Holding Back The Years

[Published in Dark Eyes #3]


Mark knew that once he turned sixteen a new one would appear. He knew what it would look like too, he knew exactly.
It would be like facing a mirror, observing the perfect image of himself. Every feature would be identical. The same sad eyes, the same paleness of the skin, the same short brown hair. Yet inside, it would be different. He knew all of this. And true enough, he was right.
The others were there as well. As soon as he awoke and came to his senses, abandoning the peacefulness of sleep, they were in the bedroom, hovering around in the half-darkness. Intimidating him with their shifting shapes. He sort of expected it. He attempted to stifle a yawn but failed, closing his eyes for that long moment, his mouth a giant chasm, just for a few seconds. When it had passed they were still there. Staring at him.
"What do you want this time?" he said sleepily.
Until that moment they had been silent before him, simply content to linger in his close vicinity, endeavouring to frighten him, and succeeding, just a fraction. The new one was sitting at the foot of the bed, with the Fifteen-Year-Old beside him, haunting him with those awful glassy eyes. They were stone grey, and incredibly narrow, almost like a Japanese. Just like Mark's.
"Meet your new friend," said the Fifteen-Year-Old.
Mark noticed the bewildering aura of devilment that always appeared to surround the Fifteen-Year-Old, that strange cloak of invisible evil that he had discerned for the whole of the previous year, ever since their initial meeting. It was driving him insane, causing him to lose his mind, to succumb to a confusing madness. It was something he had never got used to, and now it was all to begin again with this Sixteen-Year-Old.
"You're not my friends," said Mark, attempting to sound defiant.
The One-Year-Old began to cry. He was lying on the carpet close to the window, and the Three-Year-Old was trying to take off his nappy. Mark recalled how mischievous he had been at that age, so his behaviour was no shock to him. He then turned his gaze to the newcomer. The resemblance was outstanding, perfect to every inch of flesh and bone. He wondered how long it would go on, how many years would pass before it all ended. He envisaged waking on his sixtieth birthday to find sixty of them swarming around his bedroom. This caused him to really freak.
"He's always quiet like this," the Fifteen-Year-Old explained to the new arrival, who still had not uttered a word, "he's become very withdrawn in the last year. I expect you'll be much the same."
The grey eyes of the Sixteen-Year-Old seemed even more frightful than those of the Fifteen-Year-Old. Mark knew he wasn't going to enjoy this year -- no way.
He was reluctant to leave the comfort of the bedclothes, mainly because he was sporting an erection beneath the sheets. The ghastly Fifteen-Year-Old would not let it drop if he spotted it, causing Mark the utmost embarrassment all day long. He wished they would go away. He wondered where they came from in the first place. This he had been asking for years, but had not yet received a satisfactory explanation, and it seemed as though he would not learn much from this new one considering his sullen silence. It was worth another try though, if only to stall them until his hard-on had disappeared.
"Are you ghosts?" he asked.
There was laughter from the Thirteen-Year-old. Mark kind of expected that reaction from him, because at that age, he remembered, he had been a complete arsehole. Not one of his better years. He put it down to the onset of puberty. His first erection had half-frightened him to death, as he knew absolutely nothing about the human body. He thought he had developed a weird new bone, and when he had tried to piss there appeared this unwholesome sticky white stuff, accompanied by a jelly-like feeling in his knees. He never left it alone after that.
"Ghosts?" mocked the Fifteen-Year-Old. "You should know better than that by now, Mark. Of course we aren't ghosts. Haven't we told you what we are? Don't you believe us?"
Mark didn't want all this. He just wished to be normal, to live his teenage years and beyond in the knowledge that there would be no strange reminders of his past years appearing at regular intervals. He seemed trapped, haunted by these ghosts, or whatever they were.
He slipped from beneath the sheets, adopting a sitting position on the soft bed. His hardness had vanished to some other world. He watched the Eight-Year-Old and the Six-Year-Old fighting beside the wardrobe, neither of them in a winning position. They were always like that, as if they each possessed a bizarre hatred for one another. Mark couldn't understand it. Surely he hadn't been that vicious during those years?
