Silence filled the room. "I don't understand."
She broke down crying. "We weren't even trying. I know we talked about it, but I don't remember us actually trying. I mean, how many times have we been together since we moved here? Three? Four times? So how did this happen?"
"You don't need a doctor to tell you that. Apparently we weren't being so overly protective."
"Apparently? This doesn't just happen apparently!" she shouted, banging her fist against the kitchen counter. "We tried for five months with Jessica before I got pregnant. And damn it Michael, you were wearing a friggin' rubber."
I nodded. Indeed I was.
"So how, Michael? How?"
"I don't know...any number of reasons. It may have torn, or leaked at the edges. It doesn't make a difference. What difference does it make? We're going to be parents again. That's what you wanted, right?" I tried to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder but she pulled away, quick and hard.
"Forget it, Michael," she said contemptuously, burying her face in her hands. "You'll never understand." Her sobs sounded just like Jessica's.
"I'm a doctor. I do understand. Not only what your body is going through, but what's happening in your mind as well. At least, now I do." I gave her my best wounded look—brow furrowed, eyes narrowed—which she didn't bother looking at.
She shook her head, clearly frustrated. "Don't placate me, Michael. Until your body goes through the same changes I'm going through..." She took her mug and slammed it on the counter. Coffee spilled out. She walked away and sat at the kitchen table, sobbing.
"Christine..."
"I don't want to discuss this anymore."
Now it was my turn to get pissed, changes or no changes. She'd dropped the bat and put on a totally different uniform. Something totally psychotic. Like Rollerball. I needed to defend myself. "This discussion, as you call it, has been totally one-sided. It's my turn to take some swings now." It was only at this moment did I realize that the pregnancy tester was still in my hand. I pointed it at her, reminding myself at that instant to put on the kid gloves. Trod softly and carry a pregnancy stick. "We have a smart, well-behaved, beautiful child in Jessica. And now we have another on the way. Jesus Christ, Christine, we had a talk about this a few weeks ago, about how you were getting older and that now was the time to have a baby. Consider yourself blessed." This time I was the one doing the slamming, tester on counter.
"Fuck you, Michael!" she screamed, and I cowered back. My arm struck the counter and one of the mugs toppled off and shattered on the floor. Coffee spilled everywhere.
"Shit," I said bleakly, avoiding Christine's penetrating gaze. I kneeled down to gather the pieces, realizing that in our six years of marriage she'd never used such a tone of voice towards me. And I hadn't done anything wrong either. I think.
From upstairs, Jessica began to cry. Page soon followed with a series of frantic yips.
"Fucking wonderful," Christine said. "Wake the whole damn neighborhood, why don't you." She stood from the table and started storming away.
I grabbed her right arm. We locked eyes, mine tearing with ire, hers ablaze with pain: mental, physical, hormonal. A triple combo. "What's gotten into you?" I asked, despite the fact she showed no intention of listening. "And what's with the foul language, Chris? You gonna start talking like that in front of Jessica now? For sure she'll need a counselor. A real one who can do the job correctly, not someone like this doctor who's only good at Band-Aids and boogers."
She yanked her arm away. "Don't you touch me," she spat. There was a great deal of anger in her eyes, but also a glaze of confusion that stated she had no idea why she was behaving this way toward the man she presumably loved. The man whose baby she was carrying. "I'm going to take care of my daughter." Wouldn't you know it. Jessica was her daughter now.
Women's emotions. They astound me.
"Christine!"
"This conversation is over, Michael," she said, running upstairs and leaving me alone in the kitchen with porcelain chips and hot coffee circling my feet, the echoes of our voices still resonating in the air. Silence resumed upstairs, and Christine never came back down. I cleaned up the mess, all the while thinking about how arguments as alien as this one grow right out of thin air; how simple differences of opinion or emotional fluxes can create a tremendous and unavoidable banging of heads. It works that way between married couples and with entire nations of people. But in the end a resolution must be made, good, bad, or ugly. All things must come to pass. And I was confident, as I've been in the past, that the dust would eventually settle on the floors at 17 Harlan Road, lying quietly in wait until some unseen variance sent it all flying once again.
