Darkness

by John Saul

  Carl chuckled. “I know what you’re going to say,” he interrupted. “You think Warren Phillips is a Dr. Feelgood, and your old man’s hooked on drugs, right? Well, forget it—he’s not!”

  Ted pursed his lips. “Whose word do you have on that?” he asked. “Seems to me that if Phillips was shooting you up with something, he’d be the last person to tell you.”

  Carl laughed out loud. “Well, I guess we know whose son you are, anyway! First time he gave me one of those shots, way back when my arthritis first hit, I got suspicious. Never thought I’d say this, but I felt too damned good. So the next time, soon as I was done with him, I hied myself up to Orlando and got a blood test. Didn’t name any names—just told them I’d been given a shot and wanted to know what was in it.” He chuckled softly. “Figured it was amphetamines, at least, and probably a whole lot else. Well, score one for Warren Phillips. All they found was cortisone, along with some traces of hormones.”

  Ted stared at him incredulously. “Hormones?” he repeated. “What kind?”

  “How the hell would I know?” Carl boomed. “I don’t know shit from hormones, and don’t want to. Probably some kind of sheep’s balls or something, like that guy in Switzerland used to use on the movie stars. All I know is, it keeps me feeling good and looking good, and the doctor in Orlando said there was nothing wrong with it. And there damned well shouldn’t be, considering the price Phillips gets for it.” He grinned at Ted. “Who knows? If I can afford it, maybe I can live forever.”

  Ted said nothing more, but his father’s words didn’t sound right. If the shots were nothing more than hormones, how could they have made his father rebound so quickly? And why did they cost so much? From what his father had said, the shots didn’t sound like they should be that expensive.

  But drugs were.

  And only drugs, as far as he knew, could affect anyone the way Dr. Phillips’s shot had affected his father.

  “How the hell do you know where you are?” Tim Kitteridge asked Judd Duval.

  He was sitting in the prow of Judd’s boat. For the last hour he had been certain they were going in circles. Everywhere, the tangle of moss-laden cypress and bushy mangroves looked the same. Half the time, the foliage had closed in so tightly around the boat that the mangrove roots scraped against its sides as they passed. Every now and then Tim had spotted snakes—thick, green constrictors—draped over the tree limbs under which they’d passed. He’d shuddered as he imagined one of them dropping down on him, coiling itself around his body, slowly crushing him. In addition, alligators lay in the water, their yellow eyes staring greedily as they passed.

  “Lived here all my life,” Judd replied. “When you grow up in a place, you get to know it real well. Just have t’know what t’look for.” He chuckled, an ugly, cackling sound. “ ’Course, they say us swamp rats have some extra senses, too,” he added. “There’s them’s as think we can see in the dark.”

  “Well, I’d just as soon not find out,” Kitteridge observed. “Not today, anyway. You sure you know where this Lambert woman lives?”

  Judd’s chuckle rumbled up from his throat again. “Less’n she’s moved, I know the place, and she ain’t likely to move till the day she dies. If she ever dies.”

  Kitteridge glanced back at the deputy. “How old is she?”

  “Who knows? Been here as long as I have, and she was an old lady back then.” He grinned wickedly at the chief. “Lots of folks say she’s a witch. Or maybe a voodoo princess.”

  Kitteridge wondered, not for the first time, if he wasn’t just wasting the morning. Still, if he could get a line on Jonas Cox, it would be worthwhile. He’d asked Judd about Jonas first thing that morning, as soon as Judd had reported for the day’s duty.

  “Kid’s half cracked,” Judd had told him. “Lives out in the swamp somewhere, and nobody hardly ever sees him. Just as well, if you ask me. Mean as shit, and twice as dumb.”

  “According to Amelie Coulton, he and George both have something to do with this person she called the Dark Man.”

  Judd had rolled his eyes. “Amelie’s almost as dumb as Jonas. Anyway, that sure warn’t George we found out there.”

  “Amelie thinks it was,” Kitteridge replied.