"There he sits," scoffed the Fifteen-Year-Old, nodding his head in Mark's direction and speaking to no-one in particular, "Mark, the wanker supreme. All goodness and no balls."
He then began to laugh loudly, causing Mark to shudder inside, as though some heinous entity was planting cold kisses on his soul.
"Why are you here?" Mark cried. "What do you want from me? Why don't you leave me alone?"
They were words tinged with despair and frustration, and were met with further chilling laughter from the Fifteen-Year-Old and his small army of cohorts. Even the newcomer joined in the mockery. Mark recalled the explanation given to him following his initial enquiry, when he had first sought an answer to their curious presence.
"We are figures formed from the badness in your soul," he had been told as a seven-year-old, although at that time the words he did not fully comprehend. "We dwell alongside you in the living world, to taunt you and the goodness you demonstrate."
"But what about the one and two year olds? Surely I was too young to have displayed any badness then?"
"There was badness all right. It's just that you don't remember it."
He was confounded, compelled to endure the constant presence of these beings, spawned from the evil side of his psyche. Or so they claimed. They followed him around from day to day, a hubbub of tiresome noise, reminders of each living year of his existence. It was no wonder he had begun to lose his sanity.
He was aching for a piss, and got up from the warm bed to leave the room. He knew that they would pursue him. Hell, they would most likely follow him to the ends of the earth if he chose to undertake such an arduous journey. His pyjamas clung to his body with the remains of the night perspiration he had acquired during his sleep. As well as occupying a large chunk of his waking existence, they sometimes appeared during his subconscious state, popping up like bad pennies, turning his dreams into unpleasant nightmares. He couldn't escape them. It seemed as if he was doomed to spend his life with these hellish figures frequently appearing to taunt and mock him.
He felt a coldness on his bare feet upon entering the bathroom, and he locked the door behind him, realising at once that this was futile, as the ghosts were able to pursue him through walls and doors alike. As he pissed copiously into the toilet bowl they jeered loudly.
"Aren't I allowed some privacy?" he yelled.
The badness had been squeezed out of him, and collected to form this brood of unholy creatures. He had given up trying to understand the situation long ago. The horror of the situation had escalated beyond the wildness of his most frightening nightmare, of anyone's most frightening nightmare. This was a part of his life. They demanded to be with him, to torture him at every opportune moment, and what they demanded, they got.
Suddenly he heard a female voice calling from beyond the locked door of the bathroom. The sound surprised him, causing him to jump as he started to run the hot water tap.
"Mark! I'm off to work now. Watch the baby, won't you?”
It was his sister Donna. The words awoke him from the terrible living nightmare he was experiencing, the neverending trauma he suffered almost every single day. She could not see them, this he knew. Only he was able to view these monsters, the ones he called the ghosts of his previous years.
"Go on then, babysitter," said the Fifteen-Year-Old, "go and see how the baby is. Is that all you're fit for, Mark? Watching someone's baby?"
The words were cruel and scornful, but then that was indicative of the Fifteen-Year-Old. Experience had taught Mark that these phantoms, or whatever they really were, were supposed to reflect the relevant stage of his development according to the age he had been at the time. Yet he couldn't help thinking that he hadn't been so evil just one year ago. The Fifteen-Year-Old possessed a demon streak that appeared to be an accumulation of all the badness of his previous years, all that dreadfulness rolled into one. Mark feared him. He actually feared that extension of his own being.
He left the bathroom and shuffled down the hall, passing the cacophony of noise coming from his bedroom. The One-Year-Old was still wailing, although he couldn't tell if it was him or Donna's child making such an awful din. He lived with his sister and her husband following the tragic death of their parents in a motor accident when he was twelve. The ghosts didn't help, laughing and taunting him during his grief. He recalled that time with great pain, the memories returning as vivid as the day they occurred. The solemn atmosphere of the funeral, horribly interrupted by the Eleven-Year-Old pissing into the open grave before the coffins were lowered, the Eight and Six-Year-Olds battling like opposing warriors during the reception, the Three-Year-Old attempting to peek up every female's skirt in the room. Mark hated every moment. He hated those sinister spirits with all the might contained within his soul.
