Dark Wind

By Richard I. Gargus

Madness of Night

By Richard I. Gargus

                I know you think I'm crazy.  Maybe I am too.  I don't mind that you think that, even if it isn't true.  But you gotta' know I wasn't always.  Not always.  I had a good life.  I had a good job, and a family, and friends.  It's better here now.  He can't harm my friends anymore.  That's why I don't want out.  And no matter what they say, I didn't do any of those things.  I told them the truth then, and I'll tell you now.  It was just as true then as it is now, too.  You don't have to believe me, I know you won't.  Why tell you?  'Cause no matter what you think, you're gonna hear the truth once anyway.  I know you won't believe it, no one does, but you're gonna hear it anyway.

                It was while I was in high school the first time.  I told my Mom about it when it first happened and she just looked at me strange like.  "Don't you lie to me.  That scares me.  I don't want you saying any of that ever again.  You hear me?  He just jumped.  That's all there was to it.  He was always strange and no good was to come to him." she demanded.  Only it wasn't a lie.  I was telling the truth.  "You know how crazy that makes you sound?  How come no one else saw that?  I'll tell you why, 'cause it's crazy.  You gotta' quit making up these lies!"

                If it hadn’t been for Marvin lying, they probably would have taken me then.  It would have been best in the long run, you know.  Especially looking back.  I wish they had.  I know Marvin was trying to help, but damn him!  The rest would be alive now, except for his help.  Funny isn't it.  You could say Marvin killed them, couldn’t you?  In a way, they all did.  All the lawyers, all the judges, all my friends.  Yeah, they helped kill them too.

                It was summer when we found it.  Jeremy dug it up.  It was barely poking through the dirt where he threw his sleeping bag.  He bitched about it for hours before he decided to dig it up.  He should have just moved his sleeping bag, but he insisted he liked the view of the lake from there.  It's not like it wouldn’t have been the same from two feet over.  It sure wasn’t worth all those lives.  But no, that wouldn’t have been Jeremy.  He was pretty anal retentive.  Dead set on whatever he was dead set on.  So there he was.  Bitching to high heaven when Ron, Marvin, and I finally had enough.  "Move or dig the damn rock up, and shut the hell up!"

                Well, he started digging.  At first we thought it was pretty cool.  It didn’t take long to realize it was a box and not a rock.  But it was old.  Real old.  And it had carvings all over it.  The more he dug, the quieter the camp got.  When he finally pulled it up from the ground, it was completely silent.  Hell, even the owls and other critters were silent.  I don't remember any wind in the trees even.  But, there it sat by the camp fire.  A dark brown box that could have been either wood or some kind of stone.  It has figures covering the entire surface.  We gathered around looking at it.  Marvin picked it up and rolled it around, studying all the carvings.

                "Hey, I bet this is some pirates case.  I bet it has something in it more valuable than gold.  Maybe a map to a buried treasure." he suggested.

                "You stupid shit!  Pirate?  Here?  In the middle of Arizona?  Don't tell me, captain of a prairie schooner!  Right?" Ron jibed him.  "Go ahead, open it.  Let's see the map!"

                "I tried already.  It's stuck.  Someone got a knife, maybe we can pry it open."  Jeremy said.

                "Not my knife!" I said.  "You broke my last knife prying rocks out from under your sleeping bag last summer.  Use your own knife!"

                "Duh!  I don't have one Snot Drip!  Why do you think I asked for yours?  Marvin, you have one don't you?  I won't break it, damnit.  If it won't open easy, we'll try something else.  Come on, go get it."

                He did.  Marvin, the dumb shit gave him his bowie knife.  I can still see it even now.  Just like yesterday.  Jeremy tried to push it into the tiny crack between the lid and the rest of the box.  He tried the front, and both sides, but couldn't even get the tip in.  He even laid it on its back and tried hammering it in with the heel of his hand.  He might have tried all night but Marvin slapped his shoulder and reclaimed his knife before it got broken.  But anal Jeremy, had set his mind to getting it open.  He found a big rock and started to pound on the front of the box near the lock.  You know, that box had a real strange sound to it when he hit it with that rock.  I can't really describe it.  It was like a sound that was from someplace way off.  Oh, it was loud enough and all, just that it sounded like it was coming from someplace else.  Someplace out of site.  But anyway after a while, he quit.  We just all sat around staring at it.

                Finally Jeremy reached over and picked it up again.  He began tracing the carvings with his fingers when it happened.  First there was this hiss.  Like pressure leaked out.  Slowly.  Then the mist came out.  It was heavy.  It flowed out and straight down.  It ran down the sides of the box, down the sides of Jeremy's legs and spread out on the ground.  Jeremy kicked the box away and backed up.  Then, the lid opened and I heard this command in my head.  "Take one.  Only one."

