3 Angel of Darkness

by Chaz McGee

  Lily knows what she is.

  Lily was visited every week by bewildered parents unable to comprehend how it was that life handed them a child mired in such an early madness. They, like the staff, knew that Lily did not belong among adults, but the other young patients at Holloway were not safe when Lily was around, not with that wide-eyed cat in her head whispering its dark commands. So it was that the patients closest to her age stayed in a special juvenile ward in the short-term unit, but Lily was doomed to live among the lost.

  I did not judge Lily or the others. I loved each of these lost beings in their own way and saw a terrible beauty in their incoherence. The world had forgotten them, but I would not do the same. I walked beside them, wishing them a peace unlikely to come.

  And so it was that, on a bleak day in March whipped by high winds and cold drizzle, my two lives collided, my living and my dead, and my son Michael, age fourteen, appeared among the outcasts of Holloway, his mind as troubled as theirs.

  THREE

  At first, I thought time had inverted. That I had been transported back to my own miserable teenage years and was staring at my own miserable self. That’s how much Michael had come to look like me. Gone was the chubby boy with rounded features who sat silently at my funeral, his arm draped around his mother’s shoulders as a sign of his determination to be a man. He now stood nearly as tall as I had been, though he was far stockier.

  He had my dark hair and eyes, and certainly he had my nose, but his mouth was one hundred percent Connie. And, like his mother’s, it did not look as if it had smiled in a long time. I discovered him in the short-term unit, pacing Holloway’s juvenile ward, measuring the distance between the common room and his sleeping quarters.

  He had his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his jeans and his hair hung in greasy strands. His skin had become mired in a no-man’s land between uneven stubble and acne. Misery surrounded him in a cloud. It was a gloom that felt all too familiar to me: Michael was deep in the trough, he had descended as I had often descended, and was now chin high in crippling depression. Had my death done this to him?

  I’d have given anything to take on my son’s sorrow. But all I could do was walk by his side, unseen and unfelt. What had happened to change Michael so? Nine months ago, faced with the truth that I was no longer part of his life, I had stopped torturing myself by standing outside our old home, staring in at a world where I had been forgotten. I had forced myself to find other families to watch. I had made myself move on.

  Which meant I had not been there for him during whatever crisis had landed Michael here, among the lost souls of Holloway.

  Was he becoming another version of me?

  Michael ignored the nurses who watched him, assessing his behavior, trying to put a label on his troubles. He paused in the common-room doorway but gave no notice of the other young patients inside. They were gathered around a television set to watch a movie about teenage vampires. He did not notice, as I did, that the pale complexions and vacant eyes of his fellow patients were far more frightening than the stylish vampires of the movie. Michael was preoccupied and waiting for someone. His eyes kept focusing on the door at the far end of the hall before he looked quickly away, as if he were ashamed of his need for company.

  He was not waiting for his mother. When Connie came through the door a few moments later, Michael slumped in disappointment. He had been hoping for someone else.

  Connie exuded motherly optimism as she hugged him, but I could feel the cracks of fear spreading through her body like fissures. She was determined that Michael not sense the terror that vibrated in her like piano wire. I understood her fear. She had seen this all before. She had seen it in me. And she had learned that love alone was not enough. She knew that the darkness sometimes won.

  ‘I brought you tee shirts,’ she said. ‘And some books, in case you feel like reading?’

  ‘Why do I have to be here?’ Michael asked sullenly, taking the bag she offered but refusing to meet her eyes.

  ‘It’s just for a few days. Just to give you a break.’

  ‘I didn’t wreck the car on purpose,’ he protested too loudly. His voice attracted the attention of the other patients. They watched Michael and his mother warily. When it came to the war between parent and child, they knew where their loyalties lay.

  ‘Sometimes we do things without realizing why,’ Connie explained in a whisper. ‘It’s just getting worse, Michael, it’s just getting worse.’ Her voice cracked and it shocked me. This was not the steel-nerved Connie I had known. Had I taken all of her strength? Left her mired in fear of the worst?

