Darkness

1

Kelly Anderson could feel his presence close by, feel him searching for her, reaching out to her.

He’d been there, usually hovering just out of sight, for as long as Kelly could remember. Even when she’d been a tiny baby, long before she could walk or talk, she’d caught glimpses of him.

In her dreams, his face would come to her out of the darkness of sleep, leering at her, horrible features twisted into a malicious smile, his fingers — the clawed talons of a carnivorous bird — stretching toward her. She would awaken screaming, and her mother would hurry to her, lifting her from her crib, cradling her, soothing her, whispering to her that she was safe.

Those words were the first she learned.

You’re safe.

Safe.

Even now, at sixteen, she could remember speaking the word.

Safe.

But she hadn’t been safe. Not then, when her mother had whispered to her that everything was all right, that she’d only had a terrible dream, and not now, when even wide awake she could feel him creeping closer to her, reaching out, reaching.…

For what?

What was it he wanted from her?

She knew nothing about the monstrous figure of her nightmares; had no idea who he was, nor where he’d come from.

All she knew was that he was there, never far from her. Waiting. And he wanted something.

Tonight, as Kelly moved restlessly around the small house she shared with her parents, she knew he was closer than ever.

It was an oppressive night, unseasonably hot for early June, the kind of thick, muggy night that hung heavily, threatening to suffocate her. She’d opened the windows an hour before in the vain hope that even the faintest of breezes might stir the air, might cool her skin, might even drive away the madness that threatened to destroy her tonight.

She knew that’s what it was.

There was no man; there were no hands reaching out to her.

It was in her mind, all of it.

That’s what she’d been told, first by her mother, and then by the doctors her mother had taken her to.

The man who pursued her, who skulked eternally on the fringes of her life, existed only in her own mind. She’d made him up sometime long ago, and should have forgotten him, too, sometime almost as long ago.

She’d talked to the doctor for an hour a week, and tried to do what he’d told her, tried to figure out why she might have invented the man. For a long time the doctor had insisted that it was because she was adopted, telling her that she was imagining a father to replace the real father she’d never known. Kelly hadn’t believed him — after all, if she was going to create a father, he wouldn’t be anything like the terrible image she saw in her dreams. And why wouldn’t she have imagined a mother, too? Besides, she’d seen the man long before she’d ever known she was adopted, long before she’d begun to understand how different she was from everyone else.

Finally, when the nightmare man refused to go away, and she’d known he never would, she stopped talking about him, stopped trying to think of reasons why he might be there. Instead, she’d simply reported to the psychiatrist that he was gone, and at last she’d been allowed to stop going to the doctor.

For almost five years, she hadn’t mentioned him at all. But the frightening image that haunted Kelly’s nights had not gone away.

She’d stopped crying out in the night when he suddenly appeared out of the darkness of her slumber; stopped telling her mother when she caught glimpses of him at the veiled edges of her sight.

She stopped talking about much of anything, terrified that somehow she would slip, and her parents, or her teachers, or the other kids she knew, might find out that she was crazy.

For that’s what she was.

Crazy.

Her terrible secret was that only she knew it.

But tonight it would end.

She stopped her aimless prowling of the house and went to the small bedroom that had been hers for as long as she could remember. The hot, humid night seemed even more cloying in the confines of the room, as Kelly glanced over the few objects that stood against its faded walls.

It was, she thought, a tired-looking place, filled with worn-out furniture that had never been any good, even when it was new.

Just like herself: tired, worn-out, never any good even to start with.

A few months ago Kelly had covered the walls with posters-strange, dark images advertising the bands whose records she collected but rarely bothered to play.

Another of her secrets: she didn’t care about the bands, didn’t really like the music, didn’t even like the posters very much. But they covered the dullness of the walls, just as the clothes she wore — mostly black, decorated with metal studs and large ugly pins — were meant to cover up the aching emptiness she felt inside.

Except that Kelly wasn’t empty anymore.

She could almost feel the baby she knew was growing inside her.

Where had it come from?

