Personal Effects: Dark Art

by J. C. Hutchins

“I prefer to think of ‘him’ as an ‘it,’” Drake said. He raised a finger. “It’s like talking about God. The Creator is beyond human reason, and therefore beyond gender. So is the Dark Man. Don’t anthropomorphize it, Mr. Taylor. Its teeth are obsidian razors. Its claws are ebony ice. The only human thing about it is its insatiable appetite.”

  He folded his hands and stared into space.

  I stayed quiet. This was a chess game. I was white, he was black—and black had dominated the board from the beginning, had deflected nearly every advance I’d made, had punished me for trying to play.

  It was time to castle.

  “I know who you are,” I said.

  The blind man kept smiling.

  “I know who you were,” I said.

  Drake’s eyelids fluttered.

  “I know about the CIA,” I said, “and Russia, and Operation Red Show and Alexandrov …”

  His face went bone-white. His eyes blinked madly now.

  “ … land I know about what happened to his family …”

  “Stop,” he whispered.

  “ … and I know you were discharged from the Agency …”

  “No.”

  “ … and that you came back, terrified …”

  “God damn you, stop.”

  “ … and I know you abandoned your son after Lucy and Jenny died, after Ms. Walch’s daughter was killed—”

  “STOP!” Drake screamed. A mist of spittle sprayed from his lips. His green eyes flicked back and forth, doing madman’s math. He was a coiled thing now, sliding lower and lower into his chair. Its wood growled beneath him.

  His breathing went high and ragged. I watched him closely. If he began to hyperventilate, I’d grab Chaz. We’d take care of him.

  “Leave me alone,” he panted. “Don’t. No. Go. You’re going to the black place. You’re tempting the Dark Man. Its wraatttth, oh no, Almighty God, no—”

  “The visions you saw, Richard, they’re a manifestation of your guilt-from a terrible misstep you made in Russia. The monster isn’t real, Richard. The monster is you, how you see yourself.”

  Drake cringed in his chair, feral. His eyes continued to flit around the room.

  “The people who died, they meant something to you, or your family,” I said. “They represented intimacy, happiness, a new beginning, healing. And just as the Dark Man doesn’t exist, neither does your ability to see things before they happen. It was your psyche—acting like a lance, a sword, a thing that sliced at you—that wouldn’t let you move past the horror. Can’t you see? Those people you’re accused of killing were milestones, Richard. Positive roadside markers that led away from what happened in Russia.

  “Tell me Richard, please. It’s the only way to break through this. What happened in Russia?”

  His eyes flickered. His voice had an edge now.

  “‘Eye for eye, pig-fuck American,’” he said. “‘Blood for blood.’ A vow. Curse. It came across the ocean and found us. Killed Lucy and Jenny. I took Danny and ran, and it followed me, getting into my eyes, showing me what it was going to do. Who it was going to do.”

  “No, Richard,” I said. “It’s not—”

  “And YOU!” he snarled. He clenched his fists. “You. You’d just better shut your fucking mouth, Mr. Taylor. It is real. It hunted, and it’s still here, hungry, because I’m still here. You’ve seen it; I smelled you see it. Why would you possibly want to free it from the cage?”

  No. Oh, no. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Confrontation, realization. And then self-forgiveness. So close …

  “There’s no Dark M—”

  “Yes! There! Is!”

  He was out of his chair, rushing toward me, hands flailing in space for only an instant—and then they clamped onto my shirt. He yanked me out of my chair. The thing shot backward, cracking against the wall like a thunderclap.

  “GET THE FUCK OUT!” he bellowed, shaking me. My head bounced forward-and-back, forward-and-back, like a boxer’s speed bag. “Get OUT of my LIFE!”

  I opened my mouth to scream, but he released me with a shove. I stumbled backward, back slamming into the door. I heard a cry from the other side, and then Chaz was inside, brushing past me, clomping toward a man nearly twice his height.

  I’d never see a man so tall go down so fast.

  The walk back to my office was circuitous, silent and despondent.

  I was shaken by Drake’s outburst—It’s obvious these Drake men must address their rage issues, my logical side had quipped—but I was more depressed that he still believed in his Dark Man delusion. A decade of self-hatred is a hard thing to shake, I knew, but I thought I’d been close. Really close.

