The Darkest Night

by Mike Ramon

Chapter Seven

  This time it was Tom who arrived first, and Patricia found him waiting for her in the same booth they had shared the first time they met. Tom saw her as soon as she came in, and he waved her over. As she neared the booth Tom stood.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Have a seat.”

  Patricia sat across from him and he sat down again.

  “I almost didn’t come,” Patricia said. “I was still mad from the last time we met. But from what you wrote in your e-mail, in sounded like you were ready to be a bit more open-minded.”

  “Yeah, well…” Tom trailered off, not knowing what to say to that.

  “So, what exactly happened to you at that library that made you want to get in touch with me?” Patricia asked.

  “Can I get you two anything?” the waitress interrupted.

  It was the same waitress from last time, a thirty-something woman with a nametag that said her name was Carol.

  “Some grapefruit juice, please,” Patricia said.

  Again with the grapefruit juice, Tom thought.

  “I’ll take a refill on my coffee,” Tom said, pushing over his empty cup.

  “Coming right up,” Carol said and left them alone.

  Tom recounted his story of the trip to the library the previous day, stopping only when the waitress came back to give Patricia her cup of juice and to refill Tom’s own cup from a pot of lukewarm coffee. He started by telling her of his desire to find more information about the Home than she had been able to provide him with, and then about the microfiche and the long search, day by day, page by page, column by column, for anything to do with the Cedar Falls Home for Orphaned Children (and its closing). Then he recounted the first interruption, the sound like a chair being moved, and how he had found that he was still alone in the Local Heritage Room. Then he told her about the bookcase that had been moved so that it blocked access to an entire row, and about the last part, when the contents of most (if not all) of the shelves had come crashing down at once, and the curious sensation that followed, the feeling of being watched from the darkness. When he had finished Patricia looked down at the table for a minute, taking it all in.

  “What was it that made you go looking for more information about the Home?” she finally asked, looking back up at Tom. “I mean, after we talked I was sure you thought that I was either crazy or a liar.”

  “I didn’t--” Tom started, but Patricia waved him off.

  “Yes, you did,” she said. “So, what made you change your mind?”

  Tom hesitated, wondering if he should tell her about Frankie, or if it would be best to leave the boy out of this strangeness. He decided to tell her.

  “Remember the girl who disappeared in the Home--Jessica gardener?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah. It was the story you wrote about the case that caught my eye.”

  “The girl has a brother. His name is Frankie, and he’s twelve years old.”

  “I remember the story mentioning him.”

  Tom took a drink of coffee; it was nearly cold, but he didn’t care much.

  “Well, the day I went to see the Gardener family I had a few minutes alone with Frankie when his dad left the room. The dad--Hank Gardener--told me that his son didn’t remember the details of what happened the night Jessica was taken. They even took him to the hospital to get him checked out, to make sure there was nothing wrong with him physically that was impairing his memory, but he was fine. The doctor’s thought that he was just blocking out what happened because he couldn’t handle it.”

  “I’ve heard of that happening,” Patricia said. “Do you think that’s real, or just psychobabble bullshit?”

  Tom didn’t answer the question; he wanted to get the rest of the story out.

  “Hank left the room to take care of some problem with his wife--she seemed to be taking it the worst--and Frankie came out and, for some reason, decided to confide in me.”

  Patricia leaned forward, bare curiosity shining in her face.

  “He told me that he did remember what happened,” Tom said. “He just didn’t tell his parents or the police because he thought that they wouldn’t believe him. He was right; hell, I didn’t believe him.”

  “What did he tell you about that night?” Patricia asked.

  “He told me how Jessica heard a voice calling her, which I already knew. But there was more to it than that. Jessica climbed through a broken window and dropped out of site into a dark room, and Frankie followed after her. When he got inside he couldn’t see her because it was too dark. He was trying to see in the darkness, and what he saw was…he called them ‘living shadows’. He said that these shadows came toward him, and he ran.”

  “Jesus. I can’t imagine how terrified he must have been,” Patricia said. “I’m sure he must feel guilt, too, for having left her behind.”

  “He does.”

  Tom took note of the fact that she hadn’t doubted the boy’s story in the least.

  “He shouldn’t feel guilty,” Patricia said “What could he do, faced with something like that?”

  “There’s something else, as well,” Tom said. “A couple days after we met I saw Frankie again. He got my cell number from a card I gave to his father, and he left me a message asking me to meet him at a park the next day. I almost didn’t go, and I’m not entirely sure why I did. It had a little to do with our meeting here; maybe it had all just sort of piqued my interest.”

  The waitress sidled up to the table and Tom cut his story off.

  “Anything else?” she asked

  “No ,thank you; not right now,” Tom answered for the both of them.

  The waitress looked down at their cups and made a face that said, is that really all you cheapskates are going to order?, before walking off to service another table.

  “What did he tell you at the park?” Patricia asked when they were alone once again.

  “He told me about these nightmares he had been having ever since the night his sister went missing.”

  Patricia’s eyes went wide.

  “Just like me,” she said. “My nightmares started after James disappeared. At first they were coming every night; their less frequent now, but I still have them every now and then.”

  “That’s what really made me look at this thing from a new angle. His dreams sounded a lot like yours, and they started after the disappearance of a loved one, just like yours. It struck me as supremely creepy. Did you ever see anything that could be described as ‘living shadows’ in your dreams?”

  “No. Did Frankie?”

  “Yes. He said that his dreams always ended with the shadows catching him.”

  “Are those the only dreams he’s had?”