The baby was sleeping. Mark knew they wouldn't disturb him, as only he could hear the noise they made, their voices and their churlish remarks. He looked so tiny in that small cot, almost like a child's doll. His cheeks were blubbery and red, and he reached out to gently stroke each one in turn. The Fifteen-Year-Old peered over his shoulder.
"You wimp!" he shouted. "You'll be breast feeding the little bastard next."
Mark turned in rage. His eyes met those of the Sixteen-Year-Old, who was standing alarmingly close, too close for Mark's liking. Mark could practically feel the badness, which seemed to be freezing the blood within his veins, making him shiver uncontrollably. His eyes were so unnatural, so inhuman, they appeared to send him into a weird trance, to hypnotise him, to overpower his thoughts and cause an unsettling turmoil in his mind.
"Feel it," said the Sixteen-Year-Old, the first words he had spoken, "feel the badness. Revel in it, Mark. It's yours -- take it!"
The only sound Mark could hear was a macabre chuckling as he bent over the prone form of Donna's sleeping child and pressed his thumbs against the warm flesh of its neck. He was unaware of doing this, as he started to squeeze, very slowly at first. The pressure increased by the second, until he was forcing his entire hands around the baby's neck, choking him. His mind was a dreamscape of blinding light and colour, interspersed with periods of utter darkness, like lightning flashing intermittently. Beyond this the chuckling continued, and seemed to become louder, as further voices joined in, as though the whole world was laughing at him, making fun of him for some oblivious reason.
Then suddenly something snapped inside him, and he regained control of his thoughts, and more importantly his actions. He released the grip on the child's neck, just in time it appeared, and there followed an ugly fit of coughing from that tiny mouth.
"What the hell...?"
He observed his hands, holding them in front of him, staring with horror at those lethal fingers which had threatened to terminate his nephew's very existence. Then he leapt from out of the trance, and noticed the dreadful laughter that surrounded him. A gruesome ocean of familiar faces greeted him, each of them creased in mirth. His fury then reached the heights of a crescendo.
"You evil bastards!" he cried. "What do you think you're doing?"
"You almost did it then, Mark," said the Fifteen-Year-Old, "your new friend almost tricked you."
Mark caught the subhuman gaze of the Sixteen-Year-Old yet again. There was something about him, something absurdly chilling. He wasn't like the others, he was more awesome, more evil.
He was silent once more, and Mark could almost feel the devilment that surrounded him. It seemed to be eating at his very spirit, chewing away his soul, and spitting out the good nature that remained within his brain.
"So what did it feel like, Mark?" the Fifteen-Year-Old asked. "What was it like to possess the badness once again? You enjoyed it, didn't you? Admit it -- you loved it!"
This was all too much for Mark. He fled from the room in panic, and dashed into his bedroom, before slamming the door closed and pressing himself against it. He was breathing heavily, and was literally shaking. The incident with the baby scared him. Had the Sixteen-Year-Old really succeeded in transmitting his badness on to him? Mark's mind was in such anguish he didn't know what to think. Would it happen again? Could it happen again? Was he capable of killing the child, throttling the very life out of him? These things preyed on his mind as he began to get dressed.

Kirsty arrived shortly before eleven o'clock. She was wearing blue jeans and a white sleeveless top with a buttoned front. Mark didn't notice the clothing, just the patches of exposed flesh. According to him, she was dressed head to toe in temptation. Fourteen years of hormone-inducing sensuality.
He slipped his hand around her waist, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath the thin material of the top, and after a long wet kiss he gazed into her eyes.
"Are you looking after the baby again?" she asked.
"Yeh. Let's go upstairs."
The Fifteen-Year-Old was there, attempting to paw Kirsty, but not succeeding. His hands just glided straight through her body, as though he really were an apparition. Mark considered how dangerous he would be -- indeed, how dangerous they would be -- if they were able to actually touch people and things.
As they climbed the stairs, with him admiring the shape of Kirsty's delicious behind, he wondered whether these monsters were merely instruments manufactured from his own fertile imagination. They could not feel or touch, only he could see them. To the rest of the world they were invisible, they did not exist to anyone else. Many times he had travelled along this identical pathway of thought, and every time he had arrived at the same inevitable destination. They were far too baleful to have appeared from his own mind.