12
I watched television for an hour after cleaning up the mess. It was still early and sleep seemed as foreign to me as the woods had been the day I stepped in to explore them for the first time. In between harried thoughts of Christine's tirade (and revelation of pregnancy), Jessica's sudden fear of ghosts, and me being a father once again, I found myself getting up to peek out the kitchen window into the side woods, looking for the lights. I saw them, but these lights were greener, smaller, floating lazily alongside the house. Dangling from the rear-ends of insects.
Fireflies.
Perhaps it had been denial, me thinking that the golden lights had been fireflies all along. I'd only seen them twice, but I remembered them being bigger, perhaps the size of golf balls, drifting far back in the darkness of the woods for only a brief moment before blinking out.
Not fireflies.
Then what?
Isolates? No Michael, a raccoon or opossum probably, or some other brand of nocturnal dweller whose wide peering eyes fell into the yellow glow of the houselight next to the back door.
Despite the early hour I decided to try and go to bed. I figured it was possible that Christine might still be up, although it was highly doubtful that she'd be in any kind of forgiving mood just yet, which suited me just fine; my mind was still racing like mad, and not quite into harmonizing right now. I peeked into Jessica's room and found her bed empty, the sheets in a bunch at the footboard. I panicked for a brief moment but assured myself—prayed, actually—that my king bed would be filled to capacity. I paced down the hall and stuck my head into the bedroom. Indeed, Christine, Jessica, and Page were all sprawled out on the mattress, curled into sleeping positions. Someone was snoring lightly. Probably Page.
It was possible that Christine would wake up overcome with guilt—that come morning she would take me in her arms and plant apologetic kisses all over me. Then again, she might not. So I had no choice but to plan for the worst and hope for the best. We've had lesser arguments in the past that'd led to two or three days of resentment and pointless brooding. Some were my fault, others hers. This time no one carried any blame; our little world seemed to have been rocked by an invisible third party plunging in from out of nowhere. So who knew what lie ahead? I simply wanted to get it all over with, try to find a way to offset my sadness, my frustration, even if it meant making a first move.
I considered waking her up.
Something told me this wouldn't be a good idea.
So instead I undressed, showered, shaved, and took two ibuprofen to help chase away a looming headache. I'd had enough excitement to fill two hard days, and that set the cranial hammers into motion. By the time I crawled into (Jessica's) bed my head was pounding, assuring me that sleep wouldn't come anytime soon. My mind raced in nutty circles, playing out the last two days like a bad motion picture. Phillip Deighton. Isolates. Sacrifices. Old Lady Zellis. Jessica. Ghosts. Golden lights. Fireflies. I'm pregnant. Christine. Fuck you, Michael.
And with this came images of pure anxiety-born speculation, Rosy Deighton caught in the jaws of a dark monster, her hand torn free as spouts of blood paralleled her terror-filled screams with horrific sights and smells; she, trying to break free while sharp teeth rendered chunks of flesh from her body, a strong swiping claw cleaving half her face away in one monst
rous swoop. Then, Neil Farris: the man whose home and livelihood I've come to replace. I pictured him: writhing on the ground, his chewed ankle bleeding out on the pavement in buckets, waiting for help that would come all too late. I recalled my first conversation with Lou Scully. He'd said that a stray dog had made meat of Farris's ankle, that Ashborough's doctor had been taken to the Ellenville Medical Center but was declared DOA. Then the widow Farris, she confirmed this event. Exactly.
As if it had been rehearsed.
I shook away the thought. This was clearly my over-tired mind creating an ominous scenario, one befitting of my growing paranoia. Rosy. Neil. Isolates. Yet, outside of Page, I couldn't remember seeing a single dog—free or leashed—in this neighborhood since we moved in.
