Forsaken - A Novel of Art, Evil, and Insanity

by Andrew van Wey

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s skin,” he said with a smile that extended across his face as wide as it could, and for a brief second his tongue was black. “Mostly human, from the preliminary results. But we did pick up traces of canine mixed in there too.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Not according to forensics. Look close enough and you can see a few little hairs. Right there.”

  Dan turned the bag over. On the unpainted side he saw a small hair, a mole, and the faint trace of ink beneath skin.

  “Get that fucking thing away from me!” Dan spat out and his chair squealed on the linoleum as he shot back. His mind ran over the possibilities. The blood from his thumb, it had vanished when he returned. Cleaned up, he had thought. Or had it been consumed? And if so, what else could have been consumed?

  “We’ve got you pal,” Barton said with a smile.

  “Now,” Cooper said in his slow drawl. “Why don’t you tell us what you did with the rest of her?”

  Dan took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes.

  “I want,” he started, pushing his eyelids until sparks grew in the darkness and each word felt as heavy as stone. “I want to speak to my lawyer.”

  Legal Advice

  A FIREFLY APPEARED, drifting down from the ceiling vent in a small figure eight. At first he mistook it for a trick of light, a spot left burnt into his vision by the headache and the florescent lighting. A gift from the piece of glass that still resonated white hot and mocked him for being so far from his pills. Yet the firefly moved in short, erratic spirals, too quick to be a migraine aura. He watched it flicker about the otherwise empty interview room, a dim yellow-green glow smacking against the wall and ceiling as a thought crossed his mind.

  He had never seen a firefly in California.

  “Daniel, my God,” a voice said behind him and he turned to find Mr. Cohen closing the door. He was dressed well, he always was, but his chestnut hair had become peppered with grey since he’d last seen him executing his father-in-law’s will after the funeral.

  “Thanks for coming,” Dan said as they shook hands.

  “Of course. How are you? Hanging in there?”

  “I don’t know. How’s Linda, how’re the kids?”

  “I spoke to her and she’s fine. She’s coming to pick you up, so don’t worry about them, okay?”

  “They aren’t holding me?”

  “No no, of course not,” he said, placing his briefcase atop the table, brass buckles clattering in the hollow room. “They haven’t charged you, and you haven’t confessed to anything. Frankly, you should’ve never consented to an interview without my presence. Daniel what the hell were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. This whole thing, it’s absurd. I haven’t even had time to process it.”

  “I understand, I truly do.”

  “So what do I do? Tell me.”

  “Well, you have to understand, they’re building a case. And they feel it’s pretty solid.”

  “A case? I didn’t... kill, or do anything--”

  “Daniel, please, just listen. I know you didn’t, of course not. But to them, that doesn’t matter. They think you did. And, frankly, from what I’ve been told, they’ve got some fairly solid evidence to support that conclusion, however misguided it might be.”

  “I don’t care, I know what I did.”

  Mr. Cohen took a deep breath. “They’re considering a plea deal.”

  “Whu... what?” Dan stammered.

  “I’d be remiss in my duty not to bring it up.”

  “A plea deal? What does that mean?”

  “It means it’s an option.”

  “An option? That’s not an option.”

  “It’s one they’re willing to consider and one they’re pushing hard. This city, they get something like this once a decade. The place becomes a circus, the whole town gets involved. I know the D.A., hell our kids go to school together, and I’m sure she doesn’t want this thing going off the rails.”

  “Off the rails huh?”

  Mr. Cohen nodded. “No one wants that.”

  “I get hauled down here, in front of my neighbors. My house, my fucking house, is a crime scene, okay? I can’t go back there. And my kids? Oh God, what do you think they’re saying about them, right now? Their friends? Classmates? What whispers will they hear at school tomorrow?”

  Mr. Cohen took a deep breath, nodding at each point until Dan had finished. “I understand, truly, but Daniel, listen to me, please. One, they have motive,” and he held up a finger as Dan opened his mouth.