Could the man have put it there?

Could he have taken her one night, creeping up on her when she was asleep?

Wouldn’t she have known it? Wouldn’t she have wakened, feeling him inside her?

No, she wouldn’t.

She would have shut it out of her mind, refusing to recognize what was happening, for had she allowed herself to experience it, she would have screamed.

Screamed, and wakened her parents, and then they would have seen how crazy she was.

No, she must have kept silent, must have retreated into sleep while the man took her. But she knew he’d been there, knew what he’d done.

She’d known it a month ago, when she’d begun being sick every morning, fighting not to let herself throw up, terrified of letting her parents know what had happened to her.

Last week, when she’d missed her period, Kelly had begun planning what she was going to do.

She wasn’t sure where the idea had come from. But now that the time had come, and she was alone in the house, and had made up her mind, she had the strange idea that she’d always known it would end this way — that some night, when she could no longer stand the sight of herself, she would end it all.

She left her room, not bothering to turn off the light, and entered the tiny bathroom that separated her room from her parents’. She stood in the gloom for a few minutes, staring at the image in the mirror. Only half her face was lit, illuminated by the dim light that filtered from the hall. She could see one of her eyes — the eyes her mother insisted were green, but that she knew were only a pale brown.

The eye stared back at her from the mirror, and she began to have the peculiar sensation that it wasn’t her own reflection she was seeing at all. It was someone else in the mirror, a girl she barely knew.

A stranger.

A stranger whose features looked older than her own sixteen years, whose skin seemed to have taken on the pallor of age, despite her youth.

She saw a lifeless face, devoid of the joy and eagerness of youth. The face of the orphan she truly was, despite what the parents who had adopted her tried to tell her.

And then, over her own darkened shoulder, another image appeared.

It was the man. The man Kelly had seen so often in her dreams but only caught glimpses of when she was awake. Now she saw him clearly.

He was old, his loose skin hanging in folds, his eyes sunken deep within their sockets. He was smiling at her, his lips drawn back to reveal yellowing teeth.

Kelly gasped and spun around.

Except for herself, the room was empty.

She reached out, switched on the light, and instantly the gloom was washed away. She stood still for a moment, her heart pounding, but then her pulse began to ease. Finally, controlling her panic with the same grim will with which she had hidden her madness for the last few years, she turned back to the mirror once more.

He was still there, leering at her, his aged, ugly face contorted, the claws that were his fingers reaching for her throat.

“No!” Kelly screamed. “No more!”

Her hands clenched into fists and she smashed them into the mirror above the sink. The mirror shattered and most of the glass dropped away. But a single shard, razor-sharp and shaped like a sword, remained where it was.

In the bladelike fragment Kelly could still see her ancient tormentor, mocking her, laughing at her, reaching out for her.

Another scream rose in her throat, but this time there were no words. Only a final cry of anguish echoed in the house as Kelly reached out and snatched the fragment of glass from its frame.

Clutching it in both hands, she stared at it as if mesmerized, then raised it up. Now. Now the time had come. In one swift motion she plunged the blade into her belly, determined to end the life of the monster that was growing inside her.

End its life, and end her own.

• • •

“Well, that was a major waste of time,” Mary Anderson sighed as she settled herself into the passenger seat of the five-year-old Chrysler. She regretted having said it instantly, knowing her words had been motivated by the heat of the Georgia night, combined with the five hours of effort she’d just put in doing her best to be charming to people she neither knew well nor liked. But it was too late. Before she could even apologize, Ted lashed out at her.

“It might not have been, if you had at least made the effort to be civil.” He started the engine, slammed the transmission into gear, and listened with satisfaction as the tires screeched in protest before shooting the car out into the streets of Atlanta. He glanced over at Mary, ready to continue the tirade that had been building in his mind for the last hour — ever since Bob Creighton had told him that, despite his personal regard for Ted, there was no job available for him in Creighton Construction. “Personal regard,” huh? It was bullshit, that’s what it was. Creighton was going to give the supervisor’s job to his own brother-in-law, and the hell with who was the better man! But that was what it always boiled down to — connections. It wasn’t what you could do, but whose ass you kissed, or who you were buddy-buddy with, or—

His thoughts were interrupted as he felt Mary slip her hand into his and squeeze it gently. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. As if she’d read his thoughts, her soothing voice went on, “If you ask me, he was never going to give you a fair shot at that job. He was always going to hire Elaine’s brother.”

