Dark was the Night

The winds rustled the dead leaves along the Drive-In diner. The night was creeping in on the lot, and the splashes of lightening in the night brought with them snapping cracks like a whip across the earth.

Sydney crept over to the menu stalls of the Drive-in to spy out the region. She gripped her half of a heart-shaped locket to keep it from dangling in the wind. Noise would betray her.

When she saw that the lot was clear, she moved over to the doors and found that they were unlocked. Inside, she felt safer from the rain. They liked to come in the storm. She would rest here until morning.

She couldn’t see much in the unlit store. The grill and fryers to the left were unclean, and the oil was molding and smelled of a retching stench. To the right were metal stocking shelves with cups and wrappers. The back was harder still to see without lights, but there were two freezers set up beside the back door. From the outside, she had seen a large side door that she could rightly conclude led into the freezer so the truck could deliver straight to it.

She settled down under the front table where there once sat carhop trays. She should have hidden in the freezer where she could lock the stainless-steel doors, but the electric hadn’t worked in so long and the meat and produce would be rotten and the miasma would certainly carry disease. Besides, the truth was that Sydney felt less safe when her eyes weren’t on the glass front doors. Should there be a sound, she’d rather see it then leave it in the realm of the unknown. Only to hear it creep up to the walk-in freezer doors would be too much.

She found she was still holding onto the locket. It didn’t do any harm to keep her hand on it a little longer... It was all she had of the times long ago when the drive-in diner was for dates. She used to eat here with that terrible man of hers before they came and brought society down. Not all of society. Some elements stayed, like drugs, war, even slaves. Some types of labor were hard to come by.

She rubbed her side where there once were bruises and waited out the storm. The night was getting darker.

Sydney had very nearly dozed off before the lightning cracked the sky in half down the middle and shook the earth with it’s snap. She fell back and cursed before seeing that it was just lightning. She saw the spittering of rain as it began to tiptoe across the lot until it covered everything.

There, in the edge of the woods separating the diner from homes across the road, she saw the trees moving in uncanny ways. They bent against the wind and shook as through grabbed by unsettled hands. She approached the left glass door and stared straight into the tree line, hunting down anything her eyes could spot. They were there... It had to be them.

Sydney screamed and fell back from the left door as the right nearly broke at the hinges. It shook and cracked, and the glass would surely break if the two on the other side wouldn’t stop shaking it. They screamed to be let in.

Sydney approached the door and eyed them over, peering at every detail until she knew they were human. The older girl, Sydney’s age, and the little one no more than thirteen. They begged with their tears and demanded with their screams.

Against her unwillingness to trust them, Sydney unlocked the door and stepped back as the lady swung it wide open. It slapped against the ruby brick and swung close in time for the two to enter. Sydney locked the door and spun to watch the tree line. Nothing moved there now.

“What the god damn hell made it take so long?” The lady cried out.

“Shut up! You’ll lead them here.” Sydney very nearly slapped her. Perhaps the only thing to stopped her was the little girl. “Okay. Now who are you?”

The lady looked down at who Sydney thought might have been her daughter, “I’m Ruth. This little one is Ester.” She said.

The girl wouldn’t look up at the woman. She only turned and looked down the two halves of the store. The woman, Ruth, reached out and tightly held the girl’s arm, keeping her close.

“Hey Ester.” Sydney bent just a little to match the girl’s height, “You and your mom can stay here. You’ll be safe. How old are you?”

“Twelve.” Ruth spoke for her. Sydney looked up at Ruth and questioned the woman with her eyes. Something was... uncanny about her. Before she could ask anything, lightning cracked the silence and Ester stepped back towards the kitchen. Only her mother’s tight grip kept her from running for the back, “Knock it off.” She pulled her closer.

“Let’s go towards the back. The windows are a bad place to be during a storm.” Sydney walked them away from the front.

Sydney sat by the back door, looking through the small window for anything moving. She couldn’t stay where the outdoors were completely out of view.

“Don’t go too far.” Ruth said to Ester as she got close to Sydney and looked at her necklace.

“It’s just a locket. The other half belonged to my husband.” She showed Ester the locket. It had magnets in the back to snap close with the other half.

“Where is... uh,” She stuttered, “he?”

“Somewhere far from here, I hope. He wasn’t... Always nice.” Sydney answered, rubbing her side again. “Sometimes people we trust abuse it.”

Ester seemed to understand.

Ruth finally came to the door, stepping between them, “So do you know what those things are?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. Why the hell would I? We don’t exactly have any goddamn people to ask, now do we?” Ruth started up. Ester flinched backwards, and Sydney was caught off guard by the woman’s change in tone.

