Personal Effects: Dark Art

19

I’d packed my things and was about to lock up for the day when the office phone rang. I sighed, then smirked. Of all the battered third-hand equipment I’d been assigned at The Brink, this yellow-and-black beauty was my favorite. Row of sleepy-blinky extension lights, frayed cord, cracked receiver. It was the Charlie Brown of office phones.

Its broken bell gave another surly trill. I picked up.

“Zachary. A moment, please.” The voice was crisp and formal.

“Of course, Dr. Peterson. What can I do for you?”

“I have reviewed the incident reports you and Mr. Hoffacker filed today regarding your altercation with Martin Grace. Frankly, I’m surprised… and disappointed. Very disappointed.”

I stiffened. “Disappointed?”

“Yes. The patient’s assignment to Level 5 was merely a formality, in accordance with the court’s request. Grace’s files indicated that he was belligerent, not violent. If I had thought your safety was in jeopardy—”

I exhaled, smiling. “Oh, I’m fine, Dr. Peterson. It was a brief outburst, nothing more than that. He was blowing off some steam.”

Peterson clicked his tongue, impatient.

“I become concerned when multiple murderers ‘blow off steam,’ Zachary,” he said. “Your colleague, Dr. Xavier, is of the opinion that the patient would benefit from medication and sedation. Xavier also volunteered to appropriate the assignment, should you feel threatened or overwhelmed.”

I nearly growled into the receiver. Goddamned Xavier.

“With all due respect, sir, Drake is accused of those crimes,” I said. “And while I appreciate Dr. Xavier’s concern for his safety, he hasn’t worked with the man. This was a fluke.”

“Drake?”

Fuck-fuck-fuck.

“Grace. I said Grace.”

“Well, I believe Xavier’s concern was for your safety,” Peterson said.

I snorted. The guy was a snake—and as phony and hollow as the toy he resembled.

“There’s nothing amusing about this, Zachary,” Peterson said. “Grace’s behavior today could be a harbinger. The stress of the impending trial may be influencing his behavior. If I decide that medication or restraints are the best solution, then that’s how it shall be. But your point is well taken: No one at Brinkvale has spent more time with Grace than you. Tell me. Will he become violent again?”

I heard Grace’s voice, bellowing: “Get out of my life!”

“It’s… unlikely,” I replied.

“You don’t sound entirely convinced.”

“That’s because I don’t honestly know,” I admitted. “Look, Dr. Peterson, I’m getting closer to determining Grace’s mental competency, and I’m using information from his past to do that. I need his mind clear, focused, lucid… not reacting to a mule-kick of Dr. Xavier’s dope.”

“There must be something wrong with our connection, because I thought I just heard you criticizing the technique of a Brinkvale colleague,” the old man said.

I winced. “I’m sorry. I’m asking you to trust my judgment. I’m making a leap of faith in my patient. I’d appreciate it if you made one in me.”

The line was silent for a moment. Peterson then gave long hmmm.

“I’ll defer to your expertise,” he said. “But understand that time is very short indeed for Grace. Come tomorrow, you will have three business days to make your conclusions.”

“I know,” I said. “Oh, I know.”

I called Rachael on the drive home, hoping she and Lucas would be up for supper at Stovie’s, an eclectic pub renowned for its beer, bacon cheeseburgers and buffalo wings. Rachael was game, especially for a brew—“I’m feeling like something hoppy, an IPA,” she’d said—but Lucas had bailed for the day. Apparently his “brilliant, exotic chica” had called with dinner plans. Lucas was loyal, but he was no fool.

We met at the apartment and walked the three blocks south to Stovie’s, on Avenue B and East 8th. For decades, the space this bar now occupied had been an appliance store. According to Stovie’s lore—once told to us by its seen-it-all barkeep Mendel—the store closed in the 1980s. Its bankrupt owners left behind their merchandise. Rather than pitch the appliances, Lenny Reynolds—an East Village resident legendary for his industrial art—re—imagined them for use in his new bar. Refrigerator doors became tables. Oven doors became bench seats. Electric stove tops lived on, re-engineered as wall-mounted light fixtures. The chrome of vintage logos glittered from every nook.

And magnets. Everywhere, thousands of refrigerator magnets on every conceivable surface, nearly all of them donated by Stovie’s patrons. There were enough colorful plastic alphabets here to spell out the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Only in the East Village.

The bar would soon overflow with NYU students craving Thursday morning hangovers. Right now, the scene was sedate. Rachael and I sipped our beers as I recounted my traumatic morning with Daniel Drake (I’d cleaned my scratches at The Brink; they looked worse than they actually were), and the session with his father. I even confessed to my hall-wander realization that a sliver of my Drake obsession was fueled by a desire to impress her.

Rachael placed her pint of Klass’ Bitterest on the metal table and frowned.

“Zach, you do impress me. It’s your default setting, babe. I’m smitten, and blind man or no, I’m staying smitten. Call me the luckiest girl in the world… or a five-state radius, at the very least.”

