In Dark Places

by Darryl J Keck

  “I wonder if this historical account has been slightly inflated.”

  “The way this was documented, I can tell this isn’t folklore. The words were written by what I’d consider a sorrowful hand. The writer made a statement that the invention would never have been created had Spencer better managed his money and his foolish needs. He sounded to be addicted to something he couldn’t afford. With this many detailed pages, it does not read like some tale. Until I find information to disprove his words, I will believe it to be true. How it found its way into that reference book is anyone’s guess.”

  “After they killed this Bethalyn, I assume that was the last of the witches found in the area. I would think all other witches would have fled the area for their survival.”

  “This is where it gets complicated,” I say. “After Bethalyn’s body cooled, she was cut open to make sure her pregnancy was also terminated. With the loss of oxygen and the intense surge of electricity, they were certain the unborn baby would also be obliterated. To their dismay, the baby was very much alive.”

  “Where does it say that?”

  I pull out the third page and point to the passage.

  The body cooled for 87 minutes. At that moment, Artemis took a knife, cut into the body, and removed the child from the charred remains of Bethalyn. It was a unanimous decision to let the baby live.

  “They decided that they should wait until an eclipse to dispose of Bethalyn’s daughter in the same manner. They needed more darkness than a new moon could provide. They realized the child may have been more powerful than the mother—especially after surviving that much energy.”

  “I find it interesting that the body cooled for 87 minutes,” he says, somewhat suspiciously. He slides the folder back to me, narrowing his eyes. “Do you think the writer embellished any regarding the time the baby spent in the womb?”

  “That may have been an estimation.”

  “I don’t think so. 90 minutes would have been an estimation. This is very specific.”

  “After that much energy, 87 minutes may have been a safe amount of time to touch the body again,” I say, wondering why all the interest in the amount of time. “Anyway, they realized it would be nearly four years before an eclipse would darken the area. The experts had trouble predicting those back then. Since a total eclipse was uncertain, they decided to harness more lightning strikes. In the meantime, the existence of the baby was kept quiet from everyone. They knew if travelers heard that a powerful young witch was being held captive, Wilkinson Creek would quickly become a town to avoid. News didn’t travel fast back then, but it did travel.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “It said that the church locked her in the basement and just fed her enough to keep her alive. There isn’t much else here. I believe most of this story to be true even though I’ve never found any records to substantiate what is written in this document. For this young witch, her identity was covered up for the preservation of the town. Even then, money was the root of all evil.”

  “I’m not sure how any of this applies to what I am looking for, but it is definitely fascinating and quite disturbing.”

  After he says this, he winces a little with a faraway look. He almost has the look of a student trying to solve the answer for a trig problem.

  “What is it?”

  “It was nothing,” he states, unconvincingly. “I just had this vision in a room made of some type of tan stone where I was staring at an iron door. It was just a quick flash. Usually, I’m able to control creative visions. It felt like a memory more than my imagination. Anyway, can we get back to what you were saying?”

  I hesitate because I feel as if he wants to tell me more about this little vision. When he doesn’t elaborate, I say, “Well, I believe that the information from that folder might be pertinent because I only found these pages earlier this morning.”

  “This morning?” He is now giving me his full attention. “Where did you find this?”

  “Here is where it really gets strange,” I say, summarizing my little journey to the library and how I felt pushed to go immediately. I planned to keep this part to myself, but I want him to see that his interest in Wilkinson Creek and his arrival here is more than mere happenstance. “The fact that you showed up asking about unusual events in Wilkinson Creek seems a bit too coincidental to ignore. I’m not sure how any of this applies to your inquiry, but this information wasn’t only meant to find me, it may also have been meant to find you. Am I involved in something I should know about? It felt as if visiting the library had been whispered into my subconscious repeatedly in the night. That probably sounds a bit odd, I’m sure.”

  He hesitates, clearly buying some time to figure out how to present whatever brought him here. “I’m here following up on a claim by a woman that got in some trouble. Because it’s an open case, I can’t really reveal much more. Let’s just say it has been a strange day full of loose ends that I’m still trying to sort out. You may have some involvement in this, but I can’t tell you how much until I speak with this woman again.”

  “That’s comforting. I don’t want the rug pulled out from under me at any time.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” he says. “This may seem like an odd question, but do any real witches exist these days—ones with power?”

  “Plenty of women still claim to be witches,” I explain. “Sadly, these are what I consider to be dress-up witches—not the ones from the original bloodlines. These days, most authentic witches possessing power are aware they’d be under extreme scrutiny, so they tend to stay off the radar. The television show Heroes depicted exactly how it would be if powerful people suddenly exposed their abilities. As that show demonstrated, anyone with power would be gathered up and used as government weapons. I believe if a woman is out there with rare abilities, she is not making those powers known to just anyone.”

  “Do you believe anyone is capable of moving so fast that time would appear to be paused?”

  “I hesitate to ask this, but can you tell me where this is all coming from? You are holding something back. You aren’t being totally forthcoming.”

