Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

  I read your notebooks yesterday, when I was wondering if you’d left me, and honey, you’re missing the point. You’re writing down all these things about your Chicago, but not what you feel.

  I’ve left you the backpack, half the ampoules, and half the money (a whopping $161 and change). I don’t know where I’ll end up. I’m curious and scared, but excited too. There’s a part of me that really wants to stay, but you need to choose your own next door to open. So do I.

  Jason, I wish you nothing but happiness. Be safe. Amanda

  AMPOULES REMAINING: 7

  By myself, the full horror of the corridor sinks in.

  I have never felt so alone.

  —

  There’s no Daniela in this world.

  Chicago feels wrong without her.

  I hate everything about it.

  The color of the sky seems off.

  The familiar buildings mock me.

  Even the air tastes like a lie.

  Because it isn’t my city.

  It’s ours.

  AMPOULES REMAINING: 6

  I’m striking out.

  All night, I walk the streets alone.

  Dazed.

  Afraid.

  Letting my system purge the drug.

  I eat at an all-night diner and ride the train back to the South Side at dawn.

  On my way to the abandoned power plant, three teenagers see me.

  They’re on the other side of the road, but at this hour, the streets are empty.

  They call out to me.

  Taunts and slurs.

  I ignore them.

  Walk faster.

  But I know I’m in trouble when they start across the street, purposefully moving in my direction.

  For a moment, I consider running, but they’re young and no doubt faster. Besides, it occurs to me as my mouth runs dry and the fight-or-flight response kicks an initial dump of adrenaline into my system that I may need my strength.

  On the outskirts of a neighborhood, where the row houses end and a train yard begins, they catch up to me.

  There’s no one else out at this hour.

  No help in sight.

  They’re even younger than I first thought, and the smell of malt liquor wafts off them like malicious cologne. The ragged energy they carry in their eyes suggests they’ve been out all night, perhaps searching for this exact opportunity.

  The beating begins in earnest.

  They don’t even bother talking shit.

  I’m too tired, too broken to fight back.

  Before I even know what’s happening, I’m down on the pavement getting kicked in the stomach, the back, the face.

  I black out for a moment, and when I come to, I can feel their hands running up and down my body, searching—I assume—for a wallet that isn’t there.

  They finally rip my backpack away, and as I bleed on the pavement, take off laughing and running down the street.

  —

  I lie there for a long time, listening to the volume of traffic steadily increase.

  The day grows brighter.

  People walk past me on the sidewalk without stopping.

  Each breath drives a wedge of pain between my bruised ribs, and my left eye is swollen shut.

  After a while, I manage to sit up.

  Shit.

  The ampoules.

  Using a chain-link fence, I drag myself onto my feet.

  Please.

  I snake my hand up the inside of my shirt, my fingers grazing the piece of duct tape that’s affixed to my side.

  It hurts like hell to peel it slowly back, but everything hurts like hell.

  The ampoules are still there.

  Three crushed.

  Three intact.

  —

  I stumble back into the box and shut myself inside.

  My money is gone.

  My notebooks are gone.

  My syringes and needles.

  I have nothing but my broken body and three more chances to get this right.

  AMPOULES REMAINING: 2

  I spend the first half of the day begging on a South Side street corner for enough money to catch a train into the city.

  I spend the rest of it four blocks from my brownstone, sitting on the pavement behind a cardboard sign that reads:

  HOMELESS. DESPERATE. ANYTHING HELPS.

  The condition of my battered face must go a long way toward garnering sympathy, because I collect $28.15 by the time the sun goes down.

  I’m hungry, thirsty, and sore.

  I choose a diner that looks shitty enough to have me, and as I pay for my meal, the exhaustion hits.

  I have nowhere to go.

  No money for a motel room.

  Outside, the night has turned cold and rainy.

  I walk to my house and head around the block to the alley, thinking of a place where I might sleep undisturbed, undetected.

  There’s a space between my garage and the neighbor’s that’s hidden behind the trash can and recycling bin. I crawl between them, taking with me a flattened box, which I lean against the wall of my garage.

  Underneath it, I listen to the rain pattering on the cardboard above my head, hoping my makeshift shelter will last the night.

  From my vantage point, I can see over the high fence that encircles my backyard, through a window, into the second floor of my house.

  It’s the master bedroom.

  Jason walks past.

  It isn’t Jason2. I know for a fact this isn’t my world. The stores and restaurants down the block from my house are wrong. These Dessens own different cars than my family. And he’s heavier than I’ve ever been.

  Daniela appears for a moment in the window, reaches up, pulls the blinds closed.

  Good night, my love.

  The rain intensifies.

  The box sags.

  I begin to shiver.

  —

  My eighth day on the streets of Logan Square, Jason Dessen himself drops a $5 bill into my collection box.

  There’s no danger.

  I’m unrecognizable.

