The Lights of Darkness - John

Excerpt from The Lights of Darkness, unfinished YA, teen, or children's novel in progress, chapter two.

“Trick or Treat!” John Cornish cried as as the person’s whose doorbell he rang opened the door, his hand clutching his sister Natalie’s. The face of the woman contorted with disgust as she saw him. He smiled up at her sweetly. Her gaze shifted to another child in the group waiting to receive candy from her, and the corners of her mouth turned upwards in a smile, and her crinkled forehead smoothed out. The lady reached into the bowl she carried of halloween candy, and pulled a fistful out. She dropped all the candy in Natalie’s bag, and reached back in her bowl for more. She did this again, until everyone except John had been served. She dropped one small piece of candy into his bag, and John beamed up at her. As she shut the door with one last grimace at John, brother and sister turned and walked down her porch steps. As John turned his head to look at the decorations on the houses to the right of the sidewalk, Natalie reached into her bag of candy and pulled a fistful out, and dropped it into the plastic grocery bag he was carrying in his left hand. John looked back at Natalie, a lopsided smile still plastered on his unique little face. Natalie hoped he hadn’t seen her drop her candy into his bag.

When Natalie and John got home from Trick-or-Treating, they hung their candy bags on the coat hooks and went upstairs. John walked over to his small, sagging bed and took his clearance - section superhero costume off. John laid the costume down on his bed carefully, smoothing out the wrinkles on the thin, cheap material. A tear rolled down his cheek. Burned in his young little mind was the images of the wrinkled noses and grimacing mouths of the people he had seen that night. John had no clue why no one seemed to smile at him the way they smiled at the other little boys and girls his age, or

why the other kids his age seemed to avoid him as well.

The doorbell rang, and John jumped. He heard Natalie thump down the stairs, and the creaking of the door as she opened it. John ran into his mom’s room, which was right above the door. He saw the smiling kids hold out their bags while Natalie gave them a piece of candy each. They didn’t have the money to give out any more. As the kids began to walk away, John saw one kid who looked about seven turn around, and look into the lit room John was standing in. John cocked his head to the side, and the boy shuddered a bit. John watched as he ran back to the door and rang it again. John heard Natalie open the door and say something indistinct. Then John heard the boy’s voice ring out, loud and clear.

“That’s a pretty gruesome moving decoration you’ve got up in that window, miss!” he said. “Is it supposed to be a zombie?”

John was confused. He had just taken his costume off, and he had dressed up as a superhero, not a zombie. That boy must be mistaken!

John left his parent’s room to go count out his candy when he heard a loud shriek.

“Miss!” he heard the voice of the same boy call out once more. “ Your zombie decoration just disappeared! Sick!”

John heard footsteps as the boy ran away. He was positive that boy needed glasses. He most certainly wasn’t a decoration.

The door shut with a bang, and he heard Natalie’s voice call out from downstairs, strained with a tense tone.

“John! Come down and sort out your candy with me, won’t you?”

That seemed like a good idea to John, so he padded down the worn-out, stained carpeted stairs that squeaked.

In the dining room, John saw that Natalie was just finishing dumping his and her bag of candy onto the table. She balled up the thin, plastic grocery bags and shoved them in a drawer filled with them. They kept the bags so that when it rained, they would cut holes in the bag on the top and on the sides for his head and for his arms, and he would wear it like a coat. A real little rain-jacket was too much money. After all, his mom said, he would just outgrow it in a year.

“Natalie, why did you dump all of our candy together in one big heap?” John questioned his older sister.

“I…” Natralie started, unsure how to say it.

At that moment, the doorbell rang.

“Can I give out candy?” John asked.

“Go ahead, Johnny,” his mother answered.

John reached up to the doorknob, turned it until it clicked, then pulled on the door, hard.

“Trick or treat!” A girl said, holding out her bag. John took a piece of candy from the bowl and dropped it into her bag. John looked at her face for a second, then watched as she turned on her sparkly pink plastic heels, the pink billowy fabric of her princess dress trailing behind her. Her face stayed in John’s mind for a moment, it was memorable because it was the first nose he had seen that day that didn’t wrinkle upon seeing him.