  After a lengthy pause, he says, “The young woman’s claim involves stepping beyond the boundaries of time and rational thinking. I can’t get into all the details.”

  “Without knowing the specifics, was there anything to gain from making a false claim? If her story is related to the area of time manipulation, I’d be interested in hearing the details. I’m able to debunk claims of that sort.”

  “She may have falsified some of her testimony, but I haven’t been able to figure out her angle if what she asserted wasn’t on the level. She lost her stammering, and her vocabulary is now so immense that I practically had to reach for the dictionary. This was from a girl that rarely weaved an adjective into a sentence.”

  “That is saying something if she could get some words past you,” I say, knowing that he’s a vocabulary nerd. “Is it possible she wasn’t the same girl?”

  “I’ve considered all of that, and I’m nearly positive she’s the same person. This may sound a bit loco, but she believes to have changed an event in the past because a powerful woman took her back in time. She awoke this morning to find that much of her world had changed. Her old memories have replaced the memories of the host like recording over a videocassette. What is most interesting is her claim that the woman was carrying an umbrella the entire time.”

  Whenever something a bit coincidental comes into play, I’m not so quick to dismiss what is being discussed—even if the subject calls sanity into question. Still, I can’t believe I’m about to ask this question. “Did the girl’s business in the past supposedly change her life?”

  “Apparently, it changed quite a few things,” he says. “Carmen, I know this may all sound unfounded, but I can usually punch holes through one’s false testimony. She had a solid answer for every question tossed her way. Typically, she would have cracked after two minutes. I’ve dealt with her f
or years, and her demeanor was so foreign compared to how she usually interacted with me.”

  “Is there anything about this girl that makes you suspicious?”

  “Everything about her makes me suspicious,” he admits. “I believed her attestation even though she has always been an underachiever with more than her share of bad luck. She had a lot to gain by the promise of a better tomorrow.”

  “That makes her a target right away,” I point out. “The defeated are the easiest to manipulate. Let’s say her testimony is all true, she must be quite singular if a powerful being would have transported her to a moment where she would be able to rewrite history.”

  “According to her testimony, she used a rare reflective penny to make the wish. After the coin hit the water, this other woman appeared, and supposedly granted her two wishes. After saying it out loud, the whole thing sounds like nothing more than a crazy hallucination. I may have bought into it because there has to be a slim chance that being granted a wish is possible. Aladdin had to be more than some crazy story that had been passed down and exaggerated over the generations. Naturally, the obvious conclusion is that she spun a wild tale to avoid explaining the details behind her arrest.”

  “That certainly adds quite the wrinkle to this scenario,” I say, sarcastically. To play along, I ask, “Was there any mention of the name or age of the woman that placed her back in time?”

  “She said her name was Abbey and apparently looked to be in her mid-thirties. She didn’t really describe her other than wearing outlandish clothing and having flawless looks.”

  “I can’t imagine a girl being pulled in by a witch with a hook nose. Hold the phone,” I say, hearing the punch line that he’s missing. “Did you say her name was Abbey . . . as in Abellina? Are you telling me some girl is passing off a story about meeting a woman named Abbey that guided her back in time?”

  “I feel a touch of cynicism laced in your response.”

  “Not towards you, Derek,” I say, hoping my negative reply will not have him running for the door. “It’s just that everyone has heard the story about the young witch that was locked away in a dark basement until she escaped using these extreme powers. It’s a Wilkinson Creek myth that short-tempered grandmothers would use as a warning to disobedient grandkids. ‘Start behaving, or you may wake confined in a dark dungeon similar to Abellina.’”

  “Would grandmothers actually say this? That is some cruel shit. I can’t believe I haven’t heard this story. I lived in Wilkinson Creek for most of my childhood, and no one ever told me a story like that.”

  “It was a warning to rude girls and rambunctious little boys. An embroidered story like this instills fear in children. Frankenstein could have been the result of the first botched plastic surgery, and the story simply grew more frightening with each generation. The same is true of the legend of Abellina. She supposedly had all of these powers at her fingertips, yet she stayed locked up for five years in a dungeon. At any age, why wouldn’t she have escaped if that deprived of light? The story has no foundation.”

  “We get used to our environment when we’re young,” he says.

  “Well, I’ve looked and looked and have never found any records related to anyone in this entire region named Abellina. My instincts have always told me it’s nothing more than a spooky story. With the type of artifacts hanging on my walls, don’t you think I would have found some evidence that she indeed existed?”

  “If she had been locked up for years, there might not have been a record of her existence.” Derek is having trouble accepting that the story of Abellina is nothing more than a passed-down fable. The woman that made this claim must have been quite sexy. Otherwise, I can’t see a man of such intellect getting pulled into a pile of bullshit like this.

  “Please don’t even get sucked into a fabricated story, Derek,” I say, trying hard not to alienate him for these quirky beliefs and opinions. “I do believe in all types of possibilities, but I highly doubt that Abellina was part of this woman’s travel plans. She seems to have played you like a fool by using an ancient story and passing it off as an actual happening. She sounds delusional.”

