Burn the Dark

by S. A. Hunt

  A Black man came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a bar towel. Wearing eye shadow, a silk do-rag covered in purple paisley, and under his apron was an eggplant halter top embroidered with curlicues that looked more suited to a Japanese tea house than a backwoods pizzeria.

  Eyeing the camera in her hand, he tucked the towel into his back pocket and leaned invitingly on the counter. “You a bit early for lunch.” The nametag on his apron said JOEL.

  “That’s okay,” Robin told him. A glass-fronted mini-cooler stood on a counter behind Joel. She pointed at cans of Monster coffee inside. “I’ll have one of those, stick around and wait for lunch time. Cool with you?”

  Joel regarded her with a tilted head, rolling a toothpick around and around his mouth. “You look super-familiar. Where do I know you from?” His weary tone and his delicate mannerisms were somehow masculine, yet … at the same time stunningly effeminate. He smelled like citrus and coconuts, strong enough to even overpower the burnt-bread smell of pizza crust coming out of the kitchen.

  “I have a YouTube channel.” She indicated the camera as he took a coffee out of the cooler and put it on the counter. “Called ‘MalusDomestica.’ Maybe you’ve seen it?”

  Joel rang up the coffee and gave her the total. “No, no, I think … I think I mighta went to school with you. Where did you go to school at? You go to high school in Blackfield?”

  “Yes, I did.” She swiped her debit card and put in her PIN. “Do you have Wi-Fi here?”

  “We sure do.” Joel printed out her receipt, operating the register in a bored, almost automatic way, not even looking at his hand as he tugged an ink pen out of his apron pocket, clicked the end, and gave it to her. “Password’s on the receipt.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sliding into a booth, Robin took a Macbook out of her messenger bag and turned it on. She hooked up to the Wi-Fi with the password on the receipt (pineapplepluspizza) and went to YouTube, where she signed in and started uploading the week’s latest video to the MalusDomestica channel. While it processed, she perused the thumbnails of the videos already posted. Almost three hundred vlogs, most of them no more than twenty minutes long, a few stretching into a half-hour. Her face peeked out from many of them, as if the webpage were a prison for memories, for tiny past versions of herself, as if she continuously shed prior selves and kept them around as trophies. A packrat cicada, dragging around a suitcase full of old skins. She enjoyed browsing through the grid of tiny pictures, each one representing a day, a week, a month of her life—seeing all those chunks of time, those pieces of creative effort, fulfilled her, made her feel accomplished.

  Millions of subscribers, millions of viewers’ worth of video-monetization ad revenue and MalusDomestica T-shirt sales. Their patronage was what funded her travels, what put food in her mouth, clothes on her back, and gasoline in her Conlin Plumbing van.

  She clicked one of the thumbnails, opening a video from a year and a half ago. Past-Robin’s hair was dyed pink and she was slightly heavier, pearish, a spattering of blemishes on her cheeks and forehead. Now-Robin clicked to the middle of the video.

  A pumpkin sat on a picnic table in a quiet park somewhere. The day was overcast and wind coughed harsh and hollow against the camera’s microphone. Past-Robin turned and flung a hatchet with one smooth lunging movement.

  The weapon somersaulted thirty feet and planted itself neatly into the rind of the pumpkin with a morbid splutch.

  “Good one,” said Heinrich’s velvet voice from off-camera.

  Joel slid into the seat on the other side of the table, startling her. His tropical aura of perfume swept in behind him, pouring into the booth.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, Joel.”

  “Looked like you could use some company. And by the by, it’s not Johl, it’s … Joe-elle,” he said, poetically pinching the syllable at the end with an A-OK gesture. “You know, like noel? Or motel? Or go to hell?”

  She smiled tightly. “Nice to meet you, Joe-elle.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Do you always make yourself this comfortable with strangers?”

  “Nah, nah—we ain’t strangers, hon.” Joel turned in his seat, throwing a leg over one knee and his elbow over the back of the bench. “I think I know you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “You think ain’t nobody gonna recognize you with that Mohawk, that rock-chick look, that extra muscle mass,” said Joel, flourishing fingers at her. His fingernails were polished, glittering in the fluorescents. “Which looks really good on you. Very Amazonian. Very punk. I likes. And you got the cheekbones for it.” He leaned in close, talking over the Macbook’s lid. “Your name is Robin Martine, ain’t it?”