  And that was what truly troubled me: Drake’s unyielding belief in the Dark Man. He hadn’t killed those people—the empirical evidence of his alibis was enough for me to trust that—and yet he welcomed the chopping block. He was a self-appointed whipping boy, ready for the flaying, gleeful for blindness and banishment. It didn’t make sense … but then again, as my inner Spock had said this morning, madness defies the microscope.

  I trudged the halls of The Brink. It was brass tacks time, as Rachael would say. “Come to Jesus” time, as Lucas would say.

  When Dr. Peterson assigned me this case, his instructions were clear: Deduce if the patient was mentally competent to stand trial. Nothing more. But I’d taken up a crusade to fix the blind man. Yes, looking back now, it had been my intent from the beginning. Even my clever mantra had been a road map for this case: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound … he’s blind, but help him see.

  How fair was that for my patient? For me?

  Drop it, Zachary, my father had said.

  Practically speaking, I should have—should’ve saluted and done the uncomplicated thing. But I couldn’t, and damn it, that was infuriating.

  What was the purpose here? What was powering this thickheaded quest?

  Was it ego? Was I like that haughty pissant Dr. Xavier? Someone anonymous was feeding the press inside information, all of which was designed to make my life—and my father’s—more and more miserable. I reckoned he was behind that. And me? Was I fueled by ambition, focused on some invisible, mythical scorecard that’s somehow supposed to define me and my reputation? Was this about job security?

  Was this about defying my father? A bohemian urge to clash with the control freak, The Man? Rage against him and the secrets he’d kept from Lucas and me?

  Did I want to impress my girl? Prove my worth to a woman who was out of my league, a woman who could pick damned-near any man—or hell, probably any woman, for that matter—but chooses to settle for me?

  I held back a bitter chuckle here. I had no mother. Wasn’t I just high-maintenance enough with my broken mind and nyctophobia and rabblerousing and checkered past to evoke a maternal instinct in my empowered geek goddess? Was I expecting her to fix me? Had she? My God, was I that fucked up?

  I turned corners and passed doorways and looked inside myself for the answer. I was brutal, and I was honest.

  Yes.

  There were slivers of truth to all of those things. But those slivers, as small and shiny as they were, were dwarfed by No.

  No.

  I wanted to save Richard Drake because he deserved to be saved. We all do. We all deserve a chance to forgive ourselves for a pitch-black past, and pick up the shattered pieces of ourselves to start anew. I’d lived that, after the accident, the soul-grinding wrong place, wrong time catastrophe that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been on the wild ride with my giddy-giddy pardner. But I’d clawed my way out. The paintbrushes, papers and pencils that my father mocked … that Xavier mocked … that Drake himself mocked … had saved me.

  Perhaps that was an impossible thing to want for Drake, but damn it, that’s what I wanted.

  But it isn’t up to you, my rational self said.

  This was true.

  Perhaps Drake was too far gone to be helped by me or anyone else. Perhaps he and his Dark Man were forever entwined
, conjoined, inseparable. And if that were true, then he was fundamentally broken. Psychologically unsound.

  Unfit for trial.

  I knew where Drake would go, were I to sign that form and pass his lawyer an insanity plea. His destination would probably be a place different from prison and cosmetically better than The Brink. But it would be more hellish than either.

  Drake’s essence—his brilliance—would be obliterated by a system that cared for neither breakthroughs nor progress. It cared only for status-quo pacification. He would rot in a room, unliving a ghost-life, gazing through a miasma of pharmacological cocktails and solitary confinement.

  That’s not treatment. It’s barely existence.

  It was no way for a man to live. And that’s why I couldn’t let it go.

  I walked the final hallway on Level 3, reflecting on my session with Drake, replaying his confession, his outburts, his absolute insistence on the Dark Man’s existence.

  Eye for an eye, he’d said.

  I stopped, five feet from my door. There was something odd about that bit, something itchy, like a scab. I gave it a scratch. My exhausted, sleep-deprived mind said no more.

  I shrugged, closed the gap, fished for my keys.

  An eye for an eye.

