Dread the Dark Read online

I’m sitting here at the desk in my Manhattan apartment writing this on my overpriced Mac. I decided I should write everything down in case I screw up and blink out of existence. Even though no one will ever read this, it still feels like I’ve left a part of myself here, just in case things don’t go as planned. It’s ironic that once I remove my human side, this will probably seem really ridiculous.

  I have everything ready to go. Sitting in the chair behind me is another Nephilim. His name is Franklin and I found him on Craigslist, no joke. He feels differently about his Nephilim life than I do about mine. He would rather remove his demon side and become completely human. It’s the perfect trade, we both get what we want.

  This process requires a demon, not a half-demon, but a real fallen-angel type. I had to visit many dark alleys and grease a lot of palms before I found Leviornim. Leviornim, believe it or not, Levi for short, will assist us with our little trade on one condition. I must pledge to help Levi collect souls for the next two hundred years. After my debt is paid I will be free to go. I figure this first one hundred years flew by, two hundred as a demon will be nothing.

  Franklin has agreed to step into a recently vacated pastor position for a large church in Alabama. He will pay his debt by spending at least his first twenty human years spreading fear, hate, lies, and paranoia from the podium. Levi says this will only drive the parishioners to betray each other and continue to spread fear and hate, thus making it easier for demons to fool humans into trading their souls for something stupid.

  Levi has arrived so we must begin our journey. Franklin has already drawn the pentagram on the floor, as Levi has begun chanting incantations in Latin. There is one more sacrifice I must make in order to complete this process. The sacrifice of a soul is required. I will sacrifice my human soul to make this work.

  I guess that’s all for now. Maybe I will add to this, but more than likely no one will ever read this. Wish me luck, hopefully living as a demon will be everything I am hoping it to be.

  Wednesday, January 17th, 2018

  I always found blood rather repulsive, but the feeling of it dripping down my body, the coppery taste, the smell, it’s invigorating. More on that later, for now I’m happy to report that my little plan worked, I’m no longer cursed by the weakness that was my human side.

  We did run into one little hiccup. Sacrificing my soul wasn’t enough. Apparently half human means I only had half a soul. Luckily, when it came time to solve this little problem, Levi held my half soul in his hands, which meant I was free to think as a demon. The solution was easy, I reached into Franklin and ripped out his half soul. Problem solved. Franklin is now just a meat suit crumpled up on my living room floor.

  Levi has left for the moment, off to pick up a nearby soul he was promised. He told me to get my affairs in order, but I really don’t have anything I need to do. I’m not sure why I was so attached to this apartment, to things, to people. Now I can see my human side for what it was, weakness. I feel so strong now, so free.

  The one benefit of being half human for a hundred years is that I know how they think. I think I’ll be quite fantastic at collecting souls. Maybe I’ll even do it longer than the two hundred years I’ve promised.

  As a half human this might have frightened me, but the meat suit that was Franklin is now standing behind me. Levi told me he was going to send out the word that there was a meat suit up for grabs. She said her name is Myanil, she’s very old, driven into swine and run off a cliff kind of old. I can learn so much from her, from Levi. I can’t wait to start my adventure.

  I think I’ll keep this journal, log, whatever you may call it. I don’t know that a demon has ever kept records like this, maybe I’m the first.

  Friday, January 19th, 2018

  In-fucking-vigorating. That’s the only way to describe what it’s like to collect a soul. Getting a human to trade their soul for something stupid like money is easy, the real thrill is collecting the souls.

  Earlier today I collected my first soul. She had a name, but who cares what it was. She was old, in a retirement home, in a room covered in crosses and other religious icons. She thought she could hide from us! Humans are quite arrogant.

  I found her so easily, even with the wards she had protecting her room. She had traded her soul for her singing career. She wanted to be famous, and for a time, she was a household name. When I appeared before her she begged me not to take her soul. She wanted to give it all back, to undo the deal, go back and live a life without her career in exchange for keeping her soul. I just smiled and laughed. That old bitch knows that isn’t how it works.

  I sat on the edge of her bed, placed my hand on her chest, and as slowly and painfully as I could manage, I took her apart. I used a knife to slowly peel away her skin. I had planned to really drag this one out, I wanted to really enjoy my first collection, to savor it. Unfortunately the old broad’s heart stopped after about ten minutes, so I didn’t get to spend as much time with her as I had planned.

  Those ten minutes were the by far the best thing I’ve ever experienced. I silenced her screams by first removing her vocal cords. Those golden cords that she wanted so badly, I have them in my pocket now. I think I’ll keep them awhile as a reminder of my first time.

  Levi is breathing down my neck, it’s time to go. I think I might keep a record of my travels. I’ll be like a traveling blogger, only instead of reviewing restaurants and tourist attractions I’ll review my own collections and trades. Throw in some avocado toast and I’m a true damned Millennial. I’ve decided to keep my given name, so I will be Jack, the traveling, blogging, Millennial, soul-collecting, demon. It’s ridiculous and perfect.