  Sunburned and bearded and reeking of abject poverty.

  The people in my neighborhood are generous. Every day, I make enough to eat a cheap meal each evening and pocket a few dollars.

  Every night, I sleep in the alley behind 44 Eleanor Street.

  It becomes a kind of game. When the lights in the master bedroom cut out, I close my eyes and imagine I’m him.

  With her.

  Some days, I feel my sanity slipping.

  Amanda once said that her old world had begun to feel like a ghost, and I think I know what she means. We associate reality with the tangible—everything we can experience with our senses. And though I keep telling myself there’s a box on the South Side of Chicago that can take me to a world where I have everything I want and need, I no longer believe that place exists. My reality—more and more every day—is this world. Where I have nothing. Where I’m a homeless, filthy creature whose existence evokes only compassion, pity, and disgust.

  Nearby, another homeless man is standing in the middle of the sidewalk, having a full-volume conversation with nobody.

  I think, Am I so different? Aren’t we both lost in worlds that, for reasons beyond our control, no longer align with our identity?

  The most frightening moments are those that seem to be arriving with increasing frequency. Moments where the idea of a magic box, even to me, sounds like the ravings of a crazy person.

  —

  One night, I pass a liquor store and realize I have enough money for a bottle of something.

  I drink an entire pint of J&B.

  Find myself standing in the master bedroom of 44 Eleanor Street, staring down at Jason and Daniela, asleep in their bed under a tangle of blankets.

  The bedside-table clock shows 3:38 a.m., and though the house is dead silent, I’m so drunk I can feel my pulse beating against my eardrum.

  I can’t piece together the thought process th
at brought me here.

  All I can think is that I had this.

  Once upon a time.

  This beautiful dream of a life.

  And in this moment, with the room spinning and tears streaking down my face, I actually don’t know if that life of mine was real or imagined.

  I take a step toward Jason’s side of the bed, my eyes beginning to adjust in the darkness.

  He sleeps peacefully.

  I want what’s his so badly I can taste it.

  I’d do anything to have his life. To step into his shoes.

  I imagine killing him. Choking the life out of him or shooting a bullet into his brain.

  I see myself trying to be him.

  Trying to accept this version of Daniela as my wife. This Charlie as my son.

  Would this house ever feel like mine?

  Could I sleep at night?

  Could I ever look Daniela in the eyes and not think about the fear in her real husband’s face two seconds before I took his life?

  No.

  No.

  Clarity comes crashing—painful, shameful, but in the exact moment when it’s so desperately needed.

  The guilt and all the tiny differences would transform my life here into hell. Into a reminder not just of what I’d done, but of what I still didn’t have.

  This would never feel like my world.

  I’m not capable of this.

  I don’t want this.

  I am not this man.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  As I stumble out of the bedroom and down the hall, I realize that to have even considered this was to give up on finding my Daniela.

  To say I’m letting her go.

  That she isn’t attainable.

  And maybe that’s true. Maybe I don’t have a prayer of ever finding my way back to her and Charlie and my perfect world. To that single grain of sand on an infinite beach.

  But I still have two ampoules left, and I won’t stop fighting until they’re gone.

  —

  I go to a thrift store and buy new clothes—jeans, flannel shirt, a black peacoat.

  Then toiletries at a drugstore, along with a notebook, pack of pens, and a flashlight.

  I check into a motel, throw my old clothes away, and take the longest shower of my life.

  The water running off my body is gray.

  Standing in front of the mirror, I look almost like myself again, though my cheekbones stand out with more prominence from malnutrition.

  —

  I sleep into the afternoon and then train down to the South Side.

  The power plant is quiet, sunlight slanting through the windows of the generator room.

  Sitting in the doorway of the box, I open the notebook.

  I’ve been thinking ever since I woke up about what Amanda said in her goodbye note, how I haven’t really written about what I feel.

  Here goes…

  I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve worked all morning at the lab, and things are going so well I almost shrug off the party. I’ve been doing that a lot lately—neglecting friends and social engagements to steal just a few more hours in the cleanroom.

  I first notice you in the far corner of the small backyard as I stand on the deck, sipping a Corona-and-lime, my thoughts still back at the lab. I think it’s the way you’re standing that catches my attention—boxed in by a tall, lanky guy in tight black jeans who I recognize from this circle of friends. He’s an artist or something. I don’t even know his name, only that my friend Kyle has said to me recently, Oh, that guy fucks everyone.

  I can’t explain it, even to this day, but as I watch him chatting up this dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in a cobalt-blue dress—you—a flash of jealousy consumes me. Inexplicably, insanely, I want to hit him. Something in your body language suggests discomfort. You aren’t smiling, your arms are crossed, and it occurs to me that you’re trapped in a bad conversation, and that for some reason, I care. You hold an empty wineglass, streaked with the dregs of a red. Part of me urges, Go talk to her, save her. The other half screams, You know nothing about this woman, not even her name. You are not that guy.