  19

  I’d packed my things and was about to lock up for the day when the office phone rang. I sighed, then smirked. Of all the battered third-hand equipment I’d been assigned at The Brink, this yellow-and-black beauty was my favorite. Row of sleepy-blinky extension lights, frayed cord, cracked receiver. It was the Charlie Brown of office phones.

  Its broken bell gave another surly trill. I picked up.

  “Zachary. A moment, please.” The voice was crisp and formal.

  “Of course, Dr. Peterson. What can I do for you?”

  “I have reviewed the incident reports you and Mr. Hoffacker filed today regarding your altercation with Martin Grace. Frankly, I’m surprised … and disappointed. Very disappointed.”

  I stiffened. “Disappointed?”

  “Yes. The patient’s assignment to Level 5 was merely a formality, in accordance with the court’s request. Grace’s files indicated that he was belligerent, not violent. If I had thought your safety was in jeopardy—”

  I exhaled, smiling. “Oh, I’m fine, Dr. Peterson. It was a brief outburst, nothing more than that. He was blowing off some steam.”

  Peterson clicked his tongue, impatient.

  “I become concerned when multiple murderers ‘blow off steam,’ Zachary,” he said. “Your colleague, Dr. Xavier, is of the opinion that the patient would benefit from medication and sedation. Xavier also volunteered to appropriate the assignment, should you feel threatened or overwhelmed.”

  I nearly growled into the receiver. Goddamned Xavier.

  “With all due respect, sir, Drake is accused of those crimes,” I said. “And while I appreciate Dr. Xavier’s concern for his safety, he hasn’t worked with the man. This was a fluke.”

  “Drake?”

  Fuck-fuck-fuck.

  “Grace. I said Grace.”

  “Well, I believe Xavier’s concern was for your safety,” Peterson said.

  I snorted. The guy was a snake—and as phony and hollow as the toy he resembled.

  “There’s nothing amusing about this, Zachary,” Peterson said. “Grace’s behavior today could be a harbinger. The stress of the impending trial may be influencing his behavior. If I decide that medication or restraints are the best solution, then that’s how it shall be. But your point is well taken: No one at Brinkvale has spent more time with Grace than you. Tell me. Will he become violent again?”

  I heard Grace’s voice, bellowing: “Get out of my life!”

  “It’s … unlikely,” I replied.

  “You don’t sound entirely convinced.”

  “That’s because I don’t honestly know,” I admitted. “Look, Dr. Peterson, I’m getting closer to determining Grace’s mental competency, and I’m using information from his past to do that. I need his mind clear, focused, lucid … not reacting to a mule-kick of Dr. Xavier’s dope.”

  “There must be something wrong with our connection, because I thought I just heard you criticizing the technique of a Brinkvale colleague,” the old man said.

  I winced. “I’m sorry. I’m asking you to trust my judgment. I’m making a leap of faith in my patient. I’d appreciate it if you made one in me.”

  The line was silent for a moment. Peterson then gave long hmmm.

  “I’ll defer to your expertise,” he said. “But understand that time is very short indeed for Grace. Come tomorrow, you will have three business days to make your conclusions.”

  “I know,” I said. “Oh, I know.”

  I called Rachael on the drive home, hoping she and Lucas would be up for supper at Stovie’s, an eclectic pub renowned for its beer, bacon cheeseburgers and buffalo wings. Rachael was game, especially for a brew—“I’m feeling like something hoppy, an IPA,” she’d said—but Lucas had bailed for the day. Apparently his “brilliant, exotic chica” had called with dinner plans. Lucas was loyal, but he was no fool.

  We met at the apartment and walked the three blocks south to Stovie’s, on Avenue B and East 8th. For decades, the space this bar now occupied had been an appliance store. According to Stovie’s lore—once told to us by its seen-it-all barkeep Mendel—the store closed in the 1980s. Its bankrupt owners left behind their merchandise. Rather than pitch the appliances, Lenny Reynolds—an East Village resident legendary for his industrial art—re—imagined them for use in his new bar. Refrigerator doors became tables. Oven doors became bench seats. Electric stove tops lived on, re-engineered as wall-mounted light fixtures. The chrome of vintage logos glittered from every nook.