  A dark look flashed across Judd’s face, then disappeared. “Well, there ain’t no such person as the Dark Man. You cain’t hardly believe nothin’ a swamp rat says. They’ll tell you anythin’ you want, then shoot you in the back.”

  Kitteridge had stared pointedly at Duval. “Not much of a recommendation for you, is it?”

  The comment had not been lost on the deputy, but he’d merely shrugged. “You’re the boss. You want to see Clarey Lambert, it’s my job to get you there. But the onliest way we’ll find Jonas is if we stumble onto him.”

  Now, as they rounded yet another of the myriad tiny islands, a house came into view. Kitteridge had become accustomed to the shacks the swamp rats lived in, and this one seemed no different from any of the others. Propped up out of the mire on stilts, it was built of cypress, patched here and there with bits of corrugated tin. On the porch, a woman sat in a rocker, her hands busy with some mending. “That’s her,” Judd said from behind him. “Settin’ in her chair, just like always.”

  As the boat drew near, Clarey Lambert’s fingers stopped working and her eyes fixed on the two men. She knew Judd Duval—had known him for years. The other one she’d never seen before, but recognized anyway.

  “Mrs. Lambert?” Kitteridge asked as the boat came to a stop a few feet out from the porch and Judd cut the engine.

  Clarey nodded, but said nothing.

  “I’m Tim Kitteridge. I’m the police chief in—”

  “I knows who you be,” Clarey said, her eyes dropping back to the work in her lap.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Clarey shrugged.

  “I heard a story about some people who live out here.”

  Clarey’s head tilted disinterestedly.

  “Amelie Coulton said I should talk to you about them.”

  Clarey remained silent.

  “Do you know Jonas Cox?”

  Clarey nodded.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  Clarey shook her head.

  As Kitteridge’s eyes fixed on the old woman, she returned his stare, unblinking, and he knew he was going to get no information out of her at all. He had no idea how old she might be, but her eyes were almost hidden in the deep wrinkles of her skin, and her hair, thin and wispy, barely covered her scalp. “Amelie said her husband and Jonas Cox were the Dark Man’s children.” He watched the old woman carefully as he spoke, but if she’d reacted to his words, she gave no sign at all. He hesitated, then went on, “She said they were dead, Mrs. Lambert. And she said I should ask you about them.”

  Clarey’s lips creased into a thin semblance of a smile. “If Jonas be dead, why ask me where he is?”

  Again Kitteridge hesitated. Then: “That’s not what she meant. I think she meant it more like they were zombies or something.”

  Clarey’s eyes fixed on the police chief. “If’n I was you, I’d be careful who heard me talkin’ like that. Folks might think you be crazy.”

  Kitteridge held her gaze. “I didn’t say I believed her, Mrs. Lambert. I’m just doing my job.”

  Clarey Lambert smiled once more. “Then I reckon you better git on with it. And I’ll git on with mine.” Dropping her eyes, she went back to her mending, her fingers working the needle deftly through the fabric in her lap. Kitteridge watched her for a moment, but he knew that no matter what he said, she would say no more. He signaled Judd to start the engine, and the deputy pulled the boat away from Clarey’s shack. Though the police chief watched her as long as he could, she never looked up from her sewing.

  Kitteridge had the eerie feeling that as far as she was concerned, he’d never been there at all.

  Tim Kitteridge signaled Judd to slow the boat. “There’s a boat up ahead,” he said, as the deputy cut the engine and he h
imself slipped the oars into their locks.

  A moment later, as they drifted through a clump of mangrove and emerged into a quiet lagoon, he could see the boat clearly. It was empty, floating in the shallows fifty yards away. Across its stern he could make out a single word, scrawled unevenly in black paint: COX

  He glanced inquiringly at Judd Duval: “Jonas Cox?”

  The deputy shrugged. “Could be. Mebbe not—must be a dozen Coxes out here. ’Sides, boat’s empty.”

  Kitteridge frowned. “Where would he have gone? And why just leave the boat?” But even as he spoke the words, an idea formed in his mind. “Tell you what we’re going to do. I’ll row us over there, and get in that boat. Then the two of us will talk about hanging around, and decide not to. Then you row away.”