I shuddered. What difference did it make? Neil Farris was dead, and as a direct result I owned a fantastic practice brimming with patients. On the outside it would appear that I'd been at the right place at the right time; me, I couldn't decide as to whether I'd been blessed or cursed. One man's bane is another's benefit. After an hour of mind-spinning, I got up and headed back downstairs. The clock in the living room chimed eleven. I made a peanut-butter sandwich (the kitchen still carried the aroma of coffee; I figured it would stay this way until I set a mop with ammonia to the floor), grabbed a glass of milk and headed down through the hall into my office.
There was a small cork board in the reception area pinned with various messages and notes to myself. Nothing was of great importance, primarily the phone numbers of patients who'd left messages on the answering machine earlier in the day. I looked down at the machine; the message light was dark. Nice.
My office was as quiet as a morgue, and I took to my desk where I began to eat and rearrange some papers there. I'd rigged the lights in here so that the switch on the wall would trigger only the desk lamp. This created a nice concentrated glow that traveled no further than the confines of my work area, enabling me to peer out the floor-to-ceiling windows even at night. The porchlight alongside the back door was lit, splaying a dull yellow glow across the expanse of grass that reached all the way to the edge of the woods. For a moment I imagined myself as some 19th century muse working by candlelight on his most recent future-classic narrative. Like Charles Dickens maybe, or Edgar Allan Poe.
I stared out the window, into the darkness, waiting for the golden lights. Instead I saw only the concrete birdbath and the old shed that I still hadn't gone into yet. It'd never intrigued me.
Until now.
I went back inside, suddenly adrenalized. I changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, then grabbed a flashlight and hammer from the toolbox under the kitchen sink. Once equipped (I'd hoped a few blows from the hammer would prove sufficient in breaking off the rusty lock on the shed), I stepped outside via the side door in the patient waiting room. The fresh night air felt great, cool and crisp and comfortable on my lungs. Fireflies floated by in a slothful manner, moths fluttering briskly about the houselight in droves. Hordes of beetles clung to the screens like appliqués on a batik-style shirt. Quite a bugfest.
The woods were alive with the sounds of nature. Cicadas, crickets, owls and nightbirds, all tossing their calls into a wind that embraced the sea of leaves in a soothing, static-toned sway. The trees themselves were a monstrous moving shape against the cloudless sky, frontlit from the light on the back of the house. Above, a glowing half-moon illuminated the backyard, the stars pinpoint flames burning through the great dark canopy above. A rather massive contrast to the city, this great symbiosis with nature was something I still hadn't gotten used to yet.
A gust of wind rippled my shirt as I paced across the lawn towards the shed. I still hadn't switched the flashlight on; didn't need to. The moon and houselight provided enough illumination to guide the way. The grass beneath my feet was dry and needed to be cut; the blades ran under my pants and tickled my ankles as though simulating the spiny legs of some ground-bearing insect.
I reached the shed which marked the boundary of the woods. I stopped. Listened. The branches of the trees groaned restlessly in the growing wind. The ancient wood of the shed creaked and settled, making it sound alive. It scared the heck out of me, and I suddenly felt like a madman in search of some diabolical plot to commit. I looked back at the house. It had a spooky charm to it, standing there in the ghostly hue of the moon's light. During the day it feigned innocence, sitting in its colonial decorum with daisy patches and painted shutters that welcomed all approachers in smiling, gleeful colors. Now at night, its true character seemed to emerge: dark, dank, full of secrets bursting at the beams. Put a jack-o-lantern outside and it would be Halloween, just like that.
Scratch...scratch.
I jerked my sights back to the shed. I heard something. A noise, emerging from within the weather-beaten walls: like sharpened nails picking splinters away from an overly dry spot. Now I switched on the flashlight, aimed its honed beam into the quarter-inch space between the door and wall. The light disappeared beyond the slight gap, making it impossible to see inside.
Scratch...scratch.
There it was again. Although discreet, it gave me quite a startle, as though a muted alarm went off nearby. I stepped back, the flashlight and hammer now shaking in my hands. I wanted to yell out, to see if anyone was inside the shed—common sense dictated this to be highly doubtful because the door had been locked from the outside. Unless of course...unless he, she, or it had been forcibly locked inside against their will.
This was possible...
