In Dark Places

by Darryl J Keck

  “Do you promise?”

  “That is the one thing I’m almost sure about,” I say, hoping he’ll stand up so we can make our journey toward Town Square. It would be uncivilized to leave him here to look after himself, but maybe I can use a tactic to get him to move.

  “I know this is the home you’ve known for years, but there is nothing left anymore,” I remind him. “When I was looking through your binoculars, I saw your mother standing in Town Square. She may still be in the park awaiting your arrival.”

  “She won’t be under a tombstone like my friends, will she?”

  I don’t want to make assurances related to his mother’s welfare, but I can’t afford him to become paralyzed and refuse to leave the property.

  “Benny, I saw her standing in Town Square before everything changed, so she is probably waiting in the same location. She has to be worried sick about you, so we need to get over there as quickly as possible. We will have to walk because my truck is no longer in the parking lot.” The parking lot is also gone, but there is no point confusing him further.

  “Do you swear on a stack of Bibles that she will be there?”

  Since I don’t have a stack of Bibles, I make a verbal agreement to get Benny to walk alongside me. I’m already worried about finding Mandi; I can’t to be worried about him too.

  “Are you ready to step across the threshold into the uncertainty ahead?” I ask, trying to make the journey sound more colorful.

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s get moving.”

  Sometimes, less is more!

  With Franklin Hills finally behind Benny, a glint of relief fills his eyes. I wonder if he might be fearful about what comes next in his life, or if his mind flickers with uncomplicated thoughts. With the barren neighborhood before us, not much good appears to be waiting in the vicinity.

  As we walk across the long lawn that used to be surrounded by a rock wall and menacing black gate, Benny keeps turning around as if he’s expecting Franklin Hills to reappear magically. Although he’s used to living behind locks and barricades, he should be thrilled the building disintegrated. I guess you must get used to your living conditions—even when they royally stink.

  We cautiously walk to the first empty lot across from Franklin Hills’ property line. Our strides couldn’t be more out of step. We march across the yard where Benny watched the hummingbirds; he’s not putting it together due to the abrupt scenery change. Upon reaching what is left of the lot, we are greeted by another small cluster of grave markers. I ignore them and continue walking. The muscles in my stomach drop because the dead bodies are not exclusive to Franklin Hills. I’m not sure what that means yet.

  From the hillside where this property appears to end, I step upon a portion of the west bluff that overlooks Wilkinson Creek. All is silent! I couldn’t mutter a word right now if my damn life depended on it. From this higher elevation, I get a comprehensive look at the vacant expanse where the entire town stood close to an hour ago. As far as the eye can see, nothing lies in the region but desiccated grass, barren trees, and literally thousands of wooden markers—apparently identifying where each resident of this town has been planted. It’s like Arlington Cemetery with a primitive substitution for tombstones. It feels as if some type of crippling force has stripped away mankind and anything man-made standing in its path.

  What happened here is unsettling on so many levels. This is beginning to feel like judgment day, and Benny and I are somehow getting an extended stay. The complete silence is starting to affect me. From time to time as a child, I wandered into the woods. The timber would always be still and quiet—absent of all mechanical sounds, much like this. The glaring difference is that Wilkinson Creek was flourishing on the drive to Franklin Hills. The town is now gone like a fart in a hurricane. The more I survey the horizon, the more nervous I become. After careful consideration, the walk to Town Square might be more of a challenge than I first expected.

  On my way to visit Benny, I passed over one of the four bridges that connected one side of the wide creek to the other. Like all the roads and everything else that formerly populated the horizon, the bridges no longer exist. How in the hell can we get safely from here to the east side of the creek? Benny may be unable to swim. If he began struggling in the current, I might not possess the muscle necessary to pull a 240-pound man to safety.

  “This is not Wilkinson Creek,” Benny declares, struggling to understand the gravity of the situation.

  “I know it looks different, but this is the land where Wilkinson Creek once stood,” I say, still mystified. “It simply disappeared.”