“I second that,” came a lilting voice from behind her. Ida “Eye,” the fourth member of our little tribe. “Yep. Sampled the Zach goods back in high school. Yummy.”

I winked. “Not yummy enough.”

“Oh, no man’s yummy enough anymore,” the forensics lab technician said. “As a matter of fact, I’m waiting on Adrian right now.”

“Now she’s yummy,” I said. Rachael’s Doc Martens clacked against my shin. “Ow! Save me, Eye! Have a seat.”

She slid next to Rachael, grinning. Her brown fingers tapped my ever-present Moleskine sketch pad. It lay open, beside my beer.

“Been thinking about this,” she said. “Can you do a sketch of Ade for me? I want to surprise her with a present. She’s got enough watercolors from me—but I thought I’d give her something special, from the best artist I know.”

I blushed a little.

“Well, Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting fat. I’d be honored.”

She beamed.

“Thanks. So how’s this case going, with the blind guy?” she asked. “I’m reading all about it in the papers. You’ll be a rock star before this is all over, Z.”

“I don’t want to be a rock star.”

“Well, you certainly rock my world,” Rachael said. She rocked her head like a head-banger, her hands raised in a glam-rock “devil’s horn” salute. My cheeks were warmer now. I laughed, fanning my face with my hand.

“So what’s his deal about a ‘dark man?’” Eye asked. “Sounds racial.”

“Oh god, it’s anything but,” I said. I picked up one of my pencils and doodled absently on the sketch pad. “It’s his… well, ‘inner demon’ is the best way to put it. It’s a long story—and honestly, I’m kinda at a loss at this point. We’ve dug up just about everything we can on the guy, and it still doesn’t seem to be enough.

“I mean, we know about the Alexandrov-Russia debacle now; he refused to confront it, and is still trapped within the delusion,” I continued. “We’ve exhausted his personal effects from The Brink… and I don’t think there’s anything more we can glean from the lockbox. It’s like driving in the suburbs: roundabouts and dead ends everywhere.”

“Somebody poke me when you start speaking English again,” Eye said.

“Sorry. It’s complicated.” I glanced up from the page, to Rachael. “And then there’s our boozing, belching ‘Son of Drake.’ He lost it when I played ‘Night On Bald Mountain.’ I wish I knew what was up with that song. All he said was, ‘Heard it enough then, still hear it in my fucking sleep.’”

“So Grace played the song a lot after he came back from Russia,” Rachael said.

“Yeah, but why? Lucas knew more about the song than we did. We should call…”

I reached for my cell phone, but Rachael shook her head. She pulled her Blackberry from her hip pocket.

“We don’t need that bouncing Red Bull commercial,” she said. “Besides, you don’t want to interrupt his date with ‘exotic chica.’ Let your chica handle this.”

Eye watched us, bemused.

“Still waiting for that poke,” she said.

Rachael’s thumbs tak-takked on the Blackberry’s keypad, accessing the internet. As she did this, my pencil etched vague, shaded shapes in the Moleskine pad. My hand was suddenly itchy, wanting to tell a story. I rode shotgun, watching it do its thing, finding the image as it moved.

I drew two curved lines near the center of the page. They looked like the beginnings of wings—or fluid, jointless arms. I teased the lines with crosshatchings, wondering where the pencil would go next.

“God bless wireless networks, Wikipedia and Google,” Rachael said. “‘Night on Bald Mountain.’ Composed by Modest Mussorgsky. Song’s best known for, yep, Fantasia. Lemme cross-ref with Fantasia.”

On my page, new lines slipped down from the top endpoints of the curves. These, too, arced toward the center of the page. Ah.

These weren’t animal wings. They were horns. I kept going.

So did Rachael.

“Looks like Disney called this character ‘Chernabog.’ But the critter’s better known as Chernobog, with an o… as in, ‘oh what a difference a vowel makes to the copyright office.’ Here’s the skinny. Comes from pre-Christian Slavic mythology. Nocturnal demon, tormentor of souls, a ‘dark and cursed creature.’”

“Putting the poke on layaway,” Eye announced. “I give up.”

I barely heard them. My pencil was screaming across the page.

Rachael, from faraway:… also a bringer of grief, darkness, evil and death. Now here’s a job title for you: ‘Chernobog, Servant of the Black’… .

The pencil lead snapped in my hand. Still staring past my sketch, I dropped the pencil, groped for another.

…brought forth by black magic…

Found it. Continued.

… curse lifted when the karmic scales are re-balanced…

“Z,” Eye said, grimacing, “beloved, I got no love for whatever you’re drawing.”

I blinked, and gazed, a bit repulsed, at what I’d sketched so far. It resembled the head of an emaciated bear, with black swirling holes where its eyes should be. Instead of ears, hideously long horns sprouted from its skull. Spit—or blood, it was unclear—oozed from its snarling fangs.

It was a gut-churning sight, but I wasn’t embarrassed of the image, as I’d been with Annie Jackson under Primorus Maximus. My tribe was initiated. I shrugged.

