The Painted Darkness by Brian Keene, Brian James Freeman Read Free Book Online Page B

the boiler, are hundreds of dead rats, their bodies ripped to pieces, their intestines hanging from the boiler’s pipes like jagged lengths of string, their beady eyes popped and leaking. The stench hits Henry like a fist and his stomach flips, sending bile into his mouth. He vomits onto the dirt floor, but he doesn’t retreat, not yet. There is THE PAINTED DARKNESS
something even more disturbing and he can’t take his eyes off it.
    There is a freshly dug hole in the middle of the dirt floor. A big one. About the size of a grave. A mound of soil is piled off to the sides. Henry proceeds down the last two steps and carefully circles the hole, peering into it, afraid of what he will see. There’s nothing. There’s also no easy way to explain how the opening in the dirt came to be in such a short time.
    Henry’s whispers: “What the hell is going on?”
As if in reply, there’s a harsh growl behind him from the direction of the boiler.
Henry spins at the sound, but the MagLite is knocked from his hand before he can glimpse anything in the dark. The flashlight shatters against the stone wall, plunging the cellar into pitch darkness.
There’s another growl, huge and echoing, and then something cold and sharp grabs at Henry’s arms.
He screams and breaks free from the icy grip and spins around to flee and then, at the last second, he remembers the grave-like hole lurking between him and the stairs.
In his panic, he almost jumps directly into the low-lying support beams—but he realizes his error just in time and he dives forward like a kid playing Superman.
His momentum carries him across the grave and he lands hard and rolls onto the pile of freshly dug dirt.
He stumbles to his feet and he doesn’t stop running until he has scaled the steps and he’s in the attic again, locking the door and crawling into a darkened corner, pulling his legs up to his chest.
Henry can’t believe what’s happening; he’s an adult and he must face reality head-on, but tears are pouring from his eyes. He can’t remember ever being more scared than he is in this moment. He sniffles, reaches for his pocket for a tissue that isn’t there.
Downstairs, there’s a loud crash on the first floor. Then there’s another crash. The fierce sounds grow louder and louder, closer and closer.
Henry hopes the attic door will protect him. If the door isn’t enough, he doesn’t think hiding in the darkness will be sufficient, either. But for now, he hides.
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST (8)
W

hen the tracks from the rabbits crossed
    the snow-covered open area located between the two sides of the forest, Henry knew he should stop and turn back. He could hear the roar of the water under the long and narrow clearing. This was the river, hidden under a blanket of ice and snow.
    There was no path, but the rabbit tracks continued downstream, down the middle of the frozen river as if the death didn’t lurk feet or inches below their paws. Henry followed their lead, but he didn’t dare cross the river. Instead he did his best to stay on the snowy bank, but eventually the ground got steeper and steeper and he had to make a choice: go back into the woods or walk on the ice.
    Henry couldn’t stop thinking about the rabbits. Were they like the skeleton, just something he had dreamed up and simply imagined was real? How could he have imagined something so amazing, something he had never thought of or seen before? Baseball, football, cops and robbers, army men were all things he had watched on television. Even skeletons were a staple of his cartoons.
    The rabbits with the red eyes were different. They had to be real if he had never seen them before. More importantly, he closed his eyes and reopened them a dozen times and the tracks never disappeared.
    Henry carefully inched down the snowy back and onto the frozen river, a few small steps at a time. When his feet didn’t break through, he trusted the ice to hold his weight more and more. Soon he was walking down the