Darker

Chapter 4 - The friend

It's a knock on the door.

I know it's the first time I see him, when he steps inside, looking around. The very first time but I know who he is. The first time, but I have met him before.

Mom wipes her hands on her apron, then lets him take her hand, glancing at Dad. Dad smiles. He gestures at us, Darry, Soda, me, tells our names.

The Bug-man smiles too, but this time, his name is Harry. He shakes my brothers hands, then leans down in front of me. I push my wooden car over the floor, back and forth, back and forth, meeting his eyes. I know them. I see him through my older eyes. The little me is not scared, not then, not yet, but I can feel the tension. It's everywhere. I wonder why Dad lets him in, but he doesn't know. Nobody knows. Nobody feels. Not even me. I want to tell them, but I can't remember what. I can't remember why.

Harry smiles and pats my head.

I make noises, pretending it's my car, push it, but the older me wants to scream, and it's a tightness in my chest, a feeling of no air. I will warn me but I can't get a word out. But I hear them. I wonder why no one else does.

He tricks you he tricks you he tricks you he tricks you he tricks you-

xXx

I wake up, and it's dark. I rub my eyes and turn on the small lamp on my nightstand, looking at the clock. It's close to midnight. At least it wasn't me screaming that woke me up this time, but I'm scared anyway, I can feel my heart throb fast. If bug-man is boogeyman, the non-existing monster when I was little, how can he be a man named Harry? Maybe my brain just make things up, but still, this dream felt so real. At least part of it. I don't know what to believe anymore. Nothing makes sense.

I blink in the light, trying to get my eyes used to it. If this dream really was a memory, it seems like my parents knew him, the man. Like he was friends with them, or at least, my Dad. So why does he scare the wits out of me, both in my dreams and when I'm awake? I place my palm against my chest, trying to force the organ to slow down. I think of calling for Soda, but in the end, I don't. Instead, I lie down again, trying to go back to sleep. Hopefully I won't dream anymore. I don't know if I even want answers to my questions.

I let the light remain this time.

xXx

We're out in the back yard. Dad stands at the barbeque, flipping burgers and hot dogs, Mom sits in a chair, sipping coffee. Dad's friend is funny. He plays with us. Soda throws himself down in the grass, holds his stomach and laughs. No one can laugh like Soda. Darry holds up his football, wanting the man to catch it. He frowns a bit, wants a bit of the attention too.

Harry holds the ball in his hands. He throws it back to my brother. Then he picks me up, throws me up in the air and catch me. It's breathtaking, I giggle. He's funny. He pretends to drop me but he doesn't. I feel safe.

"I'm next! I'm next!" Soda yells, jumping up and down, and Harry lets go of me and I fall-

xXx

I feel nauseous and gets to the toilet just in time. I try to make it quiet, but the lamp flicks on in the hallway just a few minutes later. The bathroom door stands ajar, slipping in faint light.

"Ponyboy?"

I dry heave. "I'm... I'm okay," I manage to say. The tiles are cold under my palms. My arms shakes of holding my weight up.

Darry sits down on a knee next to me, pushes away my hair. "You're obviously not," he says dryly. I can't answer him when another wave of nauseous drives through my body.

When I'm done, Darry helps me stand up against the sink, and I wash myself, drink some water, rinse my mouth. The picture of me in the mirror is pale, red-eyed, and I look down instead. I'm still shaking. It seems like I do every day. Every time I wake up.

"Come on, Pony." My brother takes my arm, gentle leads me back to bed, and even if I'm too old for it, he snugs me in. Like Mom used to do. "No school tomorrow," he tells me, and I nod weakly.

"Darry?"

"Yeah?"

"Um... did Mom and Dad had a friend named Harry?" It's strange, but I feel nothing when I spell it out. I should, shouldn't I? His appearence scares me, but his name means nothing.

Darry seems a bit surprised by the question, but for my sake, he thinks it over. "I don't know," he finally says. "Why do you ask?"

I try to shrug where I lie on my back. "Dunno."

Darry raise his eyebrows. "You don't know?"

