Personal Effects: Dark Art

27

The crawl space was marginally brighter when I awoke. Slivers of sunlight peeked through cracks in the foundation around me and the floorboards above.

I shifted in the dirt, slapping a hand over my mouth to suppress a sudden shriek. The Dark Man may not have left a mark, but Daniel certainly had. The muscles in my torso and face sang from his beating; the pain was exquisite and loud, a full-body cathedral choir. My tongue teased at a loose tooth. My right eye seemed to move in a viscous syrup—the beaten, bruised flesh around it had swelled, nearly sealing it. I gritted and groaned, sliding across the filth toward the place I’d landed last night.

I longed for Lucas and his parkour-honed “field medic” talents. I imagined him in my Alphabet City living room, hand over contemplative mouth, considering me… and then turning to Rachael: Now this, my dear Hochrot, is the face of a foolbiscuit.

I grinned… then fretted over the loose tooth.

Lucas and Rachael. My tribe. I couldn’t wait to—

“Oh, shit,” I whispered. My voice was hoarse, ragged.

Richard Drake said they’d been marked. When Rachael had called last night, the car’s heater had surged back to life, and that feeling of being… hunted… had vanished for the duration of my drive here. Had the monster rushed back to the city? Had it devoured my lover? My brother? Then returned to confront me down here?

“Oh, shit,” I said again.

The Dark Man is here, behind you, whispering, showing me how you’re going to die…

Yes. Richard Drake had said that. And he’d said that Rachael, Lucas and Dad were going to die, too—but he say didn’t how, or when. Rachael’s last word to me as the cell phone died in my hand had been “help.”

My hands trembled as I stuffed the shoebox documents and photo of Alexandrov into my satchel. I spared a moment to look at the fragile cell phone that had saved my life. Hunks of its plastic case and buttons were missing, exposing blackened circuits. A vertical crack bisected its dark LCD screen. I flipped it over and gazed at the exposed battery. It was covered in barnacles of corrosion.

I placed it in the shoebox and closed the lid. The phone—or its caller, I thought—deserved to be, finally, at rest.

And now, I needed to get out of here, man, right now, giddy-giddy. I tore through the earth, reaching the trap door, bracing for the pain that would sweep over me as I would shove open the trapdoor, bolt out of the crawl space and run to the car. God, this was gonna suck.

Wait.

I paused, did as I was told. My lizard brain was growling. I listened. If Daniel Drake were somewhere in the house, waiting to finish me off…

Chill, Z. Take a breath. Go slow, for God’s sake, go slow.

I placed my palms against the door and pushed upward, gently. Its hinges creaked.

My eyes rose above the scuffed linoleum like a periscope. Daniel’s body lay in the center of the room. His legs were splayed across the remains of the shattered kitchen table. The man’s left shin—obviously the leg I’d hit with the hatchet—was wrapped in a blood-soaked dishtowel and cinched tight with a leather belt. The hatchet rested against his belly. Daniel’s glass-shredded face was covered in dried blood. He was snoring.

I pulled myself up through the trapdoor, hands sliding in the tacky blood on the floor, desperate to be quiet.

Daniel blew out another foghorn snore… and then his ass tooted a fart, almost like an exclamation point. I choked back a half-laugh, half-sob of pain. I hated him, but I couldn’t leave him like this. I told myself to call an ambulance when I had access to a working phone.

Seconds later, I was up and gone, hobbling through the back yard, past the grass field. Its tall blades swished in the morning breeze, a thousand-thousand fingers waving goodbye in the eastern sunrise.

Working the Saturn’s pedals was an excruciating chore.

The rotten-tooth house finally sank into the rearview mirror, and I sighed, grateful to be gone.

And when the car hit the interstate, I slammed the accelerator to the floor.

Cell phone reception.

I needed cell phone reception.

Speedometer: 85 MPH. Dashboard digital clock: 7:22 AM.

Nausea swirled in my belly and I dry-heaved with fright. It was a wordless drive, surrounded by the dim roar of the passing road, punctuated by the screams in my mind. The screams of a World Without.

She’s my anchor, my sail, the second half of my heartbeat. She grounds me, electrifies me, excites me, astounds me with her brilliance and talent, and loving her is the easiest thing I’ve ever done… effortless, natural, true. Always there, my cheerleader, my coach, my teammate, my perfect fit.

Kid brother, trusty sidekick, ever-present reminder to bounce, to stay lively and propitious, to never take life too seriously. Pop Rocks for the soul.

Father, the man to whom I owe my skepticism, my rationalism, the Bedrock of Me, the source of my hunger to do right, to fix the world…

Rachael’s tattooed chest gushed blood, flayed by a maniac. Now, her body was bisected on subway tracks, shoved by a stranger. Raped. Worse.

“No,” I muttered.

