Available Darkness Season 2

monster’s power was too strong. “ Let me in ,” Jacob screamed inside Duncan’s skull, the sound a neutron bomb between his ears.
    Duncan couldn’t let Jacob see what he was doing, or worse, try to stop him. He didn’t dare push another thought out to John until he’d banished Jacob from his head.
    Duncan buried his plan as his hand gripped tight around his desk chair. Immediately, Jacob sent a sharp pain through Duncan’s skull trying to stop him from doing anything other than obeying his master’s will. But there was no stopping the chair once it was in motion, crashing through the blackened windows.
    Sunlight poured into his prison, and with it, a rain of fire, erupting along Duncan’s arms as he screamed loud enough to spray blood from his throat.
    Jacob echoed his terror and withdrew from his brain like a scurrying roach. The moment he was gone, Duncan pushed the message to John, telling him as much as he could in the moments he had, though he was unsure how much of it was making sense as pain tainted his every thought, making it an effort.
    Do you understand? , Duncan asked.
    “Yes,” John said. “Where—”
    Duncan’s connection to John dropped as the door to his prison burst open and two men tore inside, trying to rip him from the window. Duncan shoved the men aside, then leapt through the glass and into the last hours of daylight.
    Behind the roaring inferno, Duncan’s life flashed before his eyes.
    Most of the memories went too fast.
    When they finally slowed, Duncan found himself standing on a dock overlooking the lake with Caleb as a young boy. He looked up at Duncan and said, “I can remember the flavor of ice cream you bought me at Six Flags, but sometimes I don’t even remember what day it is.” The boy shrugged. “I guess what you remember depends on what you think is important.”
    Duncan remembered looking into the child’s eyes and feeling a little less alone in the world. He might never have children, but he was lucky that he at least had the chance to feel a parent’s love, even if he wasn’t the boy’s father. That love came with fear, and a fierce desire to protect, like lion to cub.
    Duncan once believed he would never die, and never thought it possible he could die protecting a son.
    As fire ripped through his body, bubbling flesh and soul to vapor, Duncan found himself remembering Ed’s funeral again.
    Caleb had said, “This is all my fault.”
    “What do you mean?” Duncan had asked.
    “I killed him.”
    “We had an argument, a big one. It was about you. He wanted me to refuse the car you said you would buy me. He said it was too much. And that if I wanted a car, I should ask him. I told him I didn’t want a crap car, though, and that Uncle Duncan said I could pick any car I wanted. The look on his face, was just, it was like I had stuck a knife in his heart. He said, ‘Duncan Alderman is not your father. I am. And you have to do as I say.’”
    Caleb had to stop before finishing his story. “And I just said the most awful thing I could to him. I told him that I wished he wasn’t.”
    Caleb bawled as he fell into Duncan’s chest, crying. “Those were our last words. He died that night.”
    “Jesus,” Duncan had said, tears streaming down his face.
    It was then, as he comforted Caleb, that Duncan realized he’d not lost the ability to mourn. There was still one person left in the world whose death he could not bear, and whom he would do anything to protect.
    “It’s OK,” Duncan had said, hugging the boy. “He knew that you loved him. And he loved you very much.”
    And so do I , was Duncan’s final thought.

TO BE CONTINUED…

EPISODE 11:
    CHAPTER 1 — Hannah

    Hannah’s heart pounded as she floored the gas, pushing Greg’s car as fast as it would go along the Northern California highway. She tore from El Montaña and drove north without stopping for hours, too scared to pause her flight for more than a few minutes at a gas station about 150 miles upstate
    The station looked like it last had new pumps installed in the 30s, probably around the same time as the sign that read Gas-4-Less! in giant, blocky almost Art Deco letters. Though it was a full 15 minutes past “quitting time,” the old man working the station was waiting for his wife Lucinda to come get him. The old man asked Hannah what she was doing driving out on the roads all by herself so late at night.
    “You heading out toward Ashford Canyon?”
    “What’s Ashford Canyon?”