  “No, there were others. He said that the dreams had changed recently. Instead of finding himself trapped inside the Home and getting caught by the shadows, these new dreams found him moving throughout the Home when it was still an orphanage. He sees kids going about their day, and in every dream the kids get in trouble and are taken to the Special Room.”

  He explained to her about Frankie’s description of the Special Room, and about the screams that always came from the other side of the closed door. Patricia looked sick at hearing it.

  “Are you all right?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Go on.”

  “That’s about it, actually. Do you think that…I mean, it sounds kind of crazy, but it’s a crazy world…”

  “Come on, spit it out,” Patricia urged, “What is it?”

  “Do you think that these dreams, the ones where Frankie sees the kids being taken into the Special Room, aren’t really dreams, but like, I don’t know, some kind of psychic memory of the Home that he’s managed to tap into?”

  “Anything is possible in a world where shadows can snatch a little girl off to who-knows-where. Don’t you think?”

  Tom shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just a theory I had.”

  “I like it. I’ll tell Har
ry about all of this and see what he thinks.”

  “Who the hell is Harry?” Tom asked.

  “He’s a paranormal researcher who I made contact with about two months ago.”

  “A paranormal researcher? Like, a ghost hunter?”

  “Don’t say it like that,” Patricia said.

  “Like what?”

  “With such derision. I haven’t met him face to face, but we’ve been corresponding through e-mails for a couple of months, and he seems like a good guy. He’s not some crackpot.”

  “I’m not worried about him being a crackpot; I’m worried that he’s a crook who saw an opportunity to take advantage of a woman who is desperately looking for some answers, and took it.”

  “He hasn’t ‘taken advantage’ of me in any way,” Patricia said, balking at the suggestion. “He hasn’t asked me for money, or anything else. Most importantly, he believed me when I told him about my thoughts about the Home.”

  She was starting to flush with anger, and Tom saw that he had offended her in some way, perhaps had called her judgment into question. He recalled all too clearly how their last meeting had ended, and he was quick to calm the situation down.

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t know the guy, and I shouldn’t pass judgment on him.”

  This seemed to cool Patricia down some; Tom felt that a storm had been averted.

  “Harry and I have been talking about the possibility of him coming out to spend some time at the Home,” Patricia said. “To see if he can pick anything up, or find some clues as to what happened to James. I have to tell him about Frankie; his story about what he saw that night, and his dreams, are just more proof of what I’ve thought all along.”

  “That the Home is haunted?”

  “Yes. I already filled Harry in on the details I was able to dig up on the Home’s past, and he has some theories about the nature of the entities.”

  “That reminds me,” Tom said.

  He reached into his inside coat pocket and took out the small notebook he had jotted notes in at the library. He tossed it on the table.

  “There might be some stuff here that you weren’t able to dig up about the Home.”

  Patricia picked up the notebook and flipped back the cover. She scanned Tom’s writing, her eyes all lit up like a kid examining a new toy.

  “There were missing kids?” she asked, looking up at Tom.

  “Yep. The director of the place--a guy by the name of Friehl--said they were sent to other orphanages out of state, but he--”

  “He couldn’t recall the names or produce any records,” Patricia finished, reading from his notes. “He said that they were destroyed by a fire. That must be the fire I read about while doing my research.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “If they didn’t really go to other orphanages, then where did they go?”

  “Hell if I know. There are a few possibilities, and none of them are particularly good.”

  “Hey, can I borrow this?” Patricia asked, holding up the notebook. “I want to copy this stuff down, and then I’ll get it back to you.”

  “No problem.”

  Tom looked around and caught Carol the waitress looking over at the two of them. He figured she was probably trying to figure what kind if a tip she would get on two cups of coffee and a glass of grapefruit juice.

  “Listen,” Tom said, turning back to Patricia, who was still looking through the notes. “Maybe we should exchange phone numbers; it would be more convenient than e-mail.”

  He pulled out one of his cards, identical to the one he had given to Hank Gardener. The card had his e-mail address (which Patricia already knew), his number and extension at the Review, and his private cell number. He handed it to her and she slipped it in her purse without looking at it.

  “Let me give you my number,” she said.

  She produced a pen from the tangled bowels of her purse, turned to a blank page in the notebook and jotted her own cell number down. She then tore out the page and handed it to Tom, who folded it and slipped it into a pocket.

  “What do you think about Frankie?” Patricia asked. “How do you think he’s holding up?”

  “Not well. Like I said, he feels a lot of guilt. When I met him in the park I had to convince him not to go back to the Home to search for his sister alone. He promised to hold off.”

  “Do you think he’ll keep his promise?”

  “I don’t know him well enough to say for certain…but yeah, I think he will. For a while, anyway.”

  “How long is ‘a while’?”

  “Hopefully ‘a while’ is long enough to keep him from doing something stupid and getting hurt.”

  “Hopefully it’s at least long enough for me to get in touch with Harry, fill him in on everything you’ve told me, and see where he wants to take it from there. Best case scenario, he’ll finally come out here himself.”

  “Then what? We hold a séance?”

  Patricia gave him a look, and he laughed.

  “Just a joke,” Tom aid quickly. “I figured we could use some levity around here.”

  They decided to break for the day. Patricia promised to get a hold of Harry ASAP, and then to get back in touch with Tom to plan their next step. Tom decided that for the time being he would leave Frankie in the dark about what they were up to, to which Patricia objected, but Tom held firm on that point. She agreed begrudgingly that it was best. Patricia left first, with Tom offering to pay the bill, making sure to leave a good tip.