  I find myself moving toward you through the grass, carrying a new glass of wine, and when your eyes avert to mine, it feels like some piece of machinery has just seized in my chest. Like worlds colliding. As I draw near, you take the glass out of my hand as if you had previously sent me off to get it and smile with an easy familiarity, like we’ve known each other forever. You try to introduce me to Dillon, but the skinny-jeaned artist, now effectively cockblocked, makes his excuses and bails.

  Then it’s just the two of us standing in the shade of the hedgerow, and my heart is going like mad. I say, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it looked like you might need rescuing,” and you say, “Good instincts. He’s pretty, but insufferable.” I introduce myself. You tell me your name. Daniela. Daniela.

  I only remember pieces of what was said in our first moments together. Mainly how you laugh when I tell you I’m an atomic physicist, but not derisively. As if the revelation truly delights you. I remember how the wine had stained your lips. I’ve always known, on a purely intellectual level, that our separateness and isolation are an illusion. We’re all made of the same thing—the blown-out pieces of matter formed in the fires of dead stars. I’ve just never felt that knowledge in my bones until that moment, there, with you. And it’s because of you.

  Yes, maybe I just want to get laid, but I also wonder if this sense of entanglement might be evidence of something deeper. This line of thinking I wisely keep to myself. I remember the pleasant buzz from the beer and the warmth of the sun, and then, as it begins to drop, realizing how badly I want to leave this party with you but not having the balls to ask. And then you say, “I have a friend whose gallery opening is tonight. Want to come?”

  And I think: I will go anywhere with you.

  AMPOULES REMAINING: 1

  I walk the infinite corridor, the beam of my flashlight glancing off the walls.

  After a while, I stop in front of a door like all the rest.

  One in a trillion, trillion, trillion.

  My heart is racing, my palms sweating.

  There is nothing else I want.

  Just my Daniela.

  I want her in a way I can’t explain.

  That I don’t ever want to be able to explain, because the mystery of it is a perfect thing.

  I want the woman I saw at that backyard party all those years ago.

  The one I chose to make a life with, even though it meant giving up some other things I loved.

  I want her.

  Nothing more.

  I draw in a breath.

  I let it out.

  And I open the door.

  Snow from a recent storm has dusted the concrete and coated the generators beneath those glassless upper windows.

  Even now, flurries blow in off the lake, drifting down like cold confetti.

  I wander away from the box, trying to temper my hope.

  This could be an abandoned power plant in South Chicago in any number of worlds.

  As I move slowly down the row of generators, a glint on the floor catches my eye.

  I approach.

  Resting in a crack in the concrete six inches from the base of the generator: an empty ampoule with its neck snapped off. In all the abandoned power plants I’ve passed through during the last month, I’ve never seen this.

  Perhaps the one Jason2 injected himself with seconds before I lost consciousness, on the night he stole my life.

  —

  I hike out of the industrial ghost town.

  Hungry, thirsty, exhausted.

  The skyline looms to the north, and even though it’s decapitated by the low winter clouds, it’s unmistakably the one I know.

  —

  I board the northbound Red Line at Eighty-Seventh Street as dusk is falling.

  There are no seat belts, no holograms on this El.

  Just a slow, rickety ride
through South Chicago.

  Then the urban sprawl of downtown.

  I switch trains.

  The Blue Line carries me into the gentrified northern neighborhoods.

  Over the last month, I’ve been in Chicagos that looked similar, but there’s something different about this one. It isn’t just that empty ampoule. It’s something deeper that I can’t explain other than to say it feels like a place where I belong. It feels like mine.

  As we cruise past gridlocked rush-hour traffic on the expressway, the snow intensifies.

  I wonder—

  Is Daniela, my Daniela, alive and well under the snow-laden clouds?

  Is my Charlie breathing the air of this world?

  —

  I exit the train onto the El platform in Logan Square and thrust my hands deep into the pockets of my coat. Snow is sticking to the familiar streets of my neighborhood. To the sidewalks. To the cars parked along the curbs. The headlight beams from rush-hour traffic slash through the profusion of snowflakes.

  Up and down my block, the houses stand glowing and lovely in the storm.

  A fragile half inch has already collected on the steps to my porch, where a single set of footprints leads to the door.

  Through the front window of the brownstone, I see the lights on inside, and from where I stand on the sidewalk, this looks exactly like home.

  I keep expecting to discover that some minor detail is off—the wrong front door, the wrong street number, a piece of furniture on the stoop I don’t recognize.

  But the door is right.

  The street number is right.

  There’s even a tesseract chandelier hanging above the dinner table in the front room, and I’m close enough to see the large photograph on the mantel—Daniela, Charlie, and me at Inspiration Point in Yellowstone National Park.