  She took him in with tightened eyes now, assessing him fully.

  “Your mama used to babysit for my mama when we was little kids.” He sat back again, smiling like a satisfied house cat. “You and me, we used to play together. I know you, yeah, I do. We didn’t really ever talk much once we started getting into middle school—”

  “My father wasn’t too keen on having other kids in the house in addition to—”

  “No, honey, he didn’t like Black kids in the house.”

  A blush warmed her face, tinged with the heat of anger at the memory of her father. “Well, he’s dead now, or so I’ve heard. So…”

  “Oh, yeah. I know. Lot of tall tales around this town concerning you and your mama. Some of ’em are even true.” Joel took out a pack of cigarettes and packed them against his palm. Some brand she didn’t recognize, with a logo in flowery cursive she couldn’t read. “You mind if I…?”

  She didn’t mind. He took one out, but paused, waggling the pack offeringly.

  “No.” She waved him off. “Tryin’ to quit.”

  Joel cupped the cigarette in one hand with a lighter, lit it and drew on it, then dragged an ashtray over and blew a stream of menthol smoke into the air. “Break a leg,” he mused, tapping ashes. “I’ve quit many a time. Not as easy as it looks.”

  As slow as the Internet was, it would be useless while the video was uploading. Robin studied her keyboard and decided to pay more attention to Joel than the computer.

  “So,” he said, kicking a toe to an unheard beat, “what does ‘Malice Domestic’ mean?” He smiled evilly and feigned a shiver. “It sounds so sinister.” He shivered again.

  “Malus domestica. Latin scientific name of the common apple tree.”

  “Apple tree?”

  Robin gave a half-wince, half-shrug. “Makes sense if you’ve watched the videos.”

  Joel stuck out his bottom lip and nodded as if to say fair enough.

  She opened the can of coffee with a discreet snick! and dug the orange pill bottle out of her pocket, tipping one of the tablets out. Cupping the tablet with her tongue, she swallowed it with a swig of Monster, to be assimilated into the constant swamp-light still humming in the marrow of her bones from yesterday’s dose.

  Joel took another draw and French-inhaled the smoke up his nose, then blew it back out. “What’s it about?” he asked, studying the cherry at the end of the cigarette. “Your YouTube channel.”

  “It’s sort of like … a travel journal, I guess.”

  “Whatcha traveling around doing?”

  “Just, ah … trying to appreciate America.” Robin fumbled for the words. “Roadside attractions, restaurants, that kind of thing.”

  “Kind of like a homeless Guy Fieri.”

  Robin chuckled. “Well, I live in my van—but, heh. Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “You are so full of shit.” He shook his head, the do-rag’s ties rustling behind his head like a ponytail. “Look at this thrift-store Lisbeth Salander over here, talking about highways-and-byways. You ain’t Jack Kerouac.” He leaned in conspiratorially again. “What you really up to?”

  Robin hesitated, glancing down at the camera. It was still rolling. “Well … I hunt witches.”

  “Really.” Joel ashed his cigaret
te. “Fascinating.” He reached over and turned off the camera, surprising her.

  “Hey!”

  “You need to stop playin’. I assume huntin’ witches means killin’ witches, and there ain’t no way you’re videotapin’ that shit, cause me and you, we know the truth, but them out there, John Q. Asshole, they don’t know shit. They see a video of you shanking somebody, they gonna be all over you. Now, I want to talk to you without this camera here. Backstage, so to speak. Off the record. Cause I can tell you just putting on a show for the people at home. But I want real talk.” He smiled tightly. “I know what you doing. You looking for them, ain’t you?”

  Her breathing had become labored without her realizing it. She felt cornered. “Them who?”

  “The ones killed your mama.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “When it happened, my mama lost her shit.” Joel squinted in the murk of smoke hovering over the table. “I remember this vividly—because she scared the hell outta me. This was about … sophomore year? Junior year, of high school? She was out of her mind freaked out about it. Shaking, wide-eyed, locking-all-the-windows freaked. Like she thought the sky was falling, like she was afraid the Devil himself was gonna get in the house.