  “But it can’t be Wilkinson Creek. Where are all the houses and the Piggly Wiggly and all those tall buildings near the park? Where’s Town Square? I thought we were goin’ there.”

  “Town Square is right over there,” I point, noticing that all the land is infertile except the few acres around the wishing well. Even from over a mile and a half away, it is the only place left in town with green grass—similar to a greenhouse surrounded by a yellowed desert. “You can see it easily enough. It’s the only patch of land ahead with bright green grass. It’s about a mile away.”

  “My eyesight is not so good. I can’t see very far without my binoculars. They were taken away with my room. We should go back and look for them.”

  “Your binoculars will not be back where Franklin Hills used to be,” I say. “I lost my phone and keys, so let’s just forget about that for now. You’ll need to trust me that Town Square is straight ahead.”

  After another minute of complaining about the binoculars, he begins walking without questioning everything. Usually, I would prefer wandering through this uncertain terrain with a person with all of their faculties. At this moment, almost anyone might come apart worrying that the world was coming to an end. Benny, on the other hand, is a bit vacuous. It doesn’t fully register that what has happened here is an abnormal event on any day. He doesn’t grasp that anything built by humans has been eradicated. He only cares that his binoculars dematerialized—a significant source of irritation already. He isn’t concerned in the least that we have not stepped on a single blade of grass that hasn’t wilted.

  When facing what feels like the Day of Judgment, having any company is preferable to walking alone. One sizable drawback is being unable to bounce ideas off Benny. Talking about the erasure of Wilkinson Creek is like trying to expect an infant to grasp the concept of splitting infinitives. Benny keeps furrowing his brow as if the information goes in, skips around, and then rolls out like a gumball. It’s becoming quite a stressful day!

  As we walk across the brittle ground where I think the hospital used to operate and exist, we are swiftly approaching the creek—and I have not developed much of a plan to cross it. Without houses and roads to mark the property lines, judging distance is difficult.

  Although the landscape would be less terrifying without these markers scattered about, it’s comforting that the dead bodies were not piled all over the ground or swinging from the trees. I’ll endorse that being tidy was the most appropriate measure. Otherwise, the news would have people surmising that what transpired here was a form of terrorism or a reenactment of Jonestown minus the vat of grape-flavored cyanide. If what I’m seeing is the handiwork of Abellina why would she want responsibility for ruination of such magnitude? Maybe it’s the same reason most artists sign their paintings; they need someone to appreciate their creative genius.

  We’ve yet to pass Trudy’s grave marker, offering a glimmer of hope related to Mandi’s survival. Benny has glanced at more than 100 markers along the way. So far, nothing! Although I shouldn’t make light of anything with all this death staring us down, it would be a bit poetic if Trudy met her maker holding a mop and that damn container of Ajax!

  Why am I still so concerned about Mandi? Not to be shallow, but with everything she claimed now being confirmed, she is now just a girl that turned my day upside down. Shouldn’t my mission be to find anyone that is still br
eathing?

  Speaking of Mandi, why did she get singled out by Abellina? Somehow, I cannot connect the dots. Instead of being concerned about Mandi, I should be asking why Abellina has been talking to me since a week after Agnew’s bullet bore through my arm. My participation couldn’t just be as an escort for Benny. Without even knowing it, I might have been the first dislodged pebble that began this avalanche.

  “How are you doing Benny?” I ask, attempting to break my self-evaluation. Disconcerting thoughts like that may send me spiraling into a bottomless rabbit hole.

  “I just wanna find Mama,” he says. “I keep looking for her.”

  For the amount of “change” Benny has endured over the past forty-five minutes, he is keeping it together better than expected. I’m trying to appear calm and collected for his sake.

  Breaking the silence was a bad idea because he is now posing a question every minute or so. A simple answer usually satisfies him, so I don’t have to be long-winded to get the point across. At other times, no words reach him.