"You're going to screw her, aren't you?" laughed the Fifteen-Year-Old, following them into Donna's bedroom. "You're going to screw the arse off her! Aren't you, Mark?"
Mark ignored him. He looked around, and spotted that the Fourteen-Year-Old was present, and was holding his engorged penis in his right hand, sliding his palm along its length with an insidious grin upon his face. Mark was disgusted, but then recalled how remarkably randy he had felt during the whole of that year, when puberty had reared its delightful head.
He and his girlfriend then lay across the bed and began to kiss once more. Mark realised that their relationship possessed a meagre amount of verbal communication. Kirsty was his release, his sole way of forgetting about the malevolent crowd that followed him during his sleeping and waking existence. She was also gorgeous and incredibly sexy.
However, he found it difficult to concentrate on the job in hand with the Fifteen and Fourteen-Year-Olds close by, watching and giggling. He was also thinking of earlier, the incident with the baby. With plugged lips he glanced across, and noticed that his nephew was attempting some form of babyspeak and shaking the bars of the cot with his tiny hands, reminiscent of an angry Death Row inmate who had not received that call from the governor.
"Come on, Mark," goaded the Fifteen-Year-Old, "get your dick out. Let's see what you've got, you wimp!"
Mark felt a familiar stirring in his trousers, and was certainly tempted to bring up the subject of intercourse. He and Kirsty had known each other for three months, and had done it just the once, during a period of cider intoxication. It had been hell. The ghosts had been there, shouting and screaming and laughing, the final embarrassment being the lewd countdown to his own ejaculation. He was reluctant to suggest a second coupling because of this.
In order to avoid the lurid gaze of the Fifteen-Year-Old he turned Kirsty on to her back and continued the kissing with his back to the sinful entity. He endeavoured to bestow his entire attention on her, and started to unbutton her top. She withdrew from his lips and cooed in his ear, breathing warmly on his neck. She appeared to be in another world, far removed from this one. The buttons now unfastened, he swept his hand over her exposed cleavage, attempting to hold those ripe breasts in his hand, squeezing each one delicately.
"It's a front fastener," she whispered in encouragement, and continued to nibble at his neck.
It was the invitation he needed, and proceeded to unclip the bra. The bleach-white skin of her breasts was such a joy to behold. He had observed them before, indeed he had done more than that, but he could not help admiring the delicious sight once again. In his ears rang the salacious comments of the Fifteen-Year-Old, as he cupped Kirsty's right breast. It was the size of a tennis ball, and exquisitely soft. He leant over and kissed the nipple, trailing his tongue along its brownness. Kirsty sighed. Then Mark noticed something out of the corner of his eye, and instantly froze. It was the Sixteen-Year-Old, and he was kneeling beside the bed, his stone-grey eyes frightening Mark half to death.
He then saw the knife.
"Cut her, Mark," said the Sixteen-Year-Old in a fearful hush, "cut those breasts. Slice her open. Let's see this flesh really exposed."
Mark shivered. His mind suddenly became filled with turmoil, a thousand quavering thoughts within his brain. This new arrival, this Sixteen-Year-Old. He seemed more malicious than the rest of them put together, he was positively evil, spawned from the Devil himself. A product of his own badness? Mark doubted if he possessed such a craving for sin, for destruction, for torture. He eyed the gleam of the blade before him. He could never do such things to Kirsty, nor to anyone. Or could he?
Then he realised that it was not he who was holding the knife -- it was Kirsty -- and as his flesh was torn apart he saw the strange beings gradually vanish from view, disintegrating into grey clouds of some weird vapour, until they were no more.
He was almost laughing in death.

Kirsty was still stabbing him long after he was dead. Blood was everywhere, all over his shirt, covering her exposed breasts, soaking the bedclothes. The baby was crying, but she hardly noticed that. At last she ceased the murderous motions, and placed the reddened knife on the bed, and tears started to fall from her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Mark," she sobbed, ignoring the girlish laughter that filled the air around her, "they made me do it. These ghosts from my previous years. They made me do it.”