Luca was a miserable man. His life was a string of disappointments, from school, to work, to relationships. Everything and anything he ever tried he either gave up on, struggled with, or outright failed at.
He hated everyone. His parents, his boss, his neighbors, anyone he ever laid eyes on.
He hated them because they were happy.
He hated them because they had things he didn’t.
He hated them because they were there.
But there was no one he hated as much as his brother Gianni. Gianni, who had everything. Gianni the star athlete. Gianni who graduated top of the class. Gianni with his beautiful wife, good job, and big house. Even when they were children their parents had always doted on Gianni, praising him for his accomplishments while ignoring his faults. For Luca it had been the opposite.
And that, Luca decided, was all the reason he needed to kill him.
There were so many ways he could have done it: with a gun, a knife, a hammer, poison, even just wrapping his hands around Gianni’s neck and squeezing. Lord knew there were countless occasions where he wanted to just choke the life out of him, but the only problem with that was he’d be the most likely suspect. The police would be at his door before the day was out.
No, there was a better way to do it. A way in which no one would ever suspect. A way that no one could ever prove.
Luca had always had an interest in the supernatural, one of the many things about him people found ‘weird’. His brother would tease him mercilessly about it. When he was eight, Gianni had hidden under his bed one night wearing a werewolf mask and waited. Once he went into the room, the ‘werewolf’ had jumped out and growled. Luca had cried and screamed while his brother laughed.
‘A joke,’ their mother had called it. Never mind that he’d been terrified for weeks, precious Gianni could do no wrong. Meanwhile if he so much as said a mean word to his brother he’d be punished.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the older he got, the more withdrawn from his family Luca became. He spent most of his time on the internet, becoming fascinated by stories of strange disappearances, mysterious entities, and urban legends. Spent hours on forums talking about any and all of the above.
Along the way he’d heard whispers of a strange city that you couldn’t get to by normal means. Once there, you could strike a bargain with the city’s denizens in order to wish your enemy dead. No one would ever know it was you.
He’d been a teenager when he first learned of it and just kept the knowledge in his back pocket, not sure he would ever use it.
Now as a man pushing forty, he was ready to use it.
The process was simple enough; go to an alleyway at night, close your eyes and chant until you were transported to the Lightless City.
Luca had done it once before just to make sure that it worked. No point chanting in a grungy back alley with his eyes closed if it didn’t accomplish anything. At best he’d just look like a jerk, and at worst he’d open his eyes to find unwanted company.
That time he hadn’t explored, but rather closed his eyes again and waited to return to the real world while something prowled nearby. There were supposed to be all manner of strange things to be found in the Lightless City, most of which you didn’t want to be caught by.
This time he intended to go forth into the city and make a deal. There would be a price to pay of course, but as long as Gianni was gone, any price would be worth it.
Closing his eyes, Luca began to chant.
“Lightless City, Lightless City, Lightless City…”
At first there was nothing but darkness, the rancid stink of the alley and the sounds of the city. Cars going by, people on the street, a woman in one of the apartments above yelling at her children to get their asses to bed.
“Lightless City, Lightless City, Lightless City…”
Somewhere around the twelfth repetition, images began to swim before his eyes. Faint at first, just shadowy impressions of people. Nothing he could really make out.
“Lightless City, Lightless City, Lightless City…”
The images became sharper, clearer. Horrific scenes of blood and gore came into focus, the shadowy people now very real and tearing each other apart. With knives, with blades, with their teeth and bare hands if nothing else. Viscera tumbled around their feet, but yet they still continued the slaughter.
It was nauseating, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he stopped. Luca kept up his chant, the words becoming nothing but background noise as he endured visions of worm-eaten corpses, crumbling ruins, and a strange eye overlooking all of it.
Slowly, just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to take it anymore, the images began to fade until there was nothing but darkness. Only then did Luca open his eyes.
He was still in an alley, but there was no more stink of old garbage, no one yelling at their disobedient kids. It was empty. Quiet.
It was the Lightless City.
If it wasn’t for how impossibly tall and bizarre the buildings were, Luca would have thought there had just been a blackout. Though even in a blackout there’d still be people out on the streets, if only to complain to each other about the lack of power. That’s how it had been a few years back when they’d had a citywide blackout in the dead of summer; people just hung out and shot the shit outside, because it was actually cooler than staying inside.
This place though? No people, no cars, no nothing, but he knew it wasn’t empty. He could feel eyes on him from behind the darkened windows watching his every move. Knowing why he was here, and anticipating whether he’d go through with it or not.
He’d been walking for around twenty minutes when he finally came across someone else. A little boy of no older than six or seven with short, sandy hair wearing a denim jacket and cutoff shorts, bouncing a ball like he didn’t have a care in the world. The child looked up when he heard Luca approaching and smiled.
He had no eyes. Just black holes where they should be.
“Hi mister,” the boy chirped. “Will you share your light with me?”
This was the bargain, or part of it anyway. You were supposed to agree to whatever the child asked. Under no circumstances were you supposed to refuse. God only knew what the kid would do if you did.
“…I will.”
He knelt down, and the world exploded in pain as the kid tore his right eye out. He could actually feel little fingers burrowing through flesh and bone, clasping around the eye before yanking it free. Luca screamed in agony and passed out.