  And magnets. Everywhere, thousands of refrigerator magnets on every conceivable surface, nearly all of them donated by Stovie’s patrons. There were enough colorful plastic alphabets here to spell out the Encyclopedia Britannica.

  Only in the East Village.

  The bar would soon overflow with NYU students craving Thursday morning hangovers. Right now, the scene was sedate. Rachael and I sipped our beers as I recounted my traumatic morning with Daniel Drake (I’d cleaned my scratches at The Brink; they looked worse than they actually were), and the session with his father. I even confessed to my hall-wander realization that a sliver of my Drake obsession was fueled by a desire to impress her.

  Rachael placed her pint of Klass’ Bitterest on the metal table and frowned.

  “Zach, you do impress me. It’s your default setting, babe. I’m smitten, and blind man or no, I’m staying smitten. Call me the luckiest girl in the world … or a five-state radius, at the very least.”

  “I second that,” came a lilting voice from behind her. Ida “Eye,” the fourth member of our little tribe. “Yep. Sampled the Zach goods back in high school. Yummy.”

  I winked. “Not yummy enough.”

  “Oh, no man’s yummy enough anymore,” the forensics lab technician said. “As a matter of fact, I’m waiting on Adrian right now.”

  “Now she’s yummy,” I said. Rachael’s Doc Martens clacked against my shin. “Ow! Save me, Eye! Have a seat.”

  She slid next to Rachael, grinning. Her brown fingers tapped my ever-present Moleskine sketch pad. It lay open, beside my beer.

  “Been thinking about this,” she said. “Can you do a sketch of Ade for me? I want to surprise her with a present. She’s got enough watercolors from me—but I thought I’d give her something special, from the best artist I know.”

  I blushed a little.

  “Well, Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting fat. I’d be honored.”

  She beamed.

  “Thanks. So how’s this case going, with the blind guy?” she asked. “I’m reading all about it in the papers. You’ll be a rock star before this is all over, Z.”

  “I don’t want to be a rock star.”

  “Well, you certainly rock my world,” Rachael said. She rock
ed her head like a head-banger, her hands raised in a glam-rock “devil’s horn” salute. My cheeks were warmer now. I laughed, fanning my face with my hand.

  “So what’s his deal about a ‘dark man?’” Eye asked. “Sounds racial.”

  “Oh god, it’s anything but,” I said. I picked up one of my pencils and doodled absently on the sketch pad. “It’s his … well, ‘inner demon’ is the best way to put it. It’s a long story—and honestly, I’m kinda at a loss at this point. We’ve dug up just about everything we can on the guy, and it still doesn’t seem to be enough.

  “I mean, we know about the Alexandrov-Russia debacle now; he refused to confront it, and is still trapped within the delusion,” I continued. “We’ve exhausted his personal effects from The Brink … and I don’t think there’s anything more we can glean from the lockbox. It’s like driving in the suburbs: roundabouts and dead ends everywhere.”

  “Somebody poke me when you start speaking English again,” Eye said.

  “Sorry. It’s complicated.” I glanced up from the page, to Rachael. “And then there’s our boozing, belching ‘Son of Drake.’ He lost it when I played ‘Night On Bald Mountain.’ I wish I knew what was up with that song. All he said was, ‘Heard it enough then, still hear it in my fucking sleep.’”

  “So Grace played the song a lot after he came back from Russia,” Rachael said.

  “Yeah, but why? Lucas knew more about the song than we did. We should call …”

  I reached for my cell phone, but Rachael shook her head. She pulled her Blackberry from her hip pocket.

  “We don’t need that bouncing Red Bull commercial,” she said. “Besides, you don’t want to interrupt his date with ‘exotic chica.’ Let your chica handle this.”

  Eye watched us, bemused.

  “Still waiting for that poke,” she said.

  Rachael’s thumbs tak-takked on the Blackberry’s keypad, accessing the internet. As she did this, my pencil etched vague, shaded shapes in the Moleskine pad. My hand was suddenly itchy, wanting to tell a story. I rode shotgun, watching it do its thing, finding the image as it moved.

  I drew two curved lines near the center of the page. They looked like the beginnings of wings—or fluid, jointless arms. I teased the lines with crosshatchings, wondering where the pencil would go next.