  ‘This place is a hellhole,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe. Crazy people attack you all the time. The other kids told me. They have serial killers and shit locked up right next door.’

  Connie’s patience was being tested. ‘Michael, that’s just stupid teenage rumors and don’t you swear. You’re perfectly safe here. Cal told me and he ought to know.’

  ‘But end-of-grade tests are coming up,’ Michael protested, trying another tack. ‘You’re guaranteeing that I’m going to fail.’

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ she assured him, but he did not believe her. She was his mother. She had to love him. How could she possibly understand that she was the only one who did – or ever would?

  This was my fault. How many times could I have stepped in when I was alive to be a real father, providing the guidance that might have kept it from coming to this?

  ‘He’s not coming back,’ Connie told him gently. ‘He’s dead, Michael. I can’t bring him back. He’s never coming back to us and you have to accept it. Your life is just beginning. Don’t sacrifice it to this.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Michael insisted. He fled to his room, leaving Connie standing in the hall. I wanted to follow him, but Connie’s boyfriend, the man who had taken my place in my family, entered the ward, bringing an air of efficiency with him. He was tall and graying, dressed in a nice suit, full of confidence and comfortable in this setting. The staff knew him, I saw, and they liked him, judging by their smiles.

  Did he work here at Holloway? Had he been the one to convince Connie to send Michael here? Why had I not seen him here at Holloway before?

  Cal. That was his name. I remembered it now. Cal: sturdy and competent and kind. He was everything I had never been.

  Connie buried her head in his comforting arms. ‘I can’t do anything right.’

  ‘You don’t have to do anything at all,’ he told her quietly. ‘You’ve done everything that you can do. Let the people here do their jobs. They’ll give you Michael back.’

  ‘He hates me,’ Connie whispered.

  ‘He hates himself,’ the man explained and I had to admit it – his voice was thick with genuine concern. He cared for them both. Who was I to begrudge him his ability to be the man I had never been?

  ‘Where’s Sean?’ Connie asked him. Sean was my youngest. He was sunny and full of himself, as different from his brother as, well, as life from death.

  ‘I dropped him off at Matt’s house. His mother said he could stay as long as he needs to.’

  This small kindness seemed to break her. Connie began to cry. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ she said. ‘Without you and everyone else who wants to help. I don’t know what to do. I can’t do this alone.’

  ‘Just take a deep breath. You don’t have to do this alone. It’s going to be OK.’

  ‘Cal?’ A small woman emerged from a room near the nurse’s station. She was in her mid-forties, with light-brown hair and a straightforward manner. I knew her. She was a therapist who sometimes advised the department on the psychological make-up of suspects.

  ‘Miranda.’ Cal shook her hand and then gestured toward my wife. ‘This is my fiancée, Connie Fahey.’

  I heard the words like a kick in the gut. Game, set, match. Replaced.

  ‘How do you do?’ Miranda asked. ‘Wait, don’t answer that. We’ll get into that later.’

  Connie tried
to smile at the joke, but her mouth trembled with the effort.

  ‘I know you’re anxious to hear an opinion soon,’ Miranda said. ‘I’d like to talk to Michael alone first and then we can chat. Would that be OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ Connie agreed. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘An hour should do it. Then I can give you my recommendation on how long I think Michael needs to stay with us and what it is we’re looking at.’

  ‘Do you think it’s drugs?’ Connie asked. Fear radiated from her. Addiction. Obliteration. Promises. More addiction. She’d been there before.

  Miranda shook her head. ‘There was nothing in his system. This is emotional in nature.’

  ‘His father—’ Connie began.

  ‘I know,’ Miranda interrupted. ‘I have the family history. But let’s take it one hour at a time. Michael is his own person and we’ve come a long way in the treatment of adolescents. Let’s see what we’re up against first.’

  Connie nodded, glad to stave off her worst fears for the next hour, at least. She followed Cal out of the ward while I tagged along behind Miranda, desperate to know if my death was the cause of Michael’s grief. As pitiful as it sounds, I needed to know that I had mattered to him. I needed to know he remembered me.

