The Dark and Stormy Night

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

“How can I make you understand? Am I not living in a nightmare?”

Listen! My name is Edward LaSalle. I am trapped here in the cellar of this accursed house on the night of the worst storm in a hundred years. I am surrounded by rats, cobwebs, insects—God knows what else. I am utterly alone in this nightmarish abyss. Rain lashes the basement windows, and lightning flashes outside bright as day.

A cold chill climbs my back as if savoring the length of my spine. Surely, the house itself knows what's coming. I have barricaded the door with desperation, furiously typing this as fast as I can, battling against the encroaching waves of panic threatening to engulf me. Time, my dear reader, is a fleeting companion—and how much of it remains, I do not know.

Yes—I speak of that notorious murderer whose vile deeds have plagued the headlines. The hideous fiend who preys upon the innocent nurses, each one found with the same sickening signature. A modern-day Jack the Ripper is loose within these very walls.

Alas, the bumbling police, deluded in their abilities to solve the riddle, won’t find the killer. They’ve tried four times to solve the case, but they can’t, and they never will. They’re looking for fingerprints, motive, opportunity, and a weapon. They’ll find nothing but our bodies tossed in Bryant Park.

Yes! Yes! It is there, in that desolate park, that we shall all be found. Each and every one of us! And only I know why.

You will think me mad—but I am not mad. I have proof of what I say. It’s here on this very hard drive upon which my desperate fingers type. Just read on. I will explain all! You will see!

But now I must begin, calmly, sanely, that I might be believed.

For years, I told myself my father’s work was noble. But now—trapped here, hunted—my eyes see clearly. When you read this, you’ll think my eminent scientist father discovered a cure for cancer. I believed it too, but the truth is far more sinister and deeper than anything you could imagine. That’s not what it is at all!

It is impossible to say exactly when I should have known the truth. The only one with that knowledge then was my father, withholding any hints or perhaps unable to divulge the unspeakable truth. Yet now that the truth has found its way into my mind, it torments me.

Something that shouldn’t live, lives. My father brought it forth into this realm. He even bestowed upon it a name, yet concealed its discovery from me. Now, we shall all pay the dire consequences of his secret knowledge.

I have not lost my reason. You fancy me unknowledgeable. Yet I know my father’s work well when most would know nothing. He let me into the lab, yes—but only far enough to be useful. I thought I was trusted. I wasn’t. I was shielded, managed. I was the alibi, not the heir. I was never the son he believed in, only the son he needed as I knew the science.

You should have seen me. You should have seen how thoroughly I proceeded—with such analytical understanding—with such foresight—with such speed did I see the solution!

Or rather, see the problem, for there is no solution. Our fate has already been decided. I’ll never live to finish this.

Like anyone, I do not wish to die, least of all painfully, and to know the hour and place is to count down the minutes and seconds and wait anxiously for its inevitable embrace.

What? What is that sound?

Is that it?

Is it at the door?

The silence that follows is more unnerving than any noise. I hold my breath and hope it is my imagination. It runs wild and leaves my mouth bone dry. My rain wet clothes grip me like a second skin, while damp mustiness and all these creepy, crawly things down here surround me.

And all the while, my eyes stay fastened on that doorknob, watching to see if it turns. My heart rises, choking my own throat till I can't breathe.

Oh! How that thing outside must be enjoying this. It knows my terror and tastes my fear. I tell myself this is impossible—yet the thought arrives fully formed, as if placed there by something that isn’t me. It knows that I know it’s approaching the door—steadily, steadily. I want to shout, “Is that you? Stay away!”

I keep perfectly still, listen, but hear nothing. For what seems like an hour, I do not move a muscle. I cannot tell if seconds or entire lifetimes pass while I wait for the knob to turn. It’s on the other side of the door, listening. I’m sure of it. It chuckles at my plight. It knows what I feel, knows the keyboard has stopped, and knows that I’ve been holding my breath ever since that first slight noise.

I feel it like a hand at my throat.

My limbs shake with terror.

Oh, God, it’s here!

I try and tell myself I only heard a mouse or the house creaking in the outside wind. Yet my fears have already seized upon me. I’m just fooling myself with those explanations: they’re all in vain. All in vain; because Death is approaching the door. It stalks me with its black shadow before it, stealthily, stealthily.

It desires to envelop me within its malevolent grasp. It waits. It watches. It wants. Although I neither see nor hear it—I feel the presence of the thing outside the door. It’s there. It has come for me. Is the knob moving?

If I don’t finish this, no one will know how I died. That, my friend, will allow it to kill again. The urgency to reveal it grows with my every heartbeat. Yet when I tell you what waits beyond that door, you won’t believe me!

Once, when I was a boy, my mother played the parlor organ during a thunderstorm. Low, droning chords—heavy as a funeral march. Yet it made me feel safe then. I wasn't alone.

I am now.

After I wait a long time, very patiently, without hearing a sound, I resolve to type a little—a very, very little sentence. So I continue—quietly, quietly—to tell my tale.

In this world, dear reader, everything subsists upon another. And now I stumble upon that which feeds upon me. Ultimately, we are all consumed, whether by the worms in the cemetery, by the flames in the crematorium, or by that abomination of insatiable hunger which lurks beyond the door. We are all mere sustenance to something else. Yet, given the choice, I would embrace any other fate than this.

But you can’t understand the thing at the door unless I tell my tale. But where to begin? For this is not my story alone. There were others. All of us played our parts. Mine worst of all. We just didn’t know. We didn’t know! It was only as the hours passed on this fateful night that I pieced together all the deadly clues.

There were seven of us. They included George Green, the groundskeeper. An odd fellow with a dark past, he seldom spoke. There was Gladys Goodwin, our cook and housekeeper, who often hit the bottle—more often than she wanted anyone to notice.

There was also my father’s nurse, Mrs. Linda Vine, only recently hired, bullheaded, but competent. My father, Henry, who kept everything from me, and his assistant—the one he called the Widow Black but whom I called Stella. My best friend, she worked for my father.

Last, but not least, was my mother, Maria, whom no one could suspect of anything. He told me of his work. But never told her. Not the woman who shared his name and his bed. Yet she was the one who spotted the first clue—until Mrs. Vine dismissed her.

Given the limited suspects and the growing number of bodies, one might expect a swift resolution to the impending horror. With only one entrance to the house, and that deemed inaccessible, the true nature of the impending threat became increasingly ominous.

The story begins, not with me, but with those who were first here. I shall call it to their misfortune. As for my own participation, I shall call it from beyond the grave, as I have no doubt but that is where I soon shall be, as I wait for what comes through that door.

It all began four weeks ago, but its full, dreadful manifestation arrived tonight, swept in by the storm’s fury. As I recall, Gladys was following the news…