Lucas’ face flaking black, house fire flames consuming his body. Head crushed on concrete, a parkour move gone bad. Shot, bam-bam-bam, strutting Alphabet City punks back to settle their tenpin score.

“Please, no.”

Dad’s screaming face, dunked in a men’s-room toilet in One Hogan Place, parole violator dead-set on payback.

“God, if you can hear me…”

But He didn’t.

The visions blasted on, kaleidoscopic, tungsten-flares of midnight murder and mania, of my beloveds’ lives ending terribly, quietly, slowly, bullet-train fast. And then, a life’s worth of feeling the gaping World Without, with a new breed of nyctophobia: a darkness of the heart, no reason to keep beating. My fuel, my fire, gone forever.

Forever.

Tears slid down my smashed face. I glanced at the dashboard clock.

7:23 AM.

Nightmare minute.

If they were dead, it was my fault. All. My. Fault.

“Please, God. Please.”

90 MPH now.

And then, as the car screamed ever-southward, just miles away from Claytonville Prison: skeleton song.

I’d already been clutching my cell phone, watching for reception bars to wink on-screen. My thumb frantically jabbed the “voice mail” button; the thing could’ve dialed in at warp speed and it still wouldn’t be fast enough.

First message. 10:38 PM last night. Rachael.

Z? Lost you. Come back to the city—don’t go up there, please.

Second message. Also last night. 11:07. Dad.

Call me back. We need to work this out.

Third message. 6:30 AM today.

I smiled and wept.

“Z, it’s Rachael—”

“—and Lucas. Bro, you’re—”

“—It’s us. Please call when you can. We’ve been up all night—”

“—dude, Dad’s flipped his shit, you gotta—”

“—shut up, Luc. So yes, please call. We’re in a bad place over here… and thanks to your father, so’s your blind man. Wicked stuff is about to go down, Z. Call back. I love you.”

“’Dore!” Lucas called.

The voice mail ended. I dialed Rachael’s cell. She picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, it’s me,” I said. I struggled to keep my voice even; I’d been exhaustion’s punching bag—the surge of elation was too much. The tears still came. “You’re… you’re alive.”

“You are, too,” she replied. Her voice trembled, and I realized she was doing the same thing, miles away. I smiled through the tears. We were puzzles pieces clicking home, in sync once more.

“Oh Jesus, Zach,” she said. “You have no idea… you’ll never, ever know.”

I did, a little. A World Without.

“I’m coming home,” I said. “I want… No. Need. I need to see you, be with you.”

“Are you okay?”

I glanced at the ghoul’s eye staring back at me in the rearview mirror.

“No. No, babe.”

And then I said the only thing I could say. It was stupidly inadequate. Words are sometimes like that—failures of our species, hollow caveman grunts strung together to represent things bigger than the world itself.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Z,” Rachael said. “Oh, baby. You should be. You’d better be. I love you, but you’re in the red, don’t think for a minute that you’re not. Listen to me. If. You. Ever.”

I wiped away my tears, nodding. “Yeah.”

“No, I need to say this. If you ever do anything like this again, we’re through. It’s simple math. We’re together, Z; we’re a couple. That means we’re coupled together, to each other. You can’t just run off. You can’t fight a war by yourself.”

“I thought I was protecting—”

“I know what you thought, and it was chivalrous and noble and selfless… and pretty damned selfish. This isn’t about you, baby. It’s about us. If you want to keep me in your life, then keep me in your life. We’re a team. We fight our wars together. If you want to fight on your own, then have the courage and decency to tell me to my face. I like love letters, Z—but I don’t truck with lone letters. Get me?”

I did, and told her so. Rachael didn’t believe in the Dark Man as I did; she hadn’t heard its skitter-slide, hadn’t felt its icy breath on her neck, hadn’t seen. She didn’t understand… but that didn’t make her wrong. No, she was absolutely right. I never tried to explain. I abandoned her and Lucas, fueled by obsession and a need, a primal, seemingly-cellular need, to see it done.

I was more like my father—and Richard Drake—than I’d ever imagined.

“I love you, geek goddess,” I said.

“I love you back, hottie artist,” Rachael replied. “You’re in the doghouse, but at least you’re loved.”

I smiled. “I’ll take it.”

“And now the bad news,” she said. “Your dad called Lucas last night after he tried to reach you. He’s pulling Drake out of The Brink.”

I stiffened… and winced. “He’s what?”

“He’s leveraging yesterday’s accident as a reason to transfer Drake.”

“Emilio…” I muttered. “He’s probably doing it to bolster his case. Literally. Get Drake out of The Brink, make him out to be a violent psychotic, get him away from me. ‘Conflict of interest’ no more.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he wants to protect you. We don’t know, but he told Luc that he’s bulldozing through whatever red tape to make it happen. He’s on a tear, Z, calling in big favors. It’s happening today, and there’s apparently nothing you or Brinkvale can do about it. At noon, Drake is gone… and it’s over.”

