The Inside Dark

by James Hankins

  “I’m not the dithpicable one here,” Jason said, throwing his arms around his son and shaking him playfully. “Help me out here, Sophie. Who’s the dithpicable one?”

  Before she could answer, Janice said, “My vote is for Jason.”

  He paused and looked over at her. Then he smiled. She didn’t smile back but he chose to believe it had been a joke, her way of joining in the fun. It probably wasn’t, but what the hell?

  “I think you’re both dithpicable,” Sophie chimed in with a Daffy Duck imitation that put Jason’s to shame.

  Hugging his son, with the woman he still loved so very much near him despite their troubles, the three of them laughing together like they hadn’t in years, Jason smiled and realized, with amazement, that this was all made possible by his almost dying at the hands of a serial killer.

  Then, uninvited and entirely unwelcome, a memory from that morning came to him. Though the hug continued, and Sophie and Max were still laughing, the beauty of the moment drained away for Jason as a thought started nibbling on his brain like a pesky rodent, a thought that had been circling him for most of the day.

  In his mind, he cursed Ian Cobb and his damn whistling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ian Cobb turned off the television on the wall opposite his father’s bed and looked down at the old man. His rheumy eyes were open—a purely random occurrence since the accident—and staring at the ceiling. A line of drool ran from the side of his mouth to the pillowcase beneath his head. Ian grabbed a tissue from a box on the nightstand, wiped away the spittle, then dropped the tissue into a nearby trash can.

  Returning to the chair by the head of the bed, he said, “What did you think, Dad? I was a little nervous and uncomfortable. Could you tell?”

  Silence but for the click, whir, hum of the ventilator in the corner of the room.

  “You know, you haven’t said a thing since all this fuss began.”

  He stepped over to the ventilator.

  “I’m feeling lonely right now, Dad. I could use a father-son chat.”

  The machine was equipped with an alarm that sounded if the person attached to it stopped breathing for some reason—for example, due to an equipment malfunction—for a preset length of time. For his father, the default setting was eight seconds. On a keypad, Ian navigated through the machine’s functions, then entered a code increasing the setting to a full minute.

  He sat back down and ran his fingers along the ridges of the blue tube that ran from his father’s tracheal tube to the ventilator. It was his air-intake tube. The white tube was for exhalation of air. It didn’t matter which Ian chose; either would produce the same result.

  “So? What did you think?”

  He grasped the blue tube in both hands and, with an easy, practiced twist, crimped it closed, stopping the flow of oxygen. A rattling sound escaped his father’s throat. After a few seconds, Ian released the pressure on the tube.

  “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate that.”

  He crimped the plastic tube again. Another stuttering wheeze issued from the old man before Ian let the air flow again.

  “Yes, she was very pretty.”

  Ian cut off his father’s air a third time. Wheeze, rattle . . . wheeze . . . rattle . . . wheeze . . . When the noise that slipped from the old man’s throat became a prolonged squeak, like a door with rusty hinges slowly closing, he allowed the air to flow again.

  “Like I said, I’m feeling lonely,” Ian said. “Do you ever get lonely, lying here by yourself most of the time? Or have you totally closed up shop in there? Turned out the lights, locked up, and left for good? I hope not. I hope you’re still in there, Dad, thinking . . . remembering . . . feeling everything.”

  He twisted the air tube closed again and listened for half a minute to the rasping sounds coming from his father. He wondered for the hundredth time, maybe the thousandth, if a few seconds either way mattered at all to Arthur Cobb.

  “Yeah, Dad, since you asked, I guess it is good to hear that you’re lonely. Because you deserve it. Neither one of us would be lonely if you’d listened to Mom that night.”

  Ian had heard the story from a few different people who were at the party that terrible night. His mother told his father that he’d had enough to drink. One more for the road, he had replied. Apparently, he’d said it three or four times.

  He noticed his father wheezing. He hadn’t even realized he was twisting the air tube again. He eased up on it.

  “Oh, please. That same old story again? How can you even defend yourself? You didn’t listen and now Mom is gone because of you. And so is Stevie. But you . . . you walked away from the accident. Okay, you didn’t walk away, I guess, but you’re still alive and they aren’t. I miss them. Do you?”

  Ian twisted the tube hard and listened to his father’s ragged wheezing for a while before letting him breathe again.

  “So how about it, Dad? Is this the night you’re finally going to say you’re sorry for taking Mom and Stevie from me? Or how about Johnny? Isn’t it time you apologize for everything that happened to him . . . for allowing all of that to happen for all those years?”

  He twisted the tube until Arthur Cobb’s weak, sucking breaths mingled with the ventilator’s shrill alarm. Sixty seconds went by fast. So did the next thirty. Well, they went by fast for Ian anyway.

  “Really?” he finally said. “That’s all you have to say? Pathetic.”

  He let the tube fall from his fingers and the air began to flow again. He walked over to the ventilator and changed the warning setting back to eight seconds.

  “I really do hope you’re still in there, Dad. Feeling things. Remembering everything.”