  “Two, they have witnesses, from your work, from the hotel in Napa.”

  Another finger.

  “Emails, from your work computer, text messages. My God, they say they have forensic evidence pending results.”

  Two more fingers.

  “All they need is a hole in your alibi and a body, and this whole thing goes from a missing person to a capital crime. Death penalty Daniel. Do you understand?”

  Death penalty. Those two words hung in the air like a toxic fog, a tasteless joke. Dan felt as if the room had grown larger, unending and vast, and that he was no more significant than that very firefly he’d seen moments ago. Death penalty Daniel. Go south, get a new name.

  “Jesus,” was all he could say as he closed his eyes and rubbed them.

  “I would be negligent in my duties, professionally and personally, and I stress that latter part as favor to your father-in-law who was as close a friend as any. To not suggest you at least consider their proposal, and the magnitude of this situation, it would be unwise. You do understand me, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Dan said and pushed his thumbs against his eyes until he saw supernovas.

  Go south, get a new name, the glass laughed. Dan opened his eyes to see another firefly fluttering down from the ceiling.

  The world outside had been reduced to a dream. A thick fog hung in the air, lampposts rising from the parking lot like masts in a cold sea. Within that grey he saw his wife, waiting behind the wheel of their car like a ferryman ready to take him across some stygian river. The only other sounds were the doors of the police station creaking shut and the clomp of Mr. Cohen’s expensive shoes on the steps behind him.

  “Good night Daniel,” the lawyer said. Dan nodded, eyes drifting back to Linda, stepping out of the car. Behind her, the glow of Tommy’s Nintendo bounced off the car windows and he knew Jessica was somewhere inside as well and he wanted to climb into the warm car and drive far, far away. Somewhere new and open and warm where the fog and rot and bluejays and fireflies dared not follow.

  “And please think about what we discussed,” Mr. Cohen added, giving his temple a one-two tap and beeping his own car remote.

  Linda broke into a half jog towards Dan, emerging from the fog. Her eyes were wet and puffy and she looked older, more unkempt than he’d ever imagined possible. Her makeup, what remained on, was applied in liberal and pathetic splashes, as if she’d had minutes to prepare. Instead of hiding her fear, it amplified it.

  “Honey, are you all right?” she half gasped and wrapped her arms around him. It was the first bit of human warmth he’d felt since the morning, since he’d awoken to that angelic visage of his daughter staring down at him. He realized that he hadn’t hugged his wife in days. Not just touched her, there had been many of those moments, but hugged her close enough to feel her heart beating inside her chest.

  Tonight, it was racing.

  “I’m okay, it’s...” he started.

  “Oh my God, I don’t know what’s happening. They won’t let us into our house--”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Honey, you have to understand, whatever they say, this whole thing: it’s a big mistake. It’s all lies.”

  “What are they saying?” she asked, those big blue eyes he’d never seen so filled with fear. Those eyes. How many lies had he spoken while staring into them, only to be met by trust unconditional?

  He cou
ldn’t look at them any longer.

  Not far off the headlights of the lawyer’s car cut through the fog of the parking lot. Fireflies lit up the mist, and the distant buzz of cicadas in the air drew his mind far away, to wide open fields beneath an endless summer sky.

  “What are they saying?” she asked again.

  “Nothing,” he answered. “It’s all lies.”

  The Key

  THE MOTEL ROOM was modest and depressing, little more than two beds, a television, and a view through the third floor window of a billboard for an airline and the freeway beneath. It was a traveller’s motel, a place to rest a head before a meeting in the morning or a predawn flight. It was also the only vacancy in the area, a fact Linda learned while Dan was at the police station.

  The investigators had allowed her inside, but only under supervision and only to collect a few belongings. Those meager items, a suitcase at most, lay scattered about the motel like refugee artifacts. Jessica’s coloring books and homework, and Tommy’s Nintendo, sat atop a few sweatshirts and socks by the double beds. A few dolls lay at the foot, next to a folded pair of Dan’s shirt and pants. And that tie, that crimson gift from the missing and presumed deceased, sat atop his fold of clothes, mocking him.

