y and shredded clothing on the sand belonging to the happy couple. The word was that they would have considered a wild animal attack, if not for the fact that their remains had been carried off in the water.

Albert's mind was racing with more emotions than he could effectively process. Yes he had been bitter and angry for the first time last night, but he had also loved and borderline wors.h.i.+pped her. It was a strange and unsettling mixture of love and hate, relief and fear.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and for the first time he noticed the typewriter. As well as the crumpled up b.a.l.l.s of paper, there were now several neatly stacked pages. He couldn't remember writing anything late last night, let alone anything that he would have wanted to keep.

He picked up a couple of the pages and began to read. What he saw shocked him. When he had been a small boy he had been terrified by the movie "The Creature from the Black Lagoon". It was a 1954 film concerning the scientific hunt for the monster. The image of something lurking below the cool calm surface had transfixed him and put him off swimming as a child. His biggest fear was to be swimming across an open lake and see the sh.o.r.e ahead, only to find your ankle grabbed from beneath the waves and for you to be pulled under with the dark water filling your mouth and lungs as you screamed in terror.

Flicking through the pages he found that he had written a strange disjointed tale of such a similar and terrible fate befalling Alice and Dougray. He read through the pages several times. Ignoring the spelling and grammatical errors it was quite clear that his story was eerily related.

He was a practical man by nature and the idea of a coincidence was far more ridiculous than the story itself. So what did that leave him with? He had written about Alice and Dougray being attacked by his childhood monster, and something had attacked them by the water.

He hefted the typewriter onto his lap and inserted a fresh sheet of paper. There really was only one way to test the theory, he began to type.

A few minutes later he sat back and waited, feeling a nervous antic.i.p.ation. After five minutes he started to feel a little foolish. After 10 he felt positively stupid. After 15 he felt like an a.s.shole.

Finally he shoved the typewriter aside and decided that a shower was just the thing to restore a little sanity. He was toweling himself dry a short time later when there was a knock at the door. He had almost forgotten about his crazy notions as he went to the door wearing one of the lodge's robes.

He opened the door and saw Ferris standing there. "Hi Ferris what can I do for you?" Albert asked as he continued to dry his hair. It took him a moment to realise that the lodge owner wasn't speaking. He brushed the hair from his eyes and saw that Ferris was standing motionless and holding a tray. "Ferris?" He tried again.

"Huh?" The man answered distantly.

"You ok?"

"Uh, sure. What can I do for you?" The motel owner asked.

"You knocked on my door Ferris."

"Oh right. Here, this is for you I guess," Ferris said confused, as he thrust the tray forward.

Albert took the offering with a pounding heart and a dry mouth. He closed the door on Ferris without another word. There was a plate on the tray covered by a metal serving lid. He carried it into the small kitchenette and sat it on the counter.

He stared at the tray for several minutes. His mind was struggling to comprehend the possible consequences of what lay beneath the metal lid. He had written something simple and yet distinctive. A BLT sandwich with beefsteak tomatoes and a dash of mustard from a deli in New York that made their own unique recipe.

Unable to put off the inevitable any longer her s.n.a.t.c.hed the lid away from the plate and started at the sandwich. A BLT from the owner of the lodge to his only customer wasn't especially unusual, but a bite would tell all.

It was two weeks later and the lodge was buzzing. The BLT test sandwich had proven that the typewriter was allowing whatever he wrote to somehow happen in real life. It was a strange thing to stare at a black sheet of paper and know that the world lay at his fingertips. He had no idea just where to start or just what the limitations would be. For the first time in his life he was able to think about himself. What he wanted to see and what he wanted to happen.

There was a tour bus in the parking laden with heavyset muscular roadies all with bemused looks on their faces. There was a stage being erected on the rear grounds of the lodge and the band were hanging around as bemused as the roadies. It wasn't the most logically of venue choices for The Rolling Stones to be launching their new alb.u.m but here they were nevertheless.

Albert was overjoyed to see Ferris' face alive with happiness. They had spoken much over the last couple of weeks and Ferris had conceded that the lodge was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ferris had seemed like a decent man and had reminded Albert much of himself. A good man looking to the world to be good in return and finding himself short changed. The lodge's fortunes had been transformed in mere days as the IRS had rung to apologies for their terrible mistake on the business' accounts. Apparently Ferris was due a substantial rebate thanks to the typewriter.

Albert had managed to reconcile the deaths of Alice and Dougray. After all how could he have possibly known? Could he really be blamed? And just think of all the good that he could now do in the world, not to mention all the wrongs that he could right, or write so to speak.

During the first week of his new writing career the small town had never seen such an event as the one that had rolled into town. Every business was having their coffers swelled beyond measure and he had pa.s.sed by Nan's Diner on several occasions to see the kind waitress Susie beaming at him through the window. He had partaken of a few shakes when she was on duty, and most pleasingly shared a couple when she was off. He had promised to take her back to New York when he returned after the concert, especially now that he was the proud owner of the Yankees. His own personal wealth now made him one of the richest men in the world and he had started driving around town in the original Nightrider car. He knew that he had made a promise to help the world, but that could wait; after all wasn't it about time he started to look after himself for a change?

His first week, after, of course his appropriate mourning period for his sins, had been a blast. Every bully that had ever picked on him was met with suitable vengeance. There was nothing too extreme as he had learnt his lesson with Alice and Dougray. No, just a little degradation and embarra.s.sment. More than one Victoria Secrets model had knocked on his door and offered herself to him, as well as a slightly older and far more distinguished news anchor. Surprisingly his imagination had run dry a lot quicker than he had expected. Temptations of the flesh were fine, but they weren't real and checking his bank account balance online was strangely numbing as they were just digits on a screen.

