Available Darkness Season 1

tried to make sense of the vision, dream, whatever it was, a dull light grew brighter pulling him toward the surface of reality.
    An angel floated above him, blurred against the harsh of the ceiling lights. As the image drew into focus, he was met with the almost maternal smile of the girl, Abigail, sitting over him, waiting for him to come to. That’s when he realized why she was a blur.
    He was crying.
    He felt like an emotional wreck, unable to pull himself from the alien memories flooding his mind.
    He slowly sat up, ignoring the piercing pain in his body. “How long was I out?”
    “Twenty minutes,” she said, pointing to a pair of suitcases, already packed and waiting.
    “You won’t be safe with me,” he told her, knowing she didn’t care.
    Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall. It was 5:02 a.m. That gnawing certainty returned, warning him that someone was coming — perhaps his gravedigger, maybe the authorities. Either way, he needed to find a place to hide.
    He thought of the note in his pocket, the one that warned him not to touch anybody. Whoever wrote it knew what he was capable of.
    But there was another warning, too. To avoid the sunlight. He wasn’t sure why he had to avoid it, but given what he’d already done, he could take no chances.
    He had to go now, as the few moments of available darkness were quickly surrendering to morning light.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 5 — The Amnesiac

    Street lights blurred by the car’s window as the man without a name and the child without a family raced the retreating moon.
    He was in frantic search for a motel far enough from the murder scene to make the mallet in his mind soften its pounding. He’d driven about 40 frenzied miles north before finally spotting an aging Motel Eight, squat and half-forgotten off the highway. A flickering neon light announced “VA_ANCY.”
    The shrubbery surrounding the motel looked as though it had enjoyed unfettered jurisdiction for the last half year, at least; the kind of place where attention to detail wasn’t a priority — the perfect spot for a man with no legal identification to lay low until nightfall.
    Abigail had fallen asleep in the backseat, covered by a tattered pink blanket she had brought along with her. The man thought how normal she appeared, all curled up in slumber as though she hadn’t been damaged by tragedy beyond reason.
    The fat man at the desk barely glanced over the sports page long enough to take the amnesiac’s $40 in exchange for a sticky key ring, its faded blue label peeling with the number 7.
    “Thanks.”
    “Yeah,” the fat man said, “the pleasure was all mine,” in a tone that was either soaked in sarcasm or a crippled attempt at warmth.

    **

    The room was exactly as squalid as he expected. Though given their circumstances and the haven the motel provided, the door may as well have been opened by his personal butler.
    Abigail plopped onto one of the beds, grabbed the TV remote, and pressed the “ON” button.
    The man half expected to see a news report of the murder, but as Abigail flipped channels, he saw nothing other than bad early morning programming. Perhaps fortune had decided to throw him a bone, and the bodies had yet to be found.
    “Stacy used to let me watch TV sometimes while the monster was out,” Abigail said. “She liked this show.”
    The man glanced at the staged set of a sitcom. He recognized the characters, but not the title of the show, or their names.
    He peered outside a final time at the nearly vacant parking lot, then drew the curtains closed. They were the standard thick motel room variety typical of a roadside rat hole. Funny, the man mused, how he knew such trivial things as the thickness of motel room curtains, but couldn’t recall the essential details of his life.
    He wasn’t sure how amnesia worked, though he seemed to recall in old movies, or perhaps cartoons or fables, the cure was often found in a bonk on the head. Perhaps, he would look for a rubber mallet when things settled down.
    The curtains seized his attention again. He wondered if they were thick enough to keep the room dark and just how much sunlight was too much? Instincts, or perhaps some buried memory, indicated the curtains would be enough — he had only to avoid direct sunlight.
    Vampire.
    The word echoed in his mind from some unknown and far off source.
    He felt the word like an old nickname, though he didn’t seem to have a lust for blood or the fangs he