Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

  What led to this decision was a unique experience that was mine alone.

  Then again, I could be wrong.

  I could be wrong about everything.

  I get up, pace back and forth between the toilet and the bed, but there’s not much ground to cover in this six-by-eight-foot cell, and the more I pace, the more the walls seem to inch in closer until I can actually feel the claustrophobia of this room as a tightening in my chest.

  It’s getting harder to breathe.

  I move finally to the tiny window at eye level in the door.

  Peer through into a sterile white hallway.

  The sound of a woman crying in one of the neighboring cells echoes off the cinder-block walls.

  She sounds so far beyond hope.

  I wonder if it’s the same woman I saw in the booking room when I first arrived.

  A guard walks by, holding another inmate by his arm above the elbow.

  Returning to the bed, I curl up under the blanket and face the wall and try not to think, but it’s impossible.

  It feels like hours have passed.

  Why could it possibly be taking this long?

  I can only think of one explanation.

  Something happened.

  She isn’t coming.

  —

  The door to my cell unlocks with a mechanized jolt that spikes my heart rate.

  I sit up.

  The baby-faced guard standing in the doorway says, “You get to go home, Mr. Dessen. Your wife just posted bail.”

  —

  He leads me back to the booking room, where I sign some papers I don’t even bother to read.

  They return my shoes and escort me through a series of corridors.

  As I push through the doors at the end of the last hallway, my breath catches in my throat and my eyes sheet over with tears.

  Of all the places I imagined our reunion finally happening, the lobby of the 14th District Precinct wasn’t one of them.

  Daniela rises from her chair.

  Not a Daniela who doesn’t know me, or is married to another man, or another version of me.

  My Daniela.

  The one, the only.

  She’s wearing the shirt she sometimes paints in—a faded blue button-down spattered with oil and acrylic—and when she sees me her face screws up with confusion and disbelief.

  I rush to her across the lobby, wrapping my arms around her, and she’s saying my name, saying it like something isn’t adding up, but I don’t let go, because I can’t let go. Thinking—the worlds I’ve come through, the things I’ve done, endured, suffered, to get back into the arms of this woman.

  I can’t believe how good it feels to touch her.

  To breathe the same air.

  To smell her.

  Feel the voltage of my skin against hers.

  I frame her face in my hands.

  I kiss her mouth.

  Those lips—so maddeningly soft.

  But she pulls away.

  And then pushes me away, her hands against my chest, her brow deeply furrowed.

  “They told me you were arrested for smoking a cigar in a restaurant, and that you wouldn’t…” Her train of thought derails. She studies my face like there’s something wrong with it, her fingers running through two weeks’ worth of stubble. Of course there’s something wrong with it—it’s not the face she woke up to today. “You didn’t have a beard this morning, Jason.” She looks me up and down. “You’re so thin.” She touches my ragged, filthy shirt. “These aren’t the clothes you left the house in.”

  I can see her trying to process it all and coming up blank.

  “Did you bring Charlie?” I ask.

  “No. I told you I wasn’t going to. Am I losing my mind or—?”

  “You’re not losing your mind.”

  Gently, I take her by the arm and pull her over to a couple of straight-backed chairs in a small waiting area.

  I say, “Let’s sit for a minute.”

  “I don’t want to sit, I want you to—”

  “Please, Daniela.”

  We sit.

  “Do you trust me?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. This is all…scaring me.”

  “I’ll explain everything, but first I need you to call a cab.”

  “My car is parked two blocks—”

  “We’re not walking to your car.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not safe out there for us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Daniela, will you please just trust me on this?”

  I think she’s going to balk, but instead she takes out her phone, opens an app, and orders a car.

  Looking up at me finally, she says, “Done. It’s three minutes out.”

  I glance around the lobby.

  The officer who escorted me here from the booking room is gone, and at the moment, we’re the only occupants aside from the woman at the welcome window. But she’s sitting behind a thick wall of protective glass, so I feel reasonably sure she can’t hear us.

  I look at Daniela.

  I say, “What I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy. You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I haven’t. Remember the night of Ryan’s celebration at Village Tap? For winning that prize?”

  “Yeah. That was over a month ago.”

  “When I walked out the door of our house that night, that’s the last time I saw you, until five minutes ago when I came through those doors.”

  “Jason, I’ve seen you every day since that night.”

  “That man isn’t me.”

  Her face becomes dark.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s another version of me.”

  She just stares into my eyes, blinking.

  “Is this some kind of trick? Or a game you’re playing? Because—”

  “Not a trick. Not a game.”

  I take her phone out of her hand and check the time. “It’s 12:18. I have office hours right now.”

  I type in the number to my direct line on campus and hand Daniela the phone.

  It rings twice, and then I hear my voice answer with, “Hi, beautiful. I was just thinking about you.”