When he regained consciousness the kid was gone, and his head hurt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. Gingerly he put a hand to his face, wanting to know the extent of the damage and finding…nothing.
No blood. Not a single drop.
He hadn’t actually lost his eye, only his sight. It damn well hurt like the kid had really ripped his eye out though.
With a groan Luca got to his feet. No sense laying around, not in a place like this. Besides, that was only the first part; he still had to find whoever would actually fulfill his wish.
This time his wanderings led him to a park, which was all the creepier for being without streetlights and him being half-blind. A well-dressed man sat on one of the benches, reading a paper despite the poor lighting. Unlike the boy he had eyes, but was so impossibly tall and thin no one would ever mistake him for a normal person. At Luca’s approach he put the paper down, nodding a greeting.
“Whose light,” said the man, “Do you wish to have taken away?”
Without hesitation, Luca answered.
“Gianni Sepulcri.”
An image of his brother flowed into Luca’s mind. He saw him nattering on to his wife about something before he stopped, squinted, and rubbed his eyes. Blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision. Luca watched with satisfaction as Gianni’s expression turned from confusion to panic upon realizing that he couldn’t see. Not at all. Not one bit.
About damn time he suffered.
“Is your hatred satisfied?”
He could have simply left him like that, forever in the dark with no hope of a cure. His turn to suffer. His turn to be scared and miserable, to hate the mess that his life would become.
But that wasn’t what he wanted.
“…No.”
The man nodded and stood up from the bench. Tipping his hat to Luca, he walked off into the city with his hands in his pockets, whistling a jaunty tune. He tried to follow, but the man seemed to disappear as soon as he turned a corner.
Time to find him again. With a huff, Luca continued to walk through the city.
It wasn’t long before he came across another child. This time it was a little girl in a pink dress, dark hair pulled up in beribboned pigtails, and just as eyeless as the boy had been. He had to wonder about those children. Were they born here? Were they just something this place created? Surely they couldn’t have come here from the real world, could they?
He didn’t have much time to think about it, because the girl asked him the same question the boy had before.
“…Will you share your light with me?”
Just as he had the first time, Luca knelt down to let her scoop out his remaining eye. Blinding pain overtook him—literally. He’d now traded away the sight in both his eyes. It was a small price to pay. He’d manage. Not like that crybaby brother of his who was probably crumpled on the floor right now. Oh, he was sure that everyone else was already falling over themselves to console him, reassuring him that everything would be okay, that the doctors could fix it and everything would be alright.
Gianni’s problems always outweighed everyone else’s, after all.
Soon after, Luca could hear the voice of the tall man calling to him.
“Here. This way.”
With no other way to gauge where he was he let the man guide him, hoping the creepy bastard wasn’t luring him into the jaws of some waiting monster or an open manhole or something.
“Whose life,” asked the man, “Do you wish the darkness to claim?”
This was it. Two words, and it’d be all over.
For a moment, Luca hesitated. Not every moment with Gianni had been horrible. There had been days where they’d had a great time together. He could remember going to the movies, trips to ball games, birthdays and nights out drinking.
They weren’t nearly enough.
Brushing aside whatever good memories he had, Luca spoke his brother’s name one final time.
“…Gianni Sepulcri.”
In his mind’s eye he saw Gianni cradled in their mother’s arms, his wife Ava at his side. Both of them were trying to console him while their father was on the phone speaking urgently to someone. He saw the furniture that had been knocked over in Gianni’s clumsy panic. And finally, he saw his brother’s body lurch and jerk, gasping for air.
Their mother grabbed the phone, screeching hysterically about needing an ambulance right now. Ava couldn’t do anything but watch, horrified as pink foam bubbled up in her husband’s throat and his sightless eyes rolled back. She started screaming as well, demanding that EMS hurry, but it was already too late. With a rattling gurgle, Gianni breathed his last.
Dead. Gone.
For the first time in far too long, Luca was happy.
Without another word he walked off, whistling a jaunty tune as he ventured into the dark streets, taking his place among the things that crept and crawled, the eyeless children and the shadowy figures that watched from behind the windows.
Just another inhabitant of the Lightless City.
This story was inspired by the Lightless City ritual, which you can read about here: https://theghostinmymachine.com/2019/04/17/the-most-dangerous-games-lightless-city/
And since it’s officially Fall, that means Spooky Season is well and truly upon us! In honor of this, the best time of the year, I’m offering a 20% discount on subs until the 30th. 🖤
Gaahhh! So scary! Your Lightless City was as horrifying as I thought it would be. Your writing is brilliant and terrifying and I have to read it through my fingers because eeep! Well done.
Omg! I'm surprised that Luca got a happy ending! Well, debatably happy, haha. Somehow I imagined he'd trip over one of the instructions and get slaughtered or worse. 😂 Though being stuck in Lightless City, being blind, and just being a denizen of this nightmarish place, is probably worse than death. (Luca might not agree with me.) Maybe I'm a bad person, but I think Gianni would suffer more if he was just sightless. When he dies as well, then he no longer suffers. 😅
This was an exciting and suspenseful read!