"I heard the name yesterday and I just remembered somethin',"I decide to say. "He was here once and played with us I think." The first time. Maybe the second and the third and the fourth too. For some reason, I just know he was here, a lots of times. He is real. He must be. He has been in here too, I just know. The thoughts makes it almost hard to breathe.

Darry stands still for a moment, then shakes his head. "Don't remember," he says. He leaves and comes back a minute later, puts a bowl on the floor, just in case. It was what Mom always did when we got the stomach flu. I swallow down tears.

"You think you can go back to sleep?" Darry asks me.

I nod. "Don't... don't turn off the lamp," I say, and he looks worried. "If I need to get up again," I explain, I lie, and then the worry disappears from his face.

"Sure."

xXx

The sun has start to set. Dad and Harry open up bottle after bottle of beer, and gulp it. Mom's not here, maybe she's inside. Darry and Soda wrestles in the grass, but Soda, being much smaller, doesn't stand a chance, and then there's blood. It pours from his nose, crimson drops that gleams. Darry jumps up.

"I didn't do nothin!" he says, wide-eyed over Soda's yells. Dad suddenly stands next to them.

And then the three of them are not here anymore. I can hear them, Darry babbling, Soda crying, but they're not here. Our house is gone. Our back yard is empty.

I'm left. Harry too. It's only us, in a small, small world. He eyes me above the bottle when he takes a sip, and then he says,

"You're not much of a talker, huh?" It seems like things suddenly has changed. His voice is different. We fought for his attention when he was nice, but now he suddenly seems cold.

I watch him silently as he too rise up, stumbles a little when he walks to sit beside me.

"You can keep a secret?" he says. Then, "Of course you can." He laughs for himself. He puts his mouth next to my ear. His beard tickles me, I can smell his breath. It chokes me. I can feel myself watching me, hear my voice that echoes in the air: "Run and hide, Ponyboy!" But I can't move.

"I really hate your pa," Harry whispers. "I'll crush him like a bug."

And then he laughs again.

xXx

I sit in our couch, a blanket around my shoulders. The day has just begun, and I hear my brothers talk in the kitchen. About me.

"It's the third time, Darry," Soda says. "What are we gonna do about it?"

I hear cabinets opens and close. A pouring sound. "What can we do? It's nightmares."

I shudder. The last dream for the night made me wake up screaming again, and since then, I have been awake. My brothers both asked me if I was sure I didn't knew what it was about, but I stubbornly told them no. They would just tell me the dreams aren't true. But I have a feeling that they are.

I just wonder how I can remember, when I must have been only two or maybe three years old, when Darry can't. If tonight's nightmares are real, Darry had to been eight or nine at the time, and he doesn't remember a guy named Harry.

At least I do know now how the name bug-man appeared. I'll crush him like a bug. It must have affected me so much that the memory have stuck to me all these years, just to show up now when I'm stressed over my parents deaths. I can't see any other explanation.

"Pone?"

"Huh?"

"How are ya feelin'?" Soda sits down on the coffee table, a cup of hot chocolate in one hand. He gives it to me. "Still nauseous?"

"No." I take a sip. It's too much sugar in it, but I don't complain.

"I'll stay home with you," he says, throwing a glance backwards. Darry stands in the doorway to the kitchen, sighing.

"Well, I need to go," he says. "Have dinner ready at seven, Soda. Pone, take it easy today, all right?"

We promise him, and he's out. I notice the clock, raises my eyebrows at Soda. He gets it.

"Oh, he needs to shovel away the snow first. Can't get the truck out otherwise."

I hold the cup in both hands, let the surface warm my hands. Then, "He actually let you stay home?"

Soda watch me with a playful scowl. "Hey, he's not that stern, Ponyboy." He smiles. "Besides, I didn't really gave him an option or anythin'."

xXx

Soda isn't good at staying home. It's only been a couple of hours, and he almost climbs the walls by now. He pace our small house, throws himself down at random places just to jump up again. We listened to the radio a bit before, and watched a show on TV, but now everything is silent, and I can't read my book because of him. It's my fault that he's bored.