I shuddered at the thought and cursed my anxieties for allowing me to think in such a frail, childlike manner. My jumping thoughts were no more rational than Jessica's sudden fear of Page and his ghost-smelling nose. I told myself to get a grip, be strong, to handle the situation just like any pant-wearing man of the household might: with strength, vigor, and courage.
I switched tools, the flashlight now in my left hand, the hammer in my right. The woods appeared darker, suddenly dead despite the ongoing chorus of insects. The wind picked up again and I shuddered, not from the cool gust but from an instantaneous feeling of aloneness that rode down on me powerfully and aggressively.
I looked at the lock in the flashlight's beam. It dangled on the rusty hinge like a tiny piñata waiting to be pummeled. I raised the hammer not so high and whacked it. It jangled against the clasp, and the subsequent clang echoed loudly despite my weak effort. The woods answered with yet another pervasive draft.
Aiming the flashlight's beam at my handiwork, I could see that the lock was still in place but the clasp appeared looser, one rusty screw gone forever in the surrounding dirt bib beneath my feet. I thought about whacking it again but decided that the hammer's claw would do the job just as efficiently and much more quietly. I hooked the sharp edge of the claw behind the rusted fastener. I gave it a weak tug. It remained steadfast despite the missing nail.
Then...another sound. I held my breath, listening intently over the lashing precipitation of my heart. Again, it had come from within the walls of the shed. But not the faint scratching I heard earlier. This noise was a muted pounding of sorts, something boots might make while kicking up chunks of dry soil.
"Hello," I called, my voice sounding hopeless, barely more than a whisper. Jesus, did I really expect an answer? I inhaled and knocked gently against the door with the hammer. This time I did get an answer. More grinding, shuffling, and then a knock, as though something inside had come in accidental contact with one of the four walls.
My God...there was definitely something inside. Something alive.
"Hello in there?" I said, a bit louder this time but still only croaking faintly. "Can you hear me?"
No response, noise or otherwise. But there was an odor now, a pissy-smelling waft that reminded me of the NYC subway system during the month of August. I took another deep inhale, eyes tearing from the stench, and wedged the hammer's claw behind the clasp. I tugged once, twice. On the third pull the wood splintered and the screws popped free. The fourth pull
was made with less effort—as much needed to render the latch and lock from its weak foundation. It fell to the floor with a soft thud.
From inside, more scratching. Another thud. I stepped back a few feet, almost falling backwards. A feeling of giddiness hit me as though the environment had been subtly shifted into an askew position. I did my best to steady myself, holding the flashlight and hammer out at equidistant positions alongside my body. Once I regained my balance, I stared back at the shed.
What the hell is inside? Person? Animal? Isolate?
No, I told myself. I knew better than to consider something horrific, something impossible. Here I would find a bird or squirrel that had somehow wedged its way in through a crack at the base, had starved for days until this moment when it heard its potential salvation fiddling beyond the darkened walls of its prison.
Telling myself—yet again—that there was nothing to be alarmed about, I stepped forward and gripped the rusted door handle. I opened it. First a crack. Then all the way.
I shined the flashlight inside.
At first all I could see was a bulking shape in the gloom, no real details. But as I waved the light around, everything came into view, and even though I'd been partially correct in my assumption, my legs still went soft with fear and anxiety.
The smell hit me hard, as if composed of something solid—like ruthless hands around my neck. A horrible blurting sound arose, and for a moment all my muscles turned to jelly as my weakened sights confirmed my first assumption. Inside the walls of the shed lay no human, no Isolate, no squirrel nor bird. Here was an animal, but one I was in no way set to contend with.
Laying on its side against the far wall of the shed was a full-grown deer, a doe. It made that half-blurt, half honking sound again (rather loud now with the door open), and when the flashlight caught the animal's face, its wet bulging eyes rolled towards me like eggs in boiling water. There was a nasty open wound on its side, a wash of glistening crimson tiding out on the earth beneath its heaving bulk. It attempted to move, four long legs frantically kicking at the ground, one coming in solid contact with the shed wall.
Deep in the Darkness Page 8