  Next on the schedule is a single father of two. He traded his soul to spend ten more minutes with his dying wife. That was five years ago and he’s been trying to find a way out of the deal ever since. We wouldn’t usually collect until he was nearly dead, but he’s become a nuisance. I wonder what it will be like to collect from someone so young. He’s only thirty-eight, maybe he will even put up a fight. I can’t wait! I think maybe I’ll take his eyes out first, and feed them to him as he sits in the dark listening to the screams of his family. Yes, that sounds quite perfect.

  The Phone Call

  I’ve been feeling quite odd lately. Wherever I go, I feel like someone is watching me. When I’m alone it’s almost unbearable, although regardless of how many times I search the room or vehicle I’m in, there’s never anyone else there. My husband James thinks I’m being paranoid. He reminded me that I always feel a little out of sorts when her birthday comes around, but even so, this time is particularly difficult.

  I usually take great pleasure in doing my ‘I-told-you-so’ dance when I’m right and my husband is wrong. This time is different. This time I can’t put into words how much I wish I was wrong. I would do anything to be wrong.

  Today is her birthday, she would’ve been eighteen. It’s been ten years since she died. This morning as I made coffee for myself and James, I couldn’t help but watch the hands on the clock as they ticked closer and closer to 9:20 AM. James was watching me carefully as I poured too much coffee into his mug and spilled it everywhere. “You have to watch what you’re doing Susan! You burned the hell out of your hands!” He was right, but I couldn’t look away. As he cleaned up my mess I was transfixed by the clock. I kept thinking that once we were past 9:20 AM, the exact time I gave birth to our Hannah, everything would return to normal.

  Finally, the clock ticked over to 9:20 AM. That minute came and went without pageantry. I tried to breathe a big sigh of relief, however something still didn’t feel quite right. As James was warming up for his ‘I-told-you-so’ speech, the sound of Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” began to roll from the speaker on my cell phone. I was frozen. James froze mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. I felt the icy claws of truth drag their way down my spine.

  ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ was Hannah’s favorite song, it was her final favorite song. I don’t have it on
my phone, I don’t use it for a ringtone. Whenever it comes on the radio, I change the channel. The sound of that song is like daggers to my heart.

  James and I stared at the phone in disbelief, slowly processing each letter of “Unknown Caller.” “Are you going to answer it?” James asked. With trembling hands, I carefully picked up the phone; it felt heavy and fragile in my hands. Just as Fergie crooned, “It’s time to be a big girl now” I tapped the green icon on my screen and held the phone to my ear.

  The sound on the other end of the phone line sent shivers down my back. She was laughing. This wasn’t the laughter I remembered, the laughter of a small child. This was the laughter of a woman, a mad woman.

  James ripped the phone out of my hand and hit the speaker button. I waited for the laughter to subside, but it did not. Finally, I interjected, “Hannah, honey, is that you?” It felt crazy to say out loud, but I don’t know who else this could possibly be. We uprooted our lives and started over after she died. No one here knows our history.

  The other end of the line went silent for a few moments. “Hannah?” It was at this second acknowledgement of her name that she began to speak.

  “Mother dearest, what can I say?

  You slowly drank your life away.

  Father Dearest, what will you do?

  Likely nothing, the typical you.

  I was a child, innocent and sweet.

  You made sure, the end of my life I did meet.

  Take it from me, your daughter dearest,

  You can run and hide, whether farthest or nearest.

  I’m coming for you, as you came for me,

  Cutting off my branch, of the family tree.

  You did it with poison, a knife, the sharpest blade,

  I’ll do it slowly, with dull blades, be very afraid.

  Time to pay your debts, to right the wrongs,

  After completing your task, I’ll send you to where you belong.

  That’s all for now dear mother, dear father,

  I’ll come for you soon and lead you to slaughter.”

  She let out one last chuckle and the call disconnected. Silent tears had begun to fall from James’ eyes, I hadn’t even noticed that I was sobbing. The phone dropped from James’ hand, landing face down on the floor. We stood in silence, tears falling faster and faster.

  I picked up my phone and walked to the living room, plopping down on the couch, hands trembling. James joined me and we sat in silence for at least ten minutes. It was James who first broke the silence. “How do we know that was even her? It’s probably a prank.”

  “James don’t be ridiculous. We left that life behind, no one here knows our past. Everyone that does know our past is unable to find us. We changed our last name and moved across the country. And besides, I just checked to see if that song is set as a ringtone, but I can’t find it anywhere in my phone.”

  “Then try calling the number back. I’m sure it was a prank. It can’t be her, she’s been dead for ten years.”

  I scroll over to my call history and try to call the number back. On the other end of the line is the familiar error message that states this number has been ‘disconnected or is no longer in use’. “Now what? Do we Google the phone number?” The words had barely left my lips before James had grabbed his laptop from the coffee table and searched the number.

  “There…are…zero results. None. Zip. Nada. I’ve never Googled something and had zero results,” he said. The color had drained from his face.

  “Maybe our time is up, maybe we got a solid ten years in and now we pay our debts.” I posed. James simply nodded, holding his face in his hands, he was pale and visibly shaken. “What now?” I added.