“Over,” I said. I glanced at my satchel resting in the passenger seat. There was a letter and two photographs inside—things Drake had consciously—or unconsciously—wanted me to find. Why?

“Dunno.”

“What was that?” Rachael asked.

I looked back to the road ahead. A green exit sign rose on the horizon: Claytonville.

“I don’t think it’s over, Rache,” I said. “Answers. I need answers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

A wave of guilt, thick and sickening, passed over me. I couldn’t tell her about Uncle Henry. That was black, soul-wracking family history. I didn’t believe the revelation would fundamentally change the way she saw me, felt about me… but it would damn my father in her eyes. And my late grandmother, who had gone along with the plan. And then the secret would fester between us, with Lucas oblivious, intangibly damaging us, all three of us. It wasn’t a fair burden to share.

It didn’t feel right to tell her. But it wasn’t right to not tell her.

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

“Don’t answer my question with a question, damn it. I said, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’”

I cringed.

“I found some things at the Drake house—a letter from the CIA, a photo of the Russian. I don’t know what they mean, baby. I don’t know what to do. But I know that Drake didn’t kill those people, and he doesn’t deserve whatever Hell my dad’s got planned for him. I… I know… I know someone who might be able to help me. I need to talk to him. And then I have to go to The Brink.”

“Who’s ‘him?’” she asked.

And here it was, in the most honest terms I could muster:

“An… an old friend. Someone who believes in the Dark Man.”

Silence.

“You’re not going to tell me any more, are you?” she asked.

“I will, if we’re on the edge,” I said. And despite the misery that would come, I would. “Are we?”

She sighed. “What’s with you, Zach? Are you trying to ruin us? Didn’t we just cover this?”

“That’s why I’m telling you what I can. That’s why I’m asking if you trust me.”

“You know I trust you.”

“Then can you live with not knowing? At least for right now?”

“Damn it, that’s not fair and you know it.”

I was rushing toward the exit for Claytonville. I reached for the turn signal out of habit—preposterous, considering the Saturn was the sole car on this stretch of blacktop—but pulled my hand away. This, this moment, was important.

No. This was the most important moment.

“I know,” I whispered.

“You’re so in the red, kiddo,” Rachael said. “Go. Go do your thing and come home safe. We’ll fight and then we’ll fuck and you’ll cook dinner for the next month. And maybe, when we’re both ready, you can tell me about this. Deal?”

I loved her more than anything right then. I truly did.

My fingers flipped the turn signal. I merged left.

“Deal.”

I shambled through Claytonville’s atrophied limestone halls like the bloodied, filth-covered zombie I undoubtedly resembled. Even this prison’s most jaded corrections officers performed bug-eyed double takes at the sight of me: one part of my brain thought I should be proud of that; it was hard to shock the guards in a facility that housed homicidal lost causes—who now happened to be cleaner and better-dressed than me.

The last time I was here, I’d trembled with dread, anxiety, anger and a need… a need to know. Now, I was too broken, too spent, to feel any of those things. I’d been through an emotional atomsmasher. I needed a friend who understood.

“Lemme guess,” said the barrel-chested guard as we walked toward the visitor’s room. He looked me over and winked. “I should see the other guy. Right?”

I grunted. “I was the other guy.”

“Ouch.”

“Brother, I’ve got ’ouch’ on speed dial.”

The rusted door screeched open and in I stepped, alone again in the wide room with its row of semi-private nooks, panes of floor-to-ceiling shatterproof glass, and security cameras. I moaned as I sat, again reminding myself of a George Romero movie refugee. The ghostly reflection staring back at me in the glass was—sweet Christmas—worse than I imagined.

Walking dead, pardner. Brainnnns.

“Hush,” I hissed.

And, like two days ago, a fire-alarm bell trilled for a moment… and then my uncle emerged from the open door beyond the glass. The same guard followed him. Henry sat down across from me. The guard announced that we had ten minutes, and stepped backward, watching us.

Henry gazed at me, his gray eyebrows furrowed with concern. His face did not twist in revulsion as the others’ had; I supposed he’d seen worse during his twenty years here.

“What happened?” he asked.

“The path found me,” I deadpanned.

Henry’s bearded face crinkled into a slight smile. He started to speak again, but I waved my hand: It’s cool, we’re cool, let me finish.

“The man the newspapers call Martin Grace drew a map that sent me to his son’s home,” I said. “I was sent there to find something. His son did… well, he did this.” I shrugged, self-conscious. I remembered the cameras, and didn’t want to incriminate myself any more than I already had. “I fought back, took him down. But I did the right thing. Called 911 from the pay phone in the lobby. I think he’ll be okay.”