“This is how it is,” I said. They exchanged a look and nodded. “So, Rache. Cherno—”

I cut myself off, still staring at the black bear-monster. Something flickered in its eyes, in my mind.

“Chernobog,” I said. “I know that.”

And I did, I was certain of it. Had Lucas said the demon’s name last night, as he’d listened to Drake’s song? No. This detail, this hook in my brain, felt a bit older than that. I hit my rewind in my mind, eager to remember.

“Night On Bald Mountain.” Chernobog, Black God of Death. Obviously, it was an allusion to Drake’s monster, much like this new sketch. The Black, aka the Dark Man, aka The Inkstain, aka…

“He’s called it Chernobog before,” I told them. “It was in his admittance report, from a past psyche evaluation.”

They looked at me, their eyes anticipating.

“And?” Eye asked.

And…

I dropped the pencil onto the table, exasperated. “Fuck if I know.”

I sighed, cupping my hands over my eyebrows, conjuring tunnel-vision on the sketch. The beast’s eyes howled. Madness defied the microscope.

“It’s more Sisyphean bullshit,” I snapped. “Questions, answers, more goddamned questions, and here I am, waving from the bottom of the hill again. Pisses me off, man. Why? Why did Peterson pick me?”

“Oh hell,” Rachael said. “You know why.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I honestly don’t, not anymore.”

Eye raised her beer. “The aforementioned world-rocking,” she said, and drank.

I coaxed a feeble smile for her.

“Z, if you really want to ask ‘why,’ I’ve got a better one for you,” Rachael said. “Why is NYPD going all out for this guy? They’re rooting through homicide cases that are ten years old. Those are cold cases, babe. Why the arctic excavation? Why now?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Eye said. Her brown eyes met mine. “Your dad, and mine.”

“My… huh?”

“Well sure,” she replied. “It’s all because of your dad’s ex. The lady who died, your patient’s psychiatrist.”

Rachael took a sip of her Klass’ Bitterest. “Sophronia Poole.”

Eye peered at me. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t know about this, Z. My dad’s been working on it for, what, two years now? All done during his off-time, once it went cold. It was a personal favor for an old friend—your dad. Heh. You know a little about that, pinging someone in the NYPD for help.”

I nodded. It was handy, having a contact on the inside—and William V. Taylor, Manhattan District Attorney, had asked his friend Eustacio Jean-Phillipe to keep the case on life support. And the Homicide Division’s deputy chief had done just that. I imagined how meticulous Papa-Jean must’ve been to discover Richard Drake—and then piece together the horrors my patient had fled.

How many hours of personal time? Dozens? Hundreds?

What’s dead’s buried, I heard Daniel Drake say. You’d be right to leave it alone.

“I never knew about her,” I said.

“You’re kidding,” Eye said. “There was an entire room in my father’s house dedicated to her. Well her, at first. By the end, it was mostly about your blind man. Did you know he had a crush on her?”

I thought of the appointment card in Drake’s wallet and nodded. He’d “made” Sophronia Poole during their sessions, had taken notes on what things she liked: sunflowers, Jeffrey Deaver novels, spider rolls, my father. He’d planned to woo her.

And then her heart had been carved out her chest, taking my father’s heart with it. That final murder had crushed Drake’s heart, too—and his mind. He’d fallen for Sophronia, in the way patients experiencing transference sometimes do. She was his savior, an angel, an object of affection and desire. Love? Had he fallen in a kind of love with her?

Perhaps. She’d been someone he cared about. He’d gone blind after that.

My eyes fell back to the page. Chernobog glared back with its sightless eyes. The Black. Whirling circles, spirals, hypnotizing, look into my eyes.

Eyes.

Eye

I groped for my pencil. Yes, something. Something finally.

Eye for eye.

I leaned into the page… and the pencil was a living thing in my hand again, sending a transmission and I was listening, tune in, Zach, can you read me, read between my lines, yank words from my curves, from my scratches? there’s something scratching at your door

I was nodding now, my nose an inch from the table. I drew, drew from inside.

something important, yes, almost there, draw the beast, finish the piece, complete it—eye-for-eye—draw the letters-not-letters, shade it, make it real—killer of loved ones—a test of your mettle, make it metal— haunted for all your days—now meddle, meddler, welder, weld it, put it together—

I yanked my sweaty face away from the sketch pad, gasping. Rachael and Eye watched me, speechless. Despite their familiarity with this part of me, their expressions were both distracted, worried. I grabbed my glass of beer and gulped a mouthful. It was gloriously cold.

I looked at my art.

The bear-beast’s head hadn’t changed… but something had grown from its neck. The remainder of the page was filled by two large, shimmering metal rectangles. Rune-like letters glinted from their centers.

“Dog tags,” Rachael whispered, understanding.

I nodded. Yes. Oh, yes.

Oh, no.

“What if Alexandrov is still alive?” I asked. “What if he’s been killing them all along?”