                I couldn’t see in the box, it was still full of the heavy mist.  But I knew what I had to do.  I couldn’t have done anything else if I'd been dared.  I crawled over to the box and stuck my hand into the mist.  I felt a small round object and closed my fingers around it.  As I pulled my hand out, Ron was at my side, and he too reached into the mist.  After a second, Jeremy did the same, followed by Marvin.  Then we all held our hands out, open.  Palms up.  There were the black stones, and one white.  I held the white one and everyone else held a black one.  Now the mist began to flow again, it whelled out of the box and rose into the air, rising quickly and so thick we could no longer see each other or even our outstretched hands.

                Then next thing I remember was waking up in the morning.  I lurched awake.  I sat up wide awake.  The others woke at about the same time.  We were all sitting there kind’a staring at each other.  "Hey." I said.  "Where's the box?"  The others looked at me, and then around.  Marvin spoke first.

                "What box?"

                "You know.  The box we dug up.  The wooden box you thought was a pirate treasure.  It had the mist, and those stones in it.  I got a white one and you guys got a black one."  I looked around for the stone I had held.  It to was suspiciously missing.  I could see from the looks that they were pretending not to know what I was talking about.  "Oh, I get it.  Cute.  Real cute.  Well then you guys tell me what came out of that hole in the ground."  I turned to point at the hole.  There wasn’t a hole anymore.  Just flat sand.  "So, what, you buried it again." I dug around looking for it.  "Come on you guys.  What is this?  Where did you put it?"  They just looked at me.  No one said anything.

                "Sounds like a cool dream.  Can you remember more of it?" asked Jeremy.  "Yeah, tell us." the other two chimed in.  But, it was no dream.  I knew it then, and I know it now.  It was real alright.  Everyone's dead cause of it.  That sound like a dream to you?  But it didn’t happen right at first.  I felt it even then, but I didn’t see it until later.  I even know why the sound of the box was from so far away.  Cause the box was never really here.  I mean, it was, but it wasn’t.  Not really.

                We went home later that day, and I was convinced my so called buddies had played a trick on me.  I could have understood playing a trick on Marvin.  We always did, but I couldn’t imagine them chumming with him against me.  It pissed me off so much I didn’t even talk to them for a week.  And when I finally did, it was only because I decided to play like it didn’t bother me.

                It was that same week that Ron was killed.  I had joined him on a trip into the woods to catch some tadpoles.  He wanted to put them in his aquarium and watch them grow legs.  Marvin wasn’t really with us, he just said he was to cover for me.  Ron was ahead of me crossing the trestle when I saw it for the first time.  It was like a dark wind.  It blew right past me and circled Ron for a second.  I yelled at Ron and he turned to look at me.  "What?" he asked.  That was the last words he ever said.. "What?"  Then he screamed as the dark wind picked him up and slammed him into the creek bed below.  As he lay there, blood running out of his head, the dark wind turned into a man.  Well.. not really.  It was more like the shadow of a man.  Only it's face was really plainly visible.  And it was staring up at me, grinning.  That awful grin. 

                I ran home and told Mom.  Yeah, that was the first time.  The next day, the police came.  They asked me all kinds of questions.  I don't remember what I told them then.  I think I was in shock.  Jeremy and Marvin had come by earlier.  I remembered that.  And I remember the police telling me they had spoken to them also.  Marvin had told them he was with us and that Ron had just fallen when he tripped over the ties.  But he wasn’t there you see.  And the way he and Jeremy looked at me that morning.  I remember their eyes.

                It was nearly a week later that Marvin and I were riding our bikes to the mall.  Jeremy had gotten a part time job at the ice cream stand and had told us he would sneak us a bowl of ice cream if we came up there.  It was Saturday.  It was around 3 o'clock and was still warm even though it was late summer.  We were about three blocks from the house when I saw it the second time.  It came from no place.  The dark wind blew right past my head.  I locked up the brakes on my bike and yelled at Marvin, but it was too late.  He was already caught up in it, and he and his bike were carried right out into traffic.  I guess he never saw the truck that hit him.  It was like one minute he was riding and the next he just flew right in front of that truck.  I still hear that crunch.  There was this crunch and then the brakes.  There at the side of the rode stood the shadow man.  With his terrible grin.  He stared right at me.  I stared right back at him.  He was still there when the ambulance came and carried my dead friend away.  No one else could see him.  He was right there, and no one could see him.

                I avoided Jeremy for a month.  He called several times, but I just made excuses.  I had told him and Marvin both about the shadow man, but they had both scoffed at me.  I had told Jeremy again after Marvin was killed, but he just told me I was crazy and that I needed a shrink.  I avoided him, not that I was mad at him.  I just knew he was next.  It was like he was my last friend, and if I was around him, he was going to die next.  I should have known then that there was nothing I could do about it.  He was next, and he was going to die.