  Lifting his head from his hands James answered, “Susan, I think it’s time we get our affairs in order. I also think we should write our side of the story. If we are gone and someone ties us to our old identities, I want them to know why we did what we did. I don’t want to be remembered as a monster. It would destroy our loved ones back home,” James croaked.

  I disappeared into the bedroom momentarily to retrieve my journal. I brought it back to the living room, where we sat down and wrote out our side of the events.

  Our Story – To Be Read Upon Our Deaths

  You are about read the story of a family who was broken and confused and in pain. Whomever is reading this, please understand that we did our best. We hope that history has mercy on us. We don’t know how much time we have, so we must keep this pretty short.

  We struggled to have children. We tried for years, saw specialist after specialist, but nothing seemed to work. We were both in perfect health and all of our testing came back normal. We had undiagnosed infertility. By the end of this letter you may ask why we didn’t adopt. We didn’t adopt because we didn’t know that we had the skills and resources to help a child that came from a troubled home. We wanted to provide for our children, and we felt the best way to do that was to have our own biological child. It wasn’t until much later that we realized we were wrong, very wrong.

  We were both in our mid-thirties when we became pregnant with Hannah. It was a total surprise and we were elated. Once Hannah arrived things immediately got weird at home. We thought the house might be haunted. Items moved around without explanation, we heard doors closing and opening throughout the night. Finally, we had the house blessed and cleansed with sage, which seemed to calm down the activity; it never went away, but we learned to live with it. Nothing violent had ever happened, and we loved our home, so we felt it was best to ignore it and move on with life.

  We had a fairly peaceful few years, but everything changed when Hannah turned six. The activity in the house picked up practically overnight. Furniture would move itself around, doors would lock and unlock, the electricity would fluctuate, we would hear scratching, tapping, and low growls coming from within the walls. One night we checked on Hannah after she had fallen asleep. We found her hanging above her bed, upside down, ankles crossed with her arms out straight, as if she was hanging on an invisible inverted cross. Her eyes were open but lifeless. We pulled her down as quickly as we could and brought her into our room to sleep the rest of the night. We each awoke several times that night to the sound of Hannah whispering to herself in a fast, fluid, foreign language.

  From that moment forward, Hannah was different. She was distant and despondent. She no longer played and ran and sang; she would only sit and stare. When she wasn’t sitting and staring, she was either sleeping or coloring. However, she would only use the red and black crayons, nothing else. Sometimes she used a coloring book, but sometimes she would sit with her black and red crayons and draw monsters and demons, sometimes writing in foreign languages. Most often she would draw the same symbol repeatedly. Neither of us recognized the symbol, but it appeared to be a bastardization of the yin and yang symbol. They were drawn in red and black, with inverted crosses where the small circles usually resided within the symbol.

  We took her to doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and everyone in between. No one had anything useful to say, simply that she would likely grow out of it. We were told to stop letting her watch scary movies, which we never allowed anyway. People were quick to handout useless advice. We finally resorted to taking her to see a priest. Neither of us are religious but we were out of options. The priest was concerned she may need an exorcism but wouldn’t do so without the permission of the church. By this time, she had been like this for well over a year. We were approaching her eighth birthday.

  The church declined our request for an exorcism. The fact that we were not members of the church definitely didn’t do us any favors. The priest told us in confidence that he was quite worried about Hannah. It had been almost two years since we had seen any sign of our Hannah beneath the cold stoic facade. The priest said usually there was a bit of give and take between the individual and whatever is possessing them. He was worried that Hannah was buried so deep that she would never be able to return, if she was still there at all.


  This was the hardest part to hear, that Hannah might already be gone. We spent the next few months researching the exorcism ritual and trying to coax Hannah out from the depths in which she was lost. Unfortunately, we never again saw any sign of our Hannah. We even tried to exorcise her ourselves at one point. She just sat there staring into space. After a few hours we gave up, we were defeated.

  Defeat brought up a question neither of us wanted to ask. If Hannah isn’t even there anymore, then what do we do? Do we allow this shell of Hannah to continue to live in our house, harboring who knows how terrible a being? Or do we discard her shell now that she is gone?

  This was the hardest decision we had ever made. We searched for cures for two years, but there were none to be found. Nothing in life could have ever prepared us for what we would need to do next.

  On the day of her eighth birthday we killed our Hannah. We tried using rat poison in her food that day, but for some reason as we sat and waited, she got sick, but not sick enough. When she fell asleep that afternoon we sat and watched her as she slept. We finally scraped together some courage, although covered in tears and heartache, and together we plunged a long kitchen knife in between Hannah’s ribs and into her heart.

  We each expected an overwhelming sadness, but it was different from what we had imagined. Hannah had already been gone for two years, this was just her body. It was a horrifying task for parents to take on, but it was necessary. We dismembered her in the bathtub and disposed of her body in dumpsters across town, and all her identifiable parts (finger tips, head) we dropped into Lake Michigan.

  We reported her missing the next day. Luckily for us, we had enough family and friends that had witnessed Hannah’s strange behavior, along with doctor testimonies, that we were cleared as suspects right away. People assumed she wandered off before we woke up and was promptly grabbed by someone on the street. The police didn’t find any clues and the case has since gone cold.