  And just in case he was, for years Ian had made sure his father had the best care money could buy. It was where most of his savings went, and where a huge chunk of his earnings continued to go, but it was worth it. Arthur Cobb wasn’t going anywhere for a long time.

  Ian dragged his chair back to its place against the wall and opened the door.

  “I’m glad you liked seeing me on TV. Good night, Dad.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Jason sat at the desk in the corner of his living room, his fingers dancing across his computer keyboard. After leaving Sophie’s earlier, he hadn’t been able to get Ian Cobb—and therefore, the entire Crackerjack experience—out of his mind. Rather than sit in his apartment and obsess about it, he decided to put the intrusive thoughts to productive use and work on the book about his escape from captivity. To his mild surprise, the outline began to fall nicely into place. And, given that the media had already done a lot of the heavy lifting, unearthing mountains of information on Barton and his victims, including numerous photographs―all of which was available on the Internet—he didn’t think he’d have a difficult time filling the pages when he began to write in earnest. He would have to interview Ian Cobb one day soon, of course, and though the guy’s creepy vibe made Jason less than thrilled about having to spend any more time with him, he was more than willing to do so to get this book written.

  In addition to the chapters about all of the people involved, of course, he’d have to write about his abduction itself—which wouldn’t take long because, in his mind, it amounted to him walking to his car in a dark corner of the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour convenience store, then . . . nothing until he woke up.

  And that was where he was running into problems. Days had passed in that stable where he did nothing but drift in and out of consciousness. Crippling hunger, acute thirst, drugs in his system—all had conspired to render his time in captivity hazy. How excited would the publishers throwing around big numbers be if they knew how little he could actually recall of the entire ordeal? He certainly hadn’t told Howard. He remembered a few of the details of the fight with Barton, and he could always talk to Cobb and rewatch their interview with Elaine Connors to fill in some blanks, but there were still huge stretches of time—days even—when nothing much happened. Hardly riveting stuff. Jason had no
choice: he was going to have to fib a little—though embellish sounded better in his head. He would rely on his skills as a novelist to sprinkle some fiction into this nonfiction book—maybe some actions he could claim to have taken to try to escape; possibly an episode he could concoct in which Crackerjack, unseen, taunted him, whistling to him, telling him exactly how he planned to torture him, which bones he would break first. The more Jason thought about it, the more enthusiastic he became about writing this book. If he was careful to keep things plausible, he could make his entire ordeal seem even more harrowing than it had been, which would make for far better reading . . . and greater numbers of books sold.

  He had just started making notes about a fictitious event in which the masked Crackerjack stood in the shadows and gave Jason choices as to what design he would like to have painted on his face before he died when his door buzzer sounded. He glanced at a clock on the wall: 10:40 p.m. He hit the “Save” button on his computer, then walked to the intercom by the door.

  “Yeah?”

  A tinny voice came from the speaker. “Mr. Swike, it’s Detective Briggs. Got a minute? I know it’s late but I saw your light on up there.”

  It was late, and Jason hated to stop the flow when work was going well, but what could he do? He reminded himself that he’d eventually want to interview Briggs, after he came up with a list of questions, and he made a mental note to ask the detective about it before he left.

  “I’ll buzz you up.”

  In a few seconds, Briggs was at the door, which opened right into Jason’s living room.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Swike.”

  “No problem. I was working anyway. And didn’t I ask you to call me Jason?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, be my guest.” He shut the door behind Briggs and led him toward the only seating in the room other than his desk chair—a Salvation Army sofa and an armchair he’d found at the curb down the street and rescued mere minutes before the arrival of the garbage truck. He figured Briggs would prefer the armchair so he sat on the sofa. He was wrong, though; Briggs remained standing as his eyes casually roamed the room.

  “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “I have a few more questions.”

  “I figured. Fire away.”

  “How’s the book coming?”

  “Which book is that?”

  “The one about Crackerjack.”

  “You heard about that?”

  “I saw your interview with Elaine Connors tonight.”

  Jason felt a prickle of sweat at his hairline.

  “Is she that pretty in person?”

  “I guess. Maybe a little older than she looks on TV, but she’s definitely attractive.”

  Briggs took out his notebook. “Yeah, I watched the interview and just wanted to check a few things with you.”

  The bead of sweat trickled down Jason’s forehead. He wiped it away while the detective looked down at his notes.

  “When we spoke in the hospital,” he began, “you said you were drugged—or at least felt drugged—a lot of the time you were there. Right?”

  “I guess I said that.”

  “You were a bit sketchy on the details at the time.”

  “At the time, yeah, I suppose I was.”

  “But in the TV interview, you provided some details you hadn’t given me.”

  “I didn’t remember them at the time. I’d only just woken up.”

  “But your memory has gotten better since?”

  Jason had to be careful here. Lying to the police was serious business. But so was selling books, at least if you wanted anyone to buy them. He was already on record, of sorts, on national television. And he planned to say even more in his book. If he told Briggs something different now, it could cost him in numerous ways down the road. Besides, he reminded himself again, only Wallace Barton could dispute his version of events, and without a séance, Barton wouldn’t be talking.