  The kids hadn’t eaten since school and had whined the whole way to the motel, a drive that seemed distant and hazy when Dan tried to remember it. Linda had promised them room service only to discover that it had closed at nine and the only other options were the rows of fast food they’d passed on their drive.

  “Tommy, Jessica, let’s go, don’t make me ask again,” Linda said as she jingled the car keys.

  “Why can’t we stay?” whined Tommy.

  “Do you want dinner? Yes or no?” Linda barked.

  “Yes,” Tommy answered.

  “Then get in the car,” she snapped. The kids filed toward the door, Tommy shouting: “Shotgun!” as he pushed past Jessica.

  Linda waited until the kids were out of the room then turned to Dan. “We need to talk,” she said. “After dinner, I need to know everything. I need to understand what’s happening.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Your family needs to know the truth. You owe us that.”

  “I promise. We’ll talk about everything when you get back,” he said.

  “Are you going to be all right by yourself?” she asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” he said, flashing a salesman’s smile and for a moment she caught the scent of whiskey and old cigarettes. It wasn’t her husband smiling back, but her father.

  And then he was gone, and Dan gave her a kiss on the cheek that made her flinch.

  “Love you,” he said.

  “Love you too,” she smiled, then closed the door.

  In the silence that followed their departure, the days events crashed down upon him, one after the other. He found that, as he thought back, the past twenty-four hours were laced with a haze; moments recalled like snapshots from a drunken night that bore little connection to the person he was. His job, his house, his family, his whole life that he’d built, all reduced to the silence of that crummy motel room overlooking the freeway. How had it come to this?

  It started with her, he thought. That’s how. It started the moment he followed Karina out of his office. That mistake, that stupid indiscretion that now, truth or not, would be revealed like some sick punchline for his family to endure. There would be tears and an end to all laughter and nothing would be the same. It had all started with her, and now it ended with her absence.

  No, whispered the glass. It started with you.

  Yes, Dan thought. It did start with me. And since I started it, I have to finish it.

  Finish it, Mr. Glass said. Open the door.

  A new place with a new name, Dan thought. The family could come, but would they? Would they follow his lead? Would Linda forsake her mother, her few friends, her life, and her roses, all to follow him south towards the warm sun? Or would he have to go ahead to get his bearings, and then send for them once it was safe? Yes, that might be possible. Easier for one to disappear than four.

  A new name. A new life.

  And the old one would be purged by fire. A blaze of chemicals and solvents in which he saw the hallway consumed by flames, the family photos rippling as orange glimmered off the heat cracked glass. Yes, that would work. It had worked before, for others, and it could work for him. A new name, and a new life.

  He opened his eyes.

  The blank future of his imagination gave him an energy he hadn’t felt in years, a youthful excitement to see what lay at the end of the path he was driving towards. Of course, there would always be things in the rearview mirror, just like his brother had once been, but in time they too would either catch up or recede, a choice that was theirs and not his.

  And he thought of Linda and those three words she had said before closing the door.

  “Love you too.”

  And he believed her, believed that she loved him, or the construction that he was, the thing he masqueraded as. The father, the husband, the lover of art. She loved the lie he lived. In time, perhaps, she could love who he really was.

  A new name, and a new life. That’s what lay ahead of him.

  He would need his passport. Linda hadn’t packed that, which meant he would need to go back home. He would need to be quiet, perhaps even sneak through Marty’s yard and vault the fence, but it could be done. It would have to be. There was nothing here for him, nothing in this motel room, nothing in this city but ghosts and false accusations.

  He would have to leave a note. Something small and cryptic. If this plan was to work, Linda couldn’t know. Investigators would pour over his words, analyzing them. It would be a lie, yes, but it would be the final lie, and after that there would be only warm skies and blue waters.