As John stood in the open doorway, the breeze cooling his face, another boy ran up the steps onto the porch. Instead of “trick or treat” the boy’s first words were quite personal to John.

“Ewwww! Are you supposed to be some old-time circus freak? Your mom did a really good job on the face - makeup…” the boy trailed off, studying John’s face a bit more. “ I don’t think that’s make up anymore… EWWWW! That’s your real face! You’re gross!”

John took a piece of candy from the bowl, reached out, shoved it in the boy’s bag, and yelled,“you forgot to say ‘trick or treat’” and ran into the kitchen, where his mother was, the screen door slamming in the boy’s face.

John hugged his mother fiercely, wrapped his little arms around her waist, and sobbed. Natalie’s pudgy face grew hot with anger and a tear rolled down her cheek. She went into the kitchen from the dining room and wrapped her arms around John and her mother. John had been exposed to the darkness off this world, and he was never going to forget what made him different, and neither was the world.

John’s eyes blinked open to dim light coming in in between the panels of his blinds. John shut his eyes again and rolled over, pulling his thin wrinkled sheet over him to warm his chilly body. The insulation in the house was poor, just as the family that it protected was.

About fifteen minutes later, Natalie clomped up the stained stairs and walked into John’s room. She sat beside his small body, and lay her hand on his back, feeling the thump of his little heart. Suddenly, Natalie heard an abrupt bang come from below her, vibrating the loose wooden floorboards. Natalie rose quickly from the bed, and as the bed bounced up from supporting so much weight, John awoke.

He sat up groggily, rubbed his eyes, and asked, “Nattie, why are you in here?” John paused for a second, and the house issued another bang. “Nattie, what’s that noise?” John asked again. Natalie didn’t answer either of his questions, and quickly left the room to clomp down the stairs once more to find her mother.

Before Natalie reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned and called up to John, “John,” she called.

“Yeah, Nattie,” John’s little voice floated down from above from his room at the top of the stairs.

“Stay up there, okay, Johnny,”

“Only mommy can call me Johnny,” John replied obstinately.

“Okay, John, just stay up there,” Natalie warned, then continued down the stairs.

John heard Natalie and his mom conversing quietly, then the sound of four feet thumping and patting down the basement stairs. John had excellent hearing, better than anyone else in the family.

He slid off the bed and put his ear to the heating vent on the floor, hearing his mother and Nattie’s voice float up from below.

“Mom-ma, it’s so cold, can we turn the furnace on?” John heard his sister’s voice asking.

“I've tried, you know that. You heard it, just a couple minutes ago,” their mom replied.

“That banging?” Natalie questioned.

“Yes,” John heard his mother say.

“Can I try to turn the furnace on from down here? You know I’m good at mechanics!” Natalie cried optimistically.

“Natt… I’m not sure if that’s the best idea… I’ll call a mechanic to come take a look at it,” Natalie and John’s mother answered.

“But mom,” Nattie objected, “they’ll condemn this place and we won’t be able to afford to live anywhere else! You and I both know that perfectly well. Besides, we can’t pay the mechanic, either.

John’s mother, finally gave in, put in her place by her brilliant daughter. John, Natalie, and their mother dreamed of being able to afford for Natalie to go to college. Natalie was so bright, they were sure that she had a bright future ahead of her, bright enough to escape the broken family and poverty she was living in now.

John heard a dial cranking, then an odd hissing noise. Gas, as John would learn later. He heard a couple of bangs more, and then the last sound he would ever hear with his right ear. The whole house shook, and a terrible smell came up through the vent. Heat surged up through the heating vent, burning the right side of his face. John rolled away as light gray ash shot up through the vent and settled on the already grimy wood floor.

John’s heart pounded so hard it felt like it would jump out of his chest. He clumsily got to his feet and, stumbling, raced down the stairs, his bare feet picking up grime.