“Then why the hell did he invite us over there tonight?” Ted asked. All the anger drained from his voice, replaced by a note of defeat that wounded Mary more than his rage had frightened her.

Her grip on his hand tightened. “Because he wanted to pick your brains. I figured it out an hour after we got there — all he wanted to do was find out how you’d deal with the marsh on that condo site. He knows where you’re from, and he knows how much you know. And he didn’t even have to hire you to get your advice — you gave it to him for nothing.”

“Dumb!” Ted erupted, pulling his hand free of his wife’s to slam it angrily on the dash. “Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you—”

Suddenly, in spite of herself, Mary started laughing. “Stop you! Since when have I ever been able to stop you from doing anything? Besides, you’re not dumb — you’re very smart. You’re just too generous sometimes, that’s all. You give away ideas that you could sell, and then wonder why no one wants to buy them. And don’t argue with me, Ted — you know it’s true.”

When he remained grimly silent, she went on, “Please, Ted, relax. Stop worrying, and stop being mad at the world. You’ve always been able to find work before. You’ll find something this time, too.”

“Yeah,” Ted groused. “And in the meantime, my daughter looks at me like I’m a total incompetent, and my wife—”

“Your wife loves you very much,” Mary finished for him. “And if Kelly acts as though she thinks you’re incompetent, at least she acknowledges that you’re alive. In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s practically stopped speaking to me.”

Ted smiled thinly in the darkness of the car. “Maybe you should consider yourself lucky. At least she doesn’t tell you you’re stupid when you object to pink hair.”

“She did that three months ago, when she dyed it.” Mary sighed. “Besides, haven’t you seen the kids she hangs out with? Some of them have purple hair. And rings in their noses.”

“What the hell are they thinking of? Don’t they know—”

“They know they want to look different,” Mary interrupted. “For most of them, it’s just part of growing up. But with Kelly …”

She lapsed into silence as Ted turned the Chrysler into their driveway. She frowned, staring at the small house. Every light had been turned on. She should have been relieved; usually if she and Ted came home after midnight on a Friday night, the house was dark and empty. But tonight, even aside from the bright lights, she could sense Kelly’s presence.

Sense that something was wrong.

She sat still in the car, making no move to open the door even after Ted had switched the engine off. Her feeling of unease was growing.

“Mary?” Ted finally asked. “What is it? You okay?”

His words seemed to bring Mary back to life, and she groped for the door handle. The door stuck for a second, then opened. She got out, moved along the cracked sidewalk, then stopped at the front door. She should have reached out and tried the knob — Kelly practically never remembered to lock it — but didn’t. And when Ted came up beside her, she reached out to touch his arm, almost as if to prevent him from opening the door either.

“What is it?” Ted asked again.

Mary shook her head, as if to rid herself of the strange premonition she was having. “It — I don’t know,” she breathed. “There’s something wrong. I can feel it.”

A slow grin spread over Ted’s face, and his voice took on a drawl that was even broader than usual. “What could be wrong? I got no job, and my daughter hates me, and my wife thinks I give the farm away.” He reached out and tried the knob. The front door swung open.

About to go inside, he hesitated. Now he, too, felt a chill wash over him. His grin fading, he crossed the threshold. “Kelly?” he called out.

Silence.

And yet the house didn’t feel empty.

“Maybe she’s in her room,” Ted said, hearing the lack of conviction in his own voice.

Mary, firmly putting aside the fear that was crawling inside her, moved past her husband, starting toward Kelly’s room. But as she reached the hallway she paused, glancing into the bathroom.

