sit in the glow of his night light and listen to his own haggard breath as sweat dried cool on his drenched body.
The dream was always the same: it was Mama and Earl tied to the chairs in the upstairs room, only they were so much smaller than what they were in real life. In fact, Daryl seemed to tower over them as if he were a giant in the halls of his castle. When he walked, the floors rattled with each thudding step and showers of dust cascaded from the rafters overhead. His shadow fell over his mother and brother, engulfing them in a darkness so complete that Daryl could only see the frightened gleam in their eyes.
In this dream, his fingers were actually slender needles that clinked against one another and dripped sizzling beads of acid onto the floor. In each amber droplet, Daryl could clearly see his mother and brother reflected: their faces were gaunt and colorless, their mouths pulled back into screams that never seemed to come, and their eyes wide and glassy. Within those eyes, there was another reflection, this one of a small boy with a blood soaked tee shirt. The boy was being fed into the darkness of a closet whose doorway was lined with fang-like teeth; his feet scrambled over the floor and tears glistened on his cheeks, but still the hands urged him ever onward. For a second, the young boy locked gazes with the towering giant and his mouth formed two words: help me.
The dream always ended with Daryl’s needle-fingers thrusting through the air, their gleaming tips mere inches from Earl and Mama’s chests. A fraction of a second longer and they would both be impaled as the acid liquefied their organs and turned them into empty husks… but that moment of contact was always preempted with a jolt of consciousness and a choked sob. Sometimes, Daryl longed to see the dream through to completion, to see if his dream-self truly was capable of killing the only family he’d ever known. But then guilt would wash over him: he’d push the images to the back of his mind, would pull his own hair until the pain overpowered all thought and emotion, and rock back and forth while silently crying.
He didn’t really want to kill Mama. Sometimes, when he thought about the past for too long, images of the dream would bubble up from his subconscious like a dark and malevolent Leviathan rising from the depths… but, even then, part of him still knew that he’d brought it all upon himself. Mama simply wanted him to be a good boy, to grow up strong and brave, to be more like Earl and less like a sniveling child. Everything she’d ever done was due to love and he had no right to question the methods of her guidance. He just had to try harder, that was all.
Mona’s Secret Delights.
In this situation, maybe Daryl would be able to prove to her once and for all that he was a man worthy of his mother’s respect. Once Mama saw the book, once she knew how Daryl had pieced it all together and insisted that they rush back to her as soon as possible… once she had all this evidence in front of her, she’d have no choice but to heap praises upon her youngest son. He’d bask in her adoration and maybe even get one of the “secret gifts” that Earl was always being taken away for. He had no clue exactly what the gift was but understood that it was the highest form of approval Mama could give; and he wanted that more than anything else in the world.
A loud boom shuddered the car and jarred Daryl out of his thoughts as his body pitched forward. His head banged against the steering wheel and, for a moment, he simply sat there and blinked his eyes as he tried to understand what had happened.
He’d been so lost in thought that he’d forgotten to wipe the frost off the windshield for quite some time and every inch of glass was now covered with an icy film. The morning sun filtered through it, but everything beyond was nothing more than indistinct blobs of color. The car, however, was no longer moving forward…. Earl must have stopped for some reason and Daryl had been so engrossed in daydreaming that he’d never seen the flash of the taillights. Luckily, they hadn’t been going very fast; if they had, then the crash would have been a lot worse and there was a chance he could have damaged the old truck. If that had happened, Earl’s wrath would have been of biblical proportions; and, more importantly, they would never have been able to make it home in time.
“In time for what?” part of Daryl’s mind whispered. “What are you afraid of this time?”
His eyes drifted to the book again and he felt his breathe catch in his throat. Somehow it almost seemed as if, by opening its pages, he’d unleashed some dark and terrible demon upon the land. The chill bumps tingling the nape of his neck were the cold wind displaced by the flapping of leathery wings and the headache clustering behind his left eye was from talons sinking into the soft mass of his brain. He could feel the creature’s presence, pressing in on him from all sides as it repeatedly whispered three words like some archaic incantation: Mona’s Secret Delights… Mona’s Secret Delights….
A flash of color in the rearview mirror caught Daryl’s attention and he saw red and blue strobing through the ice-encrusted glass of the hatchback’s window. The frost diffused the lights into fuzzy halos that flickered and flashed in an almost random pattern. At the same time, Daryl became aware of a sound from outside the car. It was like a voice emerging from the crackle and pop of static, distant enough that the words were indistinguishable but close enough that he instantly recognized the source: a police radio. So that’s why Earl had stopped the truck… he’d been pulled over.
The demon’s hot breath tickled Daryl’s ears as it hissed dire warnings into the man’s thoughts: too late, you’ll be too late, you’ll never be a good boy now, you’ll always be a useless simpering crybaby, no use to anyone, you’ll be too late and it will all be your fault….
A shadow, vaguely man-shaped, passed the window and the tinny voice of the dispatcher sounded as if it were as close as the demon Daryl imagined to be latched onto his back. As the shadow receded, however, so did that sound of the radio, leaving Daryl with only the whispered litany of derision in his mind: dead, she’ll be dead because of you, all because of you, and you’ll never get to prove to her that you were anything other than what she always thought you were….
A voice that sounded as if it were speaking through layers of cotton broke through the contempt that plagued Daryl’s consciousness.
“License and registration, sir.”
Daryl’s heart felt as if it were fluttering so fast that every other beat was missed; his breath came in quick pants and he felt slightly dizzy, as if the interior of the car had lost its grip on reality. And he felt a tremor somewhere deep within him that almost made it seem as if every organ in his body quivered in unison.
His eyes darted to the book again.
Mona’s Secret Delights.
The demon sank its claws deeper into his eye, shredding nerve endings and snyapses with barbed tips that were nearly molten from a thousand years in the lake of fire.
“Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.”
Earl’s voice, low and gravely. Daryl knew the tone all too well: anger tinted with frustration, the way even the most innocent words seemed to mock.
Mona’s Secret Delights.
“Step out of the vehicle now, sir!”
The demon crushed Daryl beneath its weight and caused the doors and ceiling to constrict in response to its incessant murmur: and she’ll hurt you, she’ll make you scream again, there in the dark with the rats and the mice and the scent of fresh blood all up and down your arms and chest, all because you weren’t good enough, weren’t strong enough, because you failed her when she needed you most and lacked the backbone to do what needed to be done….
Earl was shouting now, his voice booming so loudly that the thud of the truck door almost seemed as inconsequential as the chatter on the cop’s radio.
“Fuckin’ pig, I know my damn rights, I wasn’t doin’ nothin,’ you stupid piece of shit.”
“Put your hands on the hood of the car, sir…”
“What? You gonna shoot me, asshole? You gonna blow me away with your big, bad gun? Mother fucker, I ain’t scared of you and that tin fuckin’ badge…”
“Put your hands on the damn hood!”
Daryl panted so quickly that his breath seemed to warm the interior of the car to the point that sweat moistened his armpits and chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that he could force the talons out of his head with his tightly clenched eyes and grinding jaw.
But, even in the darkness, he could sense the book beside him.
Could picture that leather cover….
“Sir, I’m not fucking telling you again!”
The little note card inside the gilded frame…
“Or what? Or what, you son of a bitch? You gonna taser me, pig? You gonna zap my fuckin’ ass? That it, big man?”