  Daniela’s mouth opens slowly.

  She looks ill.

  I put it on speaker and mouth, “Say something.”

  She says, “Hey. How’s your day going so far?”

  “Great. Finished my morning lecture, and now I’m seeing a few students over the lunch hour. Everything okay?”

  “Um, yeah. I just…wanted to hear your voice.”

  I grab the phone from her and mute it.

  Jason says, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  I look at Daniela, say, “Tell him you’ve been thinking, and that since we had such an amazing time in the Keys last Christmas, you want to go back.”

  “We didn’t go to the Keys last Christmas.”

  “I know that, but he doesn’t. I want to prove to you he’s not the man you think he is.”

  My doppelgänger says, “Daniela? Did I lose you?”

  She unmutes the phone. “No, I’m right here. So, the real reason for my call—”

  “Wasn’t just to hear the dulcet tones of my voice?”

  “I was thinking about when we went to the Keys for Christmas last year, and how much fun we all had. I know money’s tight, but what if we went back?”

  Jason doesn’t miss a beat.

  “Absolutely. Whatever you want, my love.”

  Daniela stares into my eyes as she says into the phone, “Do you think we can get the same house we had? The pink-and-white one that was right on the beach? It was so perfect.”

  Her voice breaks on the last word, and I think she’s right on the verge of losing her composure, but she somehow manages to hold the scaffolding together.

  “We’ll make it work,” he says.

  The phone begins to shake in her hand.

  I want to tear him slowly apart.
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br />   Jason says, “Honey, someone’s waiting out in the hall to see me, so I better jump off.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll see you tonight.”

  No you won’t.

  “See you tonight, Jason.”

  She ends the call.

  Reaching down, I squeeze her hand and say, “Look at me.”

  She looks lost, addled.

  I say, “I know your head is spinning right now.”

  “How can you be at Lakemont and also sitting here right in front of me at the same moment?”

  Her phone beeps.

  A message appears on the touchscreen, advising that our car is arriving.

  I say, “I’ll explain everything, but right now we need to get in this car and pick our son up from school.”

  “Is Charlie in danger?”

  “We all are.”

  That seems to wrench her back into the moment.

  Rising, I give her a hand up out of the chair.

  We move across the lobby toward the precinct entrance.

  A black Escalade is parked at the curb, twenty feet ahead.

  Pushing through the doors, I pull Daniela along the sidewalk toward the idling SUV.

  There’s no trace of last night’s storm, at least not in the sky. A fierce north wind has raked away the clouds and left in its wake a brilliant winter day.

  I open the rear passenger door and climb in after Daniela, who gives the black-suited driver the address to Charlie’s school.

  “Please get there as quickly as you can,” she says.

  The windows are deeply tinted, and as we accelerate away from the precinct, I look over at Daniela and say, “You should text Charlie, let him know we’re coming, to be ready.”

  She turns her phone over, but her hands are still shaking too badly to compose a text.

  “Here, let me.”

  I take her phone and open the messaging app, find the last thread between her and Charlie.

  I type:

  Dad and I are coming to pick you up from school right now. There’s no time to sign you out, so you’ll just have to excuse yourself to the bathroom and head out front. We’ll be in the black Escalade. See you in 10.

  Our driver pulls out of the parking lot and into a street that’s been plowed clean of snow, the pavement drying out under the bright winter sun.

  A couple blocks down, we pass Daniela’s navy Honda.

  Two cars ahead of hers, I see a man who looks exactly like me sitting behind the wheel of a white van.

  I glance through the rear window.

  There’s a car behind us, but it’s too far back for me to see who’s driving.

  “What is it?” Daniela asks.

  “I want to make sure no one’s following us.”

  “Who would be following us?”

  Her phone vibrates as a new text arrives, saving me from having to answer that question.

  CHARLIE now

  Everything ok?

  I respond with:

  All good. Explain when we see you.

  Putting my arm around Daniela, I pull her in close.

  She says, “I feel like I’m caught in a nightmare and I can’t wake myself up. What’s happening?”

  “We’ll go someplace safe,” I whisper. “Where we can talk in private. Then I’ll tell you and Charlie everything.”

  —

  Charlie’s school is a sprawling brick complex that looks like a mental institution crossed with a steampunk castle.

  He’s sitting out on the front steps when we pull into the pickup lane, looking at his phone.

  I tell Daniela to wait, and then I step out of the car and walk toward my son.

  He stands, bewildered at my approach.

  At my appearance.

  I crash into him and squeeze him tight and say, “God, I’ve missed you,” before I even think to stop myself.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks. “What’s with the car?”

  “Come on, we have to go.”

  “Where?”

  But I just grab hold of his arm and pull him toward the open passenger door of the Escalade.

  He climbs in first and I follow, shutting the door after us.

  The driver glances back and asks with a heavy Russian accent, “Where to now?”