  “Asked me all kinds of weird-ass questions about this and that—wanted to know what kind of person Annie was, what kinds of things she did. Why she had a speech impediment, why her tongue was like that. Did she hurt animals, did she do anything to me when me and Fish was little…”

  “She never would have.” Robin stiffened. “Mom wasn’t like that—”

  “Oh, I know.” Joel traced imaginary hearts on the table with a fingertip. “Annie was a good woman. A good-hearted woman. Weird, maybe, but good. I told my mama that. I still remember the way she cooked her bacon when me and Fish came over in the mornings. I cook mine the same way.” He illuminated each point with his hands, forming invisible shapes in the air, snapping and wagging invisible bacon. “Crispy, but still floppy. Fatty but not gristly.”

  Trying to visualize this, eating bacon for breakfast with her mother in their little kitchen, Robin saw two other little faces sitting at the table. Two quiet children, wide-eyed

  (my name is fisher and his name is johl but mama calls him jo-elle)

  and spooked like baby owls. The knot inside her loosened, and her jaw tipped open in surprise. “I do remember you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It was the bacon that made me remember.”

  Joel smiled and made a Hallelujah! raise-the-roof motion with his hands. “Ain’t nothing in this world good bacon can’t make better.”

  “They made me forget a lot. The shrinks the state made me talk to. They made—or maybe let—me think I was crazy, and they brainwashed all the witch stuff out of me. Or tried to, anyway.”

  Joel glanced toward the kitchen—or perhaps it was the clock—and back at her, giving the scruff-headed woman-in-black an assessing look. Finally, he said in a tentative way, “There was a rumor going around you said witches had something to do with it. I believed it then, and I believe it now.”

  “Yeah. I told people. But they didn’t believe me. That’s why I had to talk to the shrinks. They thought I had PTSD or something. Thought losing my mother drove me crazy.”

  “You ain’t found ’em, have you? That’s what you been doing ever since the shrinks let you out. You been looking for them witch bitches.”

  She squinted out the window at the noonday sun.

  Joel put both feet flat on the floor and stubbed out his cigarette, leaning on his elbows. He clasped his hands together and spoke around them. “So you for real, then. You doing this shit for real. How do you make YouTube videos about this shit? Ain’t this incriminating evidence?”

  Robin’s fingernails dug into her palms. “You ever heard of Slender-Man? Skinny dude with no face, wears a black suit and a red tie, got long arms, creeps people out?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  She did a search on YouTube for “Slender-Man” and turned the Macbook around so Joel could see it. “Half a dozen YouTube channels devoted to this paranormal being Slender-Man. Each one chronicles a different group of people trying to figure out the mystery surrounding him … they’re all set up as if the events happening in the videos are real. But, of course, everybody knows they aren’t—wink-wink. They’re each a scripted and acted horror series made to look real. Like, you remember The Blair Witch Project? How it was designed and shot to look like somebody found it on a camera in the woods, basically started the found-footage genre?”

  Joel nodded. “Yeah. And you doing something like that, but theirs is fake and yours is actually real? But you make it look like it’s as fake as theirs. Ah ha-ha. Reverse reverse psychology.”

  “Yes.”

  Another man came out of the kitchen. His hair was going gray and his drawn face was a hash of wrinkles, but Robin recognized Miguel from the photograph behind the register. “Hey,” he called. “We got to get ready for lunch.”

  “Untwist them panties, hero,” said Joel, grabbing at the air in a zip-it motion. “I’m just doing some catching up.”

  “Who’s your friend?” asked Miguel.

  “Her mama used to babysit me and Fish when we was kids.” Joel coughed into his fist and took a bottle of hand sanitizer out of his apron pocket, squirting it into his palms and wringing his hands. “Robin Martine.”

  Miguel’s brain seemed to lag like a busy computer program and then he subtly crumpled. “Oh.” An awkward silence lingered between them, and then one corner of his bushy mustache ticked up in a wistful half-smile. “I remember hearing about, uhh…” His belly bobbed with one hesitant breath. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  Robin tried her best to be gracious, but didn’t know what to say, so she echoed his expression and dipped her head appreciatively.

