Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set

by Ellery A Kane

  —Maggie

  The note on the counter stares at me, speaking in Maggie’s disapproving tone. Regrettably, I am hungry. Starving actually. I ignore the quinoa salad she left for me, packed in Tupperware with my name written on a sticky note, and head for the pantry where she keeps the good stuff. And I don’t call. Not yet anyway.

  “Don’t even think about it, Sammy.” He sniffs at the bowl of chips on the counter before he saunters away, tail flicking, as if he’s too evolved for junk food anyway. Maggie would be proud. I shovel in a handful, crunching shamelessly, as I open my laptop and type murder Oakland today in the search bar. 180,000,000 results. Really? But, it’s right there at the top, beckoning like a door ajar in a horror film. Body of unidentified female found in park. I remind myself to breathe.

  At approximately 7:15 a.m. this morning, officers responded to the report of a female body in a small park in the 1500 block of Jackson Street. Officer Gillian reported that the unidentified female victim appeared to have been the victim of foul play. No other information was immediately available.

  Foul play. The rest of the article—useless anyway—blurs until those words are all I see. Until I’m in the hanging tree again, watching, mute. Until I’m in the bus’s bathroom, splashing grimy water on my face, with no clue how I got there. Until I’m standing outside at the bus station, heat rising from the asphalt, brain buzzing with fear, only knowing one thing for certain. I couldn’t go back.

  Sammy bounds up the stairs, an imaginary foe in hot pursuit, and I jump. In the tense quiet, I expect Danny. He’s here, stalking toward me, wielding his knife. Having found me at last, he’ll give me what I deserve. But nothing happens. Sammy sits on the top step, calm but vigilant. My furry sentinel.

  From the kitchen window, I see the sky darkening. The sun from the morning vanished behind a thicket of clouds. The rain is coming again. And Maggie is too. She’ll be back soon, so I hurry. Another search. One I’ve done before, always in secret, and too many times to count. Hiding like a common criminal in the bathroom while Jared slept. Deleting my history, as if the name would mean anything to him. As if it was a lover I sought. But it was more corrupted than that, my betrayal. Withholding the most essential part of myself, the cracked foundation on which I was built.

  And now, even with Jared gone, the guilt nags in my stomach, but I can’t stop myself. That’s the power of the unknown. It hooks you, leads you around by your nose. Demands things from you, things you don’t want to give.

  I type the one name I can’t forget. Ironically. Cassandra “Cassie” Garrett. And I wait to see her returned to me. To see her face. On a missing poster. A Facebook page. A newspaper headline. An obituary. But it always ends the same. With nothing real. Leads that go nowhere. Like the one I’d followed years ago. Donna and Edward Garrett. Rang them up. Do you know a Cassie Garrett? I’d asked, certain the voice on the line would choke back a sob, gasp in recognition. But there was only this: Sorry. Never heard of her.

  So, the person I can’t forget doesn’t exist. Not according to the internet. And what I know—remember?—about Cassie wouldn’t fill half a page in that empty journal of mine. She’d told me she’d hitchhiked from Phoenix to Oakland after her mom went off her meds again. That she’d been looking for her real dad, but he’d already moved on. Texas maybe, according to somebody who thought he’d remembered him. “I’m savin’ up for a bus ticket to Houston,” she’d told me, counting out the few bills stuffed in her bra. I can still picture it, can still hear the soft swish of the money in her fingers.

  I stare at the computer screen like it’s a portal to the past. It’s supposed to tell me what I need to know. Unless…I imagined her. And imaginary friends can’t be raped and murdered. Sometimes, it’s a relief to think it. Today, though, it feels like a curse. Like in twenty-three years’ worth of silence, I obliterated her myself.

  I shut the laptop, suddenly wanting to be rid of it and the secrets it knows—surely, it knows—but won’t let me see. I tuck it inside its case and drag myself back up to Jared’s room. It’s barely afternoon, but the weight of the last twenty-four hours is too much to bear. And I’m bone tired. I don’t even care if Maggie finds me in here, curled up with her son’s T-shirt, one of a dozen still folded in the top dresser drawer. I have just as much right to him as she does.

