Pitch Black

The following story is the second draft of my "masterpiece," an assignment from my Creative Writing class.


Clyde McCracken pulls the thin covers over his face, shivering in the gloomy darkness of the room. The bedroom is needlessly clean, as the McCrackens seldom get any visitors. In the room rests a decaying writing desk with crumpled papers and an empty inkwell on it, and a cracked dresser opposite holding a few broken drawers.

Unable to sleep, Clyde sits up and peers through the window at the sullen landscape. The trees sway in the cold November night, the distant mountains masked behind the low grumbling clouds. It seems like ages since he’d seen the sun, ages since there was grass and sky.

Clyde, eight years old, sits on the edge of his bed, wondering when the sickly winter will end. Stumbling through the dark to his writing desk, he lights a lamp and sets it on his dresser. Weird shadows dance on the walls, the bedroom now illuminated in the dull light of the glowing lamp. He puts some overalls over his pajamas, then slips his grubby boots on, slowly lacing them in the muddy light.

Picking up the lamp, the boy sneaks down the short hallway, stopping at his mother’s doorway to listen for her muffled breathing. After a moment, he realizes the only sound is the distant jingling of the porch chimes in the wind. Confused, he enters the room and raises his lamp to the darkness. He approaches the bed, squinting in the light.

“Ma?” Clyde gently inquires, gradually leaning toward the slumped covers. He lifts the cloth, revealing his mother silently dreaming and her breath nearly visible in the wintriness of the room. With his worries eased, the boy tiptoes out and into the living room.

A strange, musty odor swirls in the air, making him uncomfortable in the loneliness of the room. He crosses the room to the doorway, rubbing his eyes tiredly before stepping outside and setting the lamp on the wooden porch. Outside isn’t much cooler than the inside, but there is a slight breeze that makes the boy shudder for a moment before taking a deep breath. As he sheds his overalls and urinates off the porch, he examines the smothering darkness around him. The forlorn moon hides behind a layer of clouds, giving the snowy tundra a ghostly white color. The small log house he lives in is surrounded by a thick forest of trees and bushes.

Putting on his overalls back on, he hears a faint noise in the distance. “Nobody ever comes around here, especially at night. Who could it be?” These thoughts run through the boy’s mind as he strains his ears in the darkness. The strange noise grows, and the boy goes back into the house in anticipation.

He stands next to the door, staring through the window and trees into the darkness looking for the traveler. He runs to his mother’s bedroom, the lamp squeaking and swaying as he shakes her awake, “Ma, Ma! Somethin’s comin’ up the road.” He stumbles over the words to alert her to the situation.

“What, hun? What’s wrong?” His mother rolls over, her face pale in the thin light. The horse could now distinctly be heard galloping toward the house.

“I think it’s the bad man, I think he came to hurt us again.” Clyde’s voice shakes as he stares at his mother.

His mother jolts up in her bed, now fully alert and ready to act, “Get the shotgun Clyde, I’ll try to calm him down.” But it’s too late.

A thud echoes through the house, and a burly man holding a bottle of liquor stumbles onto the porch of the McCrackens.

“CLYDE!” He yells, his recent intoxication slurring his speech. He barges into the house, breaking one of the door hinges and throws the bottle at a wall. “I see you, don’t think you can hide!” He bellows, squinting toward the illuminated room. He marches towards the room, the house now smelling like alcohol and tobacco. He pokes his head through the doorway, glaring at the two figures.

“Clyde, ready to come home with papa?”

“He’s never gonna go home with you, you worthless drunk. He’s my son, and you’ll never have him!” Clyde’s mother shouts, now standing in front of the boy.

“Oh, is that right?” The man responds, wiping his mouth with his dirty hand. He backhands her, her body whirling onto the floor with a loud thump.

“RUN, CLYDE, RUN!” She screams, staring in horror at the man in front of her. He whirls around as Clyde sprints out of the room, rounding the corner and dashing into the living room. Mother stands up, now holding a lamp with her hands, and shatters it over the back of the intruder’s head, the blood and gas mixing together on the floor. The intruder stumbles forward into the wall, but recoils and stares the woman in the eyes before punching her in the face. The punch rocks the woman back, her head crunching against the wooden bedpost as her motionless body rolls onto the floor.

Stepping out into the hallway, he braces himself against the wall and feels his bloodied head. He looks up just in time to see the silhouette of Clyde as he fires a shotgun at him. The shot hits him through the right shoulder, tearing apart the skin and bone beneath his jacket as he sails through the air and into a wall. A large blood pattern is painted on the wall, and the man groans in pain as he struggles to rise. Clyde reels backward from the gunshot recoil, tripping past the broken door and onto the porch. The sound of the gunshot rings throughout Clyde’s ears, and he clasps his ears to the deafening sound.

Dazed from the blast, Clyde stands and is shocked to see the intruder leaning against the wall once again, this time feeling his shoulder. The shot seemed to just anger the man, as he seemed to have already recovered from the shot. The stranger charges towards the boy, and Clyde dashes off the porch just as the door is torn off its hinges. He pursues Clyde, who is running toward the dark tree line across from the porch. The boy sprints through a thicket and dives behind a large tree stump, winded by the shallow, bitter air. His pursuer stops in his tracks, examining his surroundings in search of the child. Weary of the man near him, Clyde breathes into his shirt to mask his breathing condensation and sits perfectly still on the soft, wet ground. The stranger cups his shoulder wound with his right hand, which now is pumping blood out from adrenaline. Hearing a cough, he stumbles toward a stump with his left arm stretched out to grab the Clyde. Clyde darts away from the wounded man, running up the road towards safety. But his pursuer falls onto the stump, laying there hunched over in his last moments of his pitiful life. Trying to say something, all that is heard of the boy’s father is an incoherent gurgle as he coughs up dark blood, the sound echoing off the trees. Struggling to breathe, the only warmth he felt was his blood running down his neck and onto the forest floor.

Clyde continues his run up the road, and ducks out of the way of a crazed horse galloping up the street. The boy gasps in horror as he spots a blinding white fire casting sickly shadows on the surrounding tree line. What he didn’t realize was that the broken lamp on the floor had been slowly burning, and the fire had finally reached its peak. With no thought but that of his helpless mother, he sprints as fast as he can toward the house, his eyes fixed on the inferno that was once his home.

He runs down the dirt road, mud splattering his legs as he nears the engulfed house. He trips over a rock, whirling sideways as his momentum carried him towards the unknown. His legs hit the side of something hard, and he screams in shock as he falls into the hidden well. The boy couldn’t comprehend what was happening, and he had no last thoughts but that of his mother as he tumbled down into the well. The well engulfs him, the nearly frozen water squeezing all the air out of his lungs and he instantly falls unconscious.

The next morning, the sky drops a sullen gray blanket over the inhospitable tundra that was once the home of the McCrackens. All that is left of the family is a few smoldering pieces of what was once their home, and the pitch blackness of the ashes therein.