  “Real big shame, kid. I didn’t really know her,” he added, “but I heard she was a good person.”

  “She was.” Robin’s hand found its way around the can of coffee, and she drummed soft fingers against the aluminum. The two men watched her with expectant eyes, the quiet pause only scored by the sound of furious washing and banging in the kitchen.

  Robin looked down at the Monster can. “Five years ago. Decided this year I would come back to town and visit her. This year I’ve decided I feel like I can finally … finally push through the dark and say the things I need to say to her. I guess.”

  “Well,” said Miguel. “Welcome back, Kotter. Mi casa es su casa.”

  Joel followed him back into the kitchen. “What he said.”

  2

  Their new home cut an impressively Gothic silhouette against the stark white afternoon sky. The house was a two-story Queen Anne Victorian, an antique dollhouse painted the muted blue of a rain cloud. A wraparound porch encircled the front, and the whole thing was trimmed in white Eastlake gingerbread.

  In places here and there, it was streaked with black like mascara tears, as if the house had been weeping soot from its seams. “What did I tell you?” asked Leon. He wore a blue thrift-store two-piece and a cranberry tie from Meijer. “Cool, right?”

  Wayne unbuckled his seat belt and leaned up, pushing his glasses up with a knuckle. The boy gazed up through the U-Haul’s windshield at their new base of operations.

  “Looks like the house from The Amityville Horror or something,” he said, and looked out the side window.

  The neighborhood stretched out to their right, a mile and a half of red-brick Brady Bunch ranch houses, double-wide trailers with toys peppered across their lawns, white shepherd-cottages, a few A-frame cabins lurking deep in the trees. Across the road from 1168 was a small trailer park, eight or nine mobile homes marching in rigid lockstep toward a distant tree line. Since his window was rolled halfway down, Wayne could hear the faraway mewling-seagull-cry of children playing.

  Coins of light reflected off the lenses of his glasses. A feeling made him look back toward
1168, as if he’d almost been caught off-guard. Empty sashed windows peered down like eyes, darkness pressing against their panes from inside, as if the house were packed to the brim with shadows.

  A grin crept across his face. “It’s awesome.”

  Leon beamed.

  They got out of the box truck and clomped up the front steps. The porch was wider than he expected, four lunging steps across—wide enough to ride his bicycle up and down the length of the porch if he wanted to. A swing was chained to the ceiling where the porch angled around the corner.

  A cat stood on the porch, a slender gray shadow with black feet and honey eyes.

  Wayne smiled. “Hi, kitty-cat.”

  “You the welcome wagon?” asked his father.

  The cat muttered a hoarse miaow and trotted away, re-stationing itself down by the swing at the end of the porch.

  “Guess not.” Leon waggled his finger for emphasis. “Remind me to get some cat food when I pop into town.”

  “You mean we can have a cat?”

  “I mean we can feed the welcome wagon.” A chuckle. “Let’s not put the cat before the horse.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s a dad joke. It doesn’t have to make sense.”

  Click. The portentous sound of his father unlocking the front door made him twitch. “Check it out, it even locks with an old-timey key,” said Leon, showing Wayne the long, thin skeleton key. He pushed the door open with his fingertips.

  Disappointingly, it didn’t creak open in that spooky, melodramatic way, but the doorknob did bump loudly against the opposite wall. Leon winced and stepped inside, checking behind the door for damage. Wayne went in behind him and stood there, turning in a slow circle, taking it all in. The thick, astringent smell of fresh paint cloyed the air. The front hallway was interminably tall—the ceiling seemed fifteen feet high—but it felt cramped, with only enough room for maybe three men to walk abreast.

  To his right, a doorless archway led into a small den. To his left, a stairway climbed to the second floor and a dark bathroom yawned at the foot of the stairs, dim daylight glinting from the teeth of its chrome fixtures. Dead ahead, the foyer hallway went on past a closet door and opened into the kitchen, the floor turning into turtle-shell linoleum.