  Michael was sprawled across his narrow bed, staring at a book that I was pretty sure he wasn’t really reading.

  ‘I’m Dr Fowler,’ Miranda explained, offering her hand as if he were a grown man. Michael held the grip awkwardly before letting go. He inched away from her. She made him nervous. She was too calm, too self-possessed. He was used to fighting Connie’s passionate concern with sullen indifference. How do you fight calm?

  ‘I’m going to be your therapist while you’re here,’ Miranda explained. ‘I’m not a medical doctor. I have my PhD in clinical psychology, with a specialty in treating early adolescent depression.’

  ‘I’m not depressed,’ Michael insisted stubbornly. ‘I’m just pissed off.’

  ‘I bet you are.’ Miranda dragged a chair closer to Michael. She was not going to ask that he join her in an office. She was willing to join him. ‘It’s appropriate for you to be pissed off right now. Your father dies, no one ever talks about it, then your mother replaces him pretty quickly, I’d have to say. On top of all that, I’m willing to bet there’s not a person in this world who seems to be paying you a damn bit of attention. Did I leave anything out?’

  Michael closed the book on his lap. He may even have been trying to smile. ‘Yes. I’m in love with a girl who barely knows I exist,’ he added. ‘Even though I talk to her every day at school.’

  ‘No!’ Miranda seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Now you’re depressing me.’

  Michael smiled in spite of himself. That single spark of humor gave me hope. ‘My mom thinks I’m just like my dad,’ he told Miranda. ‘She thinks that I’m going to grow up to drink and mope and screw up all the time, and not care about anyone but myself.’

  There it was: the most matter-of-fact indictment of my life I had ever heard.

  ‘And yet you loved your father,’ Miranda said. ‘And I have no doubt that he loved you deeply.’ Thank you, bless you, thank you, Miranda. ‘Now his love is gone. It has to hurt, Michael. To know that his love is gone.’

  Just like that, my son was fighting tears. ‘I wasn’t trying to kill myself when I crashed my mom’s car,’ he said through clenched teeth.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Miranda answered gently. ‘But you did steal it. And we need to talk about that. And you could have killed the family in the other car. We need to talk about that, too. And, Michael – I don’t think your mother would survive if something happened to you. Nor would your brother’s world ever be the same.’

  ‘I’m only fourteen,’ he whispered.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It hardly seems fair, does it? That so much should be on you?’

  The tears came.

  I left them.

  His secrets were not mine to hear.

  FOUR

  I wondered if Connie blamed me for what was happening to Michael. Always a glutton for punishment, I went in search of her and found her in the courtyard that marked the center of Holloway’s vast grounds, holding Cal’s hand as they waited for Michael’s therapy session to end. If Cal was impatient to get back to work, he did not show it.

  I saw Olivia, the patient I had cast in my imaginary Holloway family, sitting in her customary spot on a bench close to the fountain of marble cherubs. I joined her on the bench, where I had a good view of Connie and her fiancé, though it was hard to look at anyone other than Olivia. The hints of magenta in her hair seemed to dance in the sunlight, mesmerizing me. Her face was so pale and solemn that she looked like a Madonna sitting in repose at the feet of the angels.

  It wasn’t that I was trying to eavesdrop. I was just trying to find my way. Connie and Cal were waiting in a companionable silence. They fit, and it hurt.

  ‘I come out here to be alone, you know,’ Olivia said to me.

  I turned to her, stunned. ‘You can see me?’

  ‘I’m crazy, not blind. What unit are you in?’

  ‘Me? I’m . . . I’m a visitor here,’ I stammered. How was it that she could see me when she never had before? Only people close to death or spiraling into madness could see me. My heart sank. I knew what it had to be.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ I told her.

  ‘Do what?’ She chewed at her lower lip with perfect white teeth as she stared at the cascading waters of the fountain.

  ‘Don’t hurt yourself.’