“MOMMY! NATTIE! MOM-MA! NATALIE!” he screamed, the volume of his voice making his throat hurt. No answer. He inhaled a lungful of smoke that was now filling the kitchen and coughed. John pulled up the bottom of his pajama shirt up to cover his mouth, inhaled a deep breath, and screamed once more, running around the first floor to the door that led to the basement.

“MOMMY! NATTIE! MOM-MA! NATALIE!” John screamed once more,now choking with tears. Still no answer. He yanked open the basement door, and was greeted by a terrible smell, lots of smoke, and not enough oxygen for him to breathe. John fell to the hard linoleum floor and passed out cold.

~/~/~/~/~/~

John awoke in a strange room, in a strange bed, with strange people around him, and a strange thing on his head. Rubbing his bleary eyes with his small fists, his vision cleared. To his left, a beeping tower held some strange things. At the foot of his bed was a kind - looking lady with a suit of white on. Her hair was neatly pinned back. John went to speak, but his throat was very sore. He swallowed instead, and it felt as if he was swallowing sand.

At his movement, the lady ( a nurse ) smiled slightly and heaved a small sigh of relief. John would recover just fine.

The nurse, seeing John’s grimace of pain, compassionately came to his side and offered him a drink. The liquid tasted funny, but it made him feel better.

His now - wide eyes darted around the entirely white, windowless room. As John saw the row of medical tools on the wall, he took a sharp inhale, revisited by his fear of going to the doctor, as all the times he had visited them, they had poked sharp things into his arm that looked exactly like the things hanging on the wall. With his quick, sudden breath, John began to choke. The nurse quickly pressed a button on the beeping - tower thing beside his bed, and John’s throat cleared, he relaxed, and fell asleep.

When John awoke once more, he felt a hand on his right shoulder. Blinking his eyes to clear them, he looked up at the figure.

The man had deep blue eyes, and jet - black hair. John recognized the face vaguely, but didn’t know how he knew him. Suddenly, it dawned on him, and he began to remember. He thought that he had seen this man in a picture in his house, but the memories were fuzzy.

The man moved his hand from John’s shoulder to his lap as John stirred. John shifted his gaze from the man to the ceiling of the room, and shut his eyes.

“Don’t you take, my sunshine away…” Richard finished singing, smiling down at his son, curled up on his lap, a mere three years old.

“I’m never gonna leave you daddy,” John replied.

Looking up into his dad’s eyes a minute more, his forehead scrunched and he frowned.

“Who’s gonna take me away from you daddy,” John questioned.

Richard sighed, and looked up at the ceiling.

“Your mommy,” Richard replied.

John giggled. “Mommy’s not gonna take me away from you, daddy,” he looked up at his dad, who would not meet his eyes, “ mommy’s my mommy and you’re my daddy!” John exclaimed, laughing, but was still confused. Why on earth would his mom take him away from his daddy?

“I…” Richard started, then was interrupted by his wife, Misty, who yelled into the living room from the kitchen, “Richard!”

Richard rose from his seated position, lifting up John in his arms.

“It’s time to go!” she hollered once more, in a strained tone.

Richard set John gently on the floor as he strode into the kitchen. Misty turned her back on Richard.

“Mommy,” John asked, hugging the back of her legs, “ Daddy said that…”

Misty cut him off sharply, her voice cracking as she said, “Johnny, nevermind what Daddy said.”

“But why…” John started, never finishing because he was cut off again by his mother, who scooped him off the ground and said,

“Let’s go,” In such a tone that shut down any other thoughts that might have come out of John’s little mouth.

Misty knelt down to scoop up her little son, picked up her purse, and swiftly exited the house, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor.

“Come along, Nat,” Richard said to his other child, his daughter, as he, too, left the building premises.

Walking up the smooth marble steps leading up to the grand oak doors of the courthouse, a couple tears fell down Misty’s face.

“Mommy, why are you crying,” John asked, wiping the tear off his mother’s face with his small, soft hand.

Misty smiled through her tears at her son’s innocence.