  Judd, mystified, did as he was told. They pulled alongside the rowboat, and he held it steady while Kitteridge, talking loudly, carefully transferred himself from his own boat into the other one.

  “I don’t know,” he said, seating himself on the center bench of the dory. “Looks like whoever was here just took off. Probably in the next county by now.”

  “Maybe we oughta take his boat,” Judd suggested.

  “Forget it. Looks like it’s ready to sink, and I don’t see any point wasting time trying to tow it out of here. Let’s just leave it.”

  He waved Duval off, and the deputy started the engine, steering their boat across the lagoon into a narrow channel on the other side. Tall reeds closed around him, and a minute later he could barely make out Tim Kitteridge sitting silently in Jonas Cox’s small dory.

  For nearly twenty minutes Kitteridge didn’t move. The water around him was as flat and still as a mirror, and the reflection line had all but disappeared. It was as if he was suspended in a green sphere, totally alone in the world.

  But he could feel someone close by, sense him with all the instincts that had protected him through his long career in California, where he’d always known which of the seedy apartments he was breaking into were empty and which held armed men, ready to shoot him on sight.

  Suddenly, from the side of the boat, a ripple ran out over the surface of the water.

  A moment later two hands appeared, clasping the boat’s gunwale.

  And then a narrow-faced, stringy-haired boy of around nineteen, with two short pieces of hollow reed clenched in his teeth, rose out of the shallow water. His ferretlike eyes widened as he saw Tim Kitteridge in the boat, and he tried to hurl himself away, but it was too late.

  The police chief grabbed him by his lanky hair, twisting him sharply so he lost his balance. He dropped back into the water from which he’d just emerged, struggling wildly.

  “Got him!” Tim yelled, but the shout was unnecessary. Judd Duval had already started the engine of his boat and was speeding across the lagoon. A minute or two later Jonas, his hands cuffed behind his back, was sitting in the deputy’s boat, glowering sullenly at Tim Kitteridge.

  “How’d you know he was there?” Duval asked as he fastened the line from Jonas’s boat onto the stem cleat of his own.

  “Saw it in a movie a long time ago,” Kitteridge said, chuckling. “The water’s so murky you can’t see two inches into it. So if you want to hide, all you do is stick a couple of reeds in your mouth and lie down. People can pass you a foot away and they’ll never see you.” His eyes fixed on Duval. “Seems to me you should have thought of it yourself.”

  Duval’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. As the deputy started the engine and began maneuvering the boat back into the narrow channels toward Villejeune, Kitteridge shifted his gaze to Jonas. “Why’d you hide from us, son?” he asked.

  Jonas’s eyes, flat and lifeless, seemed to look right through him, and he made no reply to the chief’s question.

  “Okay,” Kitteridge sighed. “You sit and think about it. But by the time we get back to town, believe me, you’re gonna talk to me. There’s a lot I want to know about you, Jonas, and I’m gonna find out.”

  He turned away, completely missing the look that passed between Jonas Cox and Judd Duval.

  11

  Kelly stepped out of Arlette Delong’s café, where she’d been sitting by herself for most of the morning, nursing three Cokes and leafing through magazines she’d picked up from the rack by the front door. Finally sensing that the woman behind the counter—a middle-aged woman with a bleached blond beehive hairdo she assumed was Arlette—was about to tell her either to purchase the magazines or put them back on the rack, she’d put some money on the counter for the Cokes and left. Outside, away from the air-conditioning, the humid heat of the morning closed around her, and she began wondering where to go next.

  As she moved quickly down the street, the one thing she was certain of was that she didn’t want to go home, where she would once again have to listen to her mother’s accusations.

  Except she knew they weren’t empty accusations. She had sneaked out last night, and she’d been caught.

  But that wasn’t so bad—she’d been sneaking out at night since she was fourteen, and been caught lots of times. And nothing much had ever happened. Her folks had told her they wouldn’t put up with it, but in the end they always did.

  The problem this morning was that she wasn’t really certain what had happened last night. What she could remember was so strange that when she had awakened this morning, she thought the whole thing must have been a dream.