  ****

  It’s Saturday. I remember that much. And I’m at Jared’s house. But he’s dead now. I remember that too. It’s my fault that he’s dead. My curse.

  I shouldn’t be in this room. His room. Maggie wouldn’t like it. She doesn’t like me. But she’s good at pretending.

  I get up fast—too fast—and the room starts to spin.

  When it stops, I’m somewhere else. Some place I don’t remember. A long, dark hallway that seems to go on forever. And doors. So many doors. The only light comes from beneath them.

  I try the first knob. It’s warm in the palm of my hand. Like someone’s just opened it. This is where I need to go. Now.

  But it’s locked.

  Don’t panic.

  I walk to the next door, a little uneasy. It feels right too. This could be the place. The right place. That’s what I think. Until I turn it.

  Locked.

  Don’t panic. But . . .

  There’s someone following me. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. It’s a feeling. A feeling I’ve had before. So I run.

  Locked. Locked. Locked. They’re all locked!

  “Evie! In here, Evie! Please!” It’s someone I know. It’s my mother. It’s Cassie. It’s Jared. Someone who needs me. Someone whose life depends on it. On me.

  The door won’t budge—I twist, I pull, I fight, I scream—no matter what I do. And whoever’s in there, whatever’s happening to them, it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.

  I crumple to the ground, sobbing. And time ticks by. The voice in the room goes quiet. The lights beneath the doors flicker off and on and off again.

  There’s a hand on my shoulder. It doesn’t mean me any harm. It belongs to a boy…a man…a boy I’ve seen before. It holds a key. Butch Calder has the key. I remember that much.

  ****

  When I open my eyes, Maggie stands over me, frowning the way she did just before we lost Jared—afraid, not mad like I expected.

  “Are you alright?”

  I nod. “I’m sorry. I had a really weird dream.”

  “You were breathing strangely,” she says. “Panicked. I could hear you from the hallway.”

  “What time is it?” It could be two in the afternoon or the dead of morning. That’s how I feel. Lost. Disoriented.

  “It’s just after five.” Her frown deepens. “Saturday,” she adds.

  “I know. I know it’s Saturday.” My dream-self nags at me, mocking me from the boneyard of my brain where she’s hiding out.

  I follow Maggie downstairs in a fog, listening to her chatter over the drone of the four o’clock news. About yoga. And why I didn’t call her. Or eat the quinoa salad she made especially for me.

  “Isn’t that near your office?” she asks, breaking the cadence of her prattle. She points to the television screen, mouth open. Sure enough, it’s the scene from the morning. Crime-scene tape, body bag, and all. “My goodness. What is the world coming to? Do you really think it’s safe for you—”

  “Wait. I want to hear this.”

  A reporter delivers the update from behind the safety of a news desk. Still, she makes it sound harrowing.

  The Oakland Police Department has not released the name of the female found deceased early this morning and has not yet specified a cause of death, though foul play is suspected. Sources close to the investigation tell us she was underage. Authorities have asked for the public’s help in finding a person of interest who may have been the last to see the young girl alive. Detectives would like to speak to Oakland native Trey Waters, but emphasi
zed he is not a suspect in a crime at this time. If you have any information…

  I make a small noise—part gulp, part whimper. It’s the sound of my past, exhumed. Undead and staggering behind me, step for step. I’d never forgotten Trey—I only wish I could—but I’d shoved him into a cobwebbed corner of my mind like a box hidden in the attic. A box you’d just as soon incinerate.

  “Anyone you know, dear?” Maggie asks, reaching for the remote. She doesn’t wait for an answer. She’s half-kidding in that insulting way she has. “But really, we should find you a new office. Rockridge, maybe? People need psychologists there too, you know.”

  I stare at the screen. They’ve put up a photo of Trey. It’s a mug shot. The only kind of picture the Trey I’d known ever took. When I see him—the stringy brown hair, now threaded with gray; the pockmarked skin; the eyes, soulless as a tin can—I think of myself. Who I was then. Who I am now. And it’s like no time has passed at all. Hate is like that. Love too, I suppose. And I can’t look away while the fire of hell burns through me.