  Although it’s a ruse, I’m trying to keep my positive disposition from receding. Since he isn’t my intellectual equal, I realize he’s facing a ton of confusion. The only thing in my corner is that he was locked up for 25 years. He may have a very faded memory of how Wilkinson Creek looked except for the limited visibility from his third-floor window. Trees were occluding most of the town.

  “Why no houses or trailers?” he asks.

  “Like Franklin Hills, all of it disappeared. From all I can see, nothing in town is left except Town Square.”

  “It’s almost time to have dinner,” he mumbles. “Benny wants lasagna.”

  “As you can clearly see, there isn’t a single restaurant or even a kitchen where we could prepare a meal like that. Benny, do you understand that the town was stripped of all its vegetation. Odds are quite good that we couldn’t locate a walnut if our lives depended on it.”

  While Benny is worried about dinner, I’m wondering how far the damage to the environment extends. I wonder if Bluff Ridge even exists. I am pondering about the grim reality we may be facing while he battles with the simple need of filling his gut.

  He just looks at me with a blank stare. “When can we have dinner? I’m hungry.”

  “Let’s get to Town Square and find your mother.” Putting dinner on his mother’s shoulders is my only play because he clearly isn’t listening to anything I have to say. “Maybe she’ll have an answer about when you can eat.”

  Anyone that would have bothered to spend ten minutes in Benny’s company would have concluded that he was incapable of operating a handgun, let alone coordinating a killing spree in the course of one night. I watched him fiddling with the zipper of his fly for nearly three minutes after he stopped to pee. It was comical on one level but sad that he was ever considered as a suspect in such a brutal murder spree.

  The more I think about it, the local police arrested an innocent man. A jury of his peers from this community convicted him on flimsy and circumstantial evidence. I can no longer blame this internment on Mandi’s mistake. Someone dropped the ball big fucking time on this case. After seeing him tug violently on his zipper, he’s more of a danger to himself than any other person.

  I must also consider that Benny may have received better care in the institution than he may have received as part of the community. As a young adult, he was the target of unnecessary cruelty—but nothing so horrible that he had a motive for committing seven murders. When I joined the police force in Bluff Ridge, I merely lacked the grit to present my suspicions about an old case.

  While Benny is keeping to himself for a moment, I take time out to chew on the situation. Could a woman of such tiny proportions wield such unrelenting power without a sword or a scepter? Logic dictates that no one is physically capable of decimating a town without some technology at play. I remember reading that witches were known to possess some freakish abilities, but never enough power to wipe a town full of houses and buildings off the map.

  Trying to understand the property disappearing is hard enough, but when we arrive at the creek, it doesn’t contain a single drop of moisture. The dried-up creek bed is even without any patches of mud or dead fish resting at the bottom. Nothing indicates that the deep ravine had tons of water flowing through it an hour ago. For Benny’s sake, this will make it possible to get to the other side without any mishaps. Even without a drop of water standing in the way, Benny manages to slip on his ass twice. I swear the boy can trip over dust particles. When I helped him up, he complained about being thirsty. With the creek all dried up, we are not even able to slurp a sip of water containing pollutants. I just realized that this place is suddenly without any natural resources. Maybe sucking the land dry was the whole idea.

  I thought a town disappearing would be public enemy number one, but my being tangled up with Benny has also proven to be a challenge. I’ve never met anyone that can get so distracted by nothing. With no wildlife and insects, few sounds should draw away his attention. Somehow, the cumulus clouds sidetrack him every few minutes.

  Benny is not autistic; he’s slow like a river of sludge flowing downstream. The prospect of his mother waiting in Town Square hasn’t proved to be motivational. While passing hundreds of rudimentary crosses, he finds it necessary to pause to read the names. He doesn’t have the foggiest idea about the identity of any of these people. I’ve been awarded a first-row seat as to how it must be to have a toddler with OCD. As soon as I disengage from this dilemma, I’m making a sizable donation to whatever charity helps people like Benny. Believe me, they’re not doing enough!

