Free The Painted Darkness by Brian Keene, Brian James Freeman

There were no windows and the floor looked grimy in the buzzing light.
On the far side of the room was a door labeled DANGER: BOILERS. That was where Henry’s father drained the fat bears.
Henry approached the door. The sound of the running water was even louder now.
“Stupid fat bear, c’mon, you bitch!” his father cried from behind the door.
Henry stopped. He had never heard his father speak like this, with this much anger. Henry pulled the door open a crack and he was even more shocked by what he saw.
One of the boilers had sprung a leak. Water was spraying like a fire hose against the concrete walls, which were old and dark like a dungeon.
Henry’s father was fighting with the emergency shutoff value, twisting a gigantic wrench with all his might. His arms were bulging and a vein was popping out of his forehead. His overalls and work boots were soaked in the dirty water, which was slowly filling the room. The large drain in the middle of the floor couldn’t maintain the pace. The water churned around his father, who was fighting desperately to stop the flow.
Then Henry saw the monsters for the first time, lurking in the shadows. They rose from the water, their scaly hunchbacks ascending like a shark’s fin. Their scarred faces came next, followed by twisted arms and curled hands with razor-sharp claws. The monsters scowled at Henry as they edged closer to his father…but he couldn’t believe they were real. This had to be another one of his imaginary worlds, another one of his games, just like he plays in the backyard or like the skeleton in the tree house and the rabbits with the red eyes—but his imaginary games never terrified him like this.
“Daddy?” Henry said, nervously.
His father looked up in surprise at the sound of his son’s voice and in that moment one of the monsters grabbed the giant wrench, twisting it with an inhuman force, snapping the emergency shutoff value in half.
The boiler hissed and released its pentup pressure directly onto Henry’s father, shredding his shirt and instantly scalding him like he had been dropped into a fryer. His skin peeled off in layers, bloody and horrible. He dropped to his knees, his face melting.
“Daddy!” Henry screamed.
The stream of boiling hot water slowed to a trickle and the ear-piercing hiss ended. There was a deathly silence unlike any Henry had ever experienced in his life. Then the monsters pounced on his father, digging into his exposed flesh with their fangs, sending a wave of blood across the room. The chewing sound was horrible—and within seconds the cooked flesh was ripped from his father’s bones.
As the monsters fed, Henry’s father fell forward into the water, a pool of blood spreading from his body.
Henry gazed at the red eyes of the monsters as they devoured the thick strands of meat— and then he ran from the basement screaming and he didn’t stop running or screaming until he found his way home where he would hide under his bed until the darkness came.
THE PRESENT (10)
Against the Darkness
H

enry pushes the door open, and again
    there is no sign of whatever has trashed the house. He steps into the kitchen. This time the broken glass and china crunch under his work boots. He stops at the sink and opens the cabinets one more time, retrieving the matches Sarah purchased to light their Christmas candles.
    When Henry arrives at the bottom of the cellar stairs, he lights one of the matches and tosses it at the end of the mop. The strands of cloth explode into flames. The sight is impressive.
    Henry uses the flaming mop to cut a fiery path through the darkness. The monster—whatever it might be—may not have been afraid to knock the flashlight out of his hands, but Henry is betting fire will be a different story. Fire has always defeated monsters in fairy tales.
    There are now three graves in the dirt floor, two large, one small. Beyond them is the boiler and the mutilated remains of the rats… but the boiler no longer appears to be