“They’re resourceful when they’re curious,” Henry said. “Trace it back here, check with visitor logs.”

I nodded. “And if the county lush cares to press charges, I’ll happily take my licks. But I don’t think he’ll do that. He’s like his father; it’s just not in him to heal. He’s lost enough already.”

I leaned forward and stared into his blue eyes.

“I saw it.”

Henry’s face was solemn. “I can tell. You don’t fall into the black and come away completely whole.” He raised his finger, as if to explain. The charms on his bracelet jingled. “I don’t mean physically. There’s a very large, sometimes very frightening, world just beside—and beneath and above—this one. That world scraped against you, Zach. It changes you. Like it changed you twenty years ago.”

“Yes.”

The silence lasted no more than five seconds. It felt like a day.

“Drake said I was marked,” I said. “Me and Lucas and Dad. And my girlfriend.”

Henry’s eyes ticked across my body. He squinted. He nodded very slowly.

“Did you find,” he asked, “what you were sent to find?”

“I… I don’t know. I think so, but it doesn’t make sense. A photo and a letter from Big Brother. The monster was protecting them, like a watchdog.”

I shivered then, recalling the Dark Man’s fingers shredding my skin.

“And why doesn’t that make sense?” Henry said.

“Because what I found basically nullified the only thing going for me in the Drake case. I thought someone else murdered all those people. A Russian. Why did Drake send me there? I didn’t gain anything. Poof, there’s the proof, not true.”

Henry squinted. “It had a vested interest in protecting them. Maybe there’s more power in what you found.”

“And maybe Drake sent me there to die,” I said. “He knew his son would be there, knew the Dark Man would be waiting and hungry. I was ‘marked,’ after all. Double cross, kill the threat. I’m the only one, perhaps ever, who’s gotten this close to… to curing him.”

I sighed. “I think… I think I beat it,” I said. “It saw the photo of the Russian, the man who’d vowed vengeance against Drake. It should’ve killed me, but it vanished.”

Henry took a deep breath and exhaled. He shook his head as slowly as he’d nodded a minute ago.

“Know this, son. Things like the Dark Man are never ‘beaten.’ There’s nothing in this world that can beat them. They’re hired guns. They leave when they’ve done their job.”

“You said you were there, back then, when the Dark Man killed Mom. You told me we were under attack. You saved Lucas, you said. It was beaten. It left. How?”

“It did what it was told to do. It took a beloved of Will’s, just as Will had…”

He stopped.

“Zach, if it’s gone, then you found its secret and put it to rest. Whatever was in that house was the key. The Dark Man has absolutes. It must do what it was born to do. The powers that control these monsters, the terms that govern when an unholy contract has been fulfilled—those are rarely absolute. If it’s gone, its contract was fulfilled. You did it. I’m proud of you.”

I scrubbed my face with my damaged hands, exasperated.

“But I don’t know what to do now,” I said. “Everything I’ve done to help Drake has had… heh… catastrophic results. And now he’s getting pulled from The Brink. I’ve got—”

“Three minutes,” the guard said.

“—I’ve got no reason to care,” I continued. “I know this. I’ve done everything I can think of, I’ve broken every rule there is to break, I’ve gone emotionally and ethically bankrupt, and look, just look at me. Finally, I’m as banged up on the outside as I am on the inside. This is a job, just a fucking job, and no job’s worth this. But.”

I looked at him, anguished. Could he possibly understand?

“But he’s my patient, Henry. Does that make sense, what that means to me? No matter what happens in the trial, no matter what happens to him once he leaves The Brink, I want to help him now. I need to. I… I can’t…”

“…let it go,” Henry finished. He gave a serene, bittersweet smile, and lifted his eyes skyward. “That’s why I’m here, Zach. Couldn’t let go. Will finally got his wish because I couldn’t let it go. It makes more sense than you’ll know.”

Goddamn it, I had so many questions about that day. About the twenty years that had come and gone. But there was no time.

Always running out of time.

“What’s left?” I said.

Henry leaned even closer to the glass. “The Dark Man is an entity of vengeance, son. That’s what it was built to be; it never learned to be this way. It is what it is. Absolute punishment, retribution that’s as compassionless as the sin that brought it here. But is the Dark Man your roadblock?”

“No. It’s Drake. His insistence.”

Henry nodded. “He wants the blood washed from his hands. Not for the crimes he’s accused of…”

I blinked.

“…but for the ones he’ll never be accused of,” I said. “Red Show.”

I finally understood—and my heart ached with the understanding.

“I should go,” I said. “But I’ll come back. If you’ll have me.”

For the first time in the twenty total minutes I’d spent with him, my uncle’s face brightened and beamed. He smiled.

It looked like his first smile in twenty years.