  She and Michael had gone into the swamp—that part she remembered clearly.

  But after that things were fuzzy. There had been some kind of ceremony, almost like a religious service. And she and Michael had been part of it. They’d been led up to an altar, and a priest, all dressed in black, had spoken to them.

  Then he’d laid her down on a bed and put a needle in her chest. But there had been no pain—no pain at all.

  That was why, when she’d remembered it this morning, she assumed it must have been a dream. But then she looked at herself in the mirror, and there on her chest she’d seen the mark.

  A red spot, in the center of which was the tiny round circle of a puncture wound. The spot had been tender to her touch.

  All she’d thought about since then was finding Michael and asking him if he remembered what had happened last night.

  Asking him if he, too, had a strange red mark on his chest.

  Except that the whole thing was crazy. Over and over she’d told herself that the mark could have been made by a mosquito and that she must have dreamed the whole thing.

  Or hallucinated it.

  Was that it? Was she going crazy again, and hallucinating?

  Now, as her mind whirled in confusion, she suddenly wished she hadn’t gotten into the fight with her mother. All she’d have had to do was apologize for sneaking out. And then maybe she could have talked about the dream, and how frightened she was this morning.

  Except that she’d never been able to talk to her mother.

  She’d never been able to talk to anyone, really. Always she’d felt like an outsider, set apart, unable to touch anyone around her.

  Until yesterday, when she’d met Michael.

  And last night …

  An image rose up in her memory of the swamp, and the circle of children around the fire.

  The circle that had opened to include her.

  Her, and Michael, too.

  When she’d awakened this morning, that was the first thing she remembered: the feeling that they had somehow belonged in that circle.

  Michael.

  She had to find him, had to talk to him.

  She glanced around and saw a phone booth in front of the post office. Crossing the street, she found a thin directory sitting on a shelf below the instrument. She rifled through its pages quickly and found what she was looking for. From the address, it seemed that the Sheffields’ house couldn’t be more than a few blocks from her grandfather’s.

  And it must face on one of the canals.

  Leaving the booth, she started down Ponce A
venue, back the way she’d come this morning.

  After turning down two wrong cul-de-sacs, she found the house. She was on the pathway that fronted the canal, less than half a mile from where she herself lived, and although she couldn’t see the street number, she recognized the boat Michael had been in last night, now tied up to a small dock at the canal’s edge. She gazed across the lawn at the house, a long, low, vaguely Mediterranean structure, with a tile roof. On a patio shaded by trellises twined with wisteria, a little girl was playing. Feeling eyes on her, the child looked up, then trotted across the lawn, coming to a stop a few yards from Kelly. Cocking her head, she stared quizzically at the older girl.

  “I bet you’re looking for my brother, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Kelly felt herself blushing. “Is your brother Michael Sheffield?”

  Jenny nodded. “But he’s not here. He’s at work. My name’s Jenny.”

  “My name’s Kelly.”

  Jenny’s eyes widened. “Kelly Anderson? My daddy says—” But before she could finish, another voice called out from the house, and a woman stepped out onto the patio.

  “Jenny? Where are you? Jenny …” Her words faded away as she saw her daughter, and then she, too, crossed the lawn. “Hello,” Barbara said, smiling at Kelly. “I hope Jenny isn’t bothering you. Sometimes she thinks the pathway belongs to us, too.”

  “This is Kelly,” Jenny interrupted. “Michael’s girlfriend!”

  “Jenny!” Barbara exclaimed. “She’s not Michael’s girlfriend. She’s just a friend of his, who happens to be a girl.” She smiled with embarrassment at Kelly. “I’m afraid she just blurts things out.”

  “I do not!” Jenny protested. Turning back to Kelly, she started talking again. “Last night, Daddy said—”

  “That’s enough, Jenny,” Barbara said sharply, and suddenly Kelly realized she had been correct; Michael’s parents had been fighting about her last night. She felt her blush deepen.

  “I—I better be going,” she murmured, but Barbara shook her head, pulling Jenny close and clamping her hands firmly over the girl’s mouth.