She froze, her mouth open, an unvoiced scream constricting her throat. On the floor, lying still in a pool of blood, her face deathly pale, lay her daughter, a large, jagged fragment of the smashed mirror still clasped tightly in her right hand.

The scream died before it left her lips. Only a faint whisper emerged. “Kelly? Oh, no — Kelly—nooo …” She moved forward, dropping to the floor, staring helplessly at her daughter’s limp form, and then she sensed Ted standing behind her. “Do something, Ted,” she whispered. “Call an ambulance—”

A numbness seemed to fall over her then, and she thought she must be going into shock. No! she told herself. Kelly needs you! Don’t start crying. Don’t scream. Don’t faint. Take care of your daughter!

She reached out and opened Kelly’s right hand. The shard of glass fell away, breaking into smaller pieces as it hit the floor. Blood surged from the cuts on Kelly’s palm. Oddly, the sight of blood streaming from the wound made Mary feel better, and then she knew why.

If Kelly were dead, she would have stopped bleeding.

Mary snatched a towel from the bar on the wall, wrapping it securely around the injured hand, then began tearing at Kelly’s bloody clothes.

She found another wound in Kelly’s torso, a deep gash. Kelly had clamped her left hand over the wound as she’d lain bleeding on the floor. Coolly, almost feeling detached from what she was doing, Mary pried her daughter’s fingers away from the cut, then wiped the blood away from the laceration and inspected it for broken glass. Seeing none, she packed another towel against the abdominal cut, then looked up to find Ted standing in the doorway, his face ashen.

“She’s alive,” Mary whispered. “Did you—”

“I called the police,” Ted replied. “They’re sending an ambulance. I—” His gaze shifted away from Mary, fixing on the pale mask of his daughter’s face, and his eyes flooded with tears. “She can’t die,” he whispered. “God, don’t let her die.…” He sank down next to his wife and gently took Kelly’s left hand in his own. Time seemed to stand still. An eerie silence settled over the house.

In the distance they heard the sound of sirens.

• • •

Mary felt the ache of exhaustion as she stood up from the orange Naugahyde sofa in the waiting room of Atlanta General Hospital. She walked toward the front doors and looked outside to see the first light of dawn breaking. Had she really been sitting here all night?

No, of course not.

The Andersons had only arrived at the hospital after one A.M. For at least two hours Mary had paced nervously around the emergency room until the doctor — she couldn’t even remember his name — had come out to tell them that Kelly was out of danger. The wound in her abdomen, despite how it had looked, wasn’t deep, nor had the piece of glass with which Kelly had stabbed herself penetrated any vital organs. She’d lost a lot of blood, but the wounds had been stitched up.

She was alive, and she was conscious, and they had been allowed to see her.

With Ted steadying her, Mary had walked down the hall, abstractly wondering how it was that now, when she knew Kelly was going to be all right, she herself was falling apart. Yet when she’d thought Kelly was dying, she’d controlled herself, tending to Kelly’s wounds, shedding not a tear, simply dealing with the situation.

They’d paused outside the room, and instinctively she and Ted had looked at each other. Until that moment, neither of them had spoken aloud about what had happened. Once again, Mary had found herself putting her emotions aside. When she spoke, her voice had been steady.

“She tried to kill herself, Ted.”

Ted had shaken his head. “Not Kelly—” he’d begun, but she’d pressed a finger against his lips, silencing him.

“She did. That’s why she’s been so quiet. She’s been thinking about it. And tonight, that’s all we’re going to do. We’re going to think about it, but we’re not going to talk about it, not unless she wants to. All we’re going to do is let her know that we love her, that we’re here for her.”

Inside, their daughter lay listlessly in bed, her face pale. Next to the bed stood an IV pole, from which hung a bag of blood. A tube led from the bag down to a needle inserted into the vein of Kelly’s right arm. She looked up at them, her eyes large and wary, like those of a terrified rabbit. Mary felt tears threaten to overwhelm her.

Her daughter was frightened, afraid that they were mad at her.

Mary controlled her tears and forced a smile. “How do you feel?”