  “It’s a bit jarring to hear your reaction. She was quite convincing and even claimed to have gone back in time for 87 minutes. You have to admit that little detail is hard to ignore after what we just read.”

  And just like that, he lost my attention related to this story. A beautiful witch taking a common girl back in time sounds hokey by any standards. Wow! Can’t he consider that 87 minutes was likely a peculiarity?

  “Well, if I met this girl, I’d close down such a ludicrous story in about 30 seconds.”

  “Why couldn’t this Abbey be the baby in the Wilkinson Creek story? You claimed to have woke up this morning feeling like you were being pulled towards the library,” he says, enthusiastically. “This is a long shot, but it is theoretically possible that Abbey whispered the suggestion into your ear last night. What led me to visit you was a misfiled comic book that was in my envelope. I believe that comic may have ended up in the pouch by someone else’s hand.”

  I cannot believe my damn ears. I thought he was thinking about me organically, but it just turns out that he was led here due to a flub-up at a comic book store. Now I’m pissed and unwilling to help him further. I hate it when my romantic hopes get crushed.

  To dispel his theory, I say, “Derek, I felt a tug in the direction of the library, but it had nothing to do with some ancient witch or a spell. I’m always getting urges to run here or there. You are reading way into what I said. I realize you are able to imagine some crazy scenarios, but this is real life.”

  He’s losing it. I must keep in mind that he has been seeing a counselor due to extreme stress; his instincts may be way off the mark. This story is beginning to sound crazier, and I’m not getting tangled in this web. I’m willing to offer up an obvious hypothesis that he may not have considered.

  “Someone may have gone to a lot of trouble pretending to possess the power to grant wishes and move her through time,” I offer. “Could someone have been using her as a pawn in a much bigger scam?”

  “I haven’t ruled that out,” he says, redeeming his logic slightly. “I just haven’t heard about any crime that she could have been involved in.”

  “I think you are trying to get all of the pieces to fall together too quickly, Derek.” I hate being a doubter, but my gut says this girl is pulling a fast one. It’s possible she may have gathered information and is using those details to throw him off the scent of something bigger. I’ll come at it from a different angle. “From researching my book, it usually takes a while before all of the segments fully make sense. You should probably talk with this girl again and be more meticulous with the questions. Due to my empathic abilities, I’m like a human lie detector. If you would like me to talk with this woman, I will be able to tell whether or not she’s stretching the truth about her testimony. I’d be willing to help you with her, so you don’t put too much time into this situation.”

  “I’m planning to drive to speak with her this afternoon,” he admits. “I plan to convince her to stay in Bluff Ridge for a few days. Just to play it safe. I may take you up on that offer about talking with her. I’ll know more after I see if any of her answers have changed.” He picks up the photo with the missing woman in the reflection at the beach.

  “Do you care if I borrow this?”

  “I don’t like my research leaving my person, but,” I hesitate, “if you think it’s necessary, you may borrow it. Just don’t leave it with anyone else.”

  “I promise to bring it back by tomorrow.”

  “Derek, try not to get sucked into an imaginary claim,” I say, offering a final opinion. “After talking with her, if any of it sounds fishy, just bail and spare yourself from the unforeseen trouble it is bound to bring.”

  Derek’s interest in strange-chronicled events from Wilkinson Creek was harmless, but I hate seeing him all caught up in the girl’s batshit-crazy reve
rie. I’ve never questioned his instincts before, but I need to be cautious of a man buying into claims of time traveling. Although Derek is hot, I need to minimize my interest in him until he’s finished seeing a counselor and done chasing this girl’s exaggerated fantasy. A pretty face isn’t worth the turmoil they can potentially drag into your world. I’ve invited enough “lunacy” into my love life to open my own circus sideshow.

  Chapter 18

  Mandi

  On the edge of town, I pull my car into a neglected trailer park flanked by the vacant lot where the drive-in theater used to be full of teenagers on weekend nights. Video rentals took away the drive-in theater business just as Netflix took away the video stores that previously rented DVDs. I might have screwed up some things, but at least I’m not responsible for thousands of video stores closing their doors. My lack of progressive thinking has probably resulted in the rise of security systems and deadbolts meant to keep Agnew out of residences. That’s definitely nothing to be proud of either, but my error might be helping the economy.

  As I park before Patricia’s rose-colored trailer, a sinking feeling fills my stomach. Showing up in front of the neglected mobile home may open Pandora’s box. Delaney suggested staying away from visiting Patricia, yet I feel within my rights to reach out to the woman. After all, her son was locked up due to my idiotic bid.

  I rap my knuckles on her thin aluminum screen door, hoping she’ll be able to hear me out here. She may not even be home, but I’ll wait around since I made the four-mile jaunt to this seedy area on the outskirts of town.

  The inner door opens as the vexed Patricia Jackson appears behind a partially-torn screen door.

  “What do you want with me?” she asks, cynically. “Soliciting is not allowed here.”