He was sitting on the cabin's veranda that he'd had installed overnight as well as a few other improvements. Ferris had started to demand just how the h.e.l.l it had happened, but Albert had written the man's concerns away. It was far easier he had found, to avoid such questions; not to mention the fact that the man could have been a little more grateful considering how Albert had saved his business and the town. It was a little grating not to be getting the credit that he undoubtedly deserved. It was starting to feel like his job and marriage all over again. People walking all over him and taking him for granted. He had started to feel a frustration again at being perceived as a doormat. Even Susie had talked endlessly about the town being blessed by G.o.d and their miracles. He had felt like throttling her at times and screaming, "I'm your G.o.d you stupid woman, me, me, me!"

He looked up and saw Susie walking up the road to his lodge, her hand flapping away in greeting. His interest had surprisingly started to wane a little in Susie during the last couple of days and he was starting to regret offering her the chance to come with him. She was a sweet enough girl, but now that he had the world to choose from, was she really the best that he could do? He was pondering making some personality changes that he could make in Susie, perhaps a little physical overhaul.

"Hi sweetie," she said pecking his cheek and his stomach knotted and he shoved a smile through his mouth and onto his lips.

"Hi," he said.

"What's the matter sourpuss?" she teased him and ruffled his new shoulder length hair.

"I've asked you not to do that!" He snapped.

"Sorry," she said quietly. "I get the feeling that you're always annoyed with me these days."

These days! He thought angrily, I've only known her a couple of weeks and now it's like we're already married. "I'm going for a walk," he said brusquely as he marched past her. Even her teary eyed expression was aggravating him.

He stormed down the steps and around to the rear of the cabin. On the way he almost knocked Keith Richards to the ground who was having a smoke.

"Whoa, easy man," Keith slurred.

"Blow it out your a.s.s Richards," Albert barked, making a mental note to write the guitarist a particularly bad case of the trots over night.

He headed out into the fields beyond the lodge and drank in the peaceful air. It was quiet and empty here and he could think for a minute. The idea of having the whole world at your fingertips may seem like an endless orgy of delights, but he was finding that there was little pleasure to be had by making puppets dance. In fact he was starting to resent for the puppets for dancing for him.

Perhaps he would just write himself away on some tropical island paradise somewhere; a little slice of heaven where he could be alone without the pressure of being G.o.d, or at least a G.o.d.

"Well now what have we got here?" A gruff voice startled him from behind.

He turned to see a burly man dressed in camouflage fatigues emerge from the tree line. The beefy man looked vaguely familiar but Albert couldn't quite place him; his memory was understandably spotty during the crazy past two weeks.

"Remember me you little f.a.ggot?" The man rumbled.

"Nope," Albert said honestly.

"I told you that this town already had one Al and that we didn't need another," the man growled.

"Oh yeah that's right. You're the ape from the diner, Alberto isn't it?" Albert said mockingly, after all when you're a G.o.d what did you have to fear from redneck locals?

Alberto showed him exactly what by stepping forward and punching him hard in the face. Albert sank to his knees as his nose spouted blood through his fingers. "What the h.e.l.l?" He exclaimed.

"That's what smart mouths get," Alberto said proudly as he hooked his thumbs into his belt loops.

"You ignorant f.u.c.king hillbilly!" Albert yelled.

Alberto stepped forward and booted him hard in the ribs. "And that's what a.s.sholes get for double measure," he grinned.

"You're going to pay for that," Albert grimaced from his fetal position on the wet gra.s.s.

"Oh and now we're going to see just where making threats gets us," Alberto smiled cruelly.

Albert cringed on the ground as the bigger man raised his foot again, only this time in a stamping motion. Just as Big Al brought his boot down Albert caught it in two hands and shoved as hard as he could backwards. Alberto staggered back and fell heavily but bruising only his pride. Albert leapt to his feet and ran back towards his cabin.

As he ran he thought of every terrible thing that he was going to inflict on the bully. He was sick and tired with having to cower beneath the yoke of those bigger and stronger than he was. Natural selection was a crock, especially when he had his very own trump card sitting black and glistening in his cabin.

One of the first things that had had summoned was a state of the art safe with which to protect the typewriter. The last thing that he wanted to do was to lose his precious prize. He had started to end his day by writing a line on it that he woke in the morning to find it still locked safely away. He figured that as long as he wrote the line at night, the typewriter had to be there come morning.

He ran as fast as he could back through the cabin gap and around the corner. He was running full speed when rounded the corner and collided straight into the back of Mick Jagger. The singer barely had time to notice him before Albert sent him spinning out into the road. A huge lorry was struggling to back up along the narrow driveway and the lead singer of The Rolling Stones was sent careering into the road and disappeared under the ma.s.sive wheels. People seemed to scream in all directions at once, but Albert kept running. He could fix this, he could fix anything.

He ran up the steps to his cabin, shrugging off the grasping hands of horrified onlookers as they sought to block his path. He reached the top of his steps just as Susie stepped out onto the veranda. Her hands were plastered to her face in terror at the scene below as a large pool of dark blood was spreading out from under the lorry.

"What did you do?" She gasped as he reached her.

He shoved her aside as he made for the sanctuary of his cabin and to correct the world that was descending into chaos around him. She made a second grab at him and he pushed her harder, much harder in his panic than he had intended. She stumbled backwards with her arms cartwheeling wildly. He reached for her but it was too little too late. Her legs caught against the low fence of the veranda and she was suddenly airborne. He heard but couldn't look at the loud splat that she made as she hit the concrete below.