  She looked up at me, startled.

  ‘Don’t ask me how I know,’ I said. ‘Just don’t hurt yourself. You can’t be more than thirty. You have your whole life ahead of you.’

  ‘My daughter is dead,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘My life died with her.’

  What do you say to that?

  ‘That’s my wife,’ I offered. Hey, it was the best I could come up with. I nodded at Connie, as if offering up my own sorrow might somehow make Olivia feel better about hers.

  ‘The woman holding that guy’s hand?’ Olivia squinted at them. ‘He works here at Holloway, you know.’

  ‘A doctor?’

  ‘No. I think he hires the nurses and orderlies. They all know him. Why is he sitting with your wife and holding her hand while you’re sitting here with me?’

  ‘It’s a very long story,’ I told her.

  ‘OK. Maybe a better question is this: why are you just sitting there staring at them and not doing anything about it?’

  ‘That’s an even longer story,’ I explained.

  Olivia’s gaze was like warm honey. I felt its heat and tasted its sweetness. To be seen, to be recognized, was . . . divine.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked, letting curiosity overcome her despair.

  ‘Kevin. I know yours. It’s Olivia.’

  ‘Well, that’s not creepy at all.’ She stared back at the fountain. For the first time, I noticed that all of the marble cherubs were boys and that they appeared to be peeing on one another. Good lord. What kind of message did that send to Holloway’s already confused patients?

  ‘Are you sure you’re a visitor?’ Olivia asked me.

  ‘I’m sure. I just like it here. It’s peaceful.’

  ‘Like a tomb,’ she agreed. ‘A tomb, a tomb, a tomb.’

  ‘What happened to your daughter?’ I asked, needing to know.

  ‘I killed her.’

  I was going to say something, anything, to break the silence that followed, but the air was split with the sudden sounds of sirens approaching from far below, growing in volume as official vehicles raced toward Holloway.

  ‘This isn’t good,’ Olivia predicted. ‘Probably one more crazy for the hardcore unit.’ She looked up at the brick building where the criminally insane were kept and I realized, with a start, that Otis Parker, the killer I’d failed to put on Death Row, was standing at the fence staring at Olivia as he idly caressed his groin.

  But Parke
r, too, was distracted by the sound of sirens. Oddly, he hurried across the exercise yard to the back of the hospital, where a chain-link fence marked the edge of the cliff that overlooked a valley. It was almost as if he already knew what I soon realized: the approaching police cars were not headed to Holloway at all. They zoomed past the front gates and continued in a loop around the hill, down toward the river that snaked through the valley below.

  ‘I must be going,’ I told Olivia. ‘We shall meet again soon.’

  She stared at me, for the first time, I think, wondering if I was real.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ I repeated. ‘Promise me. Just wait. We can talk again.’

  She looked back at the fountain, unwilling to promise, but I could not stay any longer. I had to know what was going on.

  I am not bound by cliffs or walls. It was nothing for me to take the most direct route to the scene. All I had to do was pass through the unit for the criminally insane first. The men inside were pumped up from their game of basketball. The possibility of violence nearby excited them further. I could smell the tang of their sweat and feel their energy buzzing around me like angry bees as I moved through their ranks. I reached the far edge of the exercise yard and joined the inmates gathered at the inner fence overlooking the cliff. They stamped and jostled like beasts in a pen smelling a blood sacrifice.

  The inmates had a bird’s-eye view of the scene unfolding along the banks of the Delaware tributary below. Official cars were pulling up near a small bridge that spanned the river just before a wooded area. A group of men stood at the top of the embankment, peering down at a dark shape sprawled on the riverbank below. It had to be a body. Nothing else brought out so many badges.

  Otis Parker had claimed his spot at the front of the pack and stood at the fence, inches from me. He wore a huge smile as he watched the scene unfolding below. His attention was absolute. It was as if he were watching a play that had been staged just for him. He groaned, unaware he had made the sound, and pressed his body against the fence, unconsciously grinding his hips against the metal.