                When school started back up, Jeremy was in my chemistry class with me.  I still didn’t talk much to him, and he wouldn’t believe me when I told him why.  It was the third week of class that we had our first lab exercise.  There wasn’t much to it really.  Boil water and jam a cork into the flask.  Then putting the flask under the cold water, see how low we cold we could get the water before it quit boiling.  But there it was.  The dark wind blew in from the hallway.  I circled the room and then closed in on Jeremy.  I dropped my flask and started to run in his direction.  That's when his flask exploded.  Pieces of glass flew every where, but one large piece lodged into Jeremy's throat.  He fell to the floor, yelling.  He bled to death before the ambulance could get there.  I told no one that all the while they worked on him, the shadow man stood over him grinning at me.

                Since that was the last person from the camping trip, I felt a certain relief.  Not that my friends were gone, but that I had gotten the white stone.  There were only three black stones and they were all now dead.  Somehow, I knew I was safe.  But I was only safe from the dark wind.  Safety is relative you know.

                I graduated and took a course in a trade school.  I found my first job as a mechanic in a garage two miles from my house.  I was getting pretty handy with engines and my boss liked my work.  It wasn’t long before he was trying to get me to work there full time instead of part time, and he tried convincing me that I was wasting my time in that school.  I was, but I didn’t know it then.  It was just one such conversation were in when it came back.  One of the mechanics I had started hanging around with was replacing the muffler on an old van, and I was retrieving a tubing cutter.  My boss saw me, and asked me if I had a second so he could speak with me.  He was making an offer, a good one really, when there it was.  The dark wind blew into the garage and circled around us.  I yelled, "NO! Go away!" I threw a ranch at it just as it dove and hovered around Randy, my mechanic friend.  My thrown ranch hit a hydraulic line at the same instant the lift collapsed, dropping the van instantly to the ground.  Randy died instantly, but the shadow man stood grinning at me for an hour as the police questioned me and everyone else. 

                It was determined that my wrench could not have possible caused the collapse of the lift, but my boss wasn't convinced.  He saw only what he saw, and he didn’t like what he did see.  I didn’t try to explain myself.  It wouldn’t have mattered.  He fired me, but at least he didn’t think I had gone crazy.  Well, at least he didn’t think I was seeing things.

                After a few weeks.  I found another job.  I became an apprentice on an air-conditioning repair truck.  Michael was my supervisor and had been in the business for 12 years.  He was a patient teacher, and I liked him a lot.  I was learning pretty quickly, and was after a couple of months doing most of the actual repair work with Michael in close attendance.  I had noticed a stranger though.  He was showing up in a lot of places.  At first, I just thought it was like.. how do you say it.. De Ja Vu.. like, I knew him.. no, I didn’t know him, but like I had seen him.. a lot come to think of it.  He started showing up everywhere.  On the job, off the job.  In a couple of bars I had started hanging around.  Once I even tried to talk to him, but he hurried away as soon as I approached him.  I had decided that maybe he knew, and I wanted desperately for some else to know.

                I met my future wife that year.  We had started dating just before Michael was killed.  Yeah, it was on the job.  He was lifted off a roof and thrown down 6 stories.  This time they arrested me, and the shadow man stood in the corner of my cell grinning at me for 24 hours before they released me.  A witness had told the police that I was no where near Michael when he "fell".  It was then that I found out also that the man following me was a detective.  It seems he was responsible for them arresting and holding me.  He had done some research and had found out how many dead bodies there were in my past.

                When they released me, Melissa was there to pick me up, but I wouldn’t go with her.  I was now convinced that no one was safe around me.  She cried and begged me to explain.  I let her take me to a bar, and I got stinking drunk.  I told her the whole story.  She listened.  To this day, I wish she had just told me I was crazy and left me there in my drunken stupor.  Maybe I would not be here now.  Maybe she would be alive if she had.  But, I let her convince me that she believed that I believed.  And that was all that mattered.  She needed me, and maybe if she were around, those ghosts from my past would not haunt me anymore.  Right.  I believe now, that if you have a ghost haunting you, you will never be rid of it.  It will join you in your grave.

                We were married that next summer.  I had actually begun to think I was past my bad luck.  Luck.. Hah!  We had three kids in the next 6 years, and things were going so well.  It was all beginning to seem like a bad string of coincidences.  I began to actually think the dark wind was somehow my brain trying to explain all those deaths.  What a fool I was.  Last year our oldest was getting his drivers license.  16.  Wow.  It was almost like overnight.  Melissa was going to take him to the driving test when the dark wind came again.  I can't bear the memory.  It circled her and I nearly died there as I knew what was next.  The car jumped into gear and in his panic, my son hit the gas.  The car pinned her between the grill and the garage door which was caved in around her.  I ran to her and held her hand, getting as close to her as I could as she died.  And the shadow man grinned at me.

                So, you see.  I am in the right place.  I have no friends here in the institute.  Those that have died here recently.. yeah, they are the victims of the dark wind.  Don't send me away from here.  I didnt try to kill myself because of anything you can do to change me.  You have not cured me...  I cannot be cured.  I am not, nor have I ever been crazy.  You see, I know this, because even now, the dark wind is here.  I say to you farewell, cause you see, the dark wind is circling you, and it has a face.  A face with a grin.  And it is grinning at me now.