  I thought about it on the drive over from the police station—someplace big and bustling, where even if one of the other Jasons followed us, we could easily blend into a crowd. Now I second-guess that choice. I think of three alternates—Lincoln Park Conservatory, the observation deck of the Willis Tower, and the Rosehill Cemetery. Rosehill feels like the safest option, the most unexpected. And I’m similarly drawn to Willis and Lincoln Park. So I go against my instinct and swing back to my first choice.

  I tell him, “Water Tower Place.”

  We ride in silence into the city.

  As the buildings of downtown edge closer, Daniela’s cell phone vibrates.

  She looks at the screen and then hands it over so I can see the text she just received.

  It’s a 773 number I don’t recognize.

  Daniela, it’s Jason. I’m texting you from a strange number, but I’ll explain everything when I see you. You’re in danger. You and Charlie both. Where are you? Please call me back ASAP. I love you so much.

  Daniela looks scared out of her mind.

  The air inside the car is prickling with electricity.

  Our driver turns onto Michigan Avenue, which is clogged with lunch-hour traffic.

  The yellowed limestone of the Chicago Water Tower looms in the distance, dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers that line the expansive avenue of the Magnificent Mile.

  The Escalade pulls to a stop at the main entrance, but I ask the driver to drop us underground instead.

  From Chestnut Street, we descend into the darkness of a parking garage.

  Four levels down, I tell him to stop at the next bank of elevators.

  As far as I can see, no other cars have followed us in.

  Our door slams echo off the concrete walls and columns as the SUV pulls away.

  Water Tower Place is a vertical mall, with eight floors of boutique and luxury stores built around a chrome-and-glass atrium.

  We ride up to the mezzanine level, which houses all the restaurants, and step off the glass elevator.

  The snowy weather has brought the crowds indoors.

  For the moment at least, I feel perfectly anonymous.

  We find a bench off in a quiet corner, out of the flow of foot traffic.

  Sitting between Daniela and Charlie, I think of all the other Jasons in Chicago at this moment willing to do anything, willing to kill, just to be where I’m sitting.

  I take a breath.

  Where to even begin?

  I look Daniela in the eye and brush a wisp of hair behind her ear.

  I look into Charlie’s eyes.

  I tell them how much I love them.

  That I’ve come through hell to be sitting here between them.

  I start with my abduction on a crisp October night when I was forced to drive at gunpoint to an abandoned power plant in South Chicago.

  I tell them about my fear, how I thought I was going to be murdered, about waking up instead in the hangar of a mysterious science lab, where people I’d never seen appeared not only to know me, but to have been anticipating my return.

  They listen intently to the details of my escape from Velocity Laboratories on that first night, and my return to our house on Eleanor Street, to a home that wasn’t my home, where I lived alone as a man who had chosen to dedicate his life to his research.

  A world where Daniela and I had never been married and Charlie had never been born.

  I tell Daniela about meeting her doppelgänger at the art installation in Bucktown.

  My capture and imprisonment in the lab.

  My escape with Amanda into the box.

  I describe the multiverse.

  Every door I walked through.

 
Every ruined world.

  Every Chicago that wasn’t quite right, but which brought me one step closer to home.

  There are things I leave out.

  Things I can’t yet bring myself to say.

  The two nights I spent with Daniela after the installation opening.

  The two times I watched her die.

  I’ll share these moments eventually, when the time is right.

  I try to imagine what it must feel like for Daniela and Charlie to hear this story.

  When the tears begin to slide down Daniela’s face, I ask, “Do you believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you.”

  “Charlie?”

  My son nods, but the look in his eyes is miles away. He’s staring vacantly at the shoppers strolling past, and I wonder how much of what I’ve said has actually landed.

  How does someone even begin to process such a thing?

  Daniela wipes her eyes and says, “I just want to be sure I understand exactly what you’re telling me. So on the night you went out to Ryan Holder’s celebration, this other Jason stole your life? He took you into the box and stranded you in his world so he could live in this one? With me?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “That means the man I’ve been living with is a stranger.”

  “Not completely. I think he and I were the same person up until fifteen years ago.”

  “What happened fifteen years ago?”

  “You told me you were pregnant with Charlie. The multiverse exists because every choice we make creates a fork in the road, which leads into a parallel world. That night you told me you were pregnant didn’t just happen the way you and I remember it. It unfolded in a multitude of permutations. In one world, the one we live in now, you and I decided to make a life together. We got married. Had Charlie. Made a home. In another, I decided that becoming a father in my late twenties wasn’t the path for me. I worried my work would be lost, that my ambition would die.

  “So there’s a version of our life where we didn’t keep the baby. Charlie. You pursued your art. I pursued my science. And eventually, we parted ways. That man, the version of me you’ve been living with for the last month—he built the box.”