"You can do somethin' if you like," I tell him.

"Like what?" He sits in the recliner now, playing with a lighter. I shrug.

"Dunno. Just... I feel better."

"We could go out and have a snowball war, but Darry would kill m-" he stops, biting his lip. I close my eyes, wonder why he stopped. It really doesn't matter, because I'm still thinking of them all the time. Everything reminds me, abrupted words, things people doesn't say and how they act, it all hurts. Why can't everything just be normal?

"Pone, I'm sorry." Soda suddenly sits next to me. I quickly wipe away the tear that threatens to fall.

"It's okay," I say, but Soda shakes his head.

"It's not."

I suddenly glare at him. "If you think you saying kill me matters at all, you're stupid, Sodapop!"

He looks taken aback of my outburst. His lips partly separates, but he doesn't say anything, just looks at me, and then he suddenly hugs me. He's crying, and I am too.

xXx

"You wanna put this in?" I hold up a bag of spice I found in the cabinet, and he smiles.

"Yeah, that'll be great!" He snaps it from my hand.

"What's that?" I point at the other spices on the counter.

"Chili pepper and, um..." he turns it over so he can read the label, "basil."

"You gonna put both in there?"

He gies me a funny look. "Sure. Why not?"

"What are you making?"

"I don't know." Soda turns to the stove again, staring at the pans. "But I bet it'll be good."

I have my doubts, but I don't say anything. Soda was the one who made us dinner the day after the accident, and then he continued, day after day, to make sure we had breakfast and lunch and dinner, and I think he loves it. He's not good at it, but the way his eyes sparkles, no one will ever tell him. At least the food are never boring anymore, even if we're just lucky it has been edible all the time.

I set the table and Darry comes home. He asks how I'm doing, I say I'm good.

"Not nauseous anymore?"

"No."

He puts down bags with groceries on the counter and starts to put them away, and I can't hardly watch him. If it wasn't for what happened, he had saved all his money to start college after summer. He had already half a year's savings, but I know almost all that money went to our parents funerals, their headstones, the clothes we wore.

I'm taken away from my thoughts when Darry adresses me.

"Are you sure it was Harry, Ponyboy? 'Cause I remember a Henry." He puts the milk in the fridge.

"What?" That was so unexpected. I drop the cutlery I'm holding, and they clinks against each other as they hit the table.

Soda throws me a quick glance at the sound, then looks at Darry. "I remember him!" he grins. "He was funny!"

Henry! Not Harry. I almost feel dizzy. "You do?" My voice is too small, and both my brothers watch me with concern. I stretch up, pick up the forks and knives, pretend I'm cool. "You do?" I repeat, higher.

"Yeah, wasn't he like...um, Dad's friend?" Soda's voice trembles a bit at the word dad, I guess because of my reaction from earlier, but he turns to Darry with his question.

"Childhood friends. I guess they got separated during growing up, but then he visited for a time." Darry frowns. "I don't know why he stopped coming, though. Dad talked about him sometimes."

"Maybe he moved," Soda says. He takes up a spoon from the drawer, tastes the stew, nods for himself. "Why do we talk about him?" He finds the pot-holders, puts our dinner at the table.

"I just remembered him," I shrug, trying to look casual, wondering why my memories of him apparently aren't the same as my brothers. But of course, I may be wrong. I just have a feeling I don't.


Thank you so, so much for all the reviews! Wow. I always love to hear what you think, and I take every word to my heart.

And I'm so sorry for every little grammatical error that slips through. I honestly doesn't have any excuses for them except that I'm not a native English speaker, so this is the best I can do. I read through my chapters a LOT of times, checks them in google translate (never trust that one, though!) and then have my beta Every'Piece'Has'A'Purpose to check them for me, so just so you know, I really do my best to catch them. I'm a grammar snob in my own language, so I understand it can be disturbing when you read.
And I really, really appreciate if you point them out if you find them too glaring. I use this site not only because I love to write, but also to learn. I'm NOT offended if you tell me about grammatical/spelling errors, just thankful! :)

Overkalix: Tack så mycket! :)