  “I’ve remembered a few things I’d forgotten.”

  “I guess you lost my card.”

  “I didn’t know it mattered. Barton is dead, right?”

  “Can’t argue with that last part anyway.”

  “I guess I should have called, Detective. Sorry.”

  “Well, we’re talking now anyway. So,” he said, looking at his notes again, “you originally told me that Cobb tackled Barton on top of you, and Barton was on his back, and Cobb was on top.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Cobb was screaming for you to hit him with the hammer.”

  “Right. Which I did.”

  “Okay. But on TV you told a different story. That Barton pushed Cobb off and was about to hit him with the hammer, but you tackled him, pulling him back on top of you, and he dropped the hammer.”

  Actually Cobb had said that, and Jason hadn’t disagreed. “Right.”

  “You remembered that since we spoke at the hospital?”

  Jason nodded. Briggs nodded, too, and wrote something in his little book.

  “Then Barton somehow turned around and was on top of you, looking down at you and choking you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were both fighting for the hammer?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be honest, Detective, I’m a little confused about why this all matters now, with Barton dead.”

  “Like I said at the hospital . . . big case here. Dotting i’s and crossing t’s.” Another look at his notes. “So you won the battle for the hammer and you hit him.”

  “Right.”

  “How many times?”

  What had he said yesterday? He wasn’t certain.

  “It was all happening really fast. I’m not sure. Two or three times, I think.”

  “Which hand were you holding the hammer in? I know you told me at the hospital but I don’t have it in my notes.”

  Jason doubted that was the case. But that part of his ordeal he remembered well. He could still feel the hammer’s smooth wooden handle in his palm.

  “My right hand.”

  “And where’d you hit him?”

  “In the head.”

  “I mean, where in the head?”

  “The side. Around his temple, I guess.”

  “Which side, though? Left or right?”

  Jason paused, sensing that the question was a rattlesnake coiled in the grass. The thing was, there was nothing he could do to avoid the strike. It wasn’t like his answer could change the location of Barton’s wounds.

  “The right side of his head.”

  Briggs nodded and made a show of flipping through the pages of his little notebook, as if consulting things he’d written, though Jason had no doubt the man had memorized every fact of the case.

  “Here’s where I’m confused, Jason. If Barton is on top of you, facing you as he choked you, and you grabbed the hammer with your right hand and hit him, wouldn’t the wounds have been on the left side of his head, not the right?”

  Another bead of sweat rolled down Jason’s forehead. He willed himself to keep from drawing attention to it by wiping it away, but he doubted that Briggs had failed to notice it.

  “I’m not really sure, Detective. I must have grabbed the hammer in my left hand. Like I said, things are a bit hazy.”

  “I thought your memory was improving.”

  “Yeah, but not everything’s clear yet. It may never be.”

  Briggs nodded, jotting down another note. Then he looked up and his eyes began to explore the room again, casually taking it in. When they fell on the computer screen, they stopped. He took a few steps closer and peered at the words there.

  “This your book?”

  Jason dabbed his forehead with his sleeve while Briggs was focused on the monitor.

  “Just some random things. I haven’t actually started writing yet.”

  The detective said nothing as his eyes scanned the words on the screen.

  “I’m not really comfortable with people reading my works in progress, Detect
ive. It’s so unpolished at this point. A writer’s ego, I guess.”

  “I don’t remember you mentioning this,” Briggs said as he read. “About Crackerjack asking you what design you wanted on your face when you died. Is this one of the things you only recently recalled?”

  He was getting in deeper and deeper. But again, did it even matter with Barton dead? “Yeah.”

  “That must have been terrifying.”

  “It was.”

  “Anything else like this? Something you haven’t yet told me?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

  “I bet as you write, more and more things are coming to you, right?”

  Jason got the feeling that Briggs knew he was fabricating a little to ratchet up the drama for the book. He doubted the detective would care much about that. But the discrepancy concerning the location of the head wound might be a different matter. But why should it be? Wasn’t this case closed?

  “Yeah, now and then something new comes to me.”

  “New?”

  “Well, not new . . . something I remember.”

  “I see. Well, I’d like you to let me know if you remember anything else, okay?” He slipped a business card from his pocket and placed it on the desk next to the computer. “In case you lost my card.”

  “I’ll show you out.”

  “The door’s right there, Jason. I think I can find my way. I’m a detective, after all.”

  He smiled and Jason thought of rattlesnakes again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A few days passed, and Jason was eventually able to put Detective Briggs’s visit out of his mind. He also began to forget that Ian Cobb’s whistling sounded like Crackerjack’s whistling. The day after hearing it, he’d searched online and listened to samples of people whistling, which weren’t hard to find. Nothing is hard to find on the Internet. He listened to dozens of whistlers—focusing on the men—and there was indeed a wide variety of styles and tones. Some men sounded more like Crackerjack than others, and though probably none sounded as much like him as Cobb had, there were those who approached a similar technique, so maybe Cobb’s whistling sounding a bit like a serial killer’s whistling wasn’t a big deal.