Available Darkness Season 1

coming.
    Nothing came.
    It was still dark outside. He ran to the blinds and closed them to prevent any unwelcome eyes. He thought of whoever had buried him in the woods and wondered if they were outside, waiting to finish the job.
    He listened. The pounding returned, a soft tempo drifting from upstairs.
    Another memory flashed — a closet door — unlike the barrage of visions that nearly drove him mad, this one flared and faded; just long enough to send him up the stairs, hurried but uncertain.
    As he hit the landing, the pounding grew louder, coming from one of the two dark bedrooms at the end of the hall, both doors open.
    “Hello?” the amnesiac’s voice wavered through the quiet.
    “Help, help!” came the shrill scream of a young girl.
    The man raced into the master bedroom and saw the closet door that he’d seen in the memory he stole from one of the dead. The pounding grew louder. He threw open the closet door and flicked on a light. Boxes and clothes, but no child.
    “There’s a lock! Open it!” the child cried out, pounding at where the lock was.
    He tossed boxes aside and saw a lock with a key in it, turned it, threw the lock to the ground, and then pressed against the wall which was, in fact, a secret door.
    Then he saw her. A girl no older than 12, dark hair hanging over her large dark eyes, her mouth wrenched open in an agonized wail mingled with relief.
    Abigail, a memory whispered just as the girl reached out for him, perhaps to thank him with a hug for saving her.
    A spark shot from her skin to his, and suddenly, a barrage of images he would never unsee pierced his mind — the horror of what the bald man had done to her over and over again.
    Oh God!
    The memories flared in a bright light, replaced by reality as he saw their arms locked, her body convulsing and pupils rolling back into her skull.
    It was starting.
    The murderous energy within his touch was going to feed on her, just as it had the two others downstairs. A terrified scream fled his throat as he pulled back with every ounce of his strength to break the connection. They both stumbled backwards, her against the closet door, and he to the ground in the bedroom.
    She scurried on all fours backwards into her dungeon like a wounded animal, shaking, as she put distance between them. Their eyes locked. She looked confused. He felt terrified, and shocked.
    She wasn’t dead.
    He broke the death grasp in time.
    “Don’t …touch me,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. Fear choked his voice as he said, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
    She continued to stare at him with her large dark eyes.
    He tried not to think of those eyes staring blankly at the fat bald man as he abused her, though that monster’s memory was now his own. He felt a flush of guilt, followed by revulsion.
    She looked down at her bright red arms where they had briefly touched. She looked as if she were trying to think of the right words to say. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t the words that came from the child’s mouth.
    “Did you kill them?” she asked, so utterly devoid of emotion, a chill ran through him.
    “Yes,” he said, about to explain that he had done so accidentally, when she interrupted.
    “Good.”
    * * * *

CHAPTER 3 — A Boy Long Ago

    The boy’s bedroom was impossibly dark. Even the moon hanging fat in his window held no reign here. Downstairs, the boy’s father raged. But it wasn’t his father that held his attention or commanded his fear. It was the visitor in his room.
    The shadow that was not a shadow, but not quite a man.
    The boy thought he might be dreaming. He rubbed his eyes and opened them again, attempting to discern the shape, or rather shapes, moving in the darkness of his room.
    “Hello?” the boy said.
    “Hello,” a voice whispered back. “Sorry it took so long.”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 4 — The Amnesiac

    “Wow,” Abigail said as she leaned in close to study the ashen corpses, with a cool curiosity normally accompanied by a fossil brush.
    He had tried to keep her from looking; begging without touch, but she insisted, sprinting down the stairs without timidity. She demanded to see for herself, to know with certainty that her tormentors were dead and the breath of freedom was hers to inhale.
    “How did you do this?” she asked before pausing, the answer dawning across her face. She raised a wavering finger and pointed upstairs toward the makeshift dungeon where she had accidentally touched him and