Horror
Date Published: September 16, 2024
Try not to wonder what secret darkness your neighbors or classmates hold in their hearts for you.
It’s about the hidden dark thoughts that all of us think every day. Most of us would never act on them, we’re not sociopaths, but what if there was a circumstance where through supernatural intervention, you couldn’t help but act on those hidden desires? That’s what IN DARKNESS is about, the lethality in those hidden, benign shadows that some of our thoughts live inside.
Dark thoughts, like cream, will always rise to the top at the wrong moment.
It had been over two hundred years since the original founders of Creeks Manor had moved sixty miles west of the Hudson River, four families coming out of Newburgh, to start a small, independent farming community. The town grew over the years as families celebrated new generations which gave birth to new farms and so on until they formed a local and simple government, mostly meant to help keep trade between clans healthy and mutually agreeable. It wasn’t until the late Nineteenth century that people down in New York City made Sullivan County the best kept secret just a hundred miles north, but it didn’t stay quiet for long. With the exponential growth of the automobile industry, the trip north became accessible to many more people. Farming was still a thriving business in the region, but tourism was fast becoming a solid source of income. With a growing local population and an even greater influx of visitors, a variety of businesses started to sprout up in the form of bars, restaurants, movie theatres, hotels, antique stores and of course, gas stations. The tiny farming community of less than five hundred in the late nineteenth century, swelled to a permanent resident population of almost ten thousand by the Nineteen-Seventies. Currently, the oldest residents of Creeks Manor refer to it fondly as a ‘big, little town’, while most of the population under the age of thirty like to refer to it as a ‘dead-fucking-end’.
Up until the late Seventies, the whole area was thriving; a destination vacation for those in the city who wanted to trade humidity and the aromas of the concrete jungle for some pure country air. There was a vast array of summer amenities to enjoy at one of the dozens of large, all-inclusive hotels that nestled into the Catskill Mountains. The heyday lasted for a bit, but once travel to Europe became more affordable, less and less people cared about all you can eat buffet resorts, and tourism in the whole area began its slow march toward death.
Presently, the population of Creeks Manor is Nine-thousand, eight hundred and seventy-six, up three percent from pre-pandemic levels, driven by city people who grew tired of being locked down in tiny apartments. There’s a high school which services the kids from Creeks Manor as well as its surrounding hamlets and even though the school only boasts Five-hundred and forty-one students, there’s a football field, softball field and Starbucks, which is not officially part of the sports complex, but it is right next door.
Main Street is the central artery of Creeks Manor, starting (or ending, depending on your perspective) way up on the top of Youngs’ Hill at the northern end of town (affectionately known by locals as “the Hill”) and winding its way down past thick stands of trees before the road becomes a straight line after the Arco station. The meandering route flows past about a half-mile of quaint houses with well-kept lawns and American flags waving on their porches. The homes give way to what used to be a bustling, thriving and quaint village. There are several shops that are still in operation though they are far outnumbered by the many storefronts that have been dark for quite a while now. Main Street runs by the Dairy Queen which has been shuttered for years, the parking lot in back becoming a favorite spot for the town’s bustling Meth trade. The graves of the Creeks Manor Cemetery lean like jagged, grey teeth, terraced into the hill above the lot, hanging over the meth-heads like a warning, or perhaps like a loving mother, arms open in anticipation of the inevitable embrace.
Further down Main Street, beyond the Dairy Queen, is the movie theatre (a triplex), the Crafts store, the Falls Motel with its broken neon vacancy sign, and finally the Holiday Inn and the adjacent Square Circle Diner. After that, Main Street dead ends into the service road for Route Eighty-Six marking the unofficial end of town. From here, you can look north and see all the way back up to the start of Main Street at the top of the Hill, and right there at the crest is the silhouette of The Manor standing as silent sentry against the country sky.
About the Author
Russell Rothberg has worked in television as a writer and Executive Producer for the Peacock series, Long Bright River, based on the bestselling novel, as well as for the Paramount+ series The Offer. Before returning to his roots as a writer, Russell was the Executive VP of Drama Development at Universal Television, where he developed series such as Bates Motel, Chicago Fire, Shades of Blue and Emerald City. Russell started his career as an actor-writer-director with an original play, Life After Death, at the Intar Theatre in NYC. Born and raised in New York City, Russell currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Vera. In Darkness is his first novel.
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