Kelly licked nervously at her lips, and her eyes went to the bandage on her hand. “Okay.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ted asked.

Once again Kelly’s tongue flicked over her lips. She shook her head without looking up.

“Well, then I guess there isn’t much to be said, is there?” Ted went on. Kelly shrank back into the pillows slightly, but then looked up.

“Are you very mad at me?” she asked, her voice quavering.

Ted was silent, and Mary could see his conflicting emotions passing through his eyes. Finally, he forced a smile. “I don’t see how being mad at you’s going to help anything. I just guess you must be pretty mad at your mom and me, and maybe yourself, too. But don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about anything.” He leaned over to kiss his daughter’s forehead. “Just go to sleep. We’ll be here.”

Mary stayed a few minutes longer, then kissed Kelly’s cheek. “I love you.”

Kelly made no reply, simply staring up at her mother with the strange, vacant gaze that Mary had never been able to fathom, a look that, at times, made her wonder if her daughter felt anything at all.

Tonight was one of those times.

• • •

Now, still standing in front of the glass doors, Mary heard a door open and close behind her. Turning, she saw the doctor from the emergency room coming toward her. She moved back toward the sofa, where Ted had risen to his feet, and slipped her arm through her husband’s. The doctor glanced around the waiting room and, satisfied that it was empty except for the Andersons, motioned them to sit down. He dropped into a chair opposite them.

“Is Kelly all right?” Mary asked. “Has something else—”

The doctor raised his hands reassuringly. “She’s fine,” he said; then, as if realizing the inappropriateness of his own words, he amended them. “Given the circumstances, that is.”

Ted leaned forward. “Has she talked about it, Doctor …?” His voice trailed off.

“Hartman. Yes, she has talked about it.” He paused, as if uncertain whether to go on, then seemed to come to a decision. “She seems to have been trying to abort herself.”

Mary felt a sinking sensation in her stomach, and gripped Ted’s arm, feeling his muscles stiffen under her fingers.

“Abort—” she breathed. “You mean, she wasn’t trying to—” She hesitated, then made herself complete the sentence. “… to kill herself?”

Hartman shook his head. “I think it was both, Mrs. Anderson.” His eyes darted from Mary to Ted, then back to Mary again. “I’m afraid your daughter has some pretty serious problems.”

“Not nearly as serious as the kid who got her pregnant,” Ted said, his voice dark with anger. “She’s barely sixteen years old. When I get my hands on—”

Hartman’s hands rose again, this time in protest. “Take it easy, Mr. Anderson. The thing is, Kelly isn’t pregnant. I’ve given her a careful examination, and there’s no question about it — as far as I can tell, your daughter has never had sex.”

Confusion clouded Ted’s face. “I–I don’t get it. You said—”

“I know what I said. All I can tell you is that your daughter thought she was pregnant. She was afraid to tell either of you, and she couldn’t remember when or how it had happened. So she decided to kill herself.”

Mary closed her eyes, as if the act could protect her from Hartman’s words. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Why didn’t she talk to us?” But of course she knew the answer — it was the adoption. No matter what she and Ted had ever told Kelly, they had never been able to convince their daughter of their love for her. Reluctantly, Mary had come to believe that from the moment Kelly had learned she was adopted, she had been waiting for her “real” parents to appear and claim her. And in the meantime, it was as if she refused to love them, refused to trust them. Her eyes filled with tears. “Why couldn’t she ask us to help her?”

Hartman shook his head helplessly. “She’s frightened. Frightened, and confused.” He leaned forward, and his voice dropped slightly. “She thinks she’s going to be locked up because she’s crazy. She says nobody loves her, and she doesn’t blame them.” He glanced away, then forced himself to meet the Andersons’ gaze directly. “What she said was that she’s already dead, that she’s always been dead, and that she just didn’t want to pretend to be alive any longer.”

For several moments neither Mary nor Ted said anything. Then, finally, Ted spoke. “What can we do?” he asked.

“Show her she’s wrong,” Dr. Hartman replied.