  “Mind if I change the channel?” Maggie asks. And then he’s gone—she’s already flipping—and my heart cools like a dead star. “Dr. Phil is on.”

  Evie

  May 1, 1994

  Twelve days until my birthday

  Two days after I first laid eyes on Butch Calder, I became a woman. At least that’s what Cassie called it when I told her that night. Me, I just considered it further evidence of my freakdom. None of the other Port girls my age had their periods yet. And worse, I was motherless. Not that she would’ve been much help anyway. Arlene Allcott was always too loaded to do mom things like fix a button on my sweater or practice multiplication tables. Still, it would’ve been nice to have a real woman to talk to or at least to save me the total humiliation of uttering those four words to Wally, the residential counselor on duty. Just my luck, Cherice had the night off.

  “I got my period.”

  Wally was hunkered over the kitchen table, and I watched the thick folds of his neck turn red as a tomato skin. How was I supposed to know he’d just bitten off a hunk of fried chicken? He choked down a gulp of water, coughing and wiping the runoff from his chin.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, my mortification complete.

  “Uh…yeah. Think so.” Two more coughs. And another swig and swallow. “Do you have the…uh…equipment that you need?

  If I did, I wouldn’t be asking, moron. That was the look I gave him.

  “Alright. I think the girls keep some extra…” His voice was so low, I had to strain to hear him. “…pads in the hall closet. Do you need help finding them?” I’d rather poke out my eye with this greasy chicken bone. That was the look he gave me back.

  I shook my head, wishing I’d thought to check there first, and scurried into the bathroom with a flowery, pink package that resembled a tiny diaper. This was worse than I thought. When I emerged, hoping to make a break for my room (the one I shared with three other girls), Wally stood there. I waited for him to say something, do something. I’m not sure what I’d expected. An apology. A high five. A handshake. Just something. Some middle ground between a blank stare and what came out next. “So you know you can get pregnant now, right?”

  I nearly fell over. Cassie warned me guys were stupid. “And the older they get, the dumber they seem,” that’s what she’d said. But this took it to a level I never expected. “I’m twelve, Wally.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Wally.” Bobby Pierce leaned against a doorway, grinning. And behind him, his little crew, Sarah and Cindy and Melissa, already giggling. How much did they hear? “Nobody will ever have sex with Evie. Heck, I don’t think she could pay any boys to touch her.”

  Everything. They heard everything. “Get out of here, Bobby! You too, girls!” But I was the one who took off running. Straight out the front door. I didn’t even bother to sneak out the window like I usually did. I ran until I stopped crying—a whole two blocks—because what good did crying ever do me? I couldn’t blame Bobby for what he said. After all, I’d landed a solid elbow to his stomach last week.

  And I didn’t want to have sex anyway. Not now. Not ever. My mom thought I didn’t know why she painted her lips blood red. Why she wore patent heels she could barely walk in and snuck out with Trey every time she needed a fix. But I’d seen Pretty Woman. The trouble was my mom was no Julia Roberts. She’d wasted away to nothing. Skin as gray as an oyster. Twig legs scabbed with needle sticks. If she hadn’t died, I would’ve figured she had just disappeared. Like old bones that turned to dust. And there were no Richard Geres in Oakland. Only desperate, gross old men who paid my mom to touch them.

  So, take that, Bobby. It’s usually the boys doing the paying. Maybe I’d let one kiss me someday—maybe—but only if he looked like Butch Calder. And didn’t stink like sweaty socks the way Bobby did. Even then, it seemed like a gamble.

  Some nights when I snuck out, I’d shimmy down the drainpipe, jog to the mini mart, and buy a Slurpee—wild cherry—then get punch-drunk on its sugary sweetness. Other nights, I’d troll the aisles of Wal-Mart until closing time. It sounds silly, but I’d feel safe there. Happy even. With those bright, buzzing lights and the neat corner displays and the man with a beard like Santa Claus greeting all the customers.

  But tonight, like most nights, I went through the underpass—the cold tomb beneath the freeway—fast-walking to the other side. I kept my eyes straight ahead, pretending the moving lump in a grimy sleeping bag at the edge of the shadows was just a stray dog keeping warm. I’d already made up my mind where I was headed, and I figured Cassie would be there. But I wasn’t going for her. I’d been mulling it over since Trey slithered out of his hole and showed up at Port in a Storm, reminding me who he was. The things he was capable of. As if I’d forgotten.