  Chapter 32

  Derek

  It would be anyone’s guess to gauge how long it took Benny and me to walk a little over a mile to Town Square. No matter how many times I’d quicken the pace, he’d slow me down to a skidding halt. Without any pavement or water to contend with, the hike over here should have been a cakewalk. I feel guilty being nettled by Benny when I have my own list of personality flaws. They are just a different variety of irritants that don’t usually make a person consider taking their own life.

  Having said that, I’d like to think most people consider me to be a decent guy. On the other end of the spectrum, I don’t have much patience in certain situations. Long grocery store lines, pokey baristas, and being asked too many pointless questions often make me want to run for the razor blades. Unlike some people, what I feel about someone and what I’d say to that same person is vastly different. I believe this alone gives me some character.

  We reach the wishing well, and Patricia is nowhere to be found. After encountering so much death and sterile conditions on our way here, my hopes were high that she survived the ordeal. As far as the eye can see, Town Square is the only place where anything is growing. It should be easy to locate a human being amongst so much nothingness, but it’s tricky. If memory serves, when I looked through the binoculars, Patricia was dressed in drab clothing. In a gray and yellow environment, drab doesn’t exactly stand out.

  Patricia was conversing with Abellina when I looked through Benny’s binoculars. She had been in the park, so she may be nearby. Her wish must have had something to do with Benny being released or he would have been buried with everyone else. She obviously didn’t use good judgment upon making her wish. Desperation can make a person do funny things.

  “Where is she?” Benny asks. “She’s not nowhere.”

  If we weren’t in such a tense situation, I’d consider teaching some conversational English to Benny. If we don’t die of thirst, he’ll need to blend in a little better to keep some eager cop from slapping the cuffs on him.

  “I thought she would be here,” I say.

  “But you swore on a stack of Bibles that she’d be here.” Benny is beginning to unravel. Other than the two of us, the park appears to be vacated. I’m on the onset of an intense anxiety attack without having a trusty Lorazepam within reach.

  “Benny, I didn’t have a stack of Bibles to swear on
as there weren’t any Bibles to be found,” I explain. I’m not sure why I’m even trying. “As you can see, the three churches in town are no longer standing.” I’m not trying to hurt his feelings. He needs to comprehend that her present location is totally out of my control. Since we haven’t seen another human being, chances are pretty good that we may be the only survivors. I believe Patricia made a wish to spare Benny’s life. By that logic, she should be around somewhere. I’m suddenly optimistic. “It’s possible she may be walking around looking for you and will be back shortly. In all the confusion, we may have simply missed her.”

  “We would have seen her. We were the only people.”

  “Not necessarily,” I state. “Look at all the land between here and where we came from. There are many directions she may have traveled. Try not to worry too much just yet.”

  I scan the park slowly. My intuition says she should be here. On the other side of the gazebo, I finally catch a glimpse of Patricia. She is leaning against the back of a tree but is slightly obstructed, with her face buried in her palms. I don’t want Benny getting too excited that she’s only 100 feet or so away, so I decide to come at it another way.

  “Hey, Ben, what if I told you that I just figured out the whereabouts of your mother?”

  “I would be very happy,” he says. “I don’t see her.”

  “Your mother is leaning against a tree.” I point in her direction. He follows my finger until he sees her present location. “You know, it’s quite possible that she might be a little frightened by the aftermath of the loud bang. Do you recall how scared you were when I first found you? We wouldn’t want your mom to feel terrified in the same way. Walk over and let her know you’re here, but do it calmly. I’ll be right behind you in about a minute. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Benny can do that.”

  As Benny reacquaints himself with his mother, I cautiously wander over to have a close inspection of the current state of the wishing well. As I approach, the opening is corked with cement. I rap my knuckles against the rock-hard surface, feeling rough concrete below my hand. The concrete could not have dried this quickly. The trucks weren’t even here that long ago. Well, that’s a clever way to keep anyone from retrieving Willie’s gun.