  He scanned the hotel room for something to write on. And then he saw it. A wire bound artists sketchpad, glitter and glue stains and the wide careless strokes of crayon that only a child could make. It was Jessica’s sketch pad, one they had bought a month ago on their back to school shopping trip. He had seen it at home, sitting on the children's table in her room, seen her working in it with that vague smile and the crayons in her clumsy hands. He had even stolen glances at her pictures, wondering if she perhaps held talent. She didn’t, but the pictures made him feel warm, or at least, they had before this night.

  Now, in that empty hotel room, as he turned the pages, the drawings gave him no warmth.

  The pictures started out scattered and scrawled in crayon, figures with great loose circles for eyes and squares for bodies. Dan was little more than a pear-shaped form with four toothpicks for limbs and an unsmiling circle for a head. Linda was radiant, her blond hair rendered as a warm series of squiggles. Standard fare for a child of six. At least, the first half dozen were.

  But they changed as he turned the pages.

  Each picture grew dissimilar, darker, and yet more refined. The crayon swirls and lines of the bodies were no longer vague abstractions but actual shapes. Breasts were drawn on Linda, her form growing more realistic in whatever activity she was depicted--cutting brown flowers, holding Tommy’s hand, walking Ginger--and even the dog was drawn in stunning realism, shaded in places depicting the varied color of her hair and those beady, clueless eyes.

  Another picture depicted the family sitting by the fireplace and she had drawn wrinkles on the fabric of the clothes and shaded in the orange glow on the carpet from the gas flame. Each member was staring straight at the viewer, except Dan, who's face was distorted and crossed out, as if she’d had a moment of frustration and abandoned the picture. The more pages he turned, the stranger her pictures grew. Abstract images, like a sketchbook of an artist studying shapes and anatomy. One depicted a dead bluejay. Another, an animal’s jawbone beside a rusty railroad spike.

  They unsettled him like crime scene photos, and he knew no child of six could have the dexterity and coordination to draw such things. Unless, he t
hought. Unless what?

  What did Tamara say?

  Conduits, whispered the glass.

  Who?

  The sick, the faithful, the gifted.

  Who else?

  Children.

  Why?

  Because they believed.

  They left the door open to mystery and enigma. Their imagination was untainted, still feeling for the edges and shapes inside the shadows. Unfettered by rules and dogma. Exploring the infinite. Because they believed in anything, even Santa and the tooth fairy and Bugs Bunny in clouds. Because it was easier to pass through an open door than one that was locked long ago.

  The thing, the infection, as Tamara had called it, had found an open door already. It had found Old Mabel in the nether, had used the blind old woman to take shape, like a virus. It had guided her hands and then it had killed her. No, he thought. Not killed, consumed. Fed off until it saw no more use for her. A blood-gorged tick taking over its host until it could find another.

  And now it had found new hands to guide.

  Jessica, who used to run in the front yard and chase the dog into piles of leaves. Jessica, who had always been eager to ask him about his day at work and what he did, even when Linda and Tommy no longer asked or cared. Jessica, who for the last few weeks sat quiet in her room every time Dan passed, staring out the window, or talking to friends who weren’t there.

  But maybe they were there. Maybe they were growing stronger, fermenting, spreading. Tainting the garden and the soil and the things buried in it. Living in the very fabric of the house like rats brought in by some plague ship.

  Brought in, he thought, by me.

  That painting, he had brought it into the house no different than he had brought home the lies and the affair. That painting had sat in the study, below the children’s bedroom, below their very bed. That wretched thing that whispered in the night and blurred the lines between sanity and darkness, now moving through his daughter. His innocent little girl. Jessica, who believed in Santa not just out of a childish simplicity, but because she wanted to believe in the surreal and magical and wonderful. She had left the door open to the unknown like a child trusting a stranger, and through that door a darkness had seeped in.