  He would never find it. I knew that. He couldn’t even be sure I had it. But the way he’d asked—“Where is the goddamn money, Evelyn? And the ring?”—with his claws hooked in and his eyes drilling tunnels right through me, I couldn’t take any chances.

  ****

  Willow Court, at twilight, was a nightmare come to life. My mom and I had lived there once, before the whole place was condemned. Before it became sad and dark and abandoned with things you couldn’t see skittering in the shadows. And boards on the windows that looked like mouths waiting to swallow you whole. It wasn’t much better in the daytime.

  “This is where I hang out,” Cassie had announced the day I’d met her, almost two months ago when I’d first arrived at Port in a Storm. She’d been sitting on the edge of the Willow Court pool—the one with no water—dangling her feet and smoking a cigarette. “What’re you doing here, little girl?”

  I’d sized her up. Older than me, but not by much. A little taller. And curvy enough to wear a bra. Homeless, maybe, judging by the dirt on her hands and blue jeans. And her attitude had runaway written all over it. “None of your business,” I’d said, relieved I’d already hidden the money. Unless she’d seen me. Had she?

  Her laugh was a proclamation. “I figured you’d say that. That’s why I was watching you.”

  “Liar.”

  “Alright. If I’m a liar, then how do I know you stashed something in 136?” I’d rolled my eyes, relieved. Obviously, she’d thought I was an amateur. “Hope you hid it well, because…” She’d tapped her fingers to her thumb one by one. “…sticky fingers.”

  “How old are you?” I’d asked.

  “Thirteen, but I’ll be fourteen next month. My mom says I’m thirteen going on thirty.”

  “I can see why.”

  After stubbing out her cigarette on the broken concrete, she’d hopped down into the shallow end of the pool and pretended to swim to the other side and back, making a clumsy trail through the trash. “I’ll take that as a compliment. And you?”

  “Almost thirteen.” I’d sat down and watched her, captivated. I didn’t want
to leave.

  “Wow,” she’d said, looking up at me from below. “Your eyes are fierce.” Fiercely freakish. I’d waited for her to add something mean the way Bobby and his band of idiots would have. “Like Tyra Banks fierce.” She’d grabbed a trash bag from the heap and ripped it open. “Wanna help me look for stuff to sell?”

  I’d nodded and jumped in, making a soft landing on a stained sofa cushion. She’d had me at Tyra. Since then, we’d been thick as thieves. Or scavengers. That was more like it.

  But I didn’t see Cassie by the pool tonight, and it was getting late, so I headed straight for Apartment 136, sliding the graffitied plywood from the window and climbing inside the jaws of the beast. I had to stretch to step over the broken glass into the room someone once called home, the room where Cassie slept nights now. The only sign of life, the skeleton of a mouse I’d nicknamed Cheesy. And look how he’d ended up. In front of the hall closet with a toothpick cross I’d made, marking his gravesite.

  So I didn’t waste time there—136 was only a stop along the way, a trick to fool spying eyes. I slipped out the bathroom window into a small courtyard that was hidden from the street, the access gate grown up with weeds thick as a curtain.

  In the middle of the lawn, an old swing set, the chains rusted and swaying a little as the breeze picked up. Their soft clanging reminded me of an old Christmas movie my mother loved, Jacob Marley dragging the weight of his past behind him. Cherice had let me rent it a few weeks ago, even though it was practically summer. I’d watched it alone while the rest of the house went swimming. I’ll admit that I’d lain in bed that night, holding my breath, listening for the sound of my dead mother’s footsteps on the stairs and the rattle of her chains. Surely, they’d look like needles, filled with my mother’s tainted blood, sharp little points at their ends.

  I’m not a scaredy-cat. I skirted the swing, trying not to look at it, afraid the tiny seed of fear would start to grow. The door to 201 was propped open, the way I found it the first time. The way I left it the last time. Still, I hesitated. It was so dark in there, and what little daylight was left wouldn’t last much longer.