“Okay, fine. Look, you know the uncanny valley?” Sydney asked, “We notice the smallest signs that something is off in someone’s face. If it’s almost entirely human, it freaks us out. We know it’s not human, and we fear it.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Well didn’t you ever wonder why? Almost every part of our subconscious mind was the product of evolution for survival. Something was so good at imitating us that we evolved to fear it. Specifically to fear it...”

Ruth asked, “And you’re saying the people-things out there have to do with your theorized human imitators?”

“They ARE the human imitators. You think they’re human and you trust them, then they snatch you.” Sydney said.

Ester was breathing heavily, and half utterances of words tried escaping her mouth. Only the pointing of her finger towards the front told the two women what she was thinking.

In the front, the windows could still be seen, but Ruth and Sydney failed to catch a glimpse of whatever Ester had seen. The poor, terrified young girl continued to panic and started to cry.

“I’ll check.” Sydney said, moving towards the front. She passed through the stock room and got to the window. She looked out into the storm.

Only the moving of wet leaves and trees where the wind pulled and pushed at them. Rain came pouring down from the farthest reaches of the night. Only lightning lit up the lot.

A whip of lightning ripped the dark of the night wide open and revealed the extent of the rain into the far horizon. Another crack and the lot lit up again with visitors behind the stalls. Sydney jumped away from the window and stared into the uncanny faces looking back until the dark consumed the lot again. They stared into her.

The visitors were at the window now, pressing hands against the glass. It couldn’t be explained what was wrong with them. The wrong smiles, wrong eye lids. They just looked... wrong. Sydney couldn’t hold still and ran to the back through the kitchen. The smell of the fryers left her heaving. A moment longer and she would have vomited. She could feel her stomach tighten as to empty itself.

She got back to Ruth and Ester and said, “They’ve found us.”

“How?” Ruth asked.

Sydney held her locket, “I don’t know.” She looked down at the poor Ester hiding behind the stacks of rotten bread that was dried and whiten by mold. “It’s okay Ester. They won’t get us,” She lied.

Ruth got between them and went for Ester’s arm. The girl winched but accepted the woman’s hand obediently. Sydney looked between the two...

“Ruth,” Sydney said, “There is a door in the freezer. I saw it outside. There’s nonperishables in the walk-in cooler over there.” She pointed to the door further up the wall, “Things like dried fruit and canned fish. They used them in the menu.”

“You want me to, what? Grab them? Fuck you. Grab them yourself. I’ll hide in the freezer.”

“I’m going to make sure they don’t get in. I need you to go and grab the damn food so you two have something to eat until the storm passes.” Sydney lied.

“You... You’re going to sacrifice yourself?”

“I hope not.” Sydney kept her eyes on the windows and saw the glass began to crack while the visitors pressed against it with their bleeding palms.

“F... fine.” Ruth went to the cooler door and opened it. She retched and threw up from the stench. “My god...” She entered the cooler.

“Ester,” Sydney got low to whisper, “Who is that woman? Is she your mom?”

“I...” She was too scared to finish.

“Are you in danger around her? You can trust me.”

Ester looked at Sydney and nodded with her expression.

“Come.” Sydney said. The windows up front shattered and the visitors poured in. The sound of wet footsteps moved through the kitchen to the back.

Sydney took Ester’s hand and ran into the freezer. They locked the door from the inside and heard Ruth run from the cooler screaming, “You lying bitch! You fucking lying b...”

Sydney held Ester’s ears so she wouldn’t hear the women scream. Ruth’s yells gurgled from her throat and the sound turned to a bloody mush.

The smell of the freezer was too much, and Sydney knew they couldn’t stay. Ester began to throw up. Sydney looked towards the truck delivery door and saw that it was locked and unlocked from the inside.

“Come.” Sydney brought her over and opened the door, “I can’t follow you. I have to stay and lock the door. You go.”

She gave Ester a hug. The little girl cried to her in wordless whimpers, but Sydney couldn’t came. She closed the door and heard it lock. She knew the visitors weren’t smart enough to unlock doors, so she prepared herself emotionally. Coming to terms, she unlocked the freezer door, hid in the corner and opened it.

The visitors crawled in and seemed repulsed by the smell. They wanted her though, and so entered entirely. Once they were all there and the door closed, Sydney locked it with the deadbolt on top. They looked up at her, and she looked over each one until she saw him...

In the middle, the visitor she so terribly remembered, the other half of the heart-shaped locket around his neck. He looked up into her eyes.

“You’re trapped now, asshole.” Sydney cried down at him and waited for him to attack her for the last time.

Ester ran to the tree line and up towards the long-abandoned homes where she hid in the nearest shed. She didn’t know that the visitors had been locked in, and so she